Now don't get me wrong i do love my ham low-budget and low-brow horror but this is really quite wack stuff even at your most haphazard silly level. Three relatively boring short stories told by a woman on death-row to her prison guard just before her execution.... incidentally the girl who's on death-row who tells the "stories" is fit and ...er...yeh...is probably about the only decent thing in this forgettable film. The three short stories that are told are simply very ,very , very weak stuff and frankly just straight up uninteresting. The first story is so painfully acted by everyone involved its a relief once it's over ...the mundane "suspense" of the story isn't helped by some awful camera continuity , wack editing . The one highlight admittedly is the slightly amusing second short story of a wife beating redneck....completely silly and seemingly made-up as they were filming storyline is reprived by it's bemusing off-the-wall ending. Third story...i dnno some biker devilish cult malarky promises something but again ends up crap.Overall it's mostly an uninteresting , generally non-sensical bunch of stories filmed badly and directed badly , edited and sequenced in a way that struggles to convey any decent viewing. It really isn't worth the time or effort to make even the most passive of viewing ...even at this most botchit level of low-budget horror.

I was a big fan of Paul Talbot's enthusiastically gory debut horror anthology feature "Campfire Tales," so I naturally watched this follow-up fright film omnibus outing expecting a pleasingly gruesome and straightforward ghoulish good time. Fortunately, this lowdown gritty affair doesn't disappoint, for it measures up as a nice'n'nasty little low-budget indie winner.The sturdy wraparound segments center on Tara (a fabulously fiery'n'feisty performance by gorgeous Troma movie regular Debbie Rochon), a deranged murderess who's about to have that fatal onetime only sitting on Old Sparky. Prior to getting strapped, capped and zapped, Tara whiles away her last few hours on earth relating a trio of scary stories inspired by the tortured souls of past inmates to her mean, cruelly impassive jailhouse executioner (gruffly essayed by Gunnar Hansen; Leatherface in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"). First and most unnerving yarn - A young mother shows no concern whatsoever when her two kids mysteriously disappear. The hideously bloated and grotesque spirits of the drowned tots start haunting their mom's dreams and eventually exact a harsh revenge. Second and most ironic vignette - A battered trailerpark housewife uses witchcraft to rid herself of her viciously abusive jerk hick husband, only for things to go disastrously awry -- her brutish hubs transforms from a figurative monster into a literal one! Third and most delightfully trashy anecdote - A rowdy biker gang en route to an annual Mexico drug run stop off at a cemetery to pay their respects to legendary bad-a** motorcycle mama Big Rhonda (busty blonde babe J.J. North). After the expected excessive boozing, doping and making out, Big Rhonda's body comes to life as a gnarled machete-wielding zombie so it can kill the undercover cop posing as one of the dirtbag chopper hounds.Director/co-screenwriter/co-editor Paul Talbot directs with tremendous flair and gusto: he keeps the pace constantly brisk, creates a perfectly spooky atmosphere, lays on the graphic bloodshed by the gleefully explicit bucketful, and stages the shock scenes with lip-smacking brio. Better still, the general tone is grimly serious, with amusingly warped touches of pitch-black humor sprinkled throughout. Paul Cornwell's rough, grainy cinematography contributes greatly to the overall flesh-crawling ooga booga creepiness. Ditto the spare, shivery synthesizer score by Andrew Scott Foust, Eric Martin and Kirk Luther. And the expertly used South Carolina locations give the picture a deliciously tart'n'tangy downhome regional flavor.

Hellblock 13 starts in a prison as the state executioner (Gunnar Hansen) walks around death row surveying the female inmates. He comes across Tara (Debbie Rochon) a particularly nasty serial killer & someone who is due for execution by electric chair that very day, however Tara wants to leave a legacy behind her. That of a book she has wrote & hopes will be published, she decides to read the executioner some of it...The first story is entitled 'Watery Grave' & has selfish Mother of two Sherry Simpson (Amy R. Swaim) wanting a nice peaceful life with her new, & rich, boyfriend Bob Simms (Kirk Bair) so her kids have to make way. However her offspring want revenge for their untimely deaths...The second segment is called 'White Trash Love Story' & features Heidi Mae (Jennifer Peluso) who is abused & beaten by her husband Joe Mark (David G. Holland) & just has to put up with the black eye's. That is until Heidi Mae discovers that a witch (co-writer Michael R. Smith) lives just across the road...The third & final story goes by the name of 'Big Rhonda' which features a gang of bikers making a drugs pick-up to Mexico when they stop off en-route to pay homage to a former member Big Rhonda (J.J. North) who watches over & protects them...Edited, co-written, co-produced & directed by Paul Talbot I thought Hellblock 13 wasn't a particularly good example of the anthology sub-genre. The script by Talbot, Smith & co-producer Jeffrey Miller misses the point of these anthology films, each story needs to be pacey & have a nice twist ending. Unfortunately these basic requirements are sadly lacking in Hellblock 13. The first story Watery Grave is so predictable it's untrue, you will easily guess what will happen within the first few minutes & it plays out exactly like you anticipate it to. Having said that I think this is the best segment & with a bit more time & better plotting could have made for an effective tale. White Trash Love Story is strange & has little in the way of a twist at the end & I thought this segment was all rather pointless although it's not as predictable as Watery Grave. Then there's Big Rhonda which again I just found too predictable, as soon as the word sacrifice is mentioned I knew the outcome, besides that Big Rhonda is the weakest of the three segments & just dull. All three stories lack any sort of life or effective twists & in this particular type of film that's an absolute killer. The first two stories also deal with unpleasant subject matters, the murder of children & wife beating. I know it's only a film & I'm not against exploitation but these issues sat uneasily with me in such a trivial & poorly made film. On a positive note it's watchable & since each segment only lasts for about 25 minutes it's not that boring.Director Talbot doesn't do anything to distinguish the film & as a whole Hellblock 13 lacks any sort of tension, excitement or atmosphere. The closest it ever comes is in Watery Grave which at least takes place at night & tries to create a spooky mood & I also liked the way the children sent threatening messages by rearranging toy blocks with letters on to spell words. There isn't much blood or gore, a couple of decapitated heads, a few poorly made-up zombies, some green slime vomiting, skin bulging, an awful looking witch & a few stabbings.Hellblock 13 is a poorly made film throughout & deserves the straight-to-video status that it got. The music, special effects, cinematography, sets & general production values are poor. Apparently it was filmed in 1997 but was released in 2000 by Troma which says everything you need to know. The acting is awful from everyone involved but Rochon looks quite nice I suppose.Hellblock 13 is an attempt to make an old school horror anthology like Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), Asylum (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), Tales from the Crypt (1972), Creepshow (1982), Creepshow 2 (1987) & Body Bags (1993) but, it goes without saying, it fails although at least it's watchable.

Let it be said: This movie isn't very good. It runs the gamut from boring to stupid to ugly to cheap. Sometimes it achieves all four of those things at once.It's an anthology flick with three short stories, but they move so slow you'll feel like you're watching a six hour pain-fest. In the first unengaging tale, a woman's kids are missing, and some dull things happen. Then there's "White Trash Love Story", by default the best segment in the movie, although it moves so slow you'll be asleep before the pretty good effects at the climax. Then there's the embarrassing tale of the over-age bikers who try to resurrect the late "Big Rhonda", mainly through some "hot" girl-on-girl action.The film's saving grace is the beautiful Debbie Rochon's fun performance as the jailed serial killer Tara, who spins the pathetic tales of "terror". Luckily this movie is available on DVD, so you can skip directly to her parts in the movie.But you're not gonna wanna even watch that much, because this movie really stinks. It falls below even Troma's admittedly low quality standards. Perhaps if they packed it with ideas like "Tromeo & Juliet" and gave it a sense of humor it would have been bearable, but as it stands, it is a big juicy crap burger.