John (Renaud Verley) has spent years in a psychiatric clinic for the criminally insane and is finally released. His aunt Marta (Viveca Lindfors) was responsible for his interment after some unpleasant happenings the film will take its time to even vaguely explain. In John's opinion, the only reason for her action was greed. He thinks Marta wanted to get her hands on a quite impressive inheritance he made.
It is of course relatively hard to believe everything what John says, sees or hears, since whatever his state of mind before his imprisonment has been, he is now secretly but violently mad.
After some strolling through the woods near his home and "learning" in a slaughterhouse, he carefully starts to contact Marta and her three daughters again. Strange things happen that lead him to believe the women want to destroy his sanity once and for all.
This of course only strengthens John's resolve to take his vengeance on them. He starts out with little things that are just the a wee bit too gruesome and twisted to be called pranks and slowly but steadily increases the violence of his acts.
The version of Bell from Hell on the "Chilling Classics" box set I have just watched is unfortunately cut by about thirteen minutes. It nonetheless turns out to be a fascinating movie, a very European mixture of horror, psychological thriller, presumably (the cuts!) sleaze and self conscious art house flick. As usual with films like it, the viewer has to endure a very slow build-up. The first thirty minutes of the film contain more scenes of people staring meaningfully at each other but not saying a single word than sanity should allow. Fortunately even the over-slow beginning shows the greatest strength of the film clearly: excellent photography which produces an impressive mood of the weird and the uncanny that will grow from minute to minute.
Director Claudio Guerin even turns the Euro-typical circumcisiousness of plot and storytelling into a strength. We are never quite sure if (and how much of) what we see and hear is true, never secure in our sympathies. When John starts his more disturbing acts of violence, our trust in the common order of things is already shattered. Everything that follows is just there to keep us in this state of mind.
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