Hell Spa

1992 Directed by Mike Bowler

Guaranteed the Last Health Club You'll Ever Join!

At Benson's Health Spa business is booming. And why not? With the, "Look beautiful and stay fit or never pay a dime" promotion, people are literally selling their souls to join.

Lisa Bawdon Tim Abell LeOnna Small Augie Blunt Raymond Storti Deirdre West Amy White Mike Bowler Ralph Lucas Dennis Devine

90 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Ian West ★½ 8

I know... I know... you’d think Hell Spa would be great because that title rules, but it just didn’t work for me :(
I’ll try you again one day Hell Spa... I’m certain we’ll click better then, especially for my next Spa-ploitation day, but in the meantime...
:: slowly caresses Death Spa Blu-ray while apologizing for such an egregious betrayal of spa choices::
Review by Rich Strahs ★ 1

“ You signed a lifetime membership, you remember?”
Ugh. Death Spa had so much going for it. It was cheesy and lived in the 80s. Hell Spa is almost 2 hours, shot on video and the mic work is disgusting. Literally hearing someone eat a cheeseburger is just not attractive nor is it good movie making. There is a guy who runs a spa that will kill or threaten people to lose weight. I need to lose weight and this guy is not exactly the best motivation. Does this thing really need to have a running time that runs almost 2 hours? NO!!!!!! Character development works at times but I often found myself just not caring no matter how much time was wasted on this.
Please note alcohol did not help this movie. That says a lot.
Review by ronniespectre ★★★½

The mythical Hell Spa! Grandmother to Club Dead, which is now on my want list. I rented this VHS tape on a hot tip from a friend (thanks, Justin!) and it’s truly the best way to watch it. A man in black looking like The Undertaker’s blonde nephew, or a Dennis Leary Hasselhoff hybrid, reaps the souls of desperate white collars from their failing businesses. A fitness club with three patrons and an ultra depressed entrepreneur takes the bait and all new clients enter into confusing Plan X contracts, where they lose weight OR ELSE, forcing them into crash diets and punishing workouts. A small newspaper, whose employees work out at Hell Spa, gets the scoop and a do-gooder journalist…
Review by Tonya Hardon ★★½ 1

The plot proved more cleaver than I expected, though it starts to fizzle in it's drawn out run time, but this was much more ambitious than I expected. Aside from some hacky acting and gross sound quality, I was pretty tickled with it. Sign your life away for the promise of a new you. Lighter, younger but incredibly dubious. Big results always come at a cost!
A few scenes brought big smiles, like a cop who inexplicably uses a battle axe to cut an apple at his desk. Or scenes that cut from gore to food. Mostly, I'm thankful for this line, "There’s something out there and it took my beans".
This doesn't hold up to Death Spa or Killer Workout, but if you have a fondness the horror gym subgenre, it's worth a run.
Review by smellington ★★½

I was not surprised to see that Dennis Devine had written Hell Spa. His movies tend to be rambling (overlong) exercises in mild amusements, plot holes, random weirdness, and feature very strong central female characters. In Hell Spa, Cathy is that strong central female character. She is the boss at the work, primary problem solver, and feared by the no goodniks for her rugged individualism. You know the stereotypical male lead usually found in this type of nonsense. She even has a boyfriend who primarily serves as plot device. Before I start sprouting hyperbole how Hell Spa is the Mad Max: Fury Road (full disclosure: haven’t seen it) of early 90s SOV horror movies, Hell Spa is not particularly deep…
Review by Richard ★

We're definitely continuing our journey towards the bottom of the barrel...
And why is this movie almost two hours long??
Review by Hollie Horror ★½

Well, not that I really needed another excuse to never, ever join a gym...but Hell Spa did a proper job in making me incredibly skeptical about memberships.
There were so many boring chase scenes that I found myself wishing they were sped up to the music from The Benny Hill Show.
Hell Spa was an unnecessary hour and 50 minutes long and not anywhere near as fun as other aerobic slashers (Death Spa, Killer Workout).
Review by Gregory⛧Joseph ★★★

Only the most basic skeleton of a slasher supporting a diverting, sprawling interpersonal gym-set melodrama. Ron Waldron's "Mr. Ex" is hardly an enigmatic figure, his Mephistopheles keeps regular office hours, and calmly talks the cast through his supernatural manipulations before, during and after, utterly transparent about the sort of devil bargain he's offering, winding up as sympathetic a character as the dogged gym-rats and frustrated print journalists that populate the narrative.
Unconscionably long at 110 minutes, running way out of steam but breathing freely in a way these sorts of movies rarely can. Devine's script stuffs the film with relational tangents and stubbornly complete arcs for even its most peripheral characters. The cast is diverse, arranged in configurations that subvert…
Review by dennis f ★★★★

Great low budget SOV.
Review by MarkAlanMiller

You can make a 2 hr movie.
You can make an SOV movie.
But you can’t make a 2 hr SOV movie.
Review by Maki ★½

The devil makes deals with people to lose weight and look better... OR ELSE. Shot on video with acting and a script to match, all joy found in this movie is ironic. Unintentional comedy is the order of the day, so watch it with that in mind and with a group of like-minded individuals and you can have a lot of fun with it.
"There's somebody out there... AND HE TOOK MY BEANS!"

Recent reviews

Review by MarkAlanMiller

You can make a 2 hr movie.
You can make an SOV movie.
But you can’t make a 2 hr SOV movie.
Review by Tonya Hardon ★★½ 1

The plot proved more cleaver than I expected, though it starts to fizzle in it's drawn out run time, but this was much more ambitious than I expected. Aside from some hacky acting and gross sound quality, I was pretty tickled with it. Sign your life away for the promise of a new you. Lighter, younger but incredibly dubious. Big results always come at a cost!
A few scenes brought big smiles, like a cop who inexplicably uses a battle axe to cut an apple at his desk. Or scenes that cut from gore to food. Mostly, I'm thankful for this line, "There’s something out there and it took my beans".
This doesn't hold up to Death Spa or Killer Workout, but if you have a fondness the horror gym subgenre, it's worth a run.
Review by Rich Strahs ★ 1

“ You signed a lifetime membership, you remember?”
Ugh. Death Spa had so much going for it. It was cheesy and lived in the 80s. Hell Spa is almost 2 hours, shot on video and the mic work is disgusting. Literally hearing someone eat a cheeseburger is just not attractive nor is it good movie making. There is a guy who runs a spa that will kill or threaten people to lose weight. I need to lose weight and this guy is not exactly the best motivation. Does this thing really need to have a running time that runs almost 2 hours? NO!!!!!! Character development works at times but I often found myself just not caring no matter how much time was wasted on this.
Please note alcohol did not help this movie. That says a lot.
Review by Ian West ★½ 8

I know... I know... you’d think Hell Spa would be great because that title rules, but it just didn’t work for me :(
I’ll try you again one day Hell Spa... I’m certain we’ll click better then, especially for my next Spa-ploitation day, but in the meantime...
:: slowly caresses Death Spa Blu-ray while apologizing for such an egregious betrayal of spa choices::
Review by ronniespectre ★★★½

The mythical Hell Spa! Grandmother to Club Dead, which is now on my want list. I rented this VHS tape on a hot tip from a friend (thanks, Justin!) and it’s truly the best way to watch it. A man in black looking like The Undertaker’s blonde nephew, or a Dennis Leary Hasselhoff hybrid, reaps the souls of desperate white collars from their failing businesses. A fitness club with three patrons and an ultra depressed entrepreneur takes the bait and all new clients enter into confusing Plan X contracts, where they lose weight OR ELSE, forcing them into crash diets and punishing workouts. A small newspaper, whose employees work out at Hell Spa, gets the scoop and a do-gooder journalist…
Review by Gregory⛧Joseph ★★★

Only the most basic skeleton of a slasher supporting a diverting, sprawling interpersonal gym-set melodrama. Ron Waldron's "Mr. Ex" is hardly an enigmatic figure, his Mephistopheles keeps regular office hours, and calmly talks the cast through his supernatural manipulations before, during and after, utterly transparent about the sort of devil bargain he's offering, winding up as sympathetic a character as the dogged gym-rats and frustrated print journalists that populate the narrative.
Unconscionably long at 110 minutes, running way out of steam but breathing freely in a way these sorts of movies rarely can. Devine's script stuffs the film with relational tangents and stubbornly complete arcs for even its most peripheral characters. The cast is diverse, arranged in configurations that subvert…
Review by smellington ★★½

I was not surprised to see that Dennis Devine had written Hell Spa. His movies tend to be rambling (overlong) exercises in mild amusements, plot holes, random weirdness, and feature very strong central female characters. In Hell Spa, Cathy is that strong central female character. She is the boss at the work, primary problem solver, and feared by the no goodniks for her rugged individualism. You know the stereotypical male lead usually found in this type of nonsense. She even has a boyfriend who primarily serves as plot device. Before I start sprouting hyperbole how Hell Spa is the Mad Max: Fury Road (full disclosure: haven’t seen it) of early 90s SOV horror movies, Hell Spa is not particularly deep…
Review by dennis f ★★★★

Great low budget SOV.
Review by Hollie Horror ★½

Well, not that I really needed another excuse to never, ever join a gym...but Hell Spa did a proper job in making me incredibly skeptical about memberships.
There were so many boring chase scenes that I found myself wishing they were sped up to the music from The Benny Hill Show.
Hell Spa was an unnecessary hour and 50 minutes long and not anywhere near as fun as other aerobic slashers (Death Spa, Killer Workout).
Review by Richard ★

We're definitely continuing our journey towards the bottom of the barrel...
And why is this movie almost two hours long??
Review by darongardner ★★

They could have done so little to make this movie stand up to the great title it has. Theyblewit.
Review by Maki ★½

The devil makes deals with people to lose weight and look better... OR ELSE. Shot on video with acting and a script to match, all joy found in this movie is ironic. Unintentional comedy is the order of the day, so watch it with that in mind and with a group of like-minded individuals and you can have a lot of fun with it.
"There's somebody out there... AND HE TOOK MY BEANS!"