Hellbenders

The subject of exorcism receives the Ghostbusters treatment—with a heavy dose of raunchiness—in writer-director J.T. Petty's cheerfully over-the-top horror comedy, which gathers an assortment of actors familiar to genre fans from secondary roles in other movies (most notably Clancy Brown and Clifton Collins Jr.) to play the wacky members of the Augustine Interfaith Order of Hellbound Saints, affectionately known as the titular Hellbenders. They represent the final line of defense against demons so impervious to conventional rites of exorcism that the only way to send them back into the abyss—follow me closely here—is to invite your own possession by living the most dissolute possible life and then committing suicide to drag the devils back to hell with you. The crunch comes when an officious representative from the diocese threatens to disband the crew just as a dangerous Norse demon arrives in New York who is intent on opening the gates of hell and destroying humanity. In the early going, Hellbenders is amusingly coarse, but the laughs eventually wear thin, and the big confrontation at the close—marked by deliberately chintzy special effects—falls flat. A hit-and-miss film that strains for midnight-movie cult status but never quite makes the grade, this is a strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)