Available on physical media July 29th, 2025
A rapist finds his victims at work, at a party, in the wild, etc.
Trigger warning: Rape, lots of it
Written by Jack Hill who co-directed with John Lamb, Mondo Keyhole feels very much like an excuse for putting multiple rapes on screen, attacking various women, with a veil-thin story surrounding it all as an excuse to bring the sleaze up as much as they could. The characters here are not exactly developed but rather designed as archetypes, none of them particularly well written or interesting. These folks are here to do bad things or be the victims of bad things, and it’s pretty predictable who is who and what will happen to them. Considering Hill’s body of work and all the classics under his name, the film at hand becomes a more and more frustrating watch as the run time ticks by.
The cast here is ok. They work the material they have on hand and within the story they find themselves within. As it is, though, the performances are not exactly great, and they just add to the sleaze aspect. Because of the nature of the film, remembering characters’ names was not a priority while dodging all the attacks on women and that most characters get very few lines. Judging the acting here would almost be unfair to the cast who likely were just taking a job and doing what they could. This does show from time to time and some of the party sequences do show folks who seem to be having an actual good time, but none of them are introduced, so there is no easy listing of who did best here no matter how the film is looked at.
The film here is what some would refer to as a Jack Hll joint in that he not only wrote it and co-directed it, but he also did the cinematography and the editing. This is his movie, and she shall take the blame for it. He can get his laurels for Spider Baby or Coffey or another title. Here the images and the editing of these images feel like an afterthought, like the main goal was to show the “action” and not worry about much else. Was this on purpose? Was this the plan? Or was Hill kind of stuck and producing some of his less interesting work? Who knows and honestly, if you are interested in finding out, this viewer is not.
Overall, this is not something that would be a suggested watch unless one is a massive Jack Hill fan and absolutely needs to see everything he’s ever done. This is not an agreeable watch, but it’s also not a rough watch that feels like it adds anything to any conversation. There surely an audience for it and more power to them, but this reviewer will be avoiding seeing this rape-fest ever again.
The new presentation here is likely to be as clear and clean as possible from the source material with a decent 2k presentation and sound that works well for the material. The extras here are a bit thin with a photo and poster gallery, an archival commentary with director Jack Hill, and a more modern commentary with Rob Kelly. To be honest here, judging these is difficult when the film itself is not something this viewer wants to watch again. Running two commentaries was a bit much and something that is difficult to suggest to anyone. However, for those into the film, these two commentaries should be satisfying extras.