Release and Reception
Straight to Hell's premiere was held at the Pickwick Drive-In in Burbank, California. Invitees were asked to come dressed in "post-apocalyptic fiesta garb." Everyone who arrived was handed a water pistol. The film's premiere was a fiasco, and several people at the drive-in left midway into the movie. Courtney Love was reportedly visibly upset at the premiere.
The film was not well-received by critics, drawing mostly negative reviews. In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "The result is a mildly engrossing, instantly forgettable midnight movie." Hal Hinson, in his review for the Washington Post, wrote, "The action is so gratuitous, and so indifferently presented, that it's impossible to think that Cox ever truly intended it to be seen by anyone outside of the cast and crew and their immediate families."
In the US Straight to Hell was rated "R" for violence and language. The latter reason caught the producers by surprise, as the writers deliberately refrained from including any sort of profanity in the dialogue. Even the word "hell" appears only in the title (at one point a character quite noticeably says "what the heck is going on here?"), and the insults that fly before a showdown are no worse than "go boil yer head!"
The film was released on VHS in the 1990s and was also released on DVD by Anchor Bay Entertainment on April 24, 2001, but went out of print in the following years.
Read more about this topic: Straight To Hell (film)
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