Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (1996)

Well friends here I am continuing my deep dive into the Hellraiser franchise. As I stated in my review of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, I never went any further with these movies. From here on out it is all new to me, which should be fun. Right? I mean how bad could things get? Really, I’m worried now…

I guess with the fourth installment the filmmakers decided to try and explain the puzzle box and the cenobites and hellscape contained within it. The movie starts in the future when we are introduced to Dr. Merchant. It seems that the good doctor has hijacked the space station he designed to experiment on a very familiar box. The army/space cops show up in time to stop him… sort of. While being interrogated we get to find out that his family has done battle with the box and demons from its very inception. This is because the distant ancestor was the toymaker that made the box.

We get two flashbacks. The first tells us about the toymaker and the crazed wizard that commissioned the box. After delivering the box the toymaker sticks around and is horrified to see the ritual that allows it to open the doorway to the Hell allowing a princess from hell, Angelique to enter our world. He tries to destroy the box and send her back to hell, but obviously fails. Then things jump to another ancestor in the nineties that has built a building based on some drawings he inherited from the toymaker. Plus, there is some nonsense about the bloodline having memories and passing them down. Here we get to meet Pinhead for the first time as he pops out and has a bit of a disagreement with Angelique about her methods. She uses seduction to get what she wants and well you guys probably know how Pinhead solves his problems. This leads to some conflict and eventually she goes full cenobite.

After the second flashback we bounce back to the future and watch an abbreviated fight between the space cops, Pinhead, and some of his new friends. Luckily throughout the other stories there was this MacGuffin of a new box that would destroy the minions of hell and their portal. With some very bad CGI we get to see how that works and the good guys ride off in a shuttle.

If this guy hired you to make a toy would you?

My first observation about Hellraiser IV is that it was directed by Alan Smithee. If you aren’t in the know on this sort of thing that is the named used when the director of the project wishes to have his name removed from the finished movie. The director’s actual name is Kevin Yagher and he directed such illustrious movies as… well nothing. He did this and a couple of Tales from the Crypt episodes. He would rather have no feature film credits on his resume than admit he directed Hellraiser IV. Let that sink in.

If that tidbit didn’t give it away this movie is a complete mess. In some ways it feels way too ambitious in both the epic story that is trying to be told as well as the limited budget that they had available to them. Let me speak to the story first. There are basically three distinct plots in the movie. You have the original toymaker fighting against Angelique and those that summoned her. Trying to set right what he had unintentionally done by making the box for them. He consults a random science guy who is doing an autopsy. Who is this character and why would he have any advice on what to do? That’s never explained, hell I don’t think he even gets a name. The toymaker goes back and gets caught, it is hinted that something happens to his “exquisite” fingers, but we never see it. Was something cut out of the movie? If so, why leave the dialogue referencing it in?

This happens again in the second story as there seems to be a lot more to the relationship between Pinhead and Angelique then what we get to see on screen. There are bits that hint at a rivalry as well as an attraction between the two, but it is never fleshed out on screen. Even her ending where she tries to betray him, and he turns her into another cenobite seems to have had been written with something more behind it then what we get. Again, it feels like something is missing.

The wraparound with the marines is abbreviated and forced. It is all action and itself feels tacked on just to resolve things as they reached the end of the runtime and budget. I’ll have more on budget later. There is a horrendous bit of editing at the end where Dr. Merchant goes from running down a hallway to calmly talking to Pinhead, to us then finding out that it was a hologram and that he is really in a shuttle flying away from the space station with the character that we just saw him talking to earlier before they go their separate ways. This might seem redundant me mentioning this again at this point, but something is clearly missing.

The new crew

Speaking of the budget there is a dramatic difference between some of the effects work. At times we get some decent practical effects work with bodies being skinned, hooks piercing flesh, and hearts getting ripped out of chests. Good stuff indeed. But then we suddenly get terrible CGI work. This is most noticeable with the space station that is clearly some crappy computer-generated model that they can “fold” up in the software to make another cube. There is also a gag where a pair of twins get formed into a new cenobite that is cringeworthy, even by mid-nineties digital standards. Much like the plot this is an odd mix of stuff that just doesn’t seem to belong in the same movie.

I’m going to stretch that idea of not belonging into my final point. This is the fourth movie and it travels in time. I don’t think that it is too unreasonable for them to somehow tie the characters from the first three flicks into this greater story arc. They don’t and in fact it doesn’t make any sense why any of those characters would have come across the cube since there seems to have always been a Merchant descendant available to “finish” the job and open the larger gateway to hell. It actually feels as if the previous, and much better movies, were just times where Pinhead was bored… That sucks.

Hellraiser IV Bloodline is a terrible movie that I am glad I skipped until now. I’ve never been a big fan of this franchise but even I think that it deserves better than this. I can’t see how the sequels could get any worse than this, but I’ve heard things. Clearly, I’m not recommending this one and I ask that you wish me luck as I dig deeper into the mess that is this franchise. Though I need to take a break so it may be a while.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

Hellraiser III Hell on Earth (1992)

My trip down the Hellraiser wormhole continues with the third entry in the franchise. Hell on Earth is the last one that I watched and even then, it was on Showtime years ago, maybe the late nineties. I hadn’t seen this in a while and was interested in what I was going to get. It stars Terry Farrell (Star Trek DS9) and was directed by Tony Hickox of Waxwork fame, so I had some hope for it. Might as well jump in and see.

Red cowboy boot wearing douchebag J.P. Monroe stops by a gallery in the middle of the night to buy some art for his equally douchey club, The Boiler Room. He sees a very familiar stature, the pillar from the end of part II, and decides that is the item he wants. Then the action switches to Terry Farrell’s character of Joey, an aspiring reporter, who happens to be in the emergency room when they bring in a man wrapped in chains. You can probably guess what happens next. After his gruesome demise she obsesses on solving the mystery. Why was he covered in chains and why did he head explode? You know reporter stuff.

Joey tracks down the woman, Terri, who was with him when they brought him to the hospital. She leads her to J.P. who has made a deal with Pinhead who because of the events of the previous movie has somehow been released into the real world. That means no more rules and a lot more murder! There is also a bit with Joey being scratched by one of the chains in the hospital that connects her with the familiar box and allows the ghost Elliott (Pinhead when he was still human) to contact her. With his guidance she tries to return Pinhead to Hell and save the Earth from his wrath.

This was a way better movie than I expected it to be. The story is tight with the mystery of what is happening being slowly unraveled. This is the first movie where the rules have changed which keeps the audience a little off balance. This would have been annoying if the story hadn’t explained it and in fact made it central to the plot. Pinhead is loose and has no limitations on himself anymore. You no longer need to make a deal with the devil to get messed up! Not only that he has been separated from the human half of his being, so the violence is even more brutal and random. The club scene where he destroys what seems to be a hundred people is crazy and unlike anything up until this point. I dug that.

The cast is solid with Terry Farrell and Doug Bradley carrying the movie. Bradley has a decent amount of screen time as both Pinhead and Elliott, which is cool. The rest of the cast is solid but not terribly memorable. Several of them get to play both human as well as Cenobites as Pinhead goes about rebuilding his crew. We get a smoking cenobite, a bartender/flamethrower cenobite, a D.J. cenobite that throws CDs like ninja stars, and my personal favorite a cameraman cenobite that gets some very funny lines.

The gore is pretty damn good for the nineties. There is all sorts of blood spilled in the club with flesh getting ripped by chains ending in fishhooks. Some of the highlights are an exploding head, some pointy things jammed thru heads, a camera lens punches clean thru another noggin’, and my favorite a woman is skinned alive as her skin to ripped off in one clean jerk. There are also explosions and creepy art coming to life. My inner gore hound was more than satisfied with what I got in Hellraiser III Hell on Earth.

I’ve heard that in most people’s opinions this or part IV are the best sequels in the series and after them things go downhill quickly. We shall see as I plan on making my way thru the rest of the series. Until then all I can say is that this is a fun movie that is worth checking out. For this review I watched the Arrow Blu-ray that was released as a box set with the first three movies. I’m not familiar with what the other releases of this movie look like but it is pretty sharp here. Check it out and I’ll be back with the next in the franchise.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Time to dig into this first sequel in the Hellraiser franchise. Picking up right after the end of the first flick this one finds our heroine Kirsty locked up in a mental hospital as no one believes her father was killed by demons and a mattress ate her stepmother. I guess when you come right out and say it that makes some sense. While in the hospital she meets Dr. Channard who takes a particular interest in her case. He seems determined to help her but is also very creepy. Turns out he is aware of the puzzle box and wants to go for a stroll in hell. Because of his research he knows how to bring the evil stepmother, Julia, back out of the mattress by feeding it blood. This leads to the puzzle box being solved and some cenobites wreaking havoc.

All the above leads to Kirsty and her new friend Tiffany doing battle in hell with the cenobites, Julia, and the good doctor Channard, who is now a cenobite. Along the way we get some background on how Pinhead became what he is. This also leads him to find his humanity and immediately pay the price. You know I always remembered these movies having more Pinhead in them then they have so far.

I hadn’t seen this movie in a while, and I have to say it is way better than I remember it being. I might even like it more than the first! The pacing is surprisingly fast as we get a gooey flashback to the finale of the previous film and jump right into Kirsty and the crazy doctor. No slow buildup here with some experimental brain surgery and a patient that likes to cut on himself with a straight razor as early highlights. While it lags a bit when they first get to hell things pick up for an insane ending that I was very satisfied with.

The cast is great the second time around. Ashley Laurence is perfect in the role of Kirsty and Doug Bradley shines in his limited time as Pinhead. This is also the first time in the series that we get to see him out of the makeup. For me I also liked that we get to see his human side as that makes him a far more interesting character and is the beginning of fans really embracing Pinhead as a horror icon. I get that some fans disagree with it, but sometimes I like a little bit of depth to my monsters. Though I think that most forget that the real villain of the first two movies is actually Julia, Kirsty’s stepmother. Clare Higgins is gleefully evil in the role and is a highlight of this as well as the first movie.

I’ve already mentioned a bit about the gore, but I want to speak on it just a bit more. As stated above we get an extended and horrible sequence with a mental patient seeing maggots on him, they aren’t really there, and proceeding to hack away at his own skin with the razor. This goes on for a while and the camera lingers. It is the kind of cringeworthy practical effects that I love. The skinless effect on Julia and her “shopping” for skin leads to some good stuff as well. There is the doctor getting turned into a cenobite, someone losing their heart, a room full of patients getting wiped out, and someone even gets drained of their blood on screen. This damn thing is gory as hell and I liked it.

In the past I was never a fan of the Hellraiser franchise. As I’ve gotten older I think that I’m appreciating it more and more. I’m encouraged and looking forward to checking out the rest, at least the next couple anyway. I’ve heard bad things past that. As for this one I highly recommend it.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer