Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth -review by Rabid Fox

 

To quickly recap the end of Part II, Kirsty managed to remind Pinhead of his former human self, Captain Elliot Spencer. This allowed Kirsty and company to escape the box and seal the evil back inside. The part in which Pinhead “reverts” to his human self turns out to repercussions that are dealt with in Hellraiser III. There’s also the obelisk that pops up in Channard’s office at the end of II with several tortured-looking faces and Pinhead’s image along with the rest and that too is pertinent for the next film.

That said…

Part III starts with young playboy J.P. Monroe searching an art gallery for a new work to add to his collection. The obelisk is among the works there and the features of the work, tortured faces and a curious looking box also set into the sculpture, immediately catch J.P.’s eye. A sketchy-looking merchant is happy to part with the object and tells J.P. to get a great deal of “pleasure” from the object.

Meanwhile…

In another part of town, young newscaster Joey is reporting out of a local emergency room looking for her big break. It turns out to be a no-news night and her cameraman gets called away on a real story. Joey’s bad luck soon “improves” as a young man is rushed into the emergency room accompanied by a panicked-looking young lady. The man is covered in bloody chains with hooks embedded in his flesh. Joey watches as they take him into a room to attempt to treat him but the chains begin to float and crackle with energy while the man writhes in pain. Joey is then shocked when she sees the man torn apart. The young woman that accompanied the victim has run off but leaves behind a matchbook for a club called The Boiler Room so Joey leaves to find out more about the bizarre event.

And of course…

Through her brief investigating Joey learns that J.P. is the owner of The Boiler Room. She also learns that he’s a misogynistic asshole but there has to be at least one in every Hellraiser movie so in part III we have J.P. As a quick aside, the Boiler Room is a weird place.

Joey walks in to one part and the décor looks like it caters to metal heads but they’re playing Soup Dragons and the place is full of yuppies. Then in another room there’s a metal band playing on stage (well, 80s hair metal) and then when Joey finally runs into J.P. it’s in the dining room which looks like a 5-star restaurant and is full of well-to-do patrons that look like they would be very awkward at a metal bar. Anyway, it’s assumed that all of that is the same place which is crazy…

So it turns out that the young lady that Joey is looking for is Terri, J.P.’s “girlfriend”. I say that in quotations because even before they show J.P. banging other women it’s not too hard to imagine that he’s not a girlfriend kinda guy.

But Terri is curious to talk to Joey anyway so she shows up at Joey’s place and they have some girl talk about dreams and whatnot. Joey, by the way, has these vivid dreams about her father who apparently got left behind and died in Vietnam, or at least that’s how she dreams it. So after dreams and girl talk Terri reveals that the guy who was torn apart had been fiddling with the puzzle box that they pulled out of the sculpture at J.P.’s place. Later, Terri takes Joey to the gallery (and by takes, I mean they break in) where J.P. got the sculpture and they poke around looking for any information about its origins or any info that might be available on the box. They happen upon a folder containing some sketches of the puzzle box as well as information about the Channard Institute which is where the events of the previous film occurred (but you already knew that smarty!). Joey contacts the institute and pesters them for any information that they might have on the box or the sculpture and they send her tapes of Kirsty (hey, Kirsty!) talking about the box’s sinister secrets. In one of the videos, the Kirsty session is interrupted by a cutaway to Pinhead’s human persona Elliot Spencer who tells Joey that Kirsty’s seemingly crazy talk about demons and gateways to “hell” are true and that Spencer needs Joey’s help.

Meanwhile…

In a cutaway scene J.P. is pondering his sculpture when he notices a puzzle box-sized hole on one side. For no apparent reason other than “script said so” J.P. reaches his hand way inside the sculpture hole and finds a mouse or rat hiding in there which, scared, bites him and scurries away (go rat!). J.P. bleeds all over the place because the rat apparently had teeth long enough to hit pay dirt, and some of that blood gets on the sculpture and soaks in. If you remember the previous films, the villain gets stuck in some sort of limbo and needs blood – a lot of blood – to be brought back to life; in the first film it was Frank, in the second film it was Julia, and in this film it’s Pinhead. Pinhead whispers lots of tempting things to J.P. to get him on board with helping break the Cenobite out of his artsy prison and J.P. uses his playboy bad boy status to lure more people to the slaughter. At some point he thinks, “Hey, I wonder where my ‘girlfriend’ is? I bet she’d like to be sacrificed so that I can have more power!”

But…

Terri is not really interested in J.P.’s offer because Joey is trying to help her get her life back on track (or maybe just ‘on track’). But while Joey is out at some point Terri, who by the way is staying at Joey’s place, overhears an answering machine message about Joey getting a job out in California. So now Terri, thinking that Joey is just bullshitting her, decides to mope back to J.P. and she gets to see Pinhead emerge from the sculpture, lucky gal! But at least she left Joey a note so that Joey wouldn’t worry…

So now Joey’s vivid dreaming – or maybe not dreaming – continues with a step into Spencer’s limbo. Joey starts off in the Quonset hut where Spencer first unlocked the puzzle box and eventually became Pinhead but that image of him is frozen. As Joey leaves the hut she is in the trenches during WWI (Spencer’s original time) and he is there to explain, basically, that he is one aspect of Pinhead but that those elements of their personality got separated into two beings after the events of the previous film. So now Pinhead, the purely evil part, is loose, chaotic and, since he is unbound from the box, has limitless power. So Spencer implores Joey to help lure Pinhead back into Spencer’s limbo so that they can both stop him before he dooms everyone.

And since the movie’s sub-title is Hell on Earth, you can pretty much guess what Pinhead wants to do. Pinhead, outside of the box and with no intention of going back in, is able to really get down and make some Cenobites.

It hadn’t really been established before just how that happens but the second movie seemed to imply that Leviathan (a part of the movie mythology that just seems to get dropped… forever…) is the one that transforms souls into soldiers of hell.

Oh well. So Pinhead tears through the Boiler Room and slaughters pretty much everyone. Joey stumbles on to the site of the massacre and has a little chat with Pinhead. Joey actually has the upper hand since Pinhead can’t really hurt her while she has the box and he can’t just take the box, it has to be given to him willingly. But, Pinhead can affect everything around Joey so when she runs off he uses his power bring chaos out into the streets. Pinhead also proceeds to turn a bunch of people into Cenobites to help go after Joey. Most of these newbie ‘bites look kind of cheesy; one of them, the Boiler Room DJ, gets turned into some CD-spewing monster which is kind of terrible and funny and makes you wonder what he would look like in the MP3 era. And her camera-man buddy from earlier gets turned into a Cenobite with an evil camera lense eye and gets to say “Ready for your close-up Joey?” and “that’s a wrap” in a “menacing” way.

And now for the showdown…

Joey has the puzzle box and she and Spencer want Pinhead trapped back inside whereas Pinhead and his Cenobite horde are trying to track down the box in order to destroy it and remain free of hell once and for all. During all the street chaos Joey enters a church to seek holy protection. Pinhead enters and gleefully destroys the church and its holy icons, laughing away the priest’s attempt to ward away the evil by holding a cross. Pinhead removes some of his head pins and impales himself through the palms in a mock-crucifixion then performs an unholy communion on the priest by making the priest eat of Pinhead’s flesh and blood.

Some people may find this scene out of place since up until now the Hellraiser movies have been more ambiguous about specific faiths and it isn’t even known whether or not the puzzle box “hell” is Biblical Hell or just some other plane of existence. Either way, it’s mainly meant for shock value to those who might find religious mockery or desecration to be bad.

Joey bolts from the church and winds up at a nearby construction site where she gets cornered by Pinhead and the other Cenobites, including Cenobite J.P. and Terri, how fun for them! Joey is able to trigger the box to dispel the Cenobites and afterwards again finds herself in the dreamlike state where she sees her father. Or is it her father? Nope! It’s tricky ole Pinhead and he tricks Joey into handing him the box. Joey is still able to control the scene though and change the Vietnam backdrop to bring them all into Spencer’s Quonset hut once again. In order to finally stop Pinhead, Spencer has to re-merge with his evil aspect giving Joey a chance to recapture the box and trap the evil inside once again.

Finally…

Once the threat has been resolved Joey finds that she is back at the construction site and buries the box in cement to keep it from seeing the light of day. Afterwards we fast forward to see that the completed building with a sculpture outside and a lobby design that look identical to the designs on the outside of the puzzle box.

Overall…

Well sequels start to get a little hinky after two and this one is no exception. It is okay and worth a watch in the context of the first two but the franchise is already showing its wear at this point. At least they haven’t gone into space… yet…

A couple of WTF moments that stand out to me:

The priest who initially tries to tell Joey that demons aren’t real (her reply is hilarious)

When Joey gets tricked into handing over the box to Pinhead she says something like “that’s not fair” HAHAHA!

Hellraiser III has some decent gore, not any real nudity, some blasphemous (to some) imagery.

-Rabid Fox

Hellraiser 4: Bloodline -review by Rabid Fox

 

Well it was only a matter of time before the Hellraiser franchise took its place among the stars.

Now Pinhead can trade space stories with Jason Voorhees, the Leprechaun, and the Critters. And while this sequel wasn’t that bad, I mean it was directed by Hollywood legend Alan fucking Smithee, I know that there are 5 direct-to-video sequels AFTER this one still waiting for me. So we’re already in space and there are FIVE more fucking sequels after this one. I’m assuming that any attempt at canon is out the air locks after part four but we’ll see. I have to get through this review first…

In the future…

Part IV starts in the future, on a space station designed by Paul Merchant. Merchant is using a robotic interface to manipulate the infamous puzzle box and when he succeeds in opening the box the robot is immediately destroyed. Before Merchant can continue whatever he’s up to he is stopped by armed security forces that come aboard.

They are trying to arrest Merchant for hijacking the station and moving it out of its assigned orbit. Merchant uses the story of his family’s history to attempt to explain why he needs the use of the station.

In the past…

In 18^th century France popular toymaker Phillip Lemarchand is finishing a work commissioned by the aristocrat Duc de L’Isle – the puzzle box. Duc de L’Isle is steeped in black arts and he wants to use the box in a ritual to summon and trap a demon.

He and his assistant Jacques abduct a peasant girl, kill her and skin her, then drape the skin over the summoning circle. As de L’Isle continues his ritual we see the skin begin to take shape again and Angelique the demon now has a new home with de L’Isle as her “master”. Angelique agrees so long as de L’Isle doesn’t stand “in Hell’s way” but it seems like she’s probably just playing along.

However, since de L’Isle is too eager to get his ritual going, he doesn’t bother to wait until Lemarchand is a good distance away and the toymaker peeks in through the windows and sees the whole thing. Horrified at having contributed to such evil, Lemarchand runs home to attempt to work on another box that would have the power to contain or destroy demons. While Lemarchand continues his work, Angelique seems to quickly be tiring of de L’Isle so she seduces Jacques and murders de L’Isle. As Lemarchand finishes his box configuration that would stop evil he also attempts to sneak back into de L’Isle’s house to steal back the original box. Lemarchand finds the corpse of de L’Isle and the murderous duo Jacques and Angelique who tell Lemarchand that his bloodline is cursed for his part in the evil ritual and then Lemarchand is also killed. But his family lives on…

In the “present”…

Moving ahead a couple of centuries we see that Angelique and Jacques are still kicking around doing whatever apparently immortal beings do. The present day descendant of Lemarchand, John Merchant, is an architect in the U.S. who is being awarded for the building that just happens to be the one from the end of Part III, the one whose looks are inspired by the puzzle box. So that bit of recognition happens to catch the attention of the evil duo. Angelique wants to see the new Mr. Merchant and see if she can use her demonic feminine wiles to make Merchant do her bidding. Jacques doesn’t really want to bother with the whole thing, or maybe he just doesn’t want to get ditched, but since he’s standing in Hell’s way Angelique finally dispatches him.

Back in the states, Angelique does her best to get it on with John Merchant and find the box. Despite his having a wife and family he isn’t strong enough to avoid temptation.

I mean it is demonic temptation so he should get a pass, right? Angelique also finds the box in the basement of Merchant’s building and manages to bring Pinhead back. The two demons conspire to force Merchant into designing a portal between the “real” world and their dimension so that they don’t have to bother with the stupid puzzle box anymore. There’s also a demon hound or something but I found it to be too stupid to warrant any further writing.

Merchant sure isn’t eager to help a temptress and a guy with pins coming out of his face but they kidnap his son for leverage. Fortunately, the Lemarchand blood means that Merchant also has the insight into how to design that trap that his ancestor failed to accomplish so he tries to play along with the Cenobites in hopes of luring them into that same trap (only more elaborate now because it’s not the crappy 18^th century). Pinhead gets wise to the trick though and beheads Merchant. Merchant’s wife, however, came across the box and was able to use it to banish Pinhead and Angelique once again… for a while anyway…

Back in the future…

So space station Merchant has finished telling his story up to that point and notes that he had used the robot to open the box bringing out Pinhead and company but the security showed up before he was able to finish his task. So all that time the Cenobites have been on the station and now they make their presence known by totally fucking up all the security folks.

Merchant and the main security guard take off since the guard finally realizes that Merchant isn’t full of crap. Merchant has also setup a holographic decoy to trick Pinhead and escape the station. Silly Pinhead, I guess they don’t have high tech gadgets of trickery in the hell dimension.

Speaking of high tech trickery, the entire space station, designed by Merchant, is a giant set of mirrors setup with the old Lemerchand configuration that is meant to trap and destroy the demons. So in this last moment we have what appears to be the end of Pinhead and company.

Overall…

Not as bad as I was expecting all things considered but it wasn’t quite “there”. I’m curious to see that the director’s cut (or cuts) would have done differently had he been allowed to see it through (and not fork over director’s credit to A. Smithee). So there is some blood and gore, the summoning of Angelique at the beginning is probably my favorite moment.

All in all, even though it’s “the space one” it actually has some stuff going for it including the origin of the puzzle box, but it doesn’t quite live up to the originals.

-Rabid Fox

Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 review by Rabid Fox

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Story:

This film picks up right after the events in the first film. There’s a brief aside/flashback that shows us the human origin of Hellraiser’s signature monster – Pinhead – but I’ll get back to that later. The film properly opens with Kirsty (the survivor from the first film) in a psychiatric institute due to the traumas of part I which include, but are not limited to, being hit on by a salacious uncle who happens to be wearing her father’s skin, and being stalked by creatures from Hell bent on dragging her down for an eternity of sado-masochistic “delights”.

So I guess some people might not have the mental fortitude to take that in stride and carry on with their lives.

Kirsty is made to recount her tale to the police and the psychiatrists and while tales of Cenobites and puzzle boxes and the dead coming back to life don’t really mean much to the cops, the psychiatrist Dr. Channard is intrigued. Channard’s assistant Kyle is also interested in Kirsty but not because of her batshit crazy story (wink, wink). Dr. Channard takes possession of the bloody mattress found at the house from the first movie and raises the suspicions of Kyle who decides to do some snooping.

He finds in Dr. Channard’s study a whole slew of creepy items including several puzzle boxes and other paraphernalia that would indicate that even if Kirsty’s story were b.s. someone else believes in it too.

Kyle witnesses Dr. Channard offering up one of the mental patients as a sacrifice to the bloody mattress which, as it turns out, is a great portal for Julia (Kirsty’s wicked stepmother) to return from Hell.

There’s a lot of creepy eroticism between Channard and the skinless, but no-less seductive, Julia and a good montage of victims being sacrificed to bring Julia back to full form (similar to how she sacrificed people to bring Frank back in the first film).

While all this is going on, Kirsty is having visions where she thinks her father is begging for help to escape from Hell. She befriends another patient (Tiffany) who, lucky for everyone, is a puzzle-solving savant.

The Kirsty and Julia stories converge when the puzzle box is used to take us back to the magical land of Puzzle Box Hell. Julia didn’t really need to convince Channard that he wanted to visit, he was pretty much primed from the get go. And Kirsty took the opening as an excuse to try to find and rescue her father. It’s pretty much just Tiffany that has no interest in going to Hell (go figure) and just wants to sit in her semi-catatonic state and solve puzzles. Is that too much to ask for? Yep!

Now we get to see who has been manipulated this whole time and by whom:

– Channard: even though he really wanted to see what the mystery of the box was all about, he’s been offered up as a sacrifice by Julia in a move that should surprise no one.

– Kirsty: actually, sort of a surprise but a neat payoff. Turns out that lecherous old uncle Frank has been using Kirsty to try to get himself back out of the box again.

Now why all the manipulation?

Julia: in a great bit of character evolution, Julia has been transformed from lustful temptress to full-on religious zealot. She’s now a follower of Leviathan, the dark “god” at the center of Puzzle Box Hell. She’s out farming for souls and Channard is a great offering.

Frank: this is pretty much just Frank being Frank. Hell-box sucks and Frank wants out. Frank is the one-trick pony of Hellraiser.

So now we see Channard converted into Cenobite (and boy howdy does he love that new role!) and for some reason he thinks it necessary to kick the other Cenobites’ asses and assert himself as the new leader. Maybe Hell is like prison and the new guy just needs to take on the biggest guy so nobody else will fuck with him? Either way, we get Pinhead versus Channard as a nice little break from the rest of the film’s goings on.

And that gives us a chance to discuss a side item. In the first film we’re meant to think that Cenobites are a species of their own, hellspawn that have always been and always shall be. Pinhead even comments in this one that the Cenobites are some otherworldly creatures. It’s Kirsty that convinces them that they were once people and as they realize that we get to see our Cenobite pals revert (at least for now) to their previous human forms which gives everyone else a chance to run off and attend to their affairs (i.e. getting out of the box).

The end wraps up nicely, with devils getting their due and the good “guys” getting to keep their souls for now.

Random thoughts:

I love the Julia character! Her arc really continues strongly in this one and I love her line about going from wicked step mother to evil queen. Well done, ma’am.

The Channard character really deserves his trip to the box. There’s a great shot where you see his schizoid patients all bed-bound and working out all this other collected boxes. Brilliant! This guy is an evil bastard worthy of the series.

Cenobites are people… PEOPLE! I thought I would be irked by this but it’s actually not a terrible idea. I would liken it to angels; do “good” people who die become angels or just dead spirits with wings? There were angels before people so maybe there are “real” Cenobites and then these post-human entities as well. It’s a big universe so maybe they can shed some light on it one day.

I enjoyed that Tiffany and, to a lesser extent, Kirsty, actually got better after going to Hell 🙂

All in all this was a pretty good follow-up to the first film!

Rating 4 out of 5

-Rabid Fox

Second Opinion:

I had to chime in since this, like Hellraiser, is one of my favorite movies. Hellbound also does a great job through montages reminds us what we saw in the first film. Hellbound especially shows some of the best scenes from Hellraise like Julia’s husband Larry getting torn apart.

Hellbound is also extremely gory. Make sure you seen the Unrated version. The R rated version has some of the gore cut out. Two scenes in particular are Channard’s transformation into a Cenobite and Channard’s going a bad doctor on his patients in the psych ward. It’s brutal, he rips them apart, for me that is part of the terror of Hellbound. I remember as a teen, pre-CGI, cringing at some of those scenes. That was back before I was desensitized, but wow I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first saw Hellbound. Just like I remember where and what I was doing when the first plane flew into tower 1 of the World Trade Center. Channard’s transformation branded into my longterm memory. This film had quite the impact on me back in the day. Hellraiser: Hellbound II is a nostalgic film for me. I would give Hellbound 5 stabs. I’ll acquiesce and we’ll give it a 4 stab, Highly Recommended. I would say HH2 is a MUST SEE, but chances are you already have. I hope you enjoyed Fox’s review because he brought out some fantastic plot points. This is why Hellbound is such a great squeal. It takes great elements from the first film and brings them back in a great way and further explores the story and Clive Barker’s mythology. This unfortunately is where some of the later Hellraiser sequels fall short (where Pinhead only makes cameos).

Really, if you like the Hellraiser Mythos the comics are a great place to go as well. The comic series is great. I only recently read some of them. What I saw was really cool.

-The Director.

Hellraiser reviewed by Rabid Fox

   1987 Written and Directed by Clive Barker

This is a movie that hooks you right from the beginning (yeah, you see where this is going).

A shadowy Asian merchant (taking a break from selling Mogwai?) peddles his wares to an extreme pleasure-seeker, Frank. Frank’s hedonistic tendencies have led him to a puzzle box that unlocks a gateway to Hell (or some dimension of Lovecraftian horror) where beings called Cenobites inflict exquisite pain. Frank discovers the secrets (well, not so secret) of the box and gets a one-way ticket (sorta) to S&M heaven.

Frank’s brother (Larry) and sister-in-law (Julia) decide to move into Frank’s house after said bro has been missing for some time. A quick shot of Larry and Julia putting all the house’s religious objects out to the curb may provide a clue as to how things are going to fare for the new tenants.

It’s not long before we’re treated to a nice flashback scene that shows us Frank and Julia’s first encounter and what I would call the “Sexual Awakening of Julia” montage that ends up paying off in spades for Frank later. While unpacking, Larry gets a deep cut on his hand and runs to Julia for help. Larry, it appears, is a puss and can’t stand the sight of his own blood. As he’s portrayed early on, it seems that Larry should be hanging out as sitcom dad or getting into shenanigans with Steve Guttenberg (this is the 80s after all). But not here in demonic S&M land! Fortunately for us horror aficionados, Larry is a gusher and bleed all over the floor in Frank’s old sex/adventure room which also ends up paying gangbusters for Frank. Turns out the trickle of blood reawakens Frank’s heart which was stuck under the floorboards for some reason (a little Poe imagery for you literary types).

The scene in where Frank reveals his rotted fleshless form to Julia showcases a great use of makeup and practical effects, great for the gore lover! And we also find out that Frank has somehow escaped the Cenobites. Frank explains to Julia that he needs more blood so that he can return to his pre-Hell self and they can then live happily ever after. I guess the demonic leather daddies can’t touch him after he’s back to his old self?

Luckily for the audience, Julia has legitimate moments of doubt where she struggles with the decision to help Frank. Frank is definitely a manipulator but he spends half the movie skinless, and what he’s oozing ain’t charm, so maybe he brought back a little Cenobite Fly with him from the pit? Julia does decide that she’s willing to help (wouldn’t be much of a movie if she didn’t) and again, we’re treated to a series of scenes that encompass the “Corruption of Julia” where we get to see her trolling the bars looking for some fresh meat to bring home to Frank. We get a beautiful moment where a blood-spattered Julia, channeling a little Lady Macbeth, tries washing clean her bloody hands and then a final “break” where you can literally see her take that final step onto the road of damnation. That might be my favorite part of this whole movie. Yes, the story is interesting, the monsters are unique, the gore is superb, but a lot of “bad guys” in horror movies don’t get much opportunity to struggle with the decision to do bad things.

During all of this we’re also stuck with a B plot involving Larry’s daughter Kirsty. Nobody needs to care about Kirsty until she stumbles upon Julia and Frank bludgeoning another poor schmoe (or bar perv if you prefer). Then Kirsty becomes the catalyst for the rest of the film. Turns out Frank is very aware of his niece’s blossoming and I’m sure a little family loving isn’t outside the realm of thought for someone that’s literally been torn to pieces by hellspawn to satisfy his cravings.

Kirsty manages to run away with the magical puzzle box and immediately gets it to open, which introduces her to the Cenobites who still have no fucking clue that Frank had escaped (I guess all slop piles of human remains start to look alike after a while). Anyway, as I mentioned at the beginning, the box is pretty much the least puzzling puzzle ever because you pretty much just have to sneeze in it’s direction to open the fucker; I guess if the portal to Hell was a Rubik’s cube the Cenobites would never have any fun though, right? Also, the “rule” of the box is that if you open it you are stuck with the ‘Bites so for innocent (well, 80s innocent) Kirsty that sucks and she makes a deal to trade them Frank in exchange for her salvation.

The rest of the film wraps up nicely (for us, not the shit-out-of-luck characters), with some great horrific moments and, again, great use of practical effects. Even the few 80’s CG effects are used so sparingly that you don’t immediately go “oh look, shitty 80’s graphics”. This is definitely a “must see” for any horror fan and the attention to detail, story, and character development (at least for Julia) are far too rare in newer movies. I’m sure that those qualities were due in large, if not full, part to the fact that Clive Barker wrote and directed this film based on his own short story The Hellbound Heart. Kudos!

Question to ponder after repeat viewings:

– Is there a phase in Frank’s “rebirth” where he might consider “eh, this is good enough”? Consider how much pain he’d be in all the time if he was just a bundle of raw, exposes nerves. Sounds like paradise!

-Rabid Fox