Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

There are currently 11 Hellraiser movies, and as many reviews tagged "Hellraiser" here on HMAD (well, 12 now if you feel like seeing for yourself), so I actually forgot that I never reviewed Hellraiser: Inferno back in the day, as it seemed "complete." I knew I saw it pre-HMAD, but same went for 1-4 and I got those taken care of along the way, so I'm not sure how/why Inferno (the 5th entry, if you've forgotten) got skipped over in those rewatches, especially considering in my memory I actually thought it was pretty good. So for anyone who has been waiting over a decade for me to finish up the Doug Bradley era of the franchise: today's your day!

The biggest complaint about the DTV ones (well, maybe not Hellworld) is that Pinhead doesn't appear in them very much. It's an odd complaint considering he's barely in the original, either, but I was amused that it's similar to the hate for the 5th Friday the 13th movie because Jason isn't in it. He's not in the first one either! How often do you hear fans complaining that a sequel is trying to bring things back to the original, which is usually the favorite? Wackiness. But yeah, he's barely in it, and his first appearance seems shoehorned in to try to rectify that, but it's a bad call.

Because really, the worst thing about the movie is that it's "Hellraiser 5" instead of a movie called Inferno. I get the "Where's Pinhead?" complaints in a way, but the film is structured in a way that doesn't rely on him the way the previous sequels did. The Lament Configuration gets more screentime, I think, as it appears almost instantly at a crime scene. Our protagonist is Joseph (Craig Sheffer), a corrupt cop who pockets the cash from victims' wallets, lies to his wife to go sleep with prostitutes, and does up close magic for other grown adults - in other words, he's kind of awful. Anyway he finds the LC at a crime scene and, as a bit of a puzzle nerd, keeps it for himself and maybe, just maybe, opens it.

Now, in any other Hellraiser movie, that would mean Pinhead would show up and start causing problems. But here his brief experience after Joseph fiddles with the box is treated as a nightmare, and as the movie continues following Joseph's investigation that started with the crime scene, feeling more like something like 8MM than a supernatural horror film. Not that the case isn't gruesome; a child's finger was found and the killer, known as "The Engineer", seems to be keeping the kid alive, so Joseph becomes hellbent on finding him. As the investigation gets more dangerous and disturbing (he has visions of cenobite type figures, the hooker he slept with is murdered, as is one of his informants, etc.) he starts to wonder if the box has somethng to do with it. And guess what? It does!

So unfortunately it's one of those sequels in which the audience is too far ahead of the characters, unless they for some reason are watching this as their first Hellraiser movie and have zero knowledge of the series when sitting down for it. If that's you, great, but you're also like 1% of the crowd at most. Curiously, writer/director Scott Derrickson (this was his debut as director) did the same thing with Sinister 2 (which he wrote but did not direct), giving the hero a mystery to solve that we already know the answer to. It's hard to recover from that sort of disconnect when it's treated as a "what's going on?" kind of mystery film, as opposed to Friday the 13th part whatever when a new group of idiots arrive at Crystal Lake without knowing anything about Jason. They're not exactly poring over newspaper clippings and police reports to figure out who the hockey masked guy is, you know? They're unaware and then they're dead, and it's fine.

But if you ignore the Hellraiser-ness and just go for the ride of this dirtbag getting what's coming to him, it's a solid time. The Jacob's Ladder/David Lynch-esque touches keep it visually engaging throughout, and Derrickson gets every bit of his meager budget on screen. Plus it's just enjoyably weird at times, in particular when Sheffer goes to a saloon in the middle of nowhere (already weird!) and proceeds to get his ass kicked by two long haired Asian cowboys. He also spends an extended (dream/hallucination/whatever) scene shotgunning his parents who have become cenobite/zombie things, and his own family ends up on a rotating pillar like the one from the first movie. And if you're a Nightbreed fan, please enjoy the fact that Craig Sheffer has now played two (2) Clive Barker characters who are set up by their psychiatrist, though here it's (spoiler for 24 year old movie ahead) actually Pinhead in disguise.

And keeping with the spoilers, while I'm sure it's not the first movie to do so, and also kind of changes the canon version of what Hell is in this world, I like the idea that he's stuck in an endless loop of being made miserable as his eternal punishment for the misery he inflicted on others when he was alive. He has to keep seeing his family die, chased around by demons, etc. and when he tries to kill himself to get out of it, he just ends up back at the beginning of the loop again. I try not to think about the afterlife too much, but the idea of hell just being in a cycle of reliving your worst memories for eternity sounds far worse than some kind of "you just burn forever" kind of scenario.

Plus I have to admire that it took efforts to return the series to its roots. I like Hellbound as much as the original, but I have little use for 3 or 4 (though in the latter's case it COULD have been good if the Weinsteins hadn't Weinstein'd it), and none of them really seemed to get that the Cenobites weren't supposed to be the main attraction. Like the original, this is a movie about someone whose endless thirst for hedonistic pleasure results in them delving into things they shouldn't, resulting in their very gruesome and supernaturally-charged death. It doesn't mention any of the other films' events; even when the history of the Lament Configuration is explained to Sheffer's character, it's more of a vague idea of what it's been through as opposed to "And then one time this douche who ran a nightclub got a hold of it...". So I appreciated that they were at least trying to get things back on track, even if it was kind of a silly thing to do now that the series was going DTV and thus only the most die-hard fans would likely be bothering to watch.

The blu-ray I have is paired with Bloodline, from an Echo Bridge release. Since I recently got Arrow's 4K UHD set of 1-4, I looked to see if Inferno had ever been available on its own so I wouldn't have TWO Bloodlines in the house (I mean, I only have one Godfather. It just doesn't seem right to have twice as many "Pinhead in Space!"s), but all I found was another EB multipack that added Hellseeker and Hellworld to the mix. I nearly bought that one before I realized Deader got left out, so it's a set of 4-6 and 8? Why? More annoying, Deader DID get its own release, also from Echo Bridge, but it's long out of print and goes for over 300 bucks on eBay, which... no. I'm not even sure what studio owns these movies anymore, but maybe since they did it for Amityville, Vinegar Syndrome (or someone like them) can make a nice set of Bradley's DTV era (so, Inferno through Hellworld) and I can get rid of this janky-ass disc that doesn't even have subtitles, let alone the bonus features from the DVD.

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Hellraiser (2022)

OCTOBER 4, 2022

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (BEYOND FEST)

I had to laugh when Hellraiser ended and I spied a certain credit among its writers; a bit of information that had escaped me up until now. See, about two thirds of the way through the (two hour!) movie I realized that an opening sequence was really unnecessary and the movie would be much better without it, as it tipped its hand for a mystery that our protagonist was trying to solve. "It's like when they screwed up Dark City with that opening narration!" I thought, and then the writing credits came up and I see David S. Goyer was one of them - the same Goyer who rewrote Dark City! STOP WRECKING YOUR MOVIES, GOYER!

OK, "wrecked" is a strong word. There's a lot to like here, and if you're comparing to the likes of Hellworld and Deader it will come off even better. But this really coulda/shoulda been a knockout considering the talent involved (the other writers and director David Bruckner gave us the terrific Night House) and the fact that they wisely opted not to remake the original (no Frank, no Julia, no Kirsty, etc) and truly reimagine the concept from the ground up. There are some cutesy callbacks from dialogue (a guy asking "What's your pleasure?" when tending a bar got a mild chuckle from me) and Ben Lovett's score occasionally reprises Christopher Young's iconic themes, but otherwise it's a completely new scenario, with wholly original characters beyond new takes on Chatterer and (naturally) Pinhead, who is now played by a woman and has a different tact when dealing with potential victims.

But I can't help but think it would have been closer to knockout territory if they never had that opening bit, in which the film's human villain (Goran Visnjic) lures a partygoer into his secret room and gets him to play with the Lament Configuration, summoning Cenobites and tearing him asunder. Yes, it's a Hellraiser movie and thus it's obvious that these sort of things are going to come into play, but the miscalculation here is that it's not "Hellraiser 11", it's a completely fresh start - which means they have their own rules and zero obligation to do what's expected. And making it worse, the main character is a young addict named Riley who isn't sure if the weird things she's seeing (i.e. cenobites, puzzle boxes coming to life, etc) are real or part of a drug-induced hallucination. Being that it's a remake (from a team who made a psychologically driven thriller) it actually would not only be possible, but kind of daring if she was indeed just killing people herself and chalking it up to some sort of demon (hell, go a bit meta and have her visions be inspired by an '80s horror movie she saw!), but the fact that we know perfectly well what's happening - since we saw some of it before she even got involved! - this angle never works.

So we know she's not imagining anything, and thanks to that opener, we also know who is behind it, another mystery she spends some of the film's considerable runtime trying to solve. There's some half-assed attempt to pass off Visnjic's character (a rich jerk named Voight) as being dead, but... come on. Why would they hire a recognizable actor to play this particular role if he wasn't going to come back and (spoiler for the completely inept) reveal he's lured her and her friends there to be other sacrifices? It's just frustrating, all of the pieces are there to make this a really cool and engaging film (not to mention a terrific way to relaunch a franchise) but it never really (sigh, I gotta do it - sorry) got its hooks into me because I was always so far ahead of the protagonist, in a story that's also too drawn out for its own good. They even much it up AGAIN later, when one of her friends is revealed to be working with Voight, something that very easily could have been a surprise if we found out the same time as Riley, but no - it's explained to us (not her) 10-15 minutes prior, for no reason whatsoever. There's probably a 90-95 minute cut of this movie that would work really well, but instead we get one that keeps narratively shooting itself in the foot while delaying the inevitable.

Also, while rehashing Frank and Julia wouldn't have been wise, they could have at least given us an antagonist on an equal footing with them. Since Voight is supposed to be dead he can't re-enter the story until much later, and Riley and her friends have no real desires to speak of either, to the point where I wondered if Pinhead herself was going to be disappointed that this was all she had to work with. It's kind of amusing that Night House's plot almost seems like it could have been retrofitted into a Hellraiser (a guy regrets opening the box and tries to trick Pinhead with lookalikes to save his wife's soul!) and yet they miss the mark here on what constitutes engaging heroes or villains. The characters not only lack that kind of edge, but some lack any identifying traits at all. Riley's main goal is to find her brother Matt (who disappears and is presumably killed when she first opens the box) and she is joined by his boyfriend and her own boyfriend, but also Matt's roommate, a girl named Nora who - after spending nearly 90 minutes with her - I couldn't tell you one thing about besides... the fact that her name is Nora and she is the Matt's roommate. Remember Kirsty's dull boyfriend in the first movie who they got rid of with a line of dialogue in Hellbound? This movie is populated mostly by people who aren't even as interesting as he was.

All that said, if they put out a lavish coffee table book devoted to the film's design work, I'd preorder two copies: one to keep nice for me, the other to carry around with me so that when I go see a new horror movie with bland sets and no imagination whatsoever to the visuals, I can shove it in the director's face in hopes that they'll take some inspiration and do better on the next one. Pinhead is given a makeover from the neck down, the new cenobites are pure nightmare fuel (their accompanying sound design is terrific too - "The Gasp" in particular unnerved me throughout, and Chatterer's teeth clacking has never been more unsettling), and the new design for the puzzle box is quite striking as well, in all its many forms (part of the new idea is that the box goes through stages as it collects souls). And while the early areas aren't much to look at, a big chunk of the film takes place in Voight's mansion, which is already impressive but is then embellished with iron gates and shields that spread across the entire building, controlled by switches and making the place itself kind of like a puzzle box (I suspect someone involved was a fan of the "Elysium Configuration" in Bloodline!). There isn't much in the way of gore, and it's often disappointingly cut around (like when a character is impaled by a device meant to keep him alive - we see it approach him, and then suddenly it's sticking out of his chest and back, without showing the impact), but there are a number of bits that will upset the squeamish, especially if you have a thing against razor wire and peeled skin.

And by wisely changing Pinhead, comparisons to Doug Bradley never make sense, something the replacements in Revelations and Judgment could never escape. Jamie Clayton's take gives Pinhead (actually named The Priest) an icy, quiet demeanor, playing 4D chess with the characters and letting the smallest change in their expression mark their satisfaction with scoring another victory. They don't get into it too much, but there's a sense that because she's got a feminine demeanor, Riley can appeal to her sympathies while Voight can manipulate her, but in reality "The Priest" doesn't seem to possess the same kind of lingering humanity that we got from Pinhead (thanks to Elliot Spencer). But the filmmakers are smart enough not to overuse them; they only appear about as much as Bradley did in Hellbound, if even that much, making those appearances count instead of positing them as an "icon" who has to be front and center.

I dunno. I seem to be in the minority, and that's a good thing - I want people to love it as much as I wanted to, and I'm legit sad I thought it was just OK. But even if we disagree on the characters or whatever, it's a cold hard fact that the '80s entries were kinkier and taboo-breaking than this, as even some folks who really liked it agree that it's surprisingly tame (there's almost no sex at all; it's possibly the least horny entry in the entire series!), which is odd. Clayton's Pinhead and the design work alone keep it into "win" category if we're going to be binary about everything (which seems wrong when discussing Hellraiser!), and I hope they can use the groundwork laid here to create their own "Hellbound" (i.e. a sequel that expands the world and in many ways improves on the original), but I can't help but feel disappointed that there are at least two of the Dimension ones that I found more engaging in terms of the plot and characters. To each their own, I guess!

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Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

GENRE: RELIGIOUS, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Of all the major horror franchises that came along (or at least had their biggest showcase) in the 1980's, Hellraiser was the one I never particularly got into the way I did for the others. I was late to the party in even seeing them; I think I was in high school before I watched the first three, only watching them once or twice before the release of Hellraiser: Bloodline, which was the only one I saw theatrically until Revelations in 2011. And most of the others I only bothered to watch for HMAD entries, having heard nothing good about any of them (and then, adding more negative reviews to their coffers), so now that I'm only updating sporadically I probably wouldn't have exactly rushed to watch the tenth film, Hellraiser: Judgment if not for two things. One is that I was offered a copy, so I could save myself a rental fee or blind buy down the road, and - more importantly - the other is that I heard from a number of people that it was a surprisingly decent entry, not quite hitting the highs of its theatrical releases, but certainly a step up from its DTV brethren.

And they're right! I mean, I wouldn't exactly refer to it as a "good" movie, but it's the only one of the DTV films (and I'm including Revelations in that group, despite its one-week limited release) that feels like a legit addition to the mythology that was established in the first four films. Even the one where Kirsty showed back up didn't really feel like a new chapter in an ongoing story (however loosely it was depicted), but a gimmick used to lure in folks who might be disinterested, like how Marvel (unnecessarily!) threw in Falcon and a setup for Civil War to entice people into seeing Ant-Man. But here, the scenes with Pinhead and some of his fellow Cenobites/demons/angels/whatever almost feel like they could have come from Clive Barker's imagination, and it's a shame the entire movie couldn't revolve around them as these sequences (which make up maybe 25% of the 80 minute film) are clearly where all the budget went, and now that I've seen it for myself, obviously the reason for the film's better-than-average reviews (it's actually got a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than Hellbound as of this writing, insanely enough).

Alas, that other 75% focuses on a trio of cops investigating a Seven-y serial killer who is killing people according to the Ten Commandments, even though "Thou Shall Not Kill" is one of them, the hypocrite. Maybe if we ever really saw him in action and/or the film gave us a few red herrings as to his identity this material would be more enjoyable (if still cliche; how many Biblically minded killers have we seen over the past 20 years or so?), but we mostly only see aftermath. The MO for these scenes is as follows: the detectives arrive on a scene to look at a dead body or some other kind of tableau, talk about this or that clue, then retreat to their wood-paneled office that looks suspiciously like one you might find in a used car lot or construction site. The murder sites are fine, but their office and some of the other sets are so phony looking (again, probably because all the money went into the Pinhead scenes) that it was hard to care much about their (and only their, as no other cops are seen in the film, despite the fact that this killer has seemingly earned a citywide manhunt) investigation into this vaguely defined, rarely seen killer.

It also lacks much in the way of surprises after its first (and best) ten minutes. In the opening scene we see Pinhead lamenting (heh) the advance of technology, and how he is becoming obsolete as people can just go to the internet to have their desires fulfilled instead of going to him (kind of like how we don't really need travel agents anymore when we can just head to Expedia), and I loved that concept. Unfortunately not too much is done with it, but at least it leads into the introduction of The Auditor, who looks like a Cenobite version of Claude Rains as the Invisible Man. His job is to interview would-be victims about their crimes and type them out on a typically monstrous typewriter, at which point the pages will be consumed by the Assessor (played by John Gulager!). He then pukes the results into a funnel where a trio of naked women with their faces ripped off scoop up the gross mixture in their hands and pass judgment. Why they go through all this trouble, I don't know, but I like the idea of them having their own pointless bureaucratic process for what they do.

But then our protagonist Sean (Damon Carney, who I dubbed "Michael Fauxbender" due to his mild resemblance to the actor and that their boring serial killer plot reminded me of the woeful Snowman) follows a couple of clues and ends up in the house, where we see the process again, too soon after the first and more or less spoiling the film's mystery before the halfway point. His "audit" is largely unheard by us, but the lengthy results cause the Assessor to choke during his consumption, and whatever he did has gotten the OK from the higher-ups, who instruct the Auditor to let Sean go. At this point the film starts to resemble one of the later episodes of Supernatural, with angels and demons arguing over jurisdiction and the like, but since it was at least moving away from the serial killer plot I was happy to watch it even if it was largely a repeat of a sequence we just saw 25 minutes or so ago.

In fact, if I had to guess, this sequence (or the earlier one) was added to get Pinhead and the other creations into the movie more. Since 2000's Inferno, the common complaint about these films (besides just kinda sucking in general) is that Pinhead isn't in them enough, even though that's the one thing that they share with the original (where he isn't even named Pinhead yet, but "Lead Cenobite"), so I'm sure there was a push to find a way to include him in more sequences (hilariously, at one point during the serial killer investigation they briefly cut to him spinning a Lament as he sat around waiting, as if to remind us that he was there). And unlike the more expensive Doug Bradley, new actor Paul Taylor (thankfully replacing the guy who played him in Revelations) was probably easier to pay for more days of work, so the reasons to limit his appearance were presumably based more on narrative than money. And Taylor is actually pretty good in the role; his physique is similar to Bradley's, which helps, and he's got a similar enough voice that it's easy enough to accept the transition. Whereas the last guy felt like seeing a kid in a costume, Taylor is someone who could conceivably continue playing the character for future installments and be accepted by the fans, not unlike the initial hesitance/eventual championing of every new James Bond or Batman (remember when everyone cried about Ben Affleck being cast? Some of the same people are now upset he might not come back for more).

Speaking of winning fans over, the makers cast Heather Langenkamp in the film and touted her involvement back when the film was first going into production in 2016, but if you're planning to see it for her, I'd advise against it, as her role can barely even be considered a cameo. She plays the landlord of one of the victims, and her on-screen time is limited to just two shots (one from behind!) as she walks down a flight of stairs, mutters a few things about the tenant, and opens a door. It's the kind of role that would usually be filled by Central Casting and perhaps not even meet the director until the day of shooting, yet she is given fourth billing for this nothing appearance. I'm not even joking when I say that an extra standing behind one of the cops as they wait in line for coffee is actually on-screen more than Ms. Langenkamp, and it's pretty lame of them to use her name/our affinity for "Nancy" to sucker in a few folks who might otherwise have no interest in another (or even their first). I was thinking she'd show up in one of the deleted scenes, but that's not the case. There are only two, and one is just an extension of the opening with the Auditor (played by writer/director Gary Tunnicliffe himself), letting things go on a bit longer but otherwise offering nothing of note. The other is more substantial, showing Sean and the other detective (Egerton, played by Alexandra Harris) talking about God while in a church, which clues us more into Sean's motives and gives Egerton a bit more to do than just ask for or deliver exposition (per Tunnicliffe, she wasn't even in the original story concept, but added at the producers' request, which helps explain why she's fairly extraneous in the narrative). With the the movie being so short I can't say it needed to lose scenes for pacing, but I doubt anyone will watch it and think it should have been in the movie, either. There's also a gag reel which provided some minimal amusement.

Tunnicliffe and his crew should be proud of what they've done here. It's no secret that this film (and the last one) were made quick and cheap by Dimension in order to hang on to their rights to the series (the contracts require them to make a movie within a certain amount of time; failure to do so for the Halloween series is why it ended up at Blumhouse), but he clearly wants to restore the series to its former highs instead of just playing studio lapdog and putting in the bare minimum that they require. The effects are practical, the designs are solid, and the scripts (yes, even Revelations') are far more interesting than the previous entries, where they were rewriting unrelated spec scripts to include Pinhead, which would be fine if the series was more anthological from the start, but there was this cool world opening up (particularly in the 2nd and 4th films) that got unceremoniously dropped when the series went DTV. Even if the results are imperfect, the attempt to get things back on track is admirable, and I hope that Dimension's money woes clear up somehow or (far more likely) the series is handed over to a studio that might realize the potential and give Tunnicliffe (or his replacement, if that was the case) the money to live up to the standards the series set in its initial entries. Until then, at least we have, for the first time since 1996, an entry that is actually worth watching (uneven as it may be), though I should stress that it might take suffering through the likes of Hellworld to really appreciate it.

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Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth (1992)

JANUARY 3, 2013

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

I'm pretty sure Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth was the first Hellraiser film I actually saw footage from, courtesy of a trailer that played (along with Dr. Giggles and Innocent Blood) before Pet Sematary 2 in August of 1992 (yes, I remember all of that, but can't remember my niece's birthday). I'm sure I had heard the titles, and I know I had seen photos in Fangoria because this movie was on the cover of the first issue I ever bought, but somehow the series had passed me by. I'm not sure when I actually saw it; sometime between then and the early 1996 release of Hellraiser: Bloodline.

And I'm pretty sure I haven't seen the whole thing since; I might have watched it again around when Bloodline came out but can't remember for sure, but even if so that means it's been at least 17 years (more than half my life!). That's mainly because it never got a proper DVD release - just full frame copies, and of dubious quality to boot. It was also an MPAA mangled film, and some of the footage has been restored but not all, and at different times, so there's even some question as to what cut you'll get should you find a copy (Echo Bridge has recently released it along with some of the other sequels) - 93 minutes seems to be the most complete that's legally available.

That sort of confusion is perfect for the movie itself, which starts off great and ends badly, to the extent that I wondered if two scripts were jammed together at the halfway point. Pinhead fans will disagree I'm sure, but the moment he is freed from the pillar and takes over the narrative (just over its halfway point), the movie turns to junk. The concept is interesting; basically Pinhead and his human form of Elliott Spencer have split, which means Pinhead is now completely evil and causing chaos for his own amusement, but all this means is that the movie turns into an FX showcase while Doug Bradley stands around cackling. You can really see the Elm Street influence here; it's "cool" to look at and Pinhead is making jokes (not as much as Freddy did, but he's certainly more "fun" than in the previous two entries), but doesn't have much to do with the original concept, and sure as hell isn't scary or suspenseful in the slightest.

But that's nowhere near as horrible as the new cenobites, all of which seem to have been designed during a stoned trip to Best Buy. One has CDs sliced into his head and also throws razor sharp discs at victims (I Come In Peace did it better!), and another has a video camera in his head and says things like "That's a wrap!" after killing someone. There's a scene where they charge down a street and kill a bunch of cops that seems lifted out of any random Terminator knockoff, and throughout that and just about every other scene in which they appeared I found myself wondering if Clive Barker had signed off on any of this nonsense. It's worth noting that this was the first Dimension release in the series, and while the Weinsteins were not involved as far as I know, it's certainly the beginning of the long, slow death of this series.

And it's a shame, because again, it starts off pretty great. The idea that Pinhead is trapped in a pillar of souls is interesting, and the human villain JP is tasked with supplying him with victims in order to be reborn - a fun spin on the original's plot. I also enjoyed the mystery angle, courtesy of heroine Terry Farrell as a reporter who saw a guy get torn apart by chains. Some of the later sequels took this route as well, so it's interesting to see its first incarnation, even if it ultimately results in getting to hear Pinhead's backstory (and reduces the need for Kirsty Cotton, who appears in a single throwaway shot). Granted, Pinhead's history has more built-in interest than say, Jason Voorhees, but still - it's common knowledge that the more you learn about your villain in any horror franchise, the less interesting/scary he is. The only benefit here is that it allows Doug Bradley to act a little more out of the makeup, giving the film some additional class as he's a pretty great actor. And I like the "split personality" concept, but the execution is hardly perfect, and is bogged down by the terrible new cenobites and unfortunate change of locale.

That's the other thing - this is an "American" production, unlike the original two British features. Director Anthony Hickox is from London, true, but it was shot in North Carolina, which in the 90s was what Louisiana is today - the go-to spot for shooting low budget horror movies. So the great atmosphere and architecture of Hellbound has been replaced with generic nightclubs and Anytown city streets, which doesn't help the movie any, especially in retrospect. Pinhead's makeup is fine, and this was one of the last big FX driven horror movies before CGI reared its pixel-y head, but this isn't an Evil Dead sequel - it's a Hellraiser movie. The story and themes should come first, and while there are some strong elements of both, it ultimately feels too separated from the others to measure up, and worse, now we can point at it to know exactly when things started to go wrong. I've long said that this is the one series that just gets weaker with each installment, but I think Bloodline might be a bit better than this; it's also messy, but nothing in it is as terrible as "Camerahead". Egads, man.

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Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

MAY 18, 2011

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Until the abomination known as Hellraiser: Revelations, the only film from the series I saw in theaters was Hellraiser: Bloodline, which was released in March of 1996 and was the last one to get a theatrical release (not counting Revelations’ bizarre one-off screening). But since I wasn’t a big fan of the series anyway, I don’t even know if I ever watched it again; I know I rented it so I could copy a clip to use on my public access horror review show in my senior year of high school (so, spring 1998), but if I actually watched it then I can’t recall; I sure as hell didn’t remember anything about it beyond the 18th century Paris and, of course, outer space settings.

But I also remembered that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, considering the widely publicized (well, in Fangoria and such) production troubles that are pretty common with Dimension movies. Apparently, original director Kevin Yagher was so sick of all the meddling that he eventually walked off before shooting even finished, leaving Halloween 6’s Joe Chapelle to shoot the rest of the scenes and reshoot some others based on new script elements. He also reshaped the movie; it was originally presented entirely linear, with the 18th century stuff in the first third, modern day in the middle, and then finally the space sequences. But (and honestly, I think this was a good idea), he changed it so now it starts in space, with Merchant telling the story of his two ancestors, allowing to cut back and forth to the spaceship throughout the movie (and, the whole reason for this maneuver in the first place, allowing Pinhead to make his first appearance a bit sooner). I was actually kind of surprised to discover how little certain things changed, and how a few of the revisions were actually for the better; you can read the script HERE to compare for yourself.

The main problem with the resulting movie, unsurprisingly, is that it’s too rushed. The 18th century stuff got overhauled the most, and it shows. There’s a character played by Adam Scott (who hasn’t aged at all – what the hell, man?) who I guess betrays his boss and takes control of the box/Angelique (the movie’s main villain, a sort of blend between Pinhead and the first two film’s Julia character), but it’s impossible to gauge what he was doing or who was really controlling who in these scenes. A major death is skipped over entirely (we just see his body), and the whole goddamn point of Merchant’s quest is unclear. Hell they barely even address that his wife is pregnant; if you miss the somewhat subtle moment where the child’s existence is mentioned (well, subtle for a movie featuring spaceships, a hell-beast, and a lead villain whose lines seem written by Winona Ryder’s character from Beetlejuice), the rest of the movie will seem like one giant plot hole.

The other segments fare better; the modern day stuff is of course the least interesting, and very little about it changed from the script. It starts to feel too much like a generic horror movie at times – for Christ’s sake, there’s even a scene where our female protagonist goes down into a dark basement to do laundry – but it’s fine, and it’s the segment where Pinhead really enters the story, so fans of the character (the ones who complained he wasn’t in the DTV sequels enough, apparently forgetting he wasn’t in the first one much either) probably enjoy this stuff a lot. And it’s also the area in which one of the script’s more confusing issues was cleared up. Originally, there was a single security guard who met up with Pinhead and basically tried to run only to be sent to Hell. Here, we have a pair of twin guards who become the “Siamese Twin Cenobite” (which appeared in the script without any explanation), so that was a good call – I don’t need to know where every cenobite came from, but it makes a lot more sense to have the sort of cause and effect plotting than to just introduce a character, send her off, and then bring in a male cenobite out of nowhere.

Which leaves the outer space stuff, which isn’t as hokey as you might think. Unlike Jason or Michael (Carpenter himself wanted to send Myers to space; he was thankfully turned down), it does sort of make sense to have Pinhead in space. After all, he is a demon summoned from Hell – it’s a concept based on religious beliefs, and thus having him appear in a place dictated by what SCIENCE can achieve is actually quite interesting. It’s actually sort of a shame that they didn’t set the entire movie there, as these sort of concepts could have been explored, and again, they wouldn’t have to rush things. Angelique and Pinhead are at odds and working against each other, but that power struggle barely registers, and certain aspects of Merchant’s plan are glossed over or just plain confusing. Instead, we get a lot of (admittedly cool) death scenes back to back, as Pinhead and his cronies decimates everyone on the ship except for the guy he’s trying to kill, while Merchant finishes his story and puts his plan in motion. And while the ultimate reveal of the Elysium Configuration is pretty awesome, the changed ending (allowing Merchant to live instead of die like he does in the script) weakens its impact.

And that’s sort of how the entire movie is; you see glimpses of a really good sequel (it could have easily been the best since the first), but there’s always something muddling it, or confusing you with something seemingly left behind from an earlier draft. At one point Angelique tells Merchant (present day) that they “were good together”, referring to his ancestor, but in this version the two never met in the past. You also have to hear painfully on-the-nose dialogue that’s there to sum up ideas that we would have been able to figure out for ourselves if the editing weren’t constantly rushing through major events, which is why you actually hear someone say “Your genius will be passed along your bloodline which is why we have to stop it!” (paraphrased, pretty close though). Which is why I wish Dimension had never gotten a hold of the series; the concept just isn’t a good fit for the way they like to make movies. Hellraiser movies shouldn't be about racking up a good body count or coming up with cool Cenobite designs, they should be about the actual people that INVOKE these things. The first Hellraiser is the story of a woman’s lust destroying the lives of the folks around her; if Dimension had made it that would be a two scene idea and then Pinhead would come along and, I dunno, turn Larry into Speaker-Face or something.

Maybe they should have sent it direct to DVD (well, this would have been VHS) sooner. They sure as hell didn’t care about how early Pinhead showed up in those movies (at least not with Inferno, which is the best of the lot, natch). The budget for this one was reportedly only 4 million, actually LESS than some of the DTVs, so it’s not like the production value would have been severely weakened. Without the pressure of a theatrical release, maybe Big Bad Bob would have left the production alone and the movie would have turned out really good, instead of just “better than most of them!”

Part of why I hadn’t seen the movie again is because the DVD was always really expensive; I remember seeing it for 34.99 at one point, despite a lack of any bonus material whatsoever. By the time it was finally reduced to a reasonable price, I had upgraded to an HDTV and thus didn’t want the disc because it was non-anamorphic. So while I can’t vouch for how much better/worse the picture looks on Echo Bridge’s new Blu-ray, I CAN happily report that it is indeed anamorphic, and not too bad looking either. Hardly the type of disc that you’d want to use to show off Blu-ray’s image quality, but it’s not all washed out and detail-challenged like their H20 Blu, and they certainly didn’t go overboard with DNR (if anything, for once I actually think it could be less grainy). Sadly, like all of EB’s new “Dimension orphan” discs, there aren’t any extras whatsoever (even the old disc had the trailer), and, for some reason, they have dropped the original 5.1 tracks and replaced them with DTS-HD 2.0. Unless you have the most top of the line sound system in the world (which, let’s face it, probably isn’t the audience for Hellraiser goddamn IV), you probably can’t tell much of a difference between DTS and Dolby Digital, but ANYONE can tell the difference between a stereo mix and 5.1. Maybe someone can explain the possible logistics behind this to me? However, it’s pretty cheap, and for another 2-3 bucks you can get Inferno along with it; if you’re a space-saver type, this is a fantastic option as now these two movies will take up about 1/3 the space on your shelf and look better to boot.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m not the biggest Hellraiser fan in the world, but I think the biggest problem for me is that as I grew older, the movies began aiming younger (indeed, the last two were more or less teens in peril movies). It takes a more mature mind to fully appreciate the ideas in the first film (which I saw as a kid), and I think you’d have to be an adolescent to enjoy Hellworld (which I watched a few months ago). So if you haven’t seen any of them yet, watch the entire series backwards, one per year, and see how interesting it gets as you grow wiser!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

MARCH 17, 2011

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

My good friend Ryan Rotten is more of a texter, so when I saw him calling this morning, I knew it was something relatively important. As it turns out, he had gotten wind of a screening of Hellraiser: Revelations occurring tonight at a Los Angeles theater, and wanted to know if I knew anything about it. Which I guess means he doesn’t know me very well, because I am a HUGE fan of seeing DTV movies in the theater. I am proud to say I’ve seen BOTH Rest Stop films theatrically, as well as The Descent 2 and one of the American Pie DTV sequels at test screenings (also, not DTV, but I saw the TNT miniseries of Salem’s Lot in a theater too). Thus, if I had known about this, I’d be tweeting about it nonstop trying to pack that theater. There’s something I just find quite appealing about seeing a movie in a movie theater when it was never meant to be seen on anything but a television screen.

Of course, I knew that the film probably wouldn’t be very good. From what I understand, the film was made on the cheap ($300,000 – less than the original cost even without having to factor in inflation) and quickly, because the rights to the franchise were about to expire unless Dimension made a Hellraiser movie by a certain date. So it was hardly going to live up to the original, but I also figured that it’s not like the previous four DTV sequels set a particularly high bar, so maybe, all things considered, it might be at least a reasonably decent entry.

Well, no. In fact, it might just be the worst one yet. There’s a kernel of a good concept, and I can meet them halfway on certain things (from assuming that the time/budget crunch prevented them from exploring the story in a more thorough way), but the acting is terrible across the board, the script is painfully obnoxious, and most damning of all, they couldn’t even get Pinhead right. Doug Bradley opted not to return for the first time ever (which should have been a hint right from the start that this one wouldn’t measure up – he did Hellseeker for Christ’s sake, but drew the line here), and as a result we get a guy that looks something like a kid at a Fangoria con who dresses up as Pinhead and makes you go “Hey, he put some effort into that!” - but at least that kid would be quoting lines from the original movies instead of saying the shit he says here. There is some amusing irony in the fact that they made this movie specifically to hold onto the Pinhead character and couldn’t even get that much right, but the movie is too bad to enjoy it.

The biggest problem, once again, is focusing on snotty teens. Yes, Kirsty was the heroine of the first film, but the meat of the story was about Frank and Julia, not her. So instead of an interesting/flawed adult protagonist, we have two kids who are bored with life for reasons that are never explained, and decide to drive to Mexico (“Tee-KWA-na”, as one of them reminds us about 900 times), leaving their “nowhere town” (seen to be Los Angeles – OK?) behind. For reasons too boring (and confusing) to explain, they get a hold of the box (how it got to Mexico is, you guessed it, unexplained), unleash “Pinhead”, and disappear.

We learn most of this via video footage that the police found and sent to the parents. The parents of both teens (and the sister of one, who was dating the other) have come together for a really awkward dinner party where they talk to each other (read: the audience) about what little they know, and generally just sort of get pissy at each other. Then one of the boys returns out of nowhere (his sister announces "He's back!" as if he had just been a bit late coming home from basketball practice), and things start to pick up as they try to understand what happened to him and where the other kid went. It’s actually not a bad concept, but director Victor Garcia and his editor can’t ever seem to decide on a perspective to fill in the back story, so the “found footage” type scenes are blended with regular movie footage, and after awhile they abandon the video concept entirely. So instead of using it to slowly unfold a mystery, it comes across more as padding (or pandering, considering how many goddamn found footage movies there are nowadays). The flashbacks come and go with little rhyme or reason, and are oft-repeated; the scene where they first encounter Pinhead is played THREE times in the movie, which prompted me to joke “Maybe it should be called Hellraiser: Rashomon?”, since the “Revelations” subtitle, much like Children of the Corn’s*, didn’t really make any sense in the movie. We already know everything about Pinhead (né Elliott Spencer), and nothing else concerning the mythology is revealed here.

Oh, except the definition of the word “cenobite”. In what will undoubtedly go down as one of the most mocked scenes in modern horror history (assuming anyone ever actually sees this thing), a scene begins with our Kirsty stand-in, Emma, walking into the room reading from a thick red book. “A member of a religious order living in a convent or community”, she tells us. It’s already pretty silly – this is essentially Hellraiser 9, so no one needs to know what a cenobite is at this point – but it gets more inane. Her dad asks her what she’s talking about, and then she ACTUALLY EXPLAINS WHAT WE JUST SAW. “He said cenobite, and I never heard that word before, so I looked it up in the dictionary.” Perhaps Gary Tunnicliffe, who wrote the script, is unfamiliar with certain basic concepts behind screenwriting because he’s usually a (quite good) FX man, but film is a visual medium, and folks that watch films, even bad ones like this, do possess a modicum of intelligence and the ability to process the images we are seeing. Thus, when someone is reading from what is obviously a dictionary, and even providing a basic definition of a word, we don’t need the dialogue to explain that she is indeed looking up a word in a dictionary after that. We got it.

Speaking of Tunnicliffe’s FX, they are quite good and pretty much the only reason to watch the movie – I never tire of seeing people get their skin torn off in these movies. However, it’s a shame that they couldn’t come up with some decent new cenobites to accompany “Pinhead”. We only get two others; a female version of Chatterer, and, I shit you not, a “Sub-Pinhead” of sorts that I swear is just there to make the “real” Pinhead look better by comparison. It’s like “Well I know he’s no Doug Bradley, and we didn’t do a very good job with the design, but look how bad it COULD have been! Now our main Pinhead doesn’t look so bad anymore, right?” Luckily, they keep him to a minimum (if you remove his repeated scenes I’m guessing he’d have 5 minutes of screen-time tops), but that just means spending more time with our awful protagonists, so it’s not exactly a good tradeoff.

Now, there is a somewhat decent twist in the movie, but it’s also botched (spoilers ahead!). I don’t know if this movie was meant to be webisodes or something, but it’s like a 24 twist in that it renders earlier behavior by the character completely senseless. It’s also something that can only work on paper, because what it boils down to is someone impersonating another by wearing their skin, but we can plainly see that he couldn’t have possibly done that. There are no rips in the skin (since they are ripping off the end of the first movie, they could have at least followed their lead and had visible tear marks around his face the way Andy Robinson (as Frank) did), and of course his eyes, voice, height, etc are somehow a perfect match as well. In a book, this could be cool, but when you’re watching it, all you can see is how silly it is. Plus, when he first arrived back at the house, he was in some sort of trance, as if he had escaped from hell or was shell-shocked by what he had seen. Why was he acting like that? It’s the type of thing you might have forgotten about if you were watching it in 5-10 minute chunks over a 6 month period, but not in what’s a very short (75-80 minutes MAX) movie.

Back to ripping off the first movie; the plot of the two kids sort of mirrors Julia and Frank’s from that film, albeit without the love affair (considering Clive Barker often explores homosexuality in his work, I’m surprised they never went there in any of the films). One is skinless and needs the other to bring women back to their place in order to “feast” and become whole again, and since they are in “Tee-KWA-na” this just means a lot of hookers. But since this is an ignorant Dimension production, the hookers are all Asian for some reason, and our lead characters frequently refer to how in Mexico its practically a given that hookers will turn up dead and no one will care because life is so cheap there (Hellraiser: Racism?). Nice.

Oh, and Pinhead is apparently a car thief (Hellraiser: Repossession?). The asshole kids find that their car is stolen early on (whether this is before or after they obtain the box is unclear), and then later, both sets of parents’ cars just vanish shortly after the one kid returns. No one really seems confused by this; one father just announces that the cars have been taken and that’s the end of it. Normally, this would be the part of the review where I wondered if there was a deleted scene to explain it, but I can say with some certainty that there isn’t. Why? Because after the credits, we were inexplicably “treated” to six deleted scenes from the movie! All just character bits, largely without context (and presented out of order, making it even harder to tell where they’d fit in the movie); most were likely cut because they weren’t doing the actors any favors (the two actresses playing the mothers in particular are just awful).

I could go on and on, but the review is already long enough, and what’s the point? No one involved seemed to really give a shit, and why should they? The film exists to extend their ownership of the property while they work out all the kinks in getting the remake together. But even on that level, I still found it insulting; it takes just as long to hire good actors as it does to hire bad ones, and considering Hellworld was produced in 2002, there should have been a decent script to use floating around somewhere, since they’ve never announced plans to actually STOP making Hellraiser sequels. I can forgive the film’s insular and cheap feel – the original is still the best and that wasn’t exactly a globe trotting adventure with big budget spectacle – but I can’t forgive such cynical laziness. Christ, even the end credits managed to look cheap (I also spotted some mistakes). If they had to make a movie to hold onto the rights, fine – make one, show it to a lawyer, and then burn the negative. But as far as I’m concerned, they don’t DESERVE to hold on to the rights if they are making this sort of trash and asking people to pay for it as if it was a legitimate entry. Hellraiser: Reprehensible?

There it is.

What say you?

*Even stranger, before this screening was a showing of Children Of The Corn: Genesis, a film that’s listed under the subtitle “The Dweller” on IMDb as of this writing (and is inexplicably not included with the others under “movie connections’). I had planned to go, but my new car’s security system malfunctioned and left me unable to get it started (really advanced security – even keeps its owner from “stealing” it!), so I missed out on what I’m sure was a terrific entry to that franchise. I wonder how often this happens? The screenings were not advertised in any way, and the theater employees seemed confused as to how to even let someone buy a ticket for them. Very weird, but when it comes to Dimension, nothing surprises me. Still, if you ever hear of them showing Pulse 4 or Mimic: Revelation (or whatever else they got coming our way) in a theater, you make sure to let me know!

PLEASE, GO ON...

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

JANUARY 24, 2011

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I have put off watching Hellraiser: Hellworld for a couple years now (I watched the 7th film, Deader, in September of 2008!), because it just sounded awful, and while I was never exactly the world’s biggest Hellraiser fan, I didn’t want to tarnish my opinion of the series any further. But now with two more movies on the way, plus a comic co-scripted by Clive Barker himself, I figured I could finally resign myself to see if they somehow managed to make a decent movie out of a scenario that found a group of teens resurrecting Pinhead via a website.

Well, they didn’t. And that’s kind of a shame, because the first scene suggested there COULD be a decent idea in there. The Hellraiser stories have always focused on obsessions and addictions (usually of the sexual manner), and the film opened with the funeral of a guy who died as the result of his obsession with an online computer game. We’ve probably all heard of dudes who died from one cause or another due to extensive Warcraft or Everquest playing, not to mention ruined their social lives and careers in several cases (if you haven’t seen the documentary Second Skin – please do so now, or at least before you spend your time watching DTV Hellraiser sequels), so the idea of focusing on that sort of obsession, albeit with an idea as corny as a Hellraiser-themed MMORPG, might work, or at least sort of fit into the basic themes of the series.

Alas, the movie has fuck all to do with obsession, or even the game itself (which we barely even see – apparently it’s some sort of cheap 7th Guest like point and click thing). Worse, Pinhead appears a bit more than he did in the previous couple of films, but in his most bastardized form yet, acting like a Jason Voorhees esque slasher more often than not. At one point a kid goes off by himself, stumbles around a while, and then Pinhead actually chops his head off. He also barely speaks beyond the occasional one-liner, many just recalling his more classic lines (“We have such sights to show you...”), which only serve to remind you how far the character/series has fallen.

And once again, the script was actually an original concept re-purposed into a Hellraiser film, because no one learned from the last movie that this wasn’t a good idea. They make some effort to tie it into the mythology – Lance Henriksen’s character is a “collector” of sorts, and thus he owns a bunch of puzzle boxes and chains and even a portrait of L’Merchant. And Chatterer shows up (sort of), so that’s cool. But as the film goes on, it becomes less and less involved with Hellraiser, as if they forgot to finish the process of molding it into a sequel to an unrelated franchise.

As it turns out, the real villain of the film is Lance’s character (well DUH, he’s Lance Henriksen), who is trying to get back at the kids who he believes caused the death of his son. Also (spoiler), most of the movie doesn’t actually happen – it turns out that everything involving Pinhead, the strange party they were invited to via the Hellraiser game, etc, was a hallucination/nightmare. In reality, they were buried alive, and some of them just died for real of more or less natural causes. The only legitimate appearance of Pinhead in the film comes at the very end, when Lance is holed up in a hotel somewhere some time later, and stupidly decides to open the box, which prompts Pinhead to do his thing before the credits roll. Well, whatever, movie.

Again, it’s not the lack of Pinhead I mind – he’s not in the first one much either. It’s that the film has nothing to do with the basic concepts behind the original stories, and worse, it’s simply not that good of a movie period. The kids are the usual generic and largely unlikable lot, the scenario makes almost zero sense, and the villain isn’t threatening. If this was just some random movie called Hellworld, with the Cenobites replaced by anonymous demon types, it would still be a lousy movie - having it be part of a franchise just makes it worse.

Though, to be fair, the twist actually is somewhat interesting, and had the movie been worth a shit prior to that point, it could have been an above average teen slasher (which it often resembles), instead of, almost astonishingly, the weakest Hellraiser movie yet. The idea of a father avenging the death of his child is hardly the worst concept (it worked well for Wilderness), and the production value is above average for these things (if IMDb’s estimates are to be believed, this is actually the most expensive Hellraiser movie of the entire series). But it just doesn’t gel – the hallucinations and dreams within dreams nonsense just make the movie feel padded and needlessly confusing, and I just could never get into it due to the total lack of respect it showed for the series it was supposedly a part of (since when does a Hellraiser movie focus on a bunch of kids?).

On the plus side, Lance seems to be having fun, and Hellworld can boast being the only film in the series to include a pigeon-based jump scare, so there’s something. Gary Tunnicliffe’s FX are, as usual, quite good, and the death scenes, while largely out of place, are well designed – there’s even a “strapped to a chair” mechanism-based kill that I would have accused of being a Saw ripoff if not for the fact that this movie was shot a year before the first film in that series (it was RELEASED shortly before Saw II, however). And with this film Doug Bradley tied Robert Englund’s record for most appearances as a movie killer, so you have to respect his dedication to the role (or at least, the paychecks). There was also a brief appearance of a Chevy Corsica, which longtime readers will know is the make/model of my first car, one I still miss to this day.

As usual, there’s a commentary track by the Neo Art and Logic crew – Tunnicliffe, director Rick Bota, producer/co-writer Joel Soisson, and producer Nick Phillips. And as with the others, it’s a decent track – they’re not above pointing out some flubs or silly moments, and while I hate their mercenary approach to making movies (part of the reason that they molded an unrelated script into a Hellraiser sequel was because they were days from shooting and still didn’t have a script), I can’t deny it’s kind of funny to hear someone say “I stole this shot for Prophecy 5” (especially since I didn’t even know there WAS a Prophecy 5) or point out a prop that they recycled from one of the Mimics. There’s also a making of, but it’s largely worthless –lots of the film’s most annoying character (the one Pinhead beheaded) but no Lance whatsoever, and Doug only appears in candid behind the scenes footage. Skip it. And skip the movie, too, unless you’re some sort of Romanian-American co-production completist.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

DVD Review: Hellraiser (1987)

APRIL 25, 2008

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Anchor Bay owns the right to a great number of revered horror films, so it's no surprise that Blu-Ray support has been demanded from them ever since the format was introduced. And while some may wish they would be a bit less sporadic with their releases (where the hell is Hatchet?), you can't deny that they have done a superb job with the transfers, besting even some of the major studios' big ticket titles. At any rate, Hellraiser joins the growing club, and I am again satisfied with the quality of the picture/sound.

(I am not going to re-review the movie - you can read my thoughts on the film HERE. This review focuses on the new transfer as well as the extra features).

I've always thought Hellraiser looked better than the budget would have you believe, so to see it in HD was a treat. As always, I enjoy seeing the increased level of detail in smaller objects. Andy Robinson's sweater, the rat that Frank skins next to the bed, the wood on the floor where Frank is reborn... all of these things pop out to me now. I never even noticed, say, the pattern on Larry's sweater, but now I can see the actual fibers. Sure, this has zero to do with the movie, but it just gives you an example of how much added texture and detail you get with a Blu-ray transfer.

Now, to be honest, it does look a little softer than some of AB's other BR releases, such as Halloween. Perhaps the elements weren't as well preserved, or it was just that way to begin with, but a number of scenes, particularly daylit set ones, don't have that sort of nearly 3D vividness. Other scenes, however, like the first real appearance of Pinhead around the hour mark, look gorgeous. Again the detail is striking (the patterns on Pinhead's suit, for example), but also it has that sort of rich color and contrast that inspires people to switch to HD in the first place. It may not be a demo quality transfer, but it's a damn good one nonetheless.

I never got the 20th anniversary edition of the film, so most of the extras were new to me (there are no BR-specific features). Things start off with a trio of interviews that were created for the 20th anniversary release. The first is with Andy Robinson, and this is pretty interesting as you don't often hear from him on the film (as opposed to Doug Bradley, Ashley Laurence, and of course, Clive Barker). He explains his reasons for not doing the sequel (didn't like the script, but was willing to do it anyway until he learned he'd be getting less money to boot), and talks about the origin of the "Jesus wept" line. Next up is Laurence, who is a bit batshit at times, and seemingly bitter about her lack of an A-list career ("I found myself in strange European countries, talking to puppets" - not sure if this was for a movie or not). The 3rd and best is Christopher Young, who not only still has all of his marbles, but like Robinson, gets to tell a side of the film's creation we haven't heard ad nauseum from previous DVDs, Fangoria, etc.

The other extras are all quite old. There's the "Resurrection" retrospective from the previous release, an interview with Bradley from around 2004 (nothing you haven't heard), and the commentary with Barker, Laurence, and Peter Atkins. It's a decent enough track, but just about everything of note is covered in the other extras. There is also a "text trivia track", which just sums up the stuff in the commentary in quick little notes. So like, Barker will be talking about a scene that had to be reshot for technical problems, and will go in some detail about those problems, and the onscreen note just says "This scene was reshot for technical reasons". My advice? If you've seen the movie a bunch, just put it on for your first viewing of the Blu-ray. It's not very obtrusive, and it will save you the time of watching it again with the commentary.

Anchor Bay has also included the Blu-ray disc in a collection that comes in a large model of the Lament Configuration. You get 3 discs with the release: the Hellraiser 20th anniversary DVD, Hellraiser II 20th anniversary, and this Blu-Ray. Why anyone would want two copies of the film with identical extras, I don't know, but there you go. It's also a bit large (so the discs can fit), but the construction is nice, and the two parts fit together far better than their previous collector box (the Masters of Horror Season 2 skull). Region 2 gets cool shit like this all the time, so it's nice to see AB catering to the Region 1 fans (how bout getting that Phantasm Sphere set for us Americans?).

All in all, while it's not the type of release that would finally convince someone to upgrade to the new format, it's a solid package all the same. And if you only have the previous release (from 2001?) it's definitely worth the upgrade. Also, don't forget - sales of title A makes an HD release of title B all the more enticing to the powers that be, so get cracking!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

DECEMBER 21, 2008

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Earlier today I was interviewed for a documentary about horror fans and why they do the things they do, like, I dunno, watch and write about a horror movie every single day of their life. One question was about whether or not I plan my movies, which I do not, and noted that I still didn't even know what I was going to watch today. But that was kind of a lie, because I had just gotten the new Anchor Bay release of Hellbound: Hellraiser II, and I was eager to revisit it.

Like the first film (I can't believe it's been almost a year since I watched it?), I only saw Hellraiser II once, when I was in eighth grade and watched all three (this was a happier, pre-Dimension time) back to back. Being a fan primarily of slashers, I didn't really care for any of them, and if it wasn't for Horror Movie A Day I probably still wouldn't have revisited them or watched any of the DTV sequels. Which is a shame, because the films are far better than I remembered.

While Pinhead may look cool and all that, the story is simply better suited for an older audience. The themes (the lengths one would go to satisfy their obsessions, for example) just don't really resonate with a kid who is watching it mainly for boobs and blood. I'm not even sure I understood what was going on inside Frank's personal hell back then.

The movie also had some surprising revelations for me. For example, I am currently editing a documentary, and at one point the subject of the film chuckles to himself after saying "What was on the agenda? Ah yes... an evisceration!" I have always been a bit baffled as to why he was saying that, but now I know that it's a line from the movie. Also, I think this movie may be responsible for my seething hatred of having wet skin under my clothes. When I shower, I dry myself for like a half hour, because if I feel any wetness on the interior of my clothing, I practically freak out (and instantly re-dry and put a different shirt on). Hell, even when I see people in movies just toss their jeans on immediately after getting out of a shower, I cringe. I think the scene where a skinless Julia puts on Channard's shirt, getting blood all over it, may have been the root cause of this odd phobia.

That or I'm just a giant fucking baby.

Also, as a sequel, it really delivers what you would hope for. It's not a copy of the first film, but it retains the same feel and brings back a lot of the characters (IMDb's trivia notes that the film feels muddled without Andy Robinson, but honestly I didn't mind his absence at all. It gave even more weight to the Frank scene), while expanding the mythology and introducing new villains/threats, particularly Dr. Channard. Having recently seen the lackluster sequels, the film's overall high quality is even more impressive; certainly Dimension has proven time and time again that it's pretty easy to make a shitty Hellraiser movie.

Not that it's a perfect film. There are some odd omissions of character, such as the rather personable cop who appears in the film's first 20 minutes and is then never seen again. And Kirsty has apparently gone back and read some of Clive Barker's notes or something, because all of a sudden she is an expert on the Cenobites (how did she even learn the term?), apparently gaining all of her knowledge after just looking at them for a few minutes. And while Tony Randel does an admirable job of taking over from Barker as director, I think he could have stood to lose three or even two hundred of the shots of Kirsty and Tiffany running down hallways together. There would still be several thousand for us to enjoy, so I don't think it would have been any real loss.

Speaking of the hallway, it's kind of funny how time/better technology has sort of ruined certain movie effects. Being more hip to movie magic, it's pretty easy to see that the "endless maze of hallways" is really just three hallways (if that) shot from different angles. Also, even as a kid, I was always aware of bad effects in movies (such as the abysmal composite shot in Nightmare on Elm St 3 when the skeleton is fighting Craig Wasson), but I didn't see anything wrong with Hellbound when I watched it on an EP mode VHS copy. Now, in a glorious anamorphic transfer on upscaled DVD, I can see that the matte/composite shots in this movie are pretty damn cheesy, as are some of the effects on Dr. Channard. Don't get me wrong, they are imaginative and all, but the clarity of DVD really diminishes their impact. Another thing that I noticed about the effects which was just more amusing - whenever they cut to a closeup of a head being inflicted with some incredibly serious pain (such as pins being driven into it), the head doesn't move at all. I'd be squirming like a mother fucker!

Speaking of Nightmare 3... anyone else ever notice how similar the dynamic is with the female leads in the two films? Which movie am I describing? A curly brown haired woman from the first film helps a new character, a blond with bad 80s hair, fight the returning monster while running around both a mental institute and Hell.

One other minor thing - while I always love the idea of a villain redeeming himself in the face of a greater threat, it seems really abrupt when it happens here. Pinhead has no recollection of his human side, but once he sees a picture of himself, he instantly finds it in his heart to help Kristy out. It's an interesting story idea, I just wish it was threaded more into the narrative instead of coming more or less out of nowhere in the final reel.

Anchor Bay has put together a pretty great collection for this release, and it's pretty impressive how good the movie looks when you consider that there is an additional 90 minutes of extra features. The commentary and making of are carried over from the 2000 release, then 2 features are imported from other sources, and finally 3 all new featurettes were created specially for this edition. Unsurprisingly, the new ones are the more interesting, as they deal with folks we don't often hear from. Barker, Bradly, and Ashley Laurence are not in any of the new features, so instead we hear the thoughts of the other three cenobites, as well as Kenneth Cranham, who is delightfully British (read: dryly hilarious) as he recollects his turn as Dr. Channard. There is also a new interview with director Tony Randel, who talks about how he moved up from being a film librarian at Corman's company to a full fledged director. The old making of is typical of such pieces for films that were made before special editions were in vogue, in that for every minute of interview footage, there's two minutes of film. Even though it was produced by Barker himself, it's actually the weakest in the lot. Finally, there's an old interview with Barker from the set, and a new-ish (2004) interview with Bradley. Plus the usual trailers and such. Oddly enough, the box art makes no mention of the fact that this is the full unrated 99 minute cut, not the theatrical version you might expect. Which got me thinking: what if someone preferred the theatrical? Is it available on DVD anywhere? I know unrated cuts are generally more enticing, but more often than not, the added shit is worthless (see: Crimson Tide), so the choice should at least be available.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Hellraiser: Deader (2005)

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Rock Band 2 was all I cared about today, so I needed a short movie that wouldn’t benefit from my full attention. Enter Hellraiser: Deader, aka Hellraiser 7, which I knew was actually written as another movie and molded into a Hellraiser film. Also it was from the same people who did the last one (and the next one, where Pinhead goes “online”... sigh) . Also it starred Kari Wuhrer, an actress who has never starred in a good movie. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to be surprised if the movie stunk.

And actually, it’s not all that bad at first. I like the investigative reporter plot, and Wuhrer is hotter than ever. And yeah, Pinhead isn’t in it much, but that’s not only a given nowadays, but also sort of a good idea in theory – he’s barely in the first one either. The one he’s in the most were pretty much loathed by fans (III and Bloodline) so why not try to emulate the original?

The problem is, the story here just ain’t as good. Like I said, it starts off OK, but it eventually just becomes needlessly confusing (why is Jacob’s Ladder the seeming influence for all of the DTV Hellraiser’s?). Worse, there isn’t anyone in any real danger for the bulk of the film, since Wuhrer is pretty much our only character. The folks she is investigating are dead (or “deader”); her editor is pretty much the only other human character of note, and he’s in it less than Pinhead. And while killing off the lead is sort of par for the course for these movies, we know it won’t occur until the film’s final 5 minutes, leaving 80 that are almost entirely without suspense or even violence (this is possibly the least violent film in the series). 90% of the film is merely Wuhrer walking around looking at shit.

It’s also got some pretty idiotic filmmaking. The thing that sets the whole movie off is a video where a girl is seemingly killed and then resurrected, and that’s fine. But the video is obviously shot and edited! There are conversations with both angles, reaction shots, etc. Kind of hard to buy into the “reality” of the video when it looks as manufactured as the film in which it is contained. And I had to laugh when Wuhrer sees her article in the paper, seemingly unhumorously titled “How To Be A Crack Whore” (given Wuhrer’s penchant for nudity, I’m surprised this minor subplot wasn’t more promiment). Also, there are only two other cenobites this time around, and director Rick Bota can’t even be bothered to really show them off. One of them is never even really seen in full, which is a shame, as Gary Tunnicliffe’s makeup is great (as it always is) and I would have liked to have seen it in more detail.

That all said... it’s got its moments. There’s a bit where Wuhrer finds herself with a knife in her back (no idea) and spends a good 3-4 minutes splashing blood around her bathroom and finally getting the damn thing out. I also like that the movie is actually set in Romania; Dimension films pretty much every one of their movies there, so it’s nice to see them actually admit it rather than try to pass it off as America like they usually do. The concept of a subway car that is permanently filled with lowlifes (it looks like a traveling opium den/S&M club) is also pretty fantastic; it’s the only thing in the film that seems like Clive Barker himself may have come up with. And, in pretty much the one constant of the franchise (other than the complete lack of any continuity from film to film), the score is fantastic.

Speaking of all the movies, how the fuck does everyone know how to open the box almost instantly? They pick it up, all confused, and then within 10 seconds they randomly decide to rub their thumb around the circle. If I found the damn thing, first thing I would do (besides check its Ebay value) is attack the thing with a nice screwdriver and vigorous shaking.

Bless Dimension for going all out with the extra features though. If you dig this one, you’re in for a treat, as there’s about 4 hours’ worth of stuff here including the two feature length commentaries. I only listened to one, with Bota and Pinhead himself, Doug Bradley. It’s a pretty informative track, and Bradley points out the same thing I (and others have), anyone who complains about the lack of Pinhead in these films clearly doesn’t remember the original very well. Then there are also a few making of featurettes (two about the effects, one in general), some location scout videos, and about 20 minutes or so of deleted or extended (mostly the latter) scenes. Most of it is worthless (one is just Wuhrer endlessly walking to a subway station, riveting stuff), but there are a few character bits one might enjoy. Strangely enough, there is actually a couple minutes’ worth of deleted Pinhead material here. I would think they would use as much as possible.

There is also an Easter egg worth noting. If you go into the 2nd page of the extras, go to down to “Play Movie”, and then hit left and then up (or right and down, I forget. Look, just fuck with it until you light up the Lament Configuration on the right side), you get this wonderfully odd little film with Pinhead (not Bradley) as an old man, lamenting about the state of the world and things of that nature. He then opens the box himself and two cenobites kill him. I haven’t the slightest clue what the point of it is, and the quality of the video is beyond terrible (it looks like Youtube), but it’s definitely worth a look. It reminded me of one of those Marvel Comics called “The End” which tells the ‘final’ story of certain Marvel heroes.

I still have one more to go, but I think it’s safe to say that of all the horror franchises, none fell harder than Hellraiser. All of the series got pretty bad, but they were still in the same spirit as the original films, to some extent. And it’s the only major horror franchise that got sent direct to video, which is a bit of a shame. Had Barker or even Pete Atkins stuck around, I am sure it would be a wonderfully original franchise, and it’s a shame Dimension just couldn’t let it die after Bloodline (which pretty much served as a series finale anyway). It’s ironic; the past three movies were done in more by the expectations one would have for a Hellraiser film more than anything else. If they were just unrelated genre films, they’d probably fare better with audiences.

I’m sure the online one sucks no matter how you slice it though. Christ.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...