Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

Oh, how the fanboys raged - and even Clive Barker - who sold his "art" to many inferior movies - got into the discussion and publically denounced Hellraiser: Revelations on Twitter. What very few of them obviously couldn't grasp with their mini-minds is what we have here is a real, quite ambitious sequel that's not only the first script written specifically for a Hellraiser-film since part 4, it also quite cleverly builds a story much in the vein of the first movie and through this goes back to the roots of what the fans should like. I think the problem is that it looks cheap, and fan boys often confuses cheap with bad. There's a special story behind the making of this part (and it has happen a couple of times before): New Line realized that they had to make a movie within a certain time to be able to keep the rights to the Hellraiser-franchise. So they tossed talented director Victor Garcia and writer/special effects master Gary J. Tunnicliffe maybe 100-200 thousand dollars and a production schedule of three weeks... so this was a rushed production. So that's why it's surprising it turned out SO good.

Steven and Nico is two teenagers going on one last trip to Mexico to have fun and fuck around with cheap whores. Well there it's kinda boring, but a dirty old bum gives them a puzzle box and says it will give them all the pleasure in the world. Steven thinks this is a great idea and tries it... and then both of them disappears. Some time after this, Nico stumbles back into his parents home and slowly the story of what really happened unveils....

This is micro-budget film making how it should be done. The script could probably have one or two rewrites before shooting could being and the directing might not be as thought-through, but what to expect with such a short notice? They had eleven days shooting the film with very little means. What I really like about the script is the claustrophobic, chamber play feeling. This is an interesting deconstruction of the American bourgeois family - always pretending to be perfect, but with the bloody help of the cenobites there's more revealed about themselves than they could imagine. There's some very fine references to the first Hellraiser-film, and they are a lot more fresher than what a lot of the other sequels had. The script also has some twists that feels very interesting and works fine. This is the second time I've seen then movie and I still wasn't prepared for some of them.

If you, like me, have no problem with low budget movies, you wouldn't have any problem accepting the style of this film.  The effects, designed by Tunnicliffe, looks splendid. It's a gory and violent movie but of course, because of the budget and time, some steps of the kills and effects is off screen, but don't worry. It has quite a lot of gory goo anyway. The make-up is fine also, but here we also come to one of the few problems with the film: Stephan Smith Collins. Yeah, he plays Pinhead. And no, there's actually nothing wrong with him and his acting, it's just his look - he's so far from the bleak, almost androgynic look of Doug Bradley (who said no to star in the movie because the pay was to bad and he thought the script needed another rewrite) in make-up, and here he just looks like a slacker, a couch slob, who just happens to have walked by the make-up room and cast as Pinhead because there wasn't any other choices. Nothing personal, Mr Smith Collins.

Hellraiser: Revelations is a nifty and emotional strong sequel that could have needed some more time fixing the slightly corny dialogue and a bit longer shooting schedule to be perfect, now it's just a good little DTV movie with more ambitions than money. Oh, and the Mexico sets looks very bad, they could have used some more work to! ;)  

Give it a try, see it with your own eyes and just don't believe all the negativity around this film. It's worth more than just another generic, unimaginative fanboy-bashing. 

Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (1996)

Disowned by the director because of the production company's decision to re-cut HellraiserIV: Bloodline, this is still a very underrated part of Clive Barker's macabre saga about the Lament Box and the demons called Cenobites. It has very interesting ideas, a bit more violent than part 3 and a bigger scale where they try to explain a bit more about the origin of the box and what it can make to curious people.

It's hard to deny it's a bit of a mess, and I'm pretty sure we can blame this on the production company who effectively destroyed the original vision of director Kevin Yagher and writer Peter Atkins. They actually tried to do something new and fresh, but someone high up wanted Pinhead in earlier in the movie and decided to fuck up the whole movie when Yagher left and refused to participate in the demanded changes. Good for him, maybe not so good for us - even if his workprint is available in terrible quality on bootlegs and downloading it's of course not the way it was meant to be seen.

But in all honest, the result is quite decent anyway. It could have been a lot worse! What doesn't work is the order of the scenes, which no makes the story fractured and confusing and it takes a few times watching it to fully appreciate the storyline and ideas both those written by Atkins and visually told by Yagher. The best part of the film is the origin story, where get to know the toy maker Le Merchant and how he built the box to a rich, decadent occultist who wants it to invoke a demon - and we all know who's that gonna be in the end? Well, not Pinhead at first, but a beautiful female demon who then we follow through the years until modern time. Everything is told from yet another ancestor in the future, sitting on his mysterious space station trying to once again invoke Pinhead.

Everything is very well made, gory and interesting. The middle part - focusing on the time "now" is good and has some interesting ideas, but feels a bit flat compared to the past and future. The actors is very good though, especially Kim Myers as the wife of one of Le Merchant's ancestors, all played by Bruce Ramsay by the way.

So if the script is a mess, Hellraiser Bloodline at least delivers some spectacular gore and splatter and some surprisingly fine visual effects (not all of course, for example the computer animated hands solving a computer animated box during the beginning of the movie). The highlight is a nice decapitation and a fun sequence where two heads is twisted into each other.  It's not a bad movie, but could have been a sensational sequel - maybe the best sequel of the bunch. But no, that didn't happen - but give it a try anyway. It's worth it!

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

I've been a lifelong fan of all things Hellraiser - but ironically I never read the story it's based on from the beginning. I think it's too late now anyway, I'm more of a non-fiction reader and most of my time is focused on movies and music. Hellraiser 2 is by far the best in the series, but I've always had a very soft spot for Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. It's the first sign of the franchise going a more goofy and silly route (not as silly as many others, and it always kept some kind of seriousness) and in this movie it means some outrageous technological Cenobites and an unhealthy dose of crappy nineties fashion and music.

The young owner of The Boiler Room, a hip night club for goth kids, needs something new to spend his money on and gets a strange pillar for a couple of bucks. It's of course a cursed pillar, including the Pinhead-demon - who just wants out to raise a little hell again....

Originally it was meant for writer Peter Atkins to direct, but the company thought he had to little experience as a director and asked genre veteran and cult favourite Anthony Hickox to take over the wheel instead. It's impossible to say what could have happen with Atkins doing the directing but I think Hickox, with his usual flair did a pretty good job with a silly script. Maybe he made it more silly with his directing, I have no idea, but the man is a visual genius and always packs his productions with creative camera solutions and colourful characters - so even here. He likes his slow-motion or prankster-style attitude when it comes to on-camera gags and gore (even if it could have been even gorier...).

So even if the style and story is quite far away from what happen in the first and part 2, it still hangs together very good with the mythology - and gives us a clue to what will happen in the very uneven, but also underrated, part 4 (who became an Allan Smithee-movie after the production company took the movie away from its director). I actually like how the story departs from the usual Hellraiser-gloom and dives right into neon-lights and pseudo-goth kids dancing. It's like the filmmakers trying to spoof the fans a little bit, poke fun at the darkness and sadomasochistic themes - just like they did with the fun Hellraiser: Hellworld many years later.

And yes, regarding the CD-cenobite. I need to quote David Zuzelo in his review of Hellraiser: Revelations: "Dear Clive Barker. You signed off on CD FACE, how the hell can you not sign off on this? The checks are probably smaller, but the reputation doesn't shrink any further in my opinion". Yeah, this was regarding Clive Barker's hate of the Revelations-movie, when he's one of the men (aka producers) behind the silliest Cenobite of them all! Money talks. I kinda like the Cenobites in this film It's nice to see some new faces, so to speak, and these aren't bad - even if they seem to make things explode rather than torture people with chains and hooks that much. But they're nasty bitches and that's what we like, I guess.

Hellraiser III isn't exactly a heavy-weight sequel, but it's never boring and delivers some interesting ideas, some gore, some nudity and a nice change of location. Instead of British social realism and ugly mental patients we get young, hot men and women getting torn to pieces. I like that. It feels good. 

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

I once read that Lance Henriksen never accept roles as child molesters, rapists and just any kind of acting in slasher movies. Probably a very wise decision for him, because it kept him going for many years now and he’s probably gonna act until he falls down dead (which I forbid, he can never leave us!). That’s why it’s a mystery that he accepted the role of the mystery host in Hellraiser: Hellworld. At a first glance it’s a Hellraiser-movie, but it’s just slasher in disguise. Probably the most hated (until the next one of course, Revelations) sequel in the Hellraiser-series and shot back-to-back with the interesting but very uneven Deader, also from 2005. I can agree it’s a weak movie, but if you forget what it’s meant to be and see it as a silly slasher it works.

Two years ago Adam (Stelian Urian) burned himself to death in the basement after getting to involved in the fictional Hellraiser internet-game (internet was VERY dangerous in the movies once) and now his friends are getting back into their old “drug” with participating in a Hellraiser-themed party, hosted by Lance Henriksen: Hellworld. Yes, this is one of those sequels that look at the franchise from the outside (like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare for example). Soon things are starting to get very strange in the old Leviathan house, and one by one our hero’s is getting killed in violent ways!

OK, look at it from a distance and it kinda works. The story and the twist is absurd and silly and shouldn’t work, and it would have probably worked better as a pure slasher outside the Hellraiser-realm. It also has a twist which I hate and I loath every stupid fuck that uses this idea to seem smart (I’m looking at you… NO, sorry. I won’t name any other similar movie, just so you can be disappointed by yourself). Why it works a little bit better here is because it’s a Hellraiser movie, which make it seem more logic… kinda.

Because like with Deader and Hellseeker, director Rick Bota makes a very fine job spicing up rewritten scripts and adds a lot of atmosphere and some nasty violence to DTV-sequels that never would have gotten the same treatment if they belonged to another franchise. Hellworld is the weakest because the story is the weakest. It’s shallow and belongs entirely to the beautiful location, the excellent effects by Gary J. Tunnicliffe and the presence of Lance Henriksen. As you might now, I LOVE Lance, and I watch everything he’s in. He can have a tendency, especially during later years, to look a bit bored – or maybe just too used to doing lowbudget horror films. In Hellworld he’s better than in other similar projects, and seems to have fun scaring the kids and saying silly lines. Or maybe it was just a nice vacation to Romania that made him in a good movie, I don’t know. His best scene is actually the last one, where he can do a more realistic and – it looks like – do some improvisation on the set.

I know you all hate Hellworld, and I can agree it’s no super-movie. But watch it as a slasher with a little bit of Pinhead tossed in and it’s quite fun. And it looks good at least, which is better than nothing!

Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)

After reading this hilarious comment on IMDB about the TRAILER for Hellraiser: Revelations I just had to watch one of the old sequels again and my choice fell on the one I’ve seen the least times, Hellraiser: Hellseeker. Now, I’m one of those that don’t consider any movie holy. They could have remade Hellraiser as a romcom for all I care! The original movies still exist and can be enjoyed whenever I want to. Regarding Revelations it’s probably shitty, it’s just a movie that was produced to keep the rights to the franchise and nothing wrong with that. Art is business, make no mistake. I’ve been defending the Hellraiser-sequels since as long as I can remember, and I still will do that. It’s just something with them that attracts me. Like a twilight zone in the Hellraiser-mythology…

Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) is now a grown woman and has left her terrible history behind her, living a fantastic life together with her husband Trevor (Dean Winters). A terrible accident kills her and leaves her husband alone in the world with a mind more and more confused for each day. He starts seeing visions and his paranoia starts to grow. The police think he killed Kirsty and his memory-loss gives both him and us some clues of what really happen! Soon his closest friends starts showing up dead, brutally molested and isn’t that a certain Cenobite lurking in the dark of his mind…?

Like the excellent Inferno, and the sequels after, Hellseeker is a typical mindfuck movie. What I heard all these sequels were other movies from the beginning, but was rewritten to be Hellraiser-sequels, which makes them have a distance to the Cenobite-mythology, only using it as a background to some very fucked-up characters. What’s good with them, with the possible exception of Hellworld, is that the originals scripts used are quite good. Not especially original for us who have seen a lot of movies, but more ambitious and dark than most other DTV-sequels out on the street.

But I like them, and Hellseeker - while not in the same league as Inferno – is a fun and nasty sequel, dark and downbeat and even of the character of Kirsty is not that well-written, it’s nice to connect the story back to the original movie. I mean, why not? What gives the Hellraiser-sequels more respect than for example the Children of the Corn-franchise, is that they trying to keep the stories true to the downbeat tradition of the original. Sure, Hellworld is a slasher in (a not convincing) disguise, but the rest are actually quite non-commercial for being cheap sequels produced for the home video market.

There’s not need to complain about Hellseeker, everyone else does it so well. If you can ignore the holy Hellraiser-movie by Clive Barker (and maybe part 2) and just watch it like a separate mindfuck-movie with Pinhead and his friends in cameos, I think much more of you would appreciate what they’re doing here.

If you are true Clive Barker fans, I’m sure you would wait a thousand years for a proper new Hellraiser movie, or…?

Hellraiser: Deader (2005)

Here we have part 7 in often hated Hellraiser-saga. The official series did end with part 4, but the franchise wasn't dead until much later. I've always liked the sequels. Many of them are far from perfect, but they still is above average. Well, not for hardcore-fanboys that hasn't moved away from mommie yet of course. They still cry and whine over the sequels. But not me, no way man ;) Sure, it's just a way to squeeze some money out from Clive Barkers original vision, but the movies themselves isn't especially commercial at all - except for Hellworld. But we'll discuss that one another day.

This time Kari Wuhrer plays a journalist, Amy Klein, that dosen't scare easily. She has a new assignment, to go to Romania to find out more about a mysterious sect that seem to raise people from the dead. Their leader is Winter (Paul Rhys), a decendant of the original inventor of the Lament box, and Amy soon finds her deep involved in the sect and the people around it. Soon the reality around her begins to shift and she can never be sure what's happening and if she's even alive...

I really like the idea, and Deader has some parts that works fine. I like the stuff with the bed, which is an interesting nod to the Hellbound. The idea to use the bed, inflict pain on it, and then get powers from Pinheads world is cool. Also to include a relative of LeMerchant is nice, and brings the story to a circle. That's more or less the basic concept with Deader, and it's a pity they couldn't go deeper into those ideas. The location in Romania has a lot of atmosphere and Wuhrer makes a fine intensive performace as Amy, as most of the actors. The budget was obviously restrained and that shows. There never enough time to show really cool stuff. For example, the subway train-scene could have been a lot more decadent and violent. But instead it's feels very rushed.

The gore then? Not that much. Sure, there's some blood and some very fast glimpses of gore (someone getting torn to pieces for example), but not as much and as dirty as I would like. But it also seem to be a case of low budget. This also means that we see way to little of Gary J. Tunnicliffes excellent make-up and not much Cenobites either. Or at least not much close-ups.

Concept and story can't just fill 85 minutes of a nice looking movie, even if Rick Bota do a good job with the directing and a lot of other competent people behind and in front of the camera.

Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)

I'm one of those tasteless people that have no problems at all with all the Hellraiser-sequels. Part 2 is of course in a league of it's own, but even lesser (aka "sillier") sequels like Hell on Earth and Hellworld has something that attracts me. Inferno is the most underrated of the all sequels, and for a while it seemed that everyone hated it. "Not enough Pinhead!" (he's featured more in Inferno than in the first movie by the way) and not enough connection with the Hellraiser-mythos. Sure, it takes some liberties with the legend, but if you are openmined enough and can look beyond those small details, this is one helluva movie. 

Craig Sheffer plays Det. Joseph Thorne, a real bastard-police that fucks whores, don't care about his family, takes drugs, steals and is... yeah, a traditional bad cop. One day he comes to a murder scene where a man has been ripped to pieces with hooks and chains and Thorne finds the Lament-box... and takes it with him, and of course manages to open it. From that moment he's being trapped in a nightmare where more murders is taking place and everything is connected to him. He starts seeing weird Cenobites, and the person/thing behind it all is The Engineer - an almost mythological character in the underground crime-scene...

This movie is so criminally underrated that those who claims it's bad deserves a smack in the face. With an axe. Well, I won't be so hard to you all that dislike it, but it's still underrated. Scott Derrickson (who later directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Day the Earth Stood Still) makes a fantastic job and creates a cool noir-style nightmare with great make up-effects by Gary J. Tunnicliffe (one of the best in the business today I think). It's hard to like a movie with such an unpleasant lead as Thorne, but Craig Sheffer do it well and it's a pity he never had a bigger career than he has now. He gives it all here and do a marvelous job. 

Inferno almost travels into Lynch-territory with some scenes, for example the cowboys playing poker. You can take a slice from the atmosphere and eat it, so think is it. And juicy. But it never becomes pretentious. One of the best scenes is the first trip into Hellraiser-world where Thorne encounters a couple of strange female Cenobites and one of the weirdest ones inte the series, a creture with hardly any torso and that is walking on it's hands. Everytime I watch Inferno it reminds me of the norwegian mindfuck-movie Naboer (made five years later), but the visual style and some of the gimmicks. It's a good movie to, but never come close to the small genius of Inferno.

I'm not saying it will change your world, but I dare to say it's the finest work from Scott Derrickson and a damn fine small masterpiece of direct to video-movies. 

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

The first Hellraiser-movie is one of those movies that grow on you. I wasn't really fond of it the first time, but it's been a movie I've watched over and over again during the years and it get's better. But one movie that is actually better is Hellbound, the first sequel. It might not be more original, but it's a unique horror movie with some amazing visuals and a really cool story. It's set directly after the events in the first movie, and starts without any hesitation. The strongest part of the sequel is that the filmmakers directly expands the mythology of the cenobites and that hell/other dimension that they're coming from.

Pinhead has a bigger part here, of course, and hams it up together with his favorite friends Butterball, Female Cenobite and Shatterer. We're also getting a look at where they came from and some clues to their identities, which is a nice touch. But Pinhead is such a masterful character, a combination between a poet, philosopher and a serial killer. And it never becomes cliché (they saved that for part 3). Doug Bradley is probably the only actor I could see as Pinhead now, but if there's a new one I guess they want to reboot it completely... pity in away, but on the other hand, this is one of those series that needs a good reboot to feel fresh again.

I've never been fond of the small ounces of comedy that's in this movie. For example some of the patients at the hospital are more comic relief than scary och strange. It breaks the dark illusion for a while, but as we all know it's not that much. Because most of the time we're witnessing brutal acts of violence and a stunning vision of hell. Though the budget was much bigger here the effects and sets are very uneven. Some is even very bad. But the good stuff steals everything. Hell is a labyrinth with the god Leviathan in the middle. This is my favorite part of the movie, and I just love the idea of god as a huge diamond-shaped object pouring out black light and making strange deep sounds. It's so fucking mighty. 

The script had to be rewritten quickly, but I think that was only a good thing. Sure, we miss one of the most important characters from the first movie, but on the other hand: it gives more mystery to the story and makes the twist even more nasty and surprising. The biggest shame with this franchise is that they never returned to the new Cenobite again, Doctor Channard. The transformation of him and the creation of the new lead demon is really cool and that character deserved to be resurrected for another sequel. Never happen, so I guess I have to walk through life without him. Shitty life.

Hellbound is a masterpiece. It's one of the coolest, most radical and weirdest horror movies from the eighties and I think it will last forever. One of those movies that never will die.