Even in mediocre perpetuity, horror fans know there is yet a further pit all horror series can sink to, somehow normally in the fourth entry: Go to space! Such Alien aping bogs down Critters 4: They’ve Invading Your Space, Leprechaun 4: In Space and the rare Part Ten Jason X. To this hallowed fraternity one can add Hellraiser: Bloodline, it too a Part Four. But among these august failures, Bloodline is surely the least bad, because it halfway justifies its space setting, and it doesn’t spend its entire time among the stars. Hell, Bloodline even represents a minute improvement over the former Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, in the very least that it renders Pinhead a little more austere and a little less a Semi-Kreuger more at home with early 90s would-bes like the Djinn from Wishmaster.
So…a bit of the fungal Hellraiser cheese has been scraped away. Sadly, what remains is mostly boring. Still, Bloodline’s opening credits can proudly boast the single most terrifying image in the series: “Directed by Alan Smithee.” This made me curse audibly. Director Smithee is a notorious figure, a man with an enormously…varied résumé, starting in the 60s with Death of a Gunfighter, then moving on to forgotten relics like Stitches, Let’s Get Harry, The Birds II: Land’s End, and even the self-titled, autobiographical An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn.
In truth, Alan Smithee is a pseudonym, a now-retired moniker reserved for directors wishing to disown works which do not reflect their own personal visions, victims of dislike-minded producers. The real director of Bloodline is Kevin Yagher, the SFX makeup man responsible both for Freddy Kreuger’s burn scars and the design of the Chucky doll. So here’s a rare man, like Wes Craven or Ronny Yu, with a creative stake in multiple iconic horror franchises. Too bad he’s not much of a helmer; in fact, Yagher has no other directorial experience.
Returning as writer is erstwhile Hell-hack Peter Atkins, ensuring the vaguest degree of continuity in this herky-jerky series.
In the future, the year 2127, the Space Station Minos (ooh, labyrinth reference!) hovers over Earth. Its lone occupant, Doctor Paul Merchant (Bruce Ramsay), uses a robot to remotely solve the series’ trademark puzzle box. It juuuuust opens – with brief glimpses of Doug Bradley’s Pinhead at producers’ insistence, this nanosecond being what mostly P.O.’ed Yagher – when Merchant’s task is rudely interrupted by a platoon of Space Marines™.
Primo Marine Rimmer (Christine Harnos) secures Merchant with intent to interview. In spite of Merchant’s protestations that demons now walk the ship (in a failed attempt at suspense), he acquiesces to Rimmer’s demands and launches into a film-long series of flashbacks explaining his ancestors, and their history with the puzzle box and its demons.
Here’s the thing. Bloodline boasts three interrelated tales, a sort of combo sequel and prequel, making it too something of a horror anthology on a single theme. In its most ambitious frame (for in terms of narrative and setting, at least the Hellraiser series remains ambitious), Bloodline actually aims to be something like horror’s The Godfather Part II! The editing of these flashbacks (and even the filming of their sci-fi framing story) was another source of Smithee-conjuring controversy – the end result is the most chronologically tame, telling each tale as a whole rather than leaping exquisitely between Michael and Vito Corleone. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting idea, and the main reason for Bloodline’s scant distinctions.
Thankfully, we are taken far from the stultifying confines of a cheap spaceship, all the way to the expansive cheapness of 18th century France, and a sort of sub-Barry Lyndon short film. This is the tale of Merchant’s distant relative, the master toymaker Phillip Lemarchand (Ramsay again, in a grand, foppish wig). Lemarchand has just completed his life’s masterpiece, despite his youth, in creating an intricate puzzle box for the De Sade-esque Duc de L’Isle. So on top of “Lament Configuration,” we can also add “Lemarchand Box” to the box’s list of overlong titles.
Lemarchand knows not what he has created, other than in the technical sense. De L’Isle’s intents concern occultism, imbuing the box with the ability to summon forth demons from the pits of Hell for fun and profit. In a sumptuous feast of gore and decadence, the film’s most effective moments, De L’Isle and his manservant Jacques (Adam Scott) have amassed an innocent peasant girl (Valentina Vargas, yet another performer with little or no other notable films). The poor lass is then ritualistically murdered and mutilated, for the Hellraiser series remains a fun and joyous bit of nascent torture pornography. In a loud and over-eager ceremony, De L’Isle recites his Satanic rites, using the box to imbue the girl’s body with Angelique, a succubus and Princess of Hell. And decidedly not a Cenobite – Angelique is of an earlier, less anachronistic infernal strain.
Lemarchand has borne secret witness to such villainy, and frets his responsibility in letting evil into the world. In response, Lemarchand starts a crusade which will occupy his descendants, nay, his bloodline – the creation of a diametric opposite, a box of light, the Elysium Configuration.
This cannot be accomplished with the steampunk technology at Lemarchand’s employ, at least not without access to the original box. So Lemarchand hies it back to De L’Isle’s, to reclaim that box. Instead this leads to the climax of Story # 1 – what, already?! – resulting in the deaths of both De L’Isle and Lemarchand himself – though Lemarchand’s boring, pregnant wife is allowed to survive, and pass on the bloodline – Rendering all this as prequel rather deflates some degree of suspense, as the survivors are preordained.
Back in the present (or future, really), sci-fi Merchant (or Merchant III, in my notes) exposits how the vile Angelique persisted in human society, creating further puzzle boxes from the first and spreading them throughout the globe. A viewer trying to piece together the series-wide story will then deduce how some of these boxes made their way into the Cottons’ grasp in Hellraisers I and II – apparently, the whole Pinhead Cenobite thing being a further evolution of Hell past Angelique’s animalistic era. We learn a bit more of Merchant’s quest, to fulfill his ancestor’s desire to complete the Elysium Configuration, before going back to the next flashback, and its half hour delay of the narrative.
Moving back now from the present-future to the present-present, or at least 1996 (so present-past from our 2010 perspective – oh, I’m confusing myself!). The contemporary focus is architect John Merchant (Ramsay again, now sporting hideous mid-90s man bangs), who has just completed erection of his life’s masterpiece, despite his youth. This high-rise, made disgusting and chintzy with its ornamental puzzle box detailing, is the same structure from Hell on Earth’s stinger ending. Now, there is NO way such a monstrosity would appeal to the architectural community, but apparently it does. And word of the edifice travels all the way to Darkest France, earning the attention of Angelique – still very much of this Earth, with her slave-zombie Jacques, who has also earned an alarming 90s ‘do. Mad over the Merchants’ survival, Angelique disembowels Jacques to death, and heads for New York.
Angelique’s first action, upon reaching Merchant’s building, is to amass herself some doughy schlub as a victim. Down in the basement, schlub anticipating fornication, Angelique discovers a puzzle box in the structural supports – recall III, oh ye, and yea it makes sense. The schlub casually opens the box – which gets easier to solve with each entry! – allowing Pinhead to make his official entrance. And to give the schlub the least exciting chain kill yet.
Pinhead and Angelique are on first name terms, more than eager to stand around motionlessly for minutes on end speechifying. “Hell is more ordered since your time, Princess, and much less amusing.” But what is Pinhead’s role in it now, post-III? Seemingly, he is again bound by the box, though at this point he’s allowed to roam freely upon its opening, rather than serve his duty and return to Cocytus. It would seem Pinhead is the same free agent seen in Hell on Earth, but with a more directed goal rather than sheer special effects anarchy. For he recognizes Merchant’s design as possessing the power for Good as well as Evil – this building is in essence an enlarged puzzle box, quite subconscious in Merchant’s intent, capable of opening a permanent gateway to Hell. It’s architecture, Ghostbusters style! “This is not a room. This is a holocaust waiting to happen.” From whom else would that be a compliment?
Angelique entices Merchant to complete that potentiality through sensual temptation – this act is slow-going, and tries even Pinhead’s infinite patience (and the audience’s). Representing two diametric philosophies of damnation, Pinhead endorses suffering now in place of Old Testament temptation. In order to make his, er, point, ol’ Pinny sets a trap for a pair of twin security guards – but not the same twin security guards as in Gremlins 2 or Terminator 2. The outcome of this is a foregone conclusion – two more deaths to chalk up – meaning the 10 minutes it takes to happen is extremely trying.
Here’s the thing about Pinhead. In the contemporary horror pantheon, he is perhaps the most omnipotent, an immortal demigod while most bogeymen are merely very resilient dudes. It is very hard to make this engaging. Clive Barker erred well in keeping Pinhead’s posse sidelined in the first Hellraiser, and tying his interests most rationally to the box. But now, under the Americans, Pinhead is more generically evil, and more unbound. To keep stories at film length, he is now mostly delayed through his own lugubriousness, and the fate of the security twins is an example of that. Minute after minute they creep through a baroque hallway of Hell’s production design, as Pinhead chatters away for Angelique’s benefit. By the time he at last does them in, using biomechanical tools to entwine their facial skin together into one rubbery entity, we’re long past caring.
He’s slow to action due to a love of debate. I sense a career in politics!
At last Angelique gives in to Pinheads methods, to simply kidnap Merchant’s family and blackmail Merchant into engineering a Lovecraftian End Times. This arrangement puts all the Merchants out of harm’s way, really, allowing oodles of time to chat away with Pinhead about pain and death and pop cultural ephemera. There are even plenty of chases in hallways. Damn all these hallways! In this melee, Merchant’s boring wife Bobbi (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2’s Kim Myers) collects the puzzle box, sending all threats but Pinhead back with, yes, greater ease than anyone before her.
For Pinhead’s part, he has seemingly wrangled Merchant into performing the final computer-based whatever to create his nefarious gateway. Instead Merchant does a different computer-based whatever to render his building’s lobby a trap, banishing Pinhead into the cursed realm of blue screen and opticals. In the final moments, Pinhead painlessly executes Merchant – by chain, snore! But Merchant’s son survives, as we knew he must, allowing the story to settle permanently back in the future…
Space Merchant concludes his flashbacks, and with them Yagher’s footage (the remnant shot uncredited by Joe “The Wire” Chappelle) gives way to the long-dreaded sci-fi segment. Apparently now convinced by Merchant’s extended, disparate ramblings, Rimmer allows him to complete his work – converting the space station into a franchise-ending Demon Containment Mechanism (DCM). The outcome of this is predestined, really, meaning the remaining act mostly concerns the slow, steady offing of countless anonymous Space Marines™. Hope you enjoyed Pinhead’s methods in the twin scene…
The first guy, whose name doesn’t matter, encounters Pinhead and his Pin-hoard, complete with Pin-hound, trapped in the hold in a very emasculating way! As ever, a new Hellraiser means new Cenobite designs to underwhelm. Angelique is a Cenobite now, scalp made artfully vaginal. The rent-a-cops have become the Siamese Twin Cenobites, still conjoined. There’s even an S&M hell-doggie, a pinker version of the Zuul dog – Again they steal from the almighty Ghostbusters, even while presaging the ickiness of Cremaster 3! Oh, and this first guy’s death? By chain. Is this all they know?
Second Marine’s demise: Angelique yanks him through an incredibly awkward CG portal. This sits poorly with the mostly well-executed practical latex effects.
Third Marine: dog food.
The fourth and final Marine at least has a fighting chance, anonymity aside, as he possesses the puzzle box. So far that’s been a deal-breaker, but for once here’s a guy who cannot instantly open the thing. So instead Angelique yoinks it away, contradicting what Hell on Earth taught us. The Siamese Twins get their signature moment, separating in order to turn the Marine into the center of a Cenobite Oreo. Ah, God bless body horror!
While all this is making not a whit of difference, Pinhead meets up with Merchant for – yes – a casual and extended dialogue session. He even gloats about actual world domination (!), a wild (de)evolution for the character. But it turns out Merchant was just a hologram all this time, as the real Merchant joins Rimmer in an escape ship. With the effortless push of a button, the Minos transforms into the promised Elysium Configuration, a necessarily space-based puzzle box in macro, eternally closing off the doorway from Hell to Earth.
Hmm, cube-shaped spaceship, a hive mind of leather-clad pale baldies? BORG!
Benefiting from a hefty ad campaign by Dimension Films, Hellraiser: Bloodline proved theatrically to be the highest-grossing of the entire series, even while the first remains the most profitable by cost. This ignores the fact that Hellraiser movies never set the world on fire, and sported grosses most franchises would consider anemic. Among the horror franchise elite it’s a mostly minor figure, this being before the 2000s made gornography briefly trendy. And even given Bloodline’s relative financial success (did the critics like it? – ha!), there would be no more Hellraiser movies – theatrically.
Four more sequels to date were put out direct-to-video, making Bloodline simply the midway point for the franchise. With this, Hellraiser left the “lofty” tiers of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, and joined video whore series like Leprechaun, Children of the Corn and Witchcraft. This is a more forgiving field, with lowered expectations and reduced production costs, allowing a franchise to continue on past what would otherwise be its natural stopping point. Because I see DTV as an aberration, the remainder of Hellraiser must remain a mystery to me. But I cannot let it pass without some comment…
Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) – Detective Joseph Thorne (Craig Sheffer) in the contemporary city is investigating a series of ritualistic murders, which are somehow connected to that damnable puzzle box. Director Scott Derickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) uses Inferno to break free of former Hellraiser constraints, for better or worse, in something of a mini reboot.
All sources indicate Inferno is lightest both in terms of on-screen gore and on-screen Pinhead. (After Bloodline, that ain’t a problem!) In fact, Pinhead only seems to play into Inferno’s concluding moments, where it is revealed Thorne is living out his own personal hell, with himself the killer, already in the afterlife. This twist suggests the direction this series of thematically-connected video entries shall follow, as an anthology of twisted tales with Pinhead as a newly-hellbound master of ceremonies watching from the corners. In a strange sense, this is closer to what Barker envisioned for the sequels, seeing as his Hellraiser concerned a tale of marital duplicity in prominence over demonic wackiness. This is a brave direction for a series to take, made possible perhaps by the freedoms of the DTV format, which wasn’t wholly successful with fans – Where’s our Pinhead?
Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002) – Hellseeker brings back Ashley Laurence’s Kirsty Cotton from the first two Hellraisers, simply to kill her off early on in a car accident. See, characters oughtn’t over-return in horror sequels! Rather, the focus goes to her husband, Trevor (Dean Winters, of “Oz,” “Rescue Me,” “30 Rock”), who survives to experience a series of haunting visions I imagine borrow from Jacob’s Ladder. Pinhead’s expected late arrival clues Trevor into his twist – Kirsty had reopened the box, probably for some very good reason, and made a deal to deliver Pinhead five souls connected to Trevor’s infidelitous ways in exchange for her own life. Trevor was the last of those souls, and he has in fact been in a personal hell this whole time, Kirsty having survived the crash. So…yup, following suit after Inferno!
Hellraiser: Deader (2005) – Hellseeker’s director Rick Bota returns to spin a yarn about reporter Amy Klein (Kari Wuhrer) investigating a suicide cult in Bucharest. Here we enter the pure zombie state some franchises reach, where Deader was originally a standalone film simply about cultism. It was decided at some point in production that Deader would be more successful under the Hellraiser banner, and so the story was retooled to involve Pinhead’s interference, as he too hopes to curtail the cult’s Satanic blasphemies, for they keep him up at night.
All commentary in regards to Deader points out the unfortunate: that the Hellraiser mythos has not been adequately welded into this preexisting story. Oh well.
Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) – It’s the same year, and same director, squeezing this skinless husk dry. Pinhead goes cyberspace, much as Michael Myers in Halloween: Resurrection, the non-space route horror franchises use to self-cannibalize. “Hellworld” is an online MMRPG concerning all stuff Hellraiser, and a posse of teenaged fanatics is invited to a private function at Lance Henriksen’s house (whoo!) to partake. Then Hellraiser type stuff happens, and there is a puzzle box and a Pinhead. It sounds like they’re also taking the long-suffering series the meta route, but I’m in no spot to comment.
And with the last four (DTV) films being “Hellraisers In Name Only” (HINOs), that’s is it for the franchise – to date. There are scattered mumblings about another video entry getting put out, to the enthusiasm of nobody. It’s tentatively titled Revelations.
But that’s not all! As the current horror remake trend continues effortlessly on through the 80s, year-by-year, we near the moment of redoing a 1987. It was inevitable, but Hellraiser shall get remade…someday. The damned thing’s been in Hell (of a development sort) for many years already, announced in 2007 but now not expected until 2012…if ever. The story’s already there, guys! How can this be so much harder than the speedy turnaround with which Clive Barker produced the real Hellraiser?! Maybe it’s a lack of inspiration, the sense of dry inevitability to redoing all 1980s franchise instigators. Maybe it’s because screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, of Saws IV – 3D (i.e. VII) are ill-suited to the task. Maybe it’s the endless carousel of directors who come and go. Or maybe it’s the recent announcement that producers want this thing to be PG-13. What the Labyrinthine Hell is that?! In Leviathan’s name, if any horror film doesn’t warrant watering down!...But this is all mere idle speculation.
In the meantime, there is still another potential addition, in a new book by Barker seeking a publisher, “The Scarlett Gospels.” This work reportedly adds Barker’s definitive, conclusive update to the underworld he created. But who’s to say? For a lone, grimy 1987 enterprise, the franchise has bifurcated strangely, propagating like the puzzle boxes themselves. There shall be more to this saga, I fully expect, and in theaters, but not for some while still. But when then happens…I’ll have such sights to show you.
Related posts:
• No. 1 Hellraiser (1987)
• No. 2 Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
• No. 3 Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
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