Hellraiser, No. 4 - Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

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)

Hellraiser, No. 4 - Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

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)

Hellraiser, No. 3 - Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

Time passed by, the 1980s receded into the mists of history, and lo there was no third Hellraiser. A latecomer in the great 80s horror franchisathon, Hellraiser had passed beyond the window of greatest opportunity, of sequel proliferation, into the arid wasteland of the 1990s. It when then, in a dearth of both horror sequel production and interest in them, that the rights to Hellraiser were bought away from the UK New World Pictures, picked up by the Americans at Dimension Films, the genre division of Miramax. Hellraiser would be a proper Hollywood product at last, at which point the franchise would wholly lose its battle with cliché.

Though Hellbound’s screenwriter Peter Atkins remains on board, he is the only returning production member. This accounts for the largely different tonal quality of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. Taking technical duties of wrangling a small herd of special effects artists (and also directing) is Anthony Hickox, mastermind of stunning efforts such as Waxwork II: Lost in Time, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat and Warlock: The Armageddon – boy, the man sure loves colons! He also loves Charlize Theron, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Naomi Campbell, which is better than anyone else can claim, except for that Fez guy from “That ‘70s Show.”

Also, Matt Maiellaro, the first assistant director of the second unit, co-created “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”

Among the cast, the one returner is Doug Bradley – Pinhead himself! This truly marks what Hellraiser has become, a villain-centric horror series, as close to a body count travesty as this series can muster. And Pinhead, once such a collected rule-abider, is now one more creative killer in the Freddy Kreuger mold, only with something of a “Hell” theme going on, and with a whole lot more speechifying. He even self-identifies now as pure evil, in a distinctly traditional, Judeo-Christian sorta way – this is something they outright avoided in prior entries.

But one Hellraiser standard remains forever in place: it takes Hell on Earth for-freaking-ever to get going, making this another entry you could skip the first 45 minutes of.

I can’t though…

In spite of the series’ new tonal direction, they make a good faith effort to follow up as logically as possible on Hellbound’s illogical conclusion. This means Pinhead is now bound within a pillar of writhing torment, the Pillar of Souls. Presumably, the filmmakers sought Clive Barker’s input before proceeding to demolish his brainchild, receiving two suggestions (connect the puzzle box back to ancient Egypt, or slap Pinhead in some church’s relic). This somewhat reflects that latter notion, in the broad strokes, though rather than do something interesting like place Pinhead immobilized in a monastery, they simply allow some New York yuppie philistine get his entitled hands on him.

This dilettante, J.P. Morgan (Kevin Bernhardt, of very little else), is America’s weak sauce effort to replicate the misogyny and fornication of the late Frank Cotton. J.P. sucks. Partly it’s the fault of the actor, for no one – save Doug Bradley, naturally – gives a good performance in this. Hellraiser III is the definition of special effects filmmaking, done by a director more concerned with his cheapjack visuals than in telling a story. This mentality extends to J.P.’s lamozoid ritzy heavy metal club, the Boiler Room (ooh, blatant Nightmare on Elm Street referencing, just what we needed!), the setting they replaced a church with for the chance to wedge in whatever flash-in-the-pan metal band the producers were pushing (Armored Saint).

Enough of our watered-down Frank. Who’s our watered-down Kirsty? Oh yes, even Kirsty can be watered down! It is Joey Summerskill (“Deep Space Nine’s” Terry Farrell, who is therefore above this), local reporter and…that’s it. Like any good Final Girl, for that’s where we are now, Joey’s name is indeed androgynous, and she is the lone chaste person in sight. It is this chastity which is keeping her from rising in the news world, because she prefers “tight stories, not tight skirts.” She’ll never get on Fox News that way.

Joey’s latest professional failure is a report from the hospital’s emergency room, on a night when strangely there are no patients. Well…until the camera guy Doc leaves. Then some poor wretch is wheeled in, dozens of infernal chains hooked in his body. This being a Hellraiser movie, those chains soon tear him in every direction – ho hum, this is getting tiresome…Also, his head explodes.


Terry (Paula Marshall), the skank who brought ol’ hook head in, confesses she found him at the Boiler Room. This sends Joey deep into the pits of New York’s nightlife, going all the way to ask J.P. more info about this girl Terry. For Joey is determined to get to the bottom of this hooking, this “story,” because that’s why they let reporters play lead roles – they force themselves into any genre! J.P. is too busy with his latest bevy of whores, so nothing comes of this.

Suddenly – we’re in the Vietnam War! Er?! It’s not every formulaic spook show on a miniscule budget which depicts the horrors of war. This is pretty ambit- Oh wait, this is just Joey’s dream, isn’t it? Yeah. Drat!, they really have gone the Nightmare on Elm Street route! So this is merely a way to wedge in a little back story, concerning the death of Joey’s soldier father, then let her actually wake up in bed screaming. Oh boy.


As Joey rouses, she gets a phone call from skanky Terry, seeking a place to crash, because Joey is seemingly the only person she knows. This is a chance for a lengthy, lengthy character scene – where’s Pinhead?! – but all I shall focus on is the final exposition. That dead guy, he got caught tugging on J.P.’s pillar (that don’t sound right), and what he yanked out did the chain game on him. Luckily, Terry still has that thing – a puzzle box. As with any archaic, mystical gateway to another realm, Joey sets it carelessly atop her TV.


The Pinhead pillar is now the centerpiece of J.P.’s flat, cozily adjacent to his sordid thrasher club. They’ve mostly dropped the fun skinless revenant thing, but not the tedious need for slow, steady victims those revenant plots engendered. Only this time it is Pinhead who won’t be coming about until an extremely precise series of x, y, z takes place. Okay, first up, he needs some blood (let’s ignore the whole opening kill thing except as a genre-dictated standard) – How does one accidentally bleed all over an out-of-the-way sex statue?! Don’t answer that! In this case, J.P. finds a rat inside the statue’s fresh hole (?), and the little bugger bites his hand. Very well, that’s enough arterial spray to get a few lightning effects. It’s not enough to animate Pinhead, oh no – guess we’re just stuck with J.P. and Joey for a while still.

Killing time rather than people, the movie accompanies Joey and Terry to the Pyramid Gallery, where J.P. obtained the statue. This place proves defunct, and possibly hellish in that nebulous sort of way. At the very least Joey discovers a receipt proving that the pillar came from the Channard Institute, which is “up state somewhere.” So…there goes my theory that the first two Hellraisers took place in England! And Joey goes about “investigating” the Cenobite mythos, by obtaining taped documents of Kirsty. Ah, horror sequels, where your new protagonists cannot learn about the evil themselves, they just use what others left behind. Never mind the audience is treated like newbies, so we can’t just resume where we left off. This way stagnation lies!

But eventually that danged, immobile statue’s gonna hafta eat, so things can happen. It’s another night, and J.P. needs another disposable bimbo for his bed notch. Convenient when said notch is ten paces from a nightclub full of inebriated hipsters. Tonight’s conquest shall be Sandy (Aimée Leigh), the precise sort of ditzy bleached-blonde indigenous to the early 90s. They schtupp, affording some pure cheesecake T&A formula horror is known for. And afterwards J.P. berates Sandy for being, in essence, a female – Where’s Pinhead?!

Okay, so Sandy steps just a little too close to the Pillar of Souls, which is apparently enough. Chains shoot forth, rip her skin off, then eat her. That’s the closest we come to skinlessness in this flick, Sandy having already showed as much skin as possible. And the Pinhead, er, head comes to life, though dagnabit he’s still stuck in that fekaktah statue! DRAT! Even so, Pinhead remains a most eloquent sophist, tempting J.P. with dominion most powerful, a world with J.P.’s pretentious outsider art made flesh…


Joey is busy getting her own supernatural visitation too, ‘cause you gotta keep your “main character” active until the Third Act needs her. While reviewing the institute tapes, which substitute for anything like personal action, Joey glimpses brief shots of Captain Eliot Spencer – you know, the British imperial who was transformed into Pinhead?

Hold onto that, because things are finally in motion towards some sort of finale. (The write-up is brief, the content scant, but the film as long as any.) Terry accepts a phone call from J.P., and returns to the Boiler Room to patch up their “relationship,” suddenly upset with Joey over the sort of idiotic contrivance only a substance-free screenplay can manage. Little does she know that she’s J.P.’s intended sacrifice to the pillar. And look at the silly method J.P.’s devised to lure people into his trap!


Come ‘ere, girl! Atta girl, come ‘ere! Good girl! She’s not a dog, J.P.! And when at last the intellectual approach fails him, J.P. instead attempts simply dragging Terry. What a maroon, all this earns him is temporary unconsciousness by means of Terry’s brass knuckles. And she’s all set to leave when –

Pinhead speaks, effortlessly tempting her too with promises of the “key to dreams, to black miracles.” Well, who could resist?! Not Terry, because the film has tried gamely but utterly fruitlessly to convince us of her frail state. So she unceremoniously boots J.P.’s hulk over to the statue, where he is summarily gobbled up – and gets a piston through the skull. Where’d that come from?! And Pinhead looms, fully formed…

So…he only needed one more soul?! Why didn’t he just yank J.P. right on over to him instantly, as opposed to this roundabout booty/soul call? (‘Cause it kills up screen time.) No matter, with but a half hour remaining our Pinhead can get on with busin-

No, wait, first it’s back to Joey. Give those gears a little lubricant, guys, they’re grinding smoke! It seems the ghost of Eliot Spencer has decided now is the time to provide a big block of new exposition to explain what all’s going on. Meeting in the No Man’s Land of WWI (one block down from the Vietnam flashbacks), Spencer explains they are actually in Limbo, the place between Heaven and Hell – yeah, we are unequivocally in a standard religious universe now. Apparently, in the fallout of Hellbound’s Great Whatever, the Good and Evil sides of Pinhead were separated, Spencer being the Good. The Evil, Pinhead himself – who didn’t even exist until Hell created him, mind you – is now an agent of pure, Joker-lite chaos, unbound by Hell’s laws or British notions of unique horror storytelling. That is, this is the justification for why Pinhead’s gone Freddy (which we’ll see fully in a minute).

Joey’s only chance to stop Pinhead is to get him through a gateway back to the afterlife, where Spencer can better him. “Where is it?” “Your apartment.” [Spit take.] Ha ha! What?!...Oh, apparently it’s the puzzle box he’s referring to, not Joey’s closet door or something. Maaaaybe. The metaphysics is becoming muddled…more so. At any rate, Joey must lure Pinhead back to her apartment block with the box as bait – Pinhead’s aim shall be to get it from her, through persuasion.

“Shall we begin?”


In penance for his extended absence, Pinhead goes on a bit of a murder bender in the Boiler Room. Recall in the past, when one earned the torments of Hell by opening the puzzle box? Well, all you have to do now is show up in a skeezy nightclub on the wrong night. Damn well everyone in attendance falls to Pinhead’s chains, which now have the power to do whatever gore effect they want. Pinhead even gets a few unique kills. I tried in this short span to account for them:

- Someone’s vodka tonic freezes into Pin’s head, then becomes a dagger to stab the boozer right in the mouth.

- CDs render the DJ DOA.

Actually, I think that’s about it. Sorry about that.

Soon Joey arrives in the demilitarized zone which is J.P.’s neighborhood (and this is a pre-Pinhead condition), leading herself on a tour of the Boiler Room’s mayhem. Pinhead appears in his corpse-strewn congregation, with wordy and overwrought speeches about agony and suffering and kittens and whatnot. He promises a swift end for Joey should she gift him the box. She relents, and the chase is on!

The streets erupt into a context-free maelstrom of explosions, burst water mains, and general kookiness. Joey is beset by her former associates, now molded by Pinhead to be his new Cenobite army on Earth. Now here’s where Hell on Earth could have really set itself apart, with some unique new Cenobite designs to torture our imaginations. Rather, this squad comes across like knock-off Borgs (rather than vice versa), something Joey (Jadzia Dax, remember) should be well equipped to resist.

Our first Ceno-lite is Camerahead. Oh dear. It is Doc, Joey’s former cameraman, with – yes – a camera through his head. Oy! This camera fires explosions. And Camerahead gets a serious multitude of lame camera-based puns and quips, a veritable source of envy for Mr. Freeze himself! But again – explosions. That’s it?

CD Cenobite’s weapon is – Do I have to explain this? Oh god, you just lacerated my face with a Michael Bolton single!

Barbie Cenobite, name notwithstanding, is the Boiler Room’s bartender, now armed with…deadly cocktails. Which explode. I think they’re stuck on a theme here.

Joey bypasses scant police officers, damning them to lame explosion-based deaths, as she seeks sanctuary in a matte painting of a church (you mean no real church would accept Hellraiser III?!). But in comes Pinhead, in a scene literal-minded surely must’ve desired ever since the first Hellraiser – Pinhead’s demented, blasphemous satire of the Holy Communion. Truth be told, this is Hell on Earth’s highlight, for it employs a dementia which sheer gore effects cannot rival. “This is MY body … Happy are they who come to MY supper.”


Leaving a priest now to suffer a rather more interesting demise (force-fed Pinhead’s flesh), Joey flees to a construction site of all places, where yet more uninspired Semi-bites await her…

Pistonhead is the result of J.P. having received a piston in the head. He seemingly has no powers.

Meanwhile, the Terry Cenobite – Oh right, we sorta left her dangling with Pinhead – exists mostly as an argument tool to sway Joey’s sympathies. She also enjoys a taste cigarette in her fresh tracheotomy hole – She’s a chain smoker! Get it?

Pinhead again looms – suspense goes “bye bye” when we’re assured he cannot harm Joey – and gives false promises for the box. Joey actually calls him a “pinhead,” that name really being the fans’ unofficial nickname (which doesn’t exactly class up the joint). Solving her box on the run with an ease unparalleled in this series, all the non-Pinhead Cenobites are suctioned up as though by the Ghostbusters.

Leading us straight to Vietnam why not. Joey’s father explains all is well, gimme the box, yadda yadda, don’t do it Joey he’s Pinhead! Of course she does, and of course he is. And Pinhead readies an actual attack, here in this sun-bathed field, when –


Spencer redirects them to his chamber, explaining the “gateway” he spoke of was actually the “gateway to Joey’s dreams.” Ah, metaphysical semantics, is there any ass-pull you cannot justify? These two contradictions do battle, finally descending into a cesspool of early 90s morphing effects – Pinhead is sent back to Hell! Development hell.

Sequel hook? The eventual building at that construction site uses puzzle box details in its interior design. Oh…kay…then.

One cannot say, even now, that the series wholly lacks for ambition, even as it struggles to simultaneously wedge itself into a horror format which, frankly, was no longer profitable in 1992. But the ambition is drying up, as the conceptual underpinnings are mostly eviscerated. That leaves just elaborate set pieces, something which Hellbound was already bound to. But there simply just isn’t as much of it in Hell on Earth, as we have to wade through “The J.P. and Joey Hour” first. The only inspiration here is to fashion Pinhead into a traditional boogeyman – a figure of fun and Hell puns. His character’s underpin(head)ings do not allow for that, not entirely, so we’re left with an odd little duck, a flavorless sludge. That is, it’s a horror movie from 1992.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Hellraiser (1987)
• No. 2 Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
• No. 4 Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

Hellraiser, No. 3 - Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

Time passed by, the 1980s receded into the mists of history, and lo there was no third Hellraiser. A latecomer in the great 80s horror franchisathon, Hellraiser had passed beyond the window of greatest opportunity, of sequel proliferation, into the arid wasteland of the 1990s. It when then, in a dearth of both horror sequel production and interest in them, that the rights to Hellraiser were bought away from the UK New World Pictures, picked up by the Americans at Dimension Films, the genre division of Miramax. Hellraiser would be a proper Hollywood product at last, at which point the franchise would wholly lose its battle with cliché.

Though Hellbound’s screenwriter Peter Atkins remains on board, he is the only returning production member. This accounts for the largely different tonal quality of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. Taking technical duties of wrangling a small herd of special effects artists (and also directing) is Anthony Hickox, mastermind of stunning efforts such as Waxwork II: Lost in Time, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat and Warlock: The Armageddon – boy, the man sure loves colons! He also loves Charlize Theron, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Naomi Campbell, which is better than anyone else can claim, except for that Fez guy from “That ‘70s Show.”

Also, Matt Maiellaro, the first assistant director of the second unit, co-created “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”

Among the cast, the one returner is Doug Bradley – Pinhead himself! This truly marks what Hellraiser has become, a villain-centric horror series, as close to a body count travesty as this series can muster. And Pinhead, once such a collected rule-abider, is now one more creative killer in the Freddy Kreuger mold, only with something of a “Hell” theme going on, and with a whole lot more speechifying. He even self-identifies now as pure evil, in a distinctly traditional, Judeo-Christian sorta way – this is something they outright avoided in prior entries.

But one Hellraiser standard remains forever in place: it takes Hell on Earth for-freaking-ever to get going, making this another entry you could skip the first 45 minutes of.

I can’t though…

In spite of the series’ new tonal direction, they make a good faith effort to follow up as logically as possible on Hellbound’s illogical conclusion. This means Pinhead is now bound within a pillar of writhing torment, the Pillar of Souls. Presumably, the filmmakers sought Clive Barker’s input before proceeding to demolish his brainchild, receiving two suggestions (connect the puzzle box back to ancient Egypt, or slap Pinhead in some church’s relic). This somewhat reflects that latter notion, in the broad strokes, though rather than do something interesting like place Pinhead immobilized in a monastery, they simply allow some New York yuppie philistine get his entitled hands on him.

This dilettante, J.P. Morgan (Kevin Bernhardt, of very little else), is America’s weak sauce effort to replicate the misogyny and fornication of the late Frank Cotton. J.P. sucks. Partly it’s the fault of the actor, for no one – save Doug Bradley, naturally – gives a good performance in this. Hellraiser III is the definition of special effects filmmaking, done by a director more concerned with his cheapjack visuals than in telling a story. This mentality extends to J.P.’s lamozoid ritzy heavy metal club, the Boiler Room (ooh, blatant Nightmare on Elm Street referencing, just what we needed!), the setting they replaced a church with for the chance to wedge in whatever flash-in-the-pan metal band the producers were pushing (Armored Saint).

Enough of our watered-down Frank. Who’s our watered-down Kirsty? Oh yes, even Kirsty can be watered down! It is Joey Summerskill (“Deep Space Nine’s” Terry Farrell, who is therefore above this), local reporter and…that’s it. Like any good Final Girl, for that’s where we are now, Joey’s name is indeed androgynous, and she is the lone chaste person in sight. It is this chastity which is keeping her from rising in the news world, because she prefers “tight stories, not tight skirts.” She’ll never get on Fox News that way.

Joey’s latest professional failure is a report from the hospital’s emergency room, on a night when strangely there are no patients. Well…until the camera guy Doc leaves. Then some poor wretch is wheeled in, dozens of infernal chains hooked in his body. This being a Hellraiser movie, those chains soon tear him in every direction – ho hum, this is getting tiresome…Also, his head explodes.


Terry (Paula Marshall), the skank who brought ol’ hook head in, confesses she found him at the Boiler Room. This sends Joey deep into the pits of New York’s nightlife, going all the way to ask J.P. more info about this girl Terry. For Joey is determined to get to the bottom of this hooking, this “story,” because that’s why they let reporters play lead roles – they force themselves into any genre! J.P. is too busy with his latest bevy of whores, so nothing comes of this.

Suddenly – we’re in the Vietnam War! Er?! It’s not every formulaic spook show on a miniscule budget which depicts the horrors of war. This is pretty ambit- Oh wait, this is just Joey’s dream, isn’t it? Yeah. Drat!, they really have gone the Nightmare on Elm Street route! So this is merely a way to wedge in a little back story, concerning the death of Joey’s soldier father, then let her actually wake up in bed screaming. Oh boy.


As Joey rouses, she gets a phone call from skanky Terry, seeking a place to crash, because Joey is seemingly the only person she knows. This is a chance for a lengthy, lengthy character scene – where’s Pinhead?! – but all I shall focus on is the final exposition. That dead guy, he got caught tugging on J.P.’s pillar (that don’t sound right), and what he yanked out did the chain game on him. Luckily, Terry still has that thing – a puzzle box. As with any archaic, mystical gateway to another realm, Joey sets it carelessly atop her TV.


The Pinhead pillar is now the centerpiece of J.P.’s flat, cozily adjacent to his sordid thrasher club. They’ve mostly dropped the fun skinless revenant thing, but not the tedious need for slow, steady victims those revenant plots engendered. Only this time it is Pinhead who won’t be coming about until an extremely precise series of x, y, z takes place. Okay, first up, he needs some blood (let’s ignore the whole opening kill thing except as a genre-dictated standard) – How does one accidentally bleed all over an out-of-the-way sex statue?! Don’t answer that! In this case, J.P. finds a rat inside the statue’s fresh hole (?), and the little bugger bites his hand. Very well, that’s enough arterial spray to get a few lightning effects. It’s not enough to animate Pinhead, oh no – guess we’re just stuck with J.P. and Joey for a while still.

Killing time rather than people, the movie accompanies Joey and Terry to the Pyramid Gallery, where J.P. obtained the statue. This place proves defunct, and possibly hellish in that nebulous sort of way. At the very least Joey discovers a receipt proving that the pillar came from the Channard Institute, which is “up state somewhere.” So…there goes my theory that the first two Hellraisers took place in England! And Joey goes about “investigating” the Cenobite mythos, by obtaining taped documents of Kirsty. Ah, horror sequels, where your new protagonists cannot learn about the evil themselves, they just use what others left behind. Never mind the audience is treated like newbies, so we can’t just resume where we left off. This way stagnation lies!

But eventually that danged, immobile statue’s gonna hafta eat, so things can happen. It’s another night, and J.P. needs another disposable bimbo for his bed notch. Convenient when said notch is ten paces from a nightclub full of inebriated hipsters. Tonight’s conquest shall be Sandy (Aimée Leigh), the precise sort of ditzy bleached-blonde indigenous to the early 90s. They schtupp, affording some pure cheesecake T&A formula horror is known for. And afterwards J.P. berates Sandy for being, in essence, a female – Where’s Pinhead?!

Okay, so Sandy steps just a little too close to the Pillar of Souls, which is apparently enough. Chains shoot forth, rip her skin off, then eat her. That’s the closest we come to skinlessness in this flick, Sandy having already showed as much skin as possible. And the Pinhead, er, head comes to life, though dagnabit he’s still stuck in that fekaktah statue! DRAT! Even so, Pinhead remains a most eloquent sophist, tempting J.P. with dominion most powerful, a world with J.P.’s pretentious outsider art made flesh…


Joey is busy getting her own supernatural visitation too, ‘cause you gotta keep your “main character” active until the Third Act needs her. While reviewing the institute tapes, which substitute for anything like personal action, Joey glimpses brief shots of Captain Eliot Spencer – you know, the British imperial who was transformed into Pinhead?

Hold onto that, because things are finally in motion towards some sort of finale. (The write-up is brief, the content scant, but the film as long as any.) Terry accepts a phone call from J.P., and returns to the Boiler Room to patch up their “relationship,” suddenly upset with Joey over the sort of idiotic contrivance only a substance-free screenplay can manage. Little does she know that she’s J.P.’s intended sacrifice to the pillar. And look at the silly method J.P.’s devised to lure people into his trap!


Come ‘ere, girl! Atta girl, come ‘ere! Good girl! She’s not a dog, J.P.! And when at last the intellectual approach fails him, J.P. instead attempts simply dragging Terry. What a maroon, all this earns him is temporary unconsciousness by means of Terry’s brass knuckles. And she’s all set to leave when –

Pinhead speaks, effortlessly tempting her too with promises of the “key to dreams, to black miracles.” Well, who could resist?! Not Terry, because the film has tried gamely but utterly fruitlessly to convince us of her frail state. So she unceremoniously boots J.P.’s hulk over to the statue, where he is summarily gobbled up – and gets a piston through the skull. Where’d that come from?! And Pinhead looms, fully formed…

So…he only needed one more soul?! Why didn’t he just yank J.P. right on over to him instantly, as opposed to this roundabout booty/soul call? (‘Cause it kills up screen time.) No matter, with but a half hour remaining our Pinhead can get on with busin-

No, wait, first it’s back to Joey. Give those gears a little lubricant, guys, they’re grinding smoke! It seems the ghost of Eliot Spencer has decided now is the time to provide a big block of new exposition to explain what all’s going on. Meeting in the No Man’s Land of WWI (one block down from the Vietnam flashbacks), Spencer explains they are actually in Limbo, the place between Heaven and Hell – yeah, we are unequivocally in a standard religious universe now. Apparently, in the fallout of Hellbound’s Great Whatever, the Good and Evil sides of Pinhead were separated, Spencer being the Good. The Evil, Pinhead himself – who didn’t even exist until Hell created him, mind you – is now an agent of pure, Joker-lite chaos, unbound by Hell’s laws or British notions of unique horror storytelling. That is, this is the justification for why Pinhead’s gone Freddy (which we’ll see fully in a minute).

Joey’s only chance to stop Pinhead is to get him through a gateway back to the afterlife, where Spencer can better him. “Where is it?” “Your apartment.” [Spit take.] Ha ha! What?!...Oh, apparently it’s the puzzle box he’s referring to, not Joey’s closet door or something. Maaaaybe. The metaphysics is becoming muddled…more so. At any rate, Joey must lure Pinhead back to her apartment block with the box as bait – Pinhead’s aim shall be to get it from her, through persuasion.

“Shall we begin?”


In penance for his extended absence, Pinhead goes on a bit of a murder bender in the Boiler Room. Recall in the past, when one earned the torments of Hell by opening the puzzle box? Well, all you have to do now is show up in a skeezy nightclub on the wrong night. Damn well everyone in attendance falls to Pinhead’s chains, which now have the power to do whatever gore effect they want. Pinhead even gets a few unique kills. I tried in this short span to account for them:

- Someone’s vodka tonic freezes into Pin’s head, then becomes a dagger to stab the boozer right in the mouth.

- CDs render the DJ DOA.

Actually, I think that’s about it. Sorry about that.

Soon Joey arrives in the demilitarized zone which is J.P.’s neighborhood (and this is a pre-Pinhead condition), leading herself on a tour of the Boiler Room’s mayhem. Pinhead appears in his corpse-strewn congregation, with wordy and overwrought speeches about agony and suffering and kittens and whatnot. He promises a swift end for Joey should she gift him the box. She relents, and the chase is on!

The streets erupt into a context-free maelstrom of explosions, burst water mains, and general kookiness. Joey is beset by her former associates, now molded by Pinhead to be his new Cenobite army on Earth. Now here’s where Hell on Earth could have really set itself apart, with some unique new Cenobite designs to torture our imaginations. Rather, this squad comes across like knock-off Borgs (rather than vice versa), something Joey (Jadzia Dax, remember) should be well equipped to resist.

Our first Ceno-lite is Camerahead. Oh dear. It is Doc, Joey’s former cameraman, with – yes – a camera through his head. Oy! This camera fires explosions. And Camerahead gets a serious multitude of lame camera-based puns and quips, a veritable source of envy for Mr. Freeze himself! But again – explosions. That’s it?

CD Cenobite’s weapon is – Do I have to explain this? Oh god, you just lacerated my face with a Michael Bolton single!

Barbie Cenobite, name notwithstanding, is the Boiler Room’s bartender, now armed with…deadly cocktails. Which explode. I think they’re stuck on a theme here.

Joey bypasses scant police officers, damning them to lame explosion-based deaths, as she seeks sanctuary in a matte painting of a church (you mean no real church would accept Hellraiser III?!). But in comes Pinhead, in a scene literal-minded surely must’ve desired ever since the first Hellraiser – Pinhead’s demented, blasphemous satire of the Holy Communion. Truth be told, this is Hell on Earth’s highlight, for it employs a dementia which sheer gore effects cannot rival. “This is MY body … Happy are they who come to MY supper.”


Leaving a priest now to suffer a rather more interesting demise (force-fed Pinhead’s flesh), Joey flees to a construction site of all places, where yet more uninspired Semi-bites await her…

Pistonhead is the result of J.P. having received a piston in the head. He seemingly has no powers.

Meanwhile, the Terry Cenobite – Oh right, we sorta left her dangling with Pinhead – exists mostly as an argument tool to sway Joey’s sympathies. She also enjoys a taste cigarette in her fresh tracheotomy hole – She’s a chain smoker! Get it?

Pinhead again looms – suspense goes “bye bye” when we’re assured he cannot harm Joey – and gives false promises for the box. Joey actually calls him a “pinhead,” that name really being the fans’ unofficial nickname (which doesn’t exactly class up the joint). Solving her box on the run with an ease unparalleled in this series, all the non-Pinhead Cenobites are suctioned up as though by the Ghostbusters.

Leading us straight to Vietnam why not. Joey’s father explains all is well, gimme the box, yadda yadda, don’t do it Joey he’s Pinhead! Of course she does, and of course he is. And Pinhead readies an actual attack, here in this sun-bathed field, when –


Spencer redirects them to his chamber, explaining the “gateway” he spoke of was actually the “gateway to Joey’s dreams.” Ah, metaphysical semantics, is there any ass-pull you cannot justify? These two contradictions do battle, finally descending into a cesspool of early 90s morphing effects – Pinhead is sent back to Hell! Development hell.

Sequel hook? The eventual building at that construction site uses puzzle box details in its interior design. Oh…kay…then.

One cannot say, even now, that the series wholly lacks for ambition, even as it struggles to simultaneously wedge itself into a horror format which, frankly, was no longer profitable in 1992. But the ambition is drying up, as the conceptual underpinnings are mostly eviscerated. That leaves just elaborate set pieces, something which Hellbound was already bound to. But there simply just isn’t as much of it in Hell on Earth, as we have to wade through “The J.P. and Joey Hour” first. The only inspiration here is to fashion Pinhead into a traditional boogeyman – a figure of fun and Hell puns. His character’s underpin(head)ings do not allow for that, not entirely, so we’re left with an odd little duck, a flavorless sludge. That is, it’s a horror movie from 1992.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Hellraiser (1987)
• No. 2 Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
• No. 4 Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)