Review - Hellraiser pt 3: Hellraiser I-IV (SPOILERS) | ryuuzaki's Blog

Hello.  As I'm still waiting for Aviva to call me, I thought I'd write this week's installment of my Halloween Special 4-part review of the Hellraiser franchise.  I don't think that anyone's actually reading these, but what the Hell, I'm not going to be deterred from writing them!

As always, there will be SPOILERS so read on at your own risk.

Anyway, as I said in the previous review, this week I'll be focusing on the first four Hellraiser films.  These are Hellraiser, Hellraiser II:  Hellbound, Hellraiser III:  Hell on Earth and Hellraiser IV:  Bloodline.  These were the only films of the franchise to achieve cinematic release and do vaguely follow on from one another in terms of plot.  So, starting with the first and best film, here's my review:

Hellraiser (1987)

If you want to know the plot of the original Hellraiser film, please look back to the previous review.  Hellraiser is a very faithful adaption of Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart.  There are only a few minor changes to the story.  Kirsty's father has been renamed 'Larry' and (thankfully) the hints that Kirsty has the hots for him have been removed.  The Lamarchand Configuration is called the Lament Configuration and looks far more ornate than it is described as being in the novella.  It is also opened, rather than dismantled, in order to summon the Cenobites.  The most striking difference is that Pinhead is clearly the leader of the Cenobites that appear in the movie, rather than the creature with hooks holding back its eyelids and lips who is the leader in the book.

Other than this, the story is still the same.  Frank opens the box and gets dragged into the Cenobite's world (which is, arguably, Hell).  Larry's blood somehow summons him back to the real world.  Julia lures in victims for Frank to devour to become whole again.  Kirsty finds out about this, opens the box, and strikes a deal with Pinhead in order to return Frank's soul to the Cenobites.

I love this movie.  Other than one or two parts where the special effects and puppetry has not aged well, it's still fantastically creepy and an enthralling horror movie.  My only objection to it, compared to the book, is that the Cenobites seem somehow less honorable.  At the end of the novella, when Kirsty successfully delivers Frank to them, they keep their word and let her escape.  In the film, they continue to chase after her and she is forced to close the box on them to cause them to disappear from the human world before they can get their hooks into her.  Not much of a criticism, but as I said in my previous review one of the things that I liked about the Cenobites as monsters was that they were reasonable creatures.

So, as most of my comments from the review of The Hellbound Heart also pertain to this film I don't have much more to add.  Ergo, let's move on to the first sequel.

Hellraiser II:  Hellbound (1988)

Hellbound carries on exactly where the first film left off.  Kirsty is institutionalized because of her raving about Cenobites and puzzle boxes.  She relates her story to Dr. Chanard and his orderly, Kyle, but it seems to fall on deaf ears.  Kirsty also begins having dreams that her father is still alive, but trapped in the Cenobite world and begins to wonder how she can save him.

Meanwhile, Kyle rapidly discovers that Kirsty has been telling the truth.  He discovers that Chanard owns several Lament boxes but cannot figure out how to open them.  He has also stolen the bloody mattress on which Julia was murdered and has managed to ressurect her in the same way that Frank was previously resurrected.  Soon, due to the puzzle solving skills of an inmate named Tiffany, Chanard gains access to the Cenobite world.  However, his desire to experience Hell is cut short when he is betrayed by Julia and is given to the Leviathan, the being that created the Cenobites, and becomes one himself.

Yup, the Cenobites used to all be humans.  It turns out that if you're made of the right kind of mettle, rather than just subjecting you to eternal torment in the labyrinth, you get made into a creature like Pinhead and the others.  Pinhead, it is revealed, was once a soldier named Elliot Spencer.

So Kirsty enters the labyrinth once more to search for Larry, only to discover that it's been Frank trying to lure her to him again.  She barely escapes with her life, only to be attacked by the Chanard Cenobite.  Pinhead and the others protect her, but are quickly reverted to human form and killed by Chanard.  After much running around in a panic, Kirsty manages to defeat Chanard and seal the box once again, escaping with Tiffany.  The movie ends with the appearance of a large stone pillar marked with Pinhead's face, which is the important plot point that leads us into the third film.

Although inferior to Hellraiser, I still feel that Hellbound is an incredibly enjoyable horror movie.  However, it has divided fans quite greatly.  Personally, I kind of like that you find out a little more about how the Cenobites are created.  It adds depth to their characters when you discover that they were all once human.  It's kind of interesting to see them as they once were as well, as the Female Cenobite is revealed to have once been a nun, and the Chatterer as a young teen.  It makes you wonder why these people would have chosen to open the box in the first place.

However, in seeing more of the labyrinth and the nature of the Leviathan, some fans believe that the mystery surrounding the Cenobites is dispelled to fully.  In the first film, they were just the unearthly members of some mysterious religious order, but now we know who they were and how they were created all interest is gone.  While I agree that the Cenobites were interesting as mysterious creatures, I think that we have to accept that it would be difficult to stretch out this concept over an entire franchise without them becoming dull and 2-D.  Although sequels to Hellraiser, were unnecessary (as enjoyable as some of them are), sequels there are and so we should really expect there to be over all character developments for the few characters that recur through the series, such as Pinhead and Kirsty.

That said, Kirsty now will not appear again in person until Hellraiser VI:  Hellseeker, so lets move on to Hell on Earth and discover how Pinhead escapes from his...erm...pillar.

Hellraiser III:  Hell on Earth (1992)

As you can see from the dates, there's a pretty big gap between Hellbound and Hell on Earth.  I'm not entirely sure why, but as Hellbound really didn't need a sequel anyway as they killed off all of our favourite Cenobites and Kirsty got away with all of her loose-ends tied up, I guess it doesn't really matter that much.

Anyway, the film begins with the owner of a successful nightclub called the Boiler Room purchasing the Pinhead pillar from a creepy old man.  Yup, it's the Puzzle Guardian from the first film/novella who appears to now own a shop full of creepy statues.  You know that this is not going to end well.

When she happens to see a man rushed into A&E shot full of hooked chains, a tenacious reporter discovered that this mysterious accident occurred because he'd stolen an object from the creepy Pinhead pillar.  Obviously, this object is the Lament Configuration.

The reporter, who's name is Joey, begins to investigate the box and tracks it back to the Chanard Institute where she discovers tapes of Kirsty ranting about its power.  Meanwhile, the Pinhead pillar devours (yes, you read that right) a young girl at the club and Pinhead speaks to the club owner, demanding more victims so that he can resurrect himself.

Obviously, it's not long until Pinhead frees himself and appears to be more powerful than either.  Slaughtering everyone in the club, he creates himself a small army of pseudo-cenobites and sets out into the City in order to create "Hell on Earth".  Meanwhile, Joey has a dream in which she encounters the ghost of Elliot Spencer, who helpfully explains the whole plot to her.  Pinhead is so powerful because the events of the second film separated his human and demonic sides.  Now, he's no longer connected to the Leviathan and is free to do whatever he wants in the human world.  Elliot tells Joey that Pinhead will come to her because he knows that she has the Lament Configuration, and that she must somehow find a way to drag him through the the other world where Elliot is, so that he can stop Pinhead for her.

Anyway, lots of gore and running around later, Pinhead ends up inside Joey's mind and it looks very much like Joey will die a horrible, horrible death.  Elliot appears and merges with Pinhead once again to save her, and Joey manages to use the box to banish him back to the Labyrinth.  Joey buries the box in concrete and we see that, six months later, a building has been built upon this spot that bears an uncanny resemblance to the design on the Lament Configuration.  Obviously, this is the plot point that delivers us into the fourth movie.

As you can probably tell, Hell on Earth is one of my least favorite movies in the series.  Not only is it an unnecessary sequel, but it just doesn't make a lot of sense.  After two films of the Cenobites being demonic devouts, now suddenly they're little more than eloquent Freddy Kreugers.  Why can Pinhead now make Cenobites, when previously only Leviathan could?  I'd like a little more explanation than "he's now more powerful".  Does have a human aspect to your soul really dampen your powers that much?  And the Pseudo-Cenobites just look stupid.  I understand that we're supposed to be accepting that Pinhead is very resourceful, as he can create Cenobites from whatever he has to hand, but I want to find the designer/script writer/whatever that thought the Cenobite with CD's sticking out of his head was a good idea and just kick him until he falls over.

Just, why?  The good Hellraiser films are the ones that don't just focus on what the Cenobites are up to.  As you'll see when I review Inferno, I actually prefer it when the Cenobites barely appear as then they are creepy and enigmatic rather than just monsters.

Anyway, Hell on Earth, sucks.  End of review.  Onto Bloodline.

Hellraiser IV:  Bloodline (1996)

Bloodline is told over three time periods, but it roughly carries on from the ending of Hell on Earth.

It starts out on a space station in the year 2127, where Paul Merchant has just used a robot to open the Lament Configuration.  He briefly sees Pinhead appear in the sealed room where this takes place, when soldiers burst in an arrest him.  It quickly becomes apparent that he is a descendant of Philip L'Merchant, the French toymaker who originally created the box, and was in the process of destroying it.  Quickly, he tries to explain the history of the box and the Cenobites to the soldiers.

Here, the movie travels back around 400 years to when L'Merchant created the box.  He was apparently unaware of what it would be used for as he was working on blueprints given to him by the Duc de L'Isle, an aristocrat who dabbled in the dark arts.  Later, after he has delivered the box, he witnesses the Duc murder and skin a young woman and summon a demon to inhabit her skin.  It is revealed that the demon, named Angelique, is the daughter of Leviathan and will be loyal to her summoner unless he stands between her and the machinations of Hell.

L'Merchant tries to infiltrate the house to destroy the box, but he and the Duc are both murdered by Angelique and the Duc's apprentice, Jacques.  L'Merchant's pregnant wife flees, knowing exactly what the box is and what has happened.

The story then moves forwards 200 more years where we meet John Merchant, another descendant of L'Merchant who has nightmares that feature Angelique.  John lives with his wife and their young son and he works as an architect, responsible for the building that we saw at the end of Hell on Earth.  He also has some designs that L'Merchant created for a perpetual light machine called the Elysium Configuration.  We later learn that this would have been used to destroy the Lament Configuration had L'Merchant lived.

Anyway, Angelique discovers the existence of John and the building and travels to America to pay him a visit.  In the basement of the building, she discovers the Lament Box within a pillar and releases Pinhead and his pet wolf-thing, the Chatter-Beast.  He quickly also makes a Siamese-twin Cenobite out of two security guards.  It seems that Pinhead is still intent on making a Hell on Earth but they need John's assistance to do so, thus they kidnap his wife and child.  After a confrontation inside the Lament building, John is killed but his wife succeeds in sealing the Cenobites back in the box before escaping with her son.

Anyway, back on the space station.  The stupid soldiers manage to let the Cenobites out of the sealed room and they happily run amok killing almost everyone.  Paul manages to activate the Elysium device, which turns out to be the whole space station, and escapes with the one surviving soldier as the Cenobites and the box are destroyed forever.

Yeah, Bloodlines is another fairly stupid one.  Apparently, we're supposed to disregard all the stuff about the Leviathan in the second film as now Pinhead can make Cenobites too, even with his soul intact.  Nothing like plot points being utterly ignored.  It also seems that the Labyrinth definitely is Hell now, as it's where demons come from, and so it's no longer just some other dimension.

I do kind of like the idea of going back and explaining how the box was formed.  The flashback of L'Merchant was kind of interesting, though annoyingly short compared to the other sections.  I really wish that they had just made this film a prequel.  As there are no movies that are chronologically set after this one, we must assume that Pinhead and the box are utterly destroyed in this film.  The final four films are all set in present day and so it's unclear where they fit in, though the appearance of the Chatterer in the last two make one think that (unless a second Chatterer was made that looked identical to the first, which is a possibility) they must be before his death in the second film.

Like Hell on Earth, Bloodline annoyingly features the Cenobites too heavily and so loose some of their mystique.  Pinhead's new obsession with creating 'Hell on Earth' is still a plot-point, despite the restoration of his soul and so it feels like the scriptwriters just really wanted to make this story even though they had to ignore most of the other plot-points to do it.  Although better than Hell on Earth (marginally), Bloodline still remains one of my least favourite movies of the franchise.  It's a good job that the fifth film, Inferno, is far better otherwise I may have really given up on these reviews by this point...

Anyway, there's my comments on Hellraiser I-IV.  Next week, I'll post up my final review of the straight-to-DVD sequels:  Hellraiser V:  Inferno, Hellraiser VI:  Hellseeker, Hellraiser VII: Deader and Hellraiser VIII:  Hellworld.  Some of these really aren't as bad as you'd think, either...