Hellraiser: Hellseeker

HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER

The worst of the Hellraiser sequels up to this point in the series, Hellseeker follows a bland protagonist named Trevor (husband of Kirsty) who is seemingly under investigation by the police for the murder of his wife and some other women. Trevor suffers from frequent intense headaches and loses the ability to distinguish reality from hallucination. He spends time in his cubicle at work (where he's supposed to crunch numbers but apparently never actually gets anything done), riding on a bus, at his apartment, and receiving acupuncture treatments. In the film's final scenes, the viewer learns what's actually been going on via a twist ending that transforms the Kirsty character from the likeable and sympathetic young woman she was at the start of this series into a cold-blooded killer.

I've got a single Blu-ray disc that includes Hellseeker along with three other Hellraiser films, and the back of the case describes the plot of this film as follows: “Pinhead and his legion return to unleash Hell on Earth but standing in the way is Kirsty – the only person who has defeated Pinhead in the past.” This is blatant false advertising. Kirsty and Pinhead barely appear in Hellseeker, and Kirsty certainly does not stand in Pinhead's way. Rather, she strikes a bargain with him. Unless you're a Hellraiser completist, don't waste 88 minutes sitting through this crap.

Hellraiser: Inferno

HELLRAISER: INFERNO


The fifth entry in this series follows an unethical police detective named Joseph Thorne in Colorado who finds a Lament Configuration box at a crime scene and (instead of cataloging it with the other evidence) takes it with him. He stops home briefly to visit with his wife and daughter, then heads to a motel to snort cocaine with a prostitute (who he has sex with). The next morning, Thorne messes with the puzzle box in the motel bathroom and has an experience in which he seemingly walks into another space (a house) and encounters Cenobites. He finds himself back in the motel bathroom and exits while the prostitute sleeps in the bed. The bulk of the plot finds him investigating assorted homicides with a child's severed finger left at each scene. He grows to believe that a criminal mastermind known as The Engineer is behind the murders. Throughout his investigation, he periodically glimpses Cenobites. The boundary between reality and visions/hallucinations blurs, and the viewer learns how and why in the project's final moments. Pinhead appears only briefly in this project.


Hellraiser: Inferno begins quite well as a singular and memorable protagonist (a coke-snorting cop who steals evidence and cheats on his wife) finds a Lament Configuration box and the mangled bloody remains of someone who likely encountered Cenobites (and their hooks) at a crime scene. The scenes in which the main character encounters Cenobites are visually striking and often chilling. I've read that Hellraiser creator Clive Barker (who was not creatively involved with this movie) loathes Inferno. I found it to be the best of the sequels thus far, though it's not nearly on par with the engrossing original film. Inferno's main flaw is in ignoring the Hellraiser conventions and rules that are set up earlier in the series. Inferno turns the Cenobites into moralistic judges of human sin, whereas in the original movie they were more or less neutral bringers of pleasure and pain. Inferno boasts the most cohesive plot of the Hellraiser sequels and features a flawed and unlikeable protagonist who somehow is sympathetic despite his unpleasant attributes. Of the Hellraiser sequels I've seen thus far, this is the first one I'd consider watching again. I imagine it's a different experience to sit through this movie once you've seen the ending and have an idea of what's “really” happening as the tale unfolds. Hellraiser: Inferno may offend Barker purists, but I found it to be an interesting take on the Cenobite mythos.

Hellraiser: Bloodline

HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE

The fourth film in the series takes place across three different time periods: the years 2127 and 1996 plus sometime in the 1700s.  At last addressing the question of how the puzzle boxes at the center of the Hellraiser mythos originated, Bloodline shows an 18^th century toymaker who creates the first box on commission for an occultist (who then conducts a dark ritual in which he sacrifices a woman and brings her back as a demon).  Somehow this imbues the box with the power to open gateways to hell.  The summoned demon (Angelique) still roams Earth in 1996 and sets out to find a descendant of the original toymaker.  The descendant (John Merchant) is a successful architect in New York and apparently is the one who designed the building glimpsed at the end of the third Hellraiser film.  Angelique for no apparent reason lures a man to the basement of the building and has him mess with a Lament Configuration box, which leads to the fellow’s death and the arrival of Pinhead.  The motivations of this pair of antagonists (Angelique and Pinhead) are fuzzy at best, but Pinhead kidnaps Merchant’s son and wife to use as “live bait.”  Pinhead for some reason needs Merchant to open the floodgates of hell.  When Merchant discovers that his family’s missing and his home is trashed, he immediately heads to his place of work instead of, like, phoning the police.  There he and Pinhead face off, and Merchant ends up decapitated.  On a space station in 2127, Dr. Paul Merchant (who has been recounting his family history as depicted in the film thus far even though he has no way of knowing in such detail just what transpired) wants to complete his life’s work: slamming shut the gates of hell that his toymaker ancestor unwittingly helped to open.  Pinhead and a couple of additional Cenobites wander around the space station, unaware that Paul has lured them into a trap.  Will Paul’s ploy work?  Watch the movie to find out.

Bloodline contradicts a rule that’s established in the third film: Pinhead cannot take a puzzle box but must have one given to him.  Thirty-six minutes into Bloodline, Pinhead walks to a box and picks it right up.  This is unfortunately the least of the project’s problems, though I do acknowledge that Bloodline has the best production values out of the first four films in the series.  The use of three different eras is an interesting departure from past installments, but Bloodline (like parts two and three) suffers from unclear character motivations.  Also, with no single protagonist to root for throughout the tale, the viewer might not be as invested as he or she would be in a story with a sympathetic main character.  Though Bloodline runs less than ninety minutes, it’s not worth your time.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth

HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH

The third film in the series opens with an interesting premise: what if a television news reporter witnessed the aftermath of what occurs when someone opens a Lament Configuration puzzle box and set out to discover exactly what happened?  A protagonist digging into the lore of the Cenobites could have driven an interesting story, but unfortunately Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth switches narrative directions repeatedly in a way that muddles the plot with unanswered questions and silly moments that don’t match the tone of the first film (Cenobites quip one-liners like “that’s a wrap” and “this is better than sex”).

The story more or less follows the reporter (a woman named Joey) starting at a hospital where she’d been sent on an assignment from her TV station.  After her cameraman departs, Joey witnesses the arrival of a patient who has chains hooked into his flesh.  She questions a girl (Terri) who arrived at the hospital with the wounded guy and learns only that the fellow’s injuries have to do with a box he acquired at a place called The Boiler Room.  Joey asks around at The Boiler Room (a dark nightclub) in search of the girl she met at the hospital.  Terri later phones Joey and offers to tell her story if Joey will let her crash at her place.  Meanwhile, the owner of the club (a guy named J.P.) discovers that weirdness occurs when he accidentally gets blood on a sculpture that decorates his pad.  Just as blood brought Frank back in the first film and Julia in the second, here the blood begins to revive Pinhead (who somehow ended up trapped in this sculpture – the story never addresses why he’s there).  J.P. observes as the sculpture skins and absorbs a girl he’d just slept with, and Pinhead’s face comes to life in the sculpture.  Further convoluting the plot are Joey’s dreams in which she seeks to connect with her father (who died in the Vietnam War).  At some point, Joey’s motivation becomes to lure Pinhead to her apartment because the window therein will somehow act as a gateway to a limbo where the ghost of the man who was once Pinhead resides.  By this point, the plot makes little sense, but apparently some fans of the series were entertained merely by the visuals of Pinhead slaughtering a club full of young adults and (later) Pinhead and a few Cenobites creating havoc and chaos on a city street.  I prefer images on screen that coalesce into a coherent and plausible narrative.  The film ends with Joey burying the puzzle box in wet cement at a construction site.  The viewer then sees the lobby of the building that’s been built there, and its walls are decorated with oversized versions of the trim that adorns the puzzle boxes. 

It’s unfortunate that the first two Hellraiser sequels fail to capture the atmosphere, suspense, tone, and creepiness of the original.  Perhaps each installment should have centered on a different group of Cenobites interacting with people in disparate situations who have summoned them.  Instead, part two centered on Kirsty from the first film, and she even has a cameo shoehorned into part three.  Of the Hellraiser movies I’ve seen thus far, only the first is worth your time.

Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (unrated version)

HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER 2 (UNRATED VERSION)

The second film in the Hellraiser series is flat-out bad.  The narrative is such a mess that it’s hard to summarize the plot.  The tale begins with a prologue that quickly depicts the origin of Pinhead.  In the present day, the viewer finds Kirsty (shortly after the events of the first film) in a psychiatric hospital.  By coincidence, the head shrink (Doctor Channard) has an interest in (and collection of) the sort of puzzle boxes that summon the Cenobites.  As Kirsty attempts to explain the ordeal she’s just been through, she uses the word “Cenobites” when she refers to the demons.  Did she hear that word in the original movie?  She speaks like someone who has seen the first film, not like someone who lived through only part of the events depicted therein.  Channard acquires the blood-stained mattress on which Julia died and (for no apparent reason) uses the blood of his patients to bring her back (just as Julia helped Frank to regenerate in the first film).

Channard takes a patient in a straightjacket out of the hospital and to his home with the intent of allowing the fellow to self-mutilate with a razor and bleed all over the mattress.  Were there no witnesses to his comings and goings at the hospital?  A fellow named Kyle (one of Channard’s co-workers) witnesses the return of Julia because he’d broken into Channard’s house (again with no clear motivation).  Kyle returns to the hospital and tells Kirsty he believes her story given what he saw at Channard’s house (he observed a collection of puzzle boxes too).  Kirsty wants to use one of the boxes to open a door to hell so that she can rescue her dead father.  She and Kyle go back to the doctor’s house, where Kyle (upstairs) encounters an almost completely regenerated Julia while Kirsty (downstairs) finds a photo of the man who became Pinhead.  She pockets the picture.  Julia kills Kyle and knocks Kirsty out.  Channard returns to the house with Tiffany (a young patient from the hospital who has a savant-like ability to solve puzzles).  Channard gives Tiffany one of the mystical puzzle boxes and observes with Julia from another room as Tiffany summons the Cenobites.  With the doors to hell open, all the remaining main characters set off on assorted adventures in the underworld.  Kirsty searches for her father, Tiffany wanders into a hellish carnival, and Julia leads Channard to a place where he’s turned into a Cenobite.  From this point on, the plot spirals into incomprehensibility.  If you must know what happens next, sit down and watch the film.  I discourage you from doing so: believe me, there are better ways to spend 95 minutes or so.  In his 1988 review of Hellraiser 2, Roger Ebert noted that the project “violates a basic convention of story construction, which suggests that we should get at least a vague idea of where the story began and where it might be headed.  This movie has no plot in a conventional sense.”  The 1996 edition of The BFI Companion to Horror notes that the sequel is “sicker and gorier” than the first movie, which is accurate.  It’s just a shame that the disturbing visuals were not strung together in a way that tells a coherent story.  Avoid.

Hellraiser

HELLRAISER

Directed and scripted by Clive Barker (based on his novella The Hellbound Heart), the 1987 film Hellraiser features a unique structure: for the first two-thirds, a character named Julia (nefarious and unsympathetic though she may be) appears to be the protagonist.  For the final third, Julia’s stepdaughter (Kirsty) takes over the role of being the most active central character.  Also of note, Pinhead (who became the franchise’s most iconic character) barely appears in the movie and mostly shows up in the final third.

The tale follows Julia and her husband (Larry) as they move into a property that has been in the family for some time and has sat vacant until Larry and his wife arrive.  What they don’t know is that Larry’s brother (Frank, who in the past had a passionate affair with Julia) messed around with a mystical puzzle box in the house’s uppermost room and summoned a group of unpleasant preternatural beings (“demons to some, angels to others” in the words of Pinhead).  These bipedal humanoids tortured and killed Frank, then whisked away his soul.  Larry accidentally cuts his hand and spills quite a lot of blood on the upstairs room’s floor.  When the room’s unoccupied, Frank begins to physically rematerialize in the room piecemeal (little more than a partial skeleton and a brain at first).  Julia encounters Frank when he’s further along in his regeneration and able to speak.  He pleads with his former mistress to bring him more blood to enable him to regenerate further.  She agrees to do so.  While Larry’s at work and nobody else is home (Larry’s biological daughter Kirsty, a young adult, lives in a rented room elsewhere), Julia brings a succession of men she’s picked up (allegedly for sex) to the house and lures them upstairs, where their blood nourishes an ever-more-complete Frank.  To delve into the plot further would be to deprive you of the creepy imagery and surprising story twists that are best enjoyed by actually watching the film.

I’ve never read Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart, so I can’t compare and contrast or discuss this project in terms of how it fares as an adaptation.  As a movie, Hellraiser works marvelously.  Characters generally behave in psychologically-realistic ways (Kirsty is visibly traumatized after an encounter with Frank), the backstory about Julia’s affair with Frank gets revealed through a series of often steamy flashbacks in a way that doesn’t detour too far away from the main narrative spine for very long, and the core concept itself is original and unlike any horror films that came before.  The second edition of the Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Horror (edited by Phil Hardy) states that “for the most part, Hellraiser is a return to the cutting edge of horror…”  Hellraiser in 1987 raised the bar for the horror genre.  The film that launched this franchise holds up well in the present and retains its ability to engross, unnerve, and chill viewers.  Seek it out.

The Eye (2008 English language version)

THE EYE (2008 English language version)

An American remake of a 2002 Asian film title Gin Gwai, The Eye follows a violinist named Sydney Wells who has been blind since age five due to an accident with firecrackers.  Sydney undergoes an operation, receives new corneas, and gradually reacquires the ability to see.  Soon she’s glimpsing strange shadowy figures and people who don’t seem to be real.  She eventually realizes that her new corneas have somehow enabled her to see ghosts and the shades that accompany the newly-dead into the afterlife.  Sydney grows determined to learn whose corneas she received and ultimately learns that the donor was a young Mexican woman who committed suicide.  The donor (known as a “witch” in her small community) was somewhat psychic insofar as she could see the same shadowy grim reapers that Sydney perceives and predict some deaths.  En route back to the United States from Mexico (where she and her doctor visited the donor’s mother), Sydney realizes that she’s meant to save many lives from an accident that’s about to occur.

The Eye is neither awful nor wonderful.  It’s a competently-made project with some chilling imagery (one scene in which Sydney’s stuck in an elevator with a ghost got under my skin) and a somewhat passive protagonist (at a couple of key points, Sydney’s doctor becomes the most active character).  There are worse ways to spend ninety minutes or so.  I would’ve liked some clarification on the rules of the spirits’ existences (some seem earthbound while others get escorted away by the reapers and are never seen again).  I’ll probably seek out the original Asian version of this tale at some point and watch it with subtitles.  If you’re in the mood to see Jessica Alba play a musician who must deal with a newfound ability to glimpse ghosts, you might enjoy The Eye.  I recommend the film with some reservations.

Raw Meat

RAW MEAT

An early-seventies horror film that was originally titled Death Line, Raw Meat follows three main characters (two college students who are dating plus the local police force’s Inspector Calhoun) as they stumble into a mystery concerning people who have gone missing in the Russell Square subway station of London.  The university students (Alex and Patricia) notice a man prone on the stairs leading out of the station after they exit the last train of the night.  They check his wallet to see if he has a card identifying him as a diabetic (he does not) and take note of his name.  They head up and notify a police officer of the situation, but the fellow’s gone when they all return.  Inspector Calhoun takes an interest in the case because the missing fellow (James Manfred) is a member of the Order of the British Empire.  Calhoun notes that a couple of other people went missing with their last known locations being that subway station.  Turns out there’s a feral and diseased man who lives deep underground in an abandoned space that was intended to be another subway station but was never completed after a cave-in at the turn of the century trapped several men and women who were presumed dead.  The feral man is a descendant of those trapped in the accident – they survived and reproduced.  The lone survivor of this strange inbred lineage periodically ventures into the subway station to procure fresh human flesh to sustain him.  In the third act, he kidnaps Patricia and takes her to his lair.  Alex goes searching for her and ultimately finds her alive and fights with the feral man.  Law enforcement officials (led by Calhoun) also show up and discover the feral man’s gruesome lair full of bones and partially-decayed bodies.

Raw Meat sports some surprisingly graphic images of corpses in the feral man’s domain.  The tale is oddly-paced and slow to really get underway, but the final twenty minutes or so are quite engaging as the viewer wonders what will become of Patricia.  Donald Pleasence portrays Inspector Calhoun (a tea addict) and brings a layer of dry humor to some scenes, thereby balancing out the rather grim nature of the story’s main threads.  Christopher Lee has a cameo in a scene that feels out of place (as if it were shoehorned in just for the sake of having another famous actor show up).  An interesting glimpse of London as it existed over four decades ago, Raw Meat is a flawed but engaging film that could have benefited from a faster pace and a couple of additional scenes in which the feral man stalks and attacks victims.  I’m glad I finally got around to seeing this movie.  Rumor has it that the project’s director (Gary Sherman) will be helming a remake set in Chicago. 

The Prowler

THE PROWLER

A slasher film from 1981, The Prowler opens with an ambitious prologue set in 1945 in which a killer dressed in an Army outfit murders a young couple by impaling the lovers with a pitchfork.  The bulk of the story takes place over one day and night in 1980 and follows a college student named Pam.  Her school has opted to finally hold a graduation dance again (administrators put a stop to the tradition after the 1945 murders, as the victims had snuck off from the dance).  Pam and her roommates from the dorm prepare for the big event, unaware that the killer from thirty-five years ago has returned to claim additional lives.  Pam encounters the homicidal maniac in her dorm room after she changes into a fresh dress (someone spills punch on her original outfit at the dance), and the killer chases her through the building and outside.  Pam crosses paths with her friend the deputy (seemingly the only cop around since the Sheriff has left town for his annual fishing trip).  Pam and the deputy spend much of the story together as they search for the prowler, who roams around and picks off a handful of victims.  In a tense climax, the killer chases Pam through the home of the father of the young woman who died in the 1945 prologue.  A member of the community happens to show up at just the right time to blast the antagonist with a shotgun.  An epilogue in which one of the earlier victims returns to life and claws at Pam makes little sense unless one considers the moment to be in Pam’s imagination.

The Prowler boasts exceptionally convincing practical special effects during the kill scenes (which include a blade going through someone’s skull, a throat-slashing, and a pitchfork impalement in a shower).  The film’s pacing at times seems a bit wonky (when Pam and the deputy initially search the home of a 1945 victim’s father, the sequence drags on and on), and the secondary characters are rather thinly-drawn, but fans of bloody slasher films from the 1980s should find plenty to enjoy in this tale.  The killer’s motivation is simple (his 1945 female victim dumped him via a letter while he was fighting in World War 2), though I’m not sure why he waited until 1980 to get homicidal again (apparently the return of the school dance set him off).  If you’re looking for a basic prototypical stalk-and-slash story from that genre’s early days, check out The Prowler.

Tourist Trap

TOURIST TRAP

A bizarre and chilling little movie that gave me nightmares after I first saw it on cable TV when I was a teenager, Tourist Trap follows a young woman named Molly who gets stranded in the middle of nowhere with a group of friends due to vehicular engine trouble.  A seemingly friendly fellow named Mr. Slausen happens along and offers to help repair the Jeep.  He drives Molly and her friends to his out-of-business museum that houses assorted mannequins and wax dummies.  Trouble ensues when some of the girls get nosy and snoop around the only neighboring house (which Slausen claims is inhabited by someone named Davey).  In the house lurks a homicidal masked fellow with telekinetic powers that he uses to animate mannequins, slam and bolt doors, and slide windows shut.  “Davey” (eventually revealed to be Slausen in disguise) picks off the young adults one by one until Molly is the only survivor.  She manages to kill Slausen with an axe as he dances with a mannequin. 

Tourist Trap boasts some freakish and nightmarish imagery, particularly in the prologue when a young man ventures into an old gas station and encounters assorted moving dummies (the one that springs out from behind a closed door gave me especially vivid bad dreams when I was a kid).  Molly is a somewhat passive protagonist through much of the tale, and there’s one absurd moment when she ventures into a body of water in an effort to hide and Slausen emerges up from under the surface behind her (as if he somehow knew exactly where she’d be at that moment), but Tourist Trap might well spook you if you can overlook these flaws.  Initially released in 1979, Tourist Trap holds up well decades after it first traumatized audiences.  Check it out for some fine jolts and scares.