I am such a fan of Clive Barker’s ‘Hellraiser’ (1987) and
its Peter Atkins scripted sequel ‘Hellbound: Hellraiser II’ (1988). They are
original, intelligent, well-written pieces of nightmarish exploration in
morality and sadomasochism. I wore out
my VHS copies of the films due to my religious watching. However, none of the
later instalments in the series would garner such fanatical viewing from me.
In the lead up to its
release I can remember how excited I was as a 13 year old to read Fangoria’s
production coverage of ‘Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth’ (1992). It was a change
from two British productions to an American one when production company Trans Atlantic
Entertainment bought the franchise after the bankruptcy of New World Pictures. When
I finally got around to seeing it, I was just so disappointed. Abolished was the
spirit of the original film that Atkins and director Tony Randel carried over
so well in that aforementioned first sequel. Instead, what we got was Pinhead
turned into a cartoonish Freddy like anti-hero for teenagers creating crappier
cenobites to boot with the disturbing surreal horror of pleasure and pain shifting
to scenes of slasher like entertainment with a severe dip in the quality of the
acting too. Heavy metal music also replaced Christopher Young’s atmospheric
orchestral scores.
Unlike ‘Hellbound’ Barker’s
involvement was obviously minimal here. The head of Trans Atlantic Lawrence L.
Kuppin wanted to keep him away so he could egotistically put his own signature
stamp on it. Towards the end of the shoot though, the newfound studio for the
movie’s distribution Miramax offered Clive Barker the chance of his own input.
Despite adding some stuff here and there to help try to match his vision of the
Hellraiser mythos it was sadly all in vain. Barker also helped promote this new
Americanized version of his creation directing the video for Motorhead’s
reworking of the Ozzy Osbourne song ‘Hellraiser’ which the band contributed to the
film’s soundtrack. When Pinhead is starring in a rock music promo playing a
game of poker with Lemmy you know the ball has surely dropped here. Oh dear how
soul crushing this all was. See the promo video for Motorhead's 'Hellraiser' below (a great song by the way)...
How to Sabotage a Good Sequel
A couple of more years went
by. While I had stopped buying Fangoria regularly preferring to spend my wages
from my first job leaving school on clothes, movies, music, booze, cigarettes and
recreational drugs I would always pick up a copy in one of my local newsagents for
a quick read. On one such occasion before Apu would tell me to put down the
magazine threatening to cut off my hands for treating his shop like a library I
found out that a new Hellraiser movie was in production ‘Hellraiser: Bloodline’.
Despite my bitter disappointment with the previous instalment, I held out some
hope from the articles I quickly read. According to these features, it was
going to be something completely different like we have never seen before that
would take the mythology laid down in the previous movies to new heights of
imagination with an ambitious narrative encompassing three settings each in different
eras of time. Although at the same time, it would get back to the darkness and
surrealism of the first two films.
I was excited to read all
about this but in the back of my mind, I also thought that this was too good to
be true. After a troubled shoot, the movie got a release finally in 1996 and I
came across it by chance in the Blockbuster around the corner from me. Yes, it
went straight to video in Britain just two months after coming out theatrically
in the States. Knowing that this was not a good sign I was still eager to see
it but those nagging doubts I had before would prove me right. Except it is no
fault of the original director and the original writer.
One of the few things Miramax got right was to bring back
Clive Barker into a role as big as he had on ‘Hellbound’. Usually wanting to be
involved in movies based on his work due his loyalty to the characters he
created and trying to insure a better quality film Peter Atkins wrote a script
based on his idea just like on that previous sequel; so far so good. It was to
be three movies all rolled into one epic complex horror story: the first act
being Gothic, the second contemporary horror and the third a genre crossover
with sci-fi. It is much like the first two instalments in that it centres on
one family only this time over the course of four hundred years through a
bloodline.
This bloodline is that of the Lemarchand family. The
toymaker Philip Lemarchand in the first story set in 18th century
France is the creator of the puzzle box configuration that opens a gateway to
the hellish world of the cenobites. This brings to our world here the demon
princess Angelique. He knows that he has made a terrible mistake so he sets
about inventing the Elysium Configuration to send her back but is killed before
he has the chance to complete it. He has an unborn son who survives. The second
part set in modern day America involves the follow up to ‘Hell on Earth’. The
box that was buried in cement in the climax of that film has called out to the
family’s bloodline the ancestor John Merchant an architect who has had
constructed a building incorporating the designs of the box seen at the end of
the last movie. Angelique learns of the bloodline’s survival and travels there finding
the cemented box in a pillar and unleashing Pinhead who wants to force John to
use the Elysium
Configuration to keep the gateway open between hell and earth so he may come
and go as he pleases. Lastly, in the futuristic setting of space in 2127
another descendent Dr Paul Merchant has constructed the Minos space station for
the specific reason of rectifying Lemarchand’s mistake to end his family’s
curse forever by destroying the demonic cenobites and the connection between
their world and ours forever.
The production history is a depressing one to say the
least. This unnecessary debacle was all down to the dim-witted studio
executives whom despite green lighting a script that did not introduce their
franchise’s star monster Pinhead until almost half way through the film suddenly
decided that this was not on when viewing the director’s workprint. The
directorial debut of SFX wiz Kevin Yagher got gang raped here. The execs forgot
what partly made the first two movies work so well, which was that the real
monsters were the human villains of Frank, Julia and Dr Channard. The Cenobites
were the secondary antagonists and Pinhead was all the scarier for it - less is
more. Not learning from their mistakes with ‘Hell on Earth’ the genre arm of
Miramax Dimension sabotaged the story of charting the history of the puzzle box
starting with its creation in 18th century France. This is the part
of the film that the suits had a problem with - no Pinhead for 40 whole
minutes. Even in its cut form though, it is still the strongest part of the
movie.
This story was never essentially supposed to be about
Pinhead. He features in it and when he does appear in every scene in the
version that is out there now he eats up the screen like always. Doug Bradley
is forever reliably brilliant in the role, which he plays with such commanding
power and coldness aided by equally spine tinkering dialogue from Peter Atkins:
(while looking at the Earth from the
space station in the third act) “Glorious,
is it not? The creatures that walk its surface, always looking to the light,
never seeing the untold oceans of darkness beyond. There are more humans alive
today than in all of its pitiful history. The Garden of Eden. A garden of
flesh.” We saw so little of the character in those first two instalments as
they were for the most part not about Pinhead yet we could never forget him. It
would have worked just fine here also. Bradley’s performance is a return to his
portrayal pre ‘Hell on Earth’ in which in that he was a humanless demon run
amuck free from the rules of his God Leviathan.
Nevertheless,
the studio made cuts anyway behind Kevin Yagher’s back. His originally intended
version had more plot, characterization and explained clearly the events. The
released version is incoherent making little sense most of the time. There was
also more graphic imagery, which included in that first act aristocratic cenobites,
demon clowns and a whole fancy dress party sequence of evil all sacrificed to
make way for a quicker entrance for Dimension’s franchise poster boy. With that,
Yagher quite rightfully fucked off right out of there and disowned it pulling
an Alan Smithee by completely removing his credit of director and having that
same said name replacing his. There were
still scenes from the shooting script left to film. However, rewrites were made
and new scenes filmed with the narrative structure changed with the sci-fi part of the story serving as a bookend in order to give the black pope of pain more screen time.
At the helm was the hack Joe Chappelle director of one of the worst movies of
the Halloween franchise ‘The Curse of Michael Myers’ (1996).
The result of
all this is a mixed bag as there are diamonds in the rough. The interesting
elements we can see from Kevin Yagher’s original version include a fiery
relationship between Pinhead and Angelique that would have had likely more
elaboration if left intact. Pinhead is such a strong character that oozes
charisma and it is fascinating to see his authority challenged by his sexy demonic
female equal who in her mind is superior. It is good to see a strong villainess
again much like Julia in the first two instalments but here awful dubbing also
sabotages Valentina Vargas’s performance. After seeing workprint footage with her
original accent her voice in the final cut really does take away the power from
her performance. The rest of the cast except of course another great turn from
Bradley are just okay. The acting is not on a par with the first two films but
a step up from ‘Hell on Earth’. Genre fans will know Kim Myers from the
severely underrated ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge’ (1985).
A film Yagher provided the excellent special makeup effects for. The originally intended ending is a lot better but Dimension decided a
happy sappy one would be more beneficial as opposed to that more
emotionally charged one. Check it out below from the workprint...
It looks great
visually despite Dimension hiring and firing four directors of photography and
the set designs are impressive with the special effects equally so and the SFX
for the gore is decent. There is also the return of an orchestral musical score
and though it pales in comparison to Young’s work, it does at least hark back
to the classic era of the Hellraiser movies.
The Ruining of a Horror Franchise (conclusion)
In what should have been one of the best sequels with
such a unique concept turned out to be a frustrating uneven mess. It does have
though truly redeeming qualities that makes good on the promise of returning to
the roots of the first two films, which just elevates ‘Hellraiser: Bloodline’
above the former entry. It is just that if Miramax had of allowed Kevin Yagher
to release his definitive vision of the final movie we could have had something
solid overall. As it turned out instead of being the saviour of the franchise after
‘Hell on Earth’ it helped relegate the series to direct to video with a further five sequels that were even worse. “Jesus Wept” so said Frank Cotton and
so did millions of Hellraiser fans.
** out of ****
Dave J. Wilson
©2012
Cinematic Shocks, Dave J. Wilson - All work is the property of the credited
author and may not be reprinted or reproduced elsewhere without permission.
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