Les écorchés III

In New York City, Pinhead, the puzzle box, and the other Cenobites are trapped in a pillar. J. P. Monroe buys it for his nightclub, The Boiler Room. Frustrated TV reporter Joey Summerskill (Terry Farrell) encounters Terri (Paula Marshall) at the hospital who brought in a victim of the club. She decides to investigate when her story is turned down. Terri turns out to be one of Monroe's many girlfriends and she has the box.

This is the franchise turning into a more standard horror. It has the skin-ripping fun. The characters work. I love Farrell from Star Trek and she's fine as the protagonist. I like the mind games from Pinhead. The WWI dream stuff can be better substituted with an additional character. It's trying to explain the monster when it doesn't need explaining. It does give a final solution which is very important. Honestly, Pinhead is a brilliant monster design. The new ones are pretty cheesy. The camera and the CD Cenobites can exists no other time. They even try some quippy dialogue although Pinhead is undefeated as a character.

Cheap looking sequel reduces the complicated Hellraiser and Pinhead legends into your standard Freddy and Jason cliches complete with teenagers running around in distress and discussing their so called problems in between.

This time around Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and a TV news reporter (Terry Farrell) battle it out for possession over a box that can open the gates of hell and end the world as we know it. Not even Bradley's commanding presence can breath life into this.

Unrated; Sexual Situations, Nudity, Extreme Graphic Violence, and Profanity.

Here's part three of the Hellraiser Saga... Once again this continues from where the last film ended, though it's a looser connection. The battle between Pinhead (Bradley) and his original human self, Captain Elliott Spencer, allowed him to break free of hells shackles. Entrapped in a monolith, he is awoken by Sandy (Leigh), when an accidental cut splashes blood on his stone features. Revealing himself to JP Monroe (Bernhardt), an unscrupulous womanising club owner, Pinhead makes a deal to free himself from his confines and to help JP to achieve his dreams...

This leads to lots of twists and turns in the storyline as you know you can't trust a daemon. The only thing which stands in his way is an aspiring investigative reporter, Joanne "Joey" Summerskill (Farrell), who's investigating the gory and violent murders which are appearing in the city.

The first thing that becomes evident is the amount of budget available for this film. Instead of being kept within the confines of a house or a hospital, now we're out in New York City. Penthouses, apartments, clubs, restaurants, ally's and streets. The locations are so much bigger. This is good, as it gives scope for a larger story with more hellish violence and gore... and it nearly delivers. Nearly, because the scene where the Cenobites finally take to the streets is actually underwhelming. What was required were a few more Cenobites and quite a few more victims, both pedestrians and police. It's nice to have explosions... I just wanted more.

The acting is okay, Bradley still stands out and is excellent as Pinhead. Farrell does a good job as the reporter. However, it's Bernhardt and Marshall, who plays Terri, who have their bouts of woodenness. The direction too is quite different from the first two, gone are the artistic and atmospheric lighting for a more natural feel. This is okay, but the film does lose a little of its mood and spirit, which added strength to the first two movies. I can understand the need for doing this. If you expand the daemons universe to include a lot more of reality then it stands to reason to get that feeling across would be to lose the more imaginative aspects of the filmmaking. That said there are still quite a few iconic shots, such as the entrance of Pinhead at the club and later in the church, and nicely thought out camera shots and angles.

Though I didn't find it as good as the first films it's still as enjoyable, though for different reasons... and as Pinhead would attain, variety is the spice of life.

Another good thing is that this film actually works as a stand-alone, you only need a vague idea about the previous stories; whereas, Hellbound actually made you feel as though you should have watched the first film before viewing. So for that reason, I would recommend this to all horror fans and newbies alike. This is a well written, structured, and acted film... which has its fair share of tension, fear, and suspense.

Watching this film as part of a four movie Hellraiserthon, I was full of expectation after the brilliance of the first two films. This third venture was a total disappointment, replacing the plot and tension of the earlier films with pretty girls and lots of mindless violence. The only saving grace was the excellent performance by Doug Bradley as a very confident and menacing Pinhead. Personally, I'd watch the first two films many times again, but skip this vacation from quality.

first of all, Hellraiser III isn't a BAD film. In fact, it's quite good if it would stand on its own. And it certainly is one of the more decent efforts in the overall disappointing decade of the 90's. Compared to the first two Hellraisers, however, it's a bit of a failure. Hellraiser ('87) and Hellbound ('88) were horrorfilms in the purest possible form and my two all-time favorites. There were 4 indicators in those movies that brought them close to being the definition of horror.

1. Creating a unique and utterly morbid atmosphere (through settings, music etc...)

2. Building up an unbearable tension ( the occasional twists etc..)

3. Showing nasty and very bloody sequences in a beautiful way

4. The presence of a true horror icon !! ( in this case...PINHEAD )

Hellraiser III fails to at least 3 of these points...The dark and macabre settings from Hell and the mental institution are replaced by a bar which plays horrible rock music, there's almost no tension to detect and it's a very predictable story. The gore however is still present, but the quality of it doesn't come near the originals. The Boiler Room massacre puts Clive Barker to shame, I think. The whole story know turns around the character of Pinhead. He's more than ever the star of this movie and that almost goes wrong. He talks too much and he even starts to become funny. That certainly isn't good for a horror icon. ( Look at what a joke Fred Krueger became ). Director Anthony Hickox obviously is a big fan of Pinhead and he wanted the movie to be especially about him. Every now and then Hickox tries to link this film to the original story but it clearly isn't his biggest concern. The tapes about Kirsty in the Chanard institute and the dream-sequences where Joey meets Elliot Spencer are too fake and forced. The movie does explain where Pinhead comes from but it certainly isn't stressed enough...

Hellraiser III goes very much over the top near the end and I almost lost my love towards Pinhead after the church scene ! I'm trying to forget that particular part. It really is a shame that this movie is part of the series. If this would have been a new film ( with a new demon ) it would have been an enjoyable, well-made change. But as part of a great series it fails to deliver and you're left behind with a disappointment. This movie was followed by episode 4: Bloodline and a few others after that. The fourth is a surprisingly good attempt to bring back the spirit of the original ones and should be watched directly after the first two. Everything that came after part 4 should be skipped unless you're a die-hard Pinhead fan.