Hellraiser III

Look, we've already seen what Pinhead can do with his hooks and chains, but how is he back into action?

It makes no sense to go into the details of how Pinhead came back after being destroyed in part two. Through some improbable and convoluted way involving a copper statue, the box, and a pompous night club owner, Pinhead was brought back to life in New York. Now he's in the real world and he is seeking to stay.

A struggling reporter named Joanne "Joey" Summerskill (Terry Farrell) has the box and the ability to send Pinhead back to hell. The way to send him back to hell is very vague and uninformative, but at least Joey understands... I think.

This entire episode was a mess. No one is going to accuse horror movies of being intelligent, but some are dumber than others. Pinhead still desires pleasures and flesh, but the victims this time around are just set pieces, they have no personalities and no true characteristics besides vapidity. "Hell on Earth" went for maximum carnage as though that was an adequate replacement for substance. So many horror movie franchises do that once they get into their third, fourth, and fifth episodes. Their idea wells run dry so they just reach for the body count button as though that will mask the pitiful plot when all it does is make the movie bloodier and dumber.

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.

With that `clever' subtitle, how could this film suck?

Enter the mistake all horror films with on screen villains make: because the heroine dies and/or moves on to other projects, the villain moves to the spotlight. This is an even more fatal blow to Hellraiser because Pinhead never was meant to be in the spotlight, have too many lines, and this series was not meant to be a slasher.

Ooh, I know, since Hellbound: Hellraiser II made the mistake of pulling off a tolerable explanation let's correct that mistake and explain it to death! Let's go into more detail about pinhead and the box and set us up for Hellraiser: Bloodline with 90 minutes of backstory and no story for itself!

I really don't have much else to say and don't think I need to say much else. Ashley Lawrence isn't the only one abandoning ship on this one (no, the 10 second cameo doesn't count), Chris Young also disappears on us. The concepts of the first two films go away, and we have Pinhead moving to Elm Street with his band of `clever' new cenobites. This is hardly an ambitious move for any horror franchise, especially for Hellraiser. I mean, don't we have enough ominous unstoppable killing machines wandering around the horror aisles at your local rental place? At least Jeepers Creepers did some things differently.

All the latter Hellraisers get points for ambition. #3 is just mediocre slasher with Cenobites and a box. It's not necessarily the worst in the series, but damn it's the most boring . . .

I have yet to see Bloodline or Inferno, but Hell on Earth is the worst of the first three Hellraiser movies. It lacks both the wit and the sheer terror of the first two films. What's more, it breaks the rules established in the previous Hellraiser films (that is, Cenobites cannot harm the truly innocent, the Cenobites can be summoned or banished by the box, and so on). And while Pinhead actually spoke very little in the first two films, in Hell on Earth he is downright talky. Unfortunately, only a few of his lines are very memorable. It is unfortunate that Clive Barker did not have more to do with this movie (he wrote and directed the first and wrote the story for the second), as it might have turned out much better.

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.