Hellraiser: Bloodline

Taking place over the course of 400 years, three generations of the Lemarchand/Merchant family consisting of toymaker Phillippe in 1796, Architect John in 1996, and engineer Paul in 2196(all played by Bruce Ramsay) all find themselves haunted by their connection to a puzzle box made by Phillipe that has served as the cenobite's gateway to Earth. Over the course of several lifetimes, Cenobite Angelique (Valentina Vargas) has confrontations with the Merchant bloodline eventually culminating in Paul Merchant's attempts to end the cenobite threat forever.

Following the release of Hellraiser III, Clive Barker took a more active role in Hellraiser IV hoping to give the series a refresh. Inspired by the ending of Hellraiser III which featured a building inspired by the aesthetics of the Puzzle Box, the initial premise was built upon the idea of a shape changing structure used to capture Pinhead and teaming with Hellraiser II & III scribe Peter Atkins the two pitched their take to Miramax who greenlit the project. The script was seen as the most ambitious Hellraiser film as it called for elaborate special effects and a story spanning three different eras but a limited budget provided by Miramax forced rewrites scaling back the film's script to work within the limitations. After no suitable director could be courted, including Stewart Gordon who declined following artistic disagreements, directing duties were given to Kevin Yagher, a special effects technician who impressed with his directorial work on the TV series Tales from the Crypt. Following negative reactions by Miramax to the initial 110-minute long workprint, executive mandates soon followed which demanded Pinhead appear more prominent and earlier in the film, a framing story added, and a happy ending ordered. Exhausted from the shoot, Yagher declined to return with Joe Chappelle brought in to direct the reshoots who's no stranger troubled Miramax produced horror films as he directed Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. Upon release the film was negatively received by critics and audiences, and its box office saw a sizable dip making $9 million against its $4 million budget and resulted in further entries being released directly to video without Clive Barker's involvement (until later this year where a long gestating reboot will be released on Hulu). Because of its troubled production history (and Alan Smithee credit), Hellraiser: Bloodline does carry a certain level of fascination of "what might've been?". While no director's cut exists due to 10% of the original intended material not being shot, there have been fan curated attempts at producing something close to Yagher's original intentions. But even if Bloodline were to have been finished as intended, there's some sizable problems inherent to the film that even fan driven editing can't fix.

Due to the fact Barker took a more active role in the film's production as opposed to Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, there is definitely an earnest attempt that comes through on screen that the filmmakers are at least trying to bring Pinhead and the series itself back to something more in line tonally with the first two entries rather than the over the top excess we saw in the third entry. The script is truly epic in scope as we see the box's 18th Century origins involving a Marquis de Sade esque duke who dabbles in the dark arts and the themes of legacy and destiny are certainly ambitious with Bruce Ramsay called upon to play three different generations of the Merchant lineage and he does really well in all three, particularly in the fan restoration where some solid work from the 2196 storyline was jettisoned in the original theatrical cut. The film also features solid work from Mickey Cottrell playing the despicably evil Du de L'Isle and his equally reprehensible assistant Jacque played by Adam Scott is also very fun.

Unfortunately, the major problem with Bloodline is like Hellraiser III, Bloodline tries to make the cenobites the primary antagonists and much like how it fell flat there, it also doesn't work here. While Pinhead may be the "face" of this series, he really only works in a supporting capacity and shouldn't be the primary driving force behind the plot as we saw with the antagonists in the first two Hellraisers who made those films work. The movie does have a secondary antagonist in Valentina Vargas' Angelique, but she's frankly so similar to Pinhead that even though the character acts as a succubus for the various Merchant descendants there's really nothing she does all that different from Pinhead aside from seduction. A lot of the cenobite scenes just feel old hat at this point with Pinhead's piercing chains that tear people apart having lost the original simplistic impact they once had. Even if this entry had been the third movie instead of Hell on Earth it wouldn't have worked all that well because it's a massively overstuffed movie with its three timelines and whether you're watching them play out linearly or with the framing device the characters and actions feel too thin and disconnected from each other to make for a satisfying experience.

Hellraiser: Bloodline can't be faulted for its ambition or scope, but that can't make up for the fact the Cenobites have exhausted most of their novelty at this point and the series is struggling to keep itself fresh. The movie does get unfairly dismissed as just being "Pinhead in Space", but that's really not a fair assessment of this movie and undersells its ambitions as a cheap exploitative gimmick. Bloodline does feel like a movie with a brain and ideas but maybe those ideas were muddle and lost with the scaling back of the script and would've been allowed to flourish if they'd divided it into three separate films (as Barker had considered). It's not a trainwreck, but it's also not some maligned masterwork either.

The year is 2127, and a descendent of the maker of the box that opens the gate to Hell is trying to figure out a way to open the box and trap the demons that come out of Hell. He has commandeered a space station (that he himself designed) for this task. He opens the box, lets the demons out, and is detained (people begin to investigate his questionable behavior on the ship) before he can capture them. Almost the entire film is told in the form of a story which he tells the people holding him, in an effort to get them to let him go so he can finish his work. Needless to say, it takes a lot of gory deaths to convince them.

There is a small bit of tension created by the fact that the entire time he is telling the guards what is going on, the Cenobites are out and are on the ship. However, this is largely forgotten about for the majority of the film because so much of it takes place in 18th century France, the time when the box was created. Basically, some toymaker makes the box, opens it, demons show up, and they terrorize his family for generations. You'd think they'd be grateful because he let them out into the world of the living. Anyway, the guy in 2127 has taken upon himself the task of building a NEW box that will be sort of an antidote to the first box, one that is designed so that it can actually trap LIGHT inside.

It's an interesting enough story, and it was actually fairly entertaining, but the film itself was still somewhat lacking. The acting was pretty bad (but at least Ashley Laurence was blissfully absent again), and there wasn't much effort put into the directing. The movement back and forth from the distant future to the distant past was also a bit detrimental at times to the tension of the story, but luckily the film did present a few cool new cenobites (one that was satisfactorily created out of a couple of idiot security guards), and Bloodline also displayed probably one of Pinhead's best performances ever. I would say that Bloodline is more of an informational movie than a good Hellraiser movie. While it is interesting to watch, it is almost more informational than entertaining. So even though the movie itself may have been disappointing, I think that it is a good addition to the series as a whole. It works better within the Hellraiser series than it does by itself.

I've been a Hellraiser fans since I was 15 years old, my all time favorite in the series being the amazing HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II. The nightmarish trip to hell with the fascinating vision of hell and the theatrical staging was just marvellous. Add in the bombastic soundtrack and it ranks as one of the top 3 horror movies of all time, surpassing even the original HELLRAISER. HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH was total garbage. They attempted to make Pinhead a wisecracking anti-hero like Freddy Krueger - and that was just so out of character. HELLRAISER (IV): BLOODLINE attempts to go back to the roots, exploring the origins of the box and was literally butchered by the f#kin producers, which led to the director (Kevin Yagher) withdrawing his name from the project and it became one of those imfamous "directed by Alan Smithee" movies. The movie takes place over 3 time periods, the past, the present and the future. In my opinion they should have scrapped the future plot - Pinhead's excursion to space - it's just ridiculous and absurd and does not fit into the Hellraiser universe. Also HELLRAISER: BLOODLINES was chopped down to a meager 85 minute runtime and feels rushed. A lot of scenes were cut out on behest of the producers which keeps the film from being a great entry into the series. If they had ditched the "Pinhead goes to space" scenario and focused more on the past and present this movie could have been FAR superior. It still is not nearly as terrible as HELLRAISER III, VI and all the successors, but it is wasted potential here. Not all is bad though: the makeup effects are superb, the sado-masochistic scenes are among the best in the series and the cenobites don't look like the clowns of HELLRAISER III (except for the twins. They're just weird). Also, the past "segment" of the film drips with atmosphere. Overall, this could have been a 9 out of 10, but the space opera drags it down quite a few notches.

If you search around, you'll find in the Internet the original script for Bloodline as well as the 'Workprint' videos saved by the film's original director. To be honest, the original script needs a couple more drafts in order to properly explain the story to the audience. Too much of it was left vague and poorly explained. But the plot did make sense when both the script and initial footage are considered together. It's hard to know exactly what happened to drive away the film's director. But what happened afterward is a classic Hollywood mess. Core points of the plot were ignored, others ripped away, others turned inside out to the point of blatantly contradicting basic Hellraiser plot and character concepts. Despite the idiotic mess made of the plot, much of it is beautifully done. It was the very last of the Hellraiser films with any level of inventiveness and class. As such, it's worth watching. But raspberries to the dolts who bolted together the elegant remnants of this film into a lumbering ignoramus.

When movie franchises begin to get "long on the tooth", everyone from the director and the film crew to the studio producing the film, are required to come up with new ways to make the viewing experience fresh for the audience that follows it. These are the guidelines that should be followed when occurrences like this happen. Of course we all know that's rarely the case except for the few. Most money hungry studios end up taking the full reign of the production and end up demanding the final result being fairly an exact copy of previous entries made or drastically changed the concept itself. Thus leading to the trend of diminishing returns. For Clive Barker's Hellraiser (1987) franchise, the trend is mostly the same, except the issues are in other places this time.

Compared to Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), this entry doesn't really surpass it, but it does at least feel more on track than the prior one does. Originally Kevin Yagher (a make-up and special effects artist who had experience in other horror films) was set to direct as his debut film. Unfortunately, Miramax Studios, which then owned the rights fought with Yagher, causing him to quit. However, one man who hasn't left since Hellraiser II: Hellbound (1988) was writer Peter Atkins, who once again penned the script. In this chapter, the year is 2127 and audiences are introduced to Dr. Merchant (Bruce Ramsay) an inventor who has discovered a way to destroy Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his followers forever. Regrettably, he is stopped before he is able to finish by a group of soldiers who came to take him away. To stall time, Merchant convinces Rimmer (Christine Harnos) to listen to why he needs to finish what he was doing. The story Merchant tells is how the Cenobites were first released and how they connect to his family ties.

The fact that Atkins went in even further than before to explain the back story to Pinhead and his origins is again commendable, but sadly this new information totally contradicts the three films before it. None of the main characters in the prior entries were related to Merchant, so why did their fate have them come in contact with Pinhead? Also what about the multiple boxes that Dr. Channard had in his office from the second film? If these boxes act as portals, what makes you think destroying one box will keep Pinhead out forever? It just doesn't add up. Along with that is a new pseudo-villain named Angelique (Valentina Vargas) who also has a past with Merchant, but only him. Of the characters in the story, the only people that matter and viewers will enjoy is Dr. Merchant, Angelique and Pinhead. Bruce Ramsay (who ends up playing different versions of himself) manages to at least be competent in his role and certainly more convincing than Terry Farrell from the previous movie. As for Vargas and Bradley, they both looked like they enjoyed their roles. Doing all kinds of evil acts and such.

On the flip side, the rest of the cast is completely forgettable. There is no character development, not even for Rimmer who listens to Dr. Merchant. There's also a young Adam Scott and an older Kim Myers (from A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)) and they too have no real significant importance. But aside from characters, Atkins did change a number of things for the better. One being the tone; the third movie had a completely different tone to that of the first two. Many fans took it as too goofy and cheesy where Pinhead was portrayed more as a generic slasher villain. Here, Pinhead still kills just cause, but he's not as blood hungry either. Another plus is the creativeness of the cenobite designs, which unlike the third film looked quite gimmicky. Here, they look more like what Pinhead's followers would look like. Then again, fans may also complain because there really isn't a lot of new additions. Throughout the whole film, only three new cenobites appear of which one wasn't even human and they also don't receive a lot of screen time. Along with that is a possible dislike for the smaller amount of gore too. With that it may not be as scary either.

Yet, the kill scenes are still quite gruesome. Another interesting edition to the mix of the franchise is the use of CGI, which doesn't look that bad. It's used minimally which is how it should be used. The cinematography shot by Gerry Lively is a slight improvement over his work in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992). This time instead of showing Pinhead in the sunlight all the time, he is kept in the shadows and this helps him feel more mysterious and dangerous. Finally for the musical score, Daniel Licht who would later be known for his music in the Dexter (2006) TV show composed the tracks. Thankfully, Licht exceeds Randy Miller's score from the prior film by adding new themes for the cenobites and making a variation of Christopher Young's original theme that was created from the first film. Much of these tracks use the same string build up, choral echoes and percussion but its the deviations that make it more appealing to listen to than recycled tracks.

It still doesn't anywhere match the first two original movies and most will probably find it equal to that of the Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) quality, but even for the production troubles that it had and nonsensical story telling, it can be a more entertaining watch. Although the likable cast is few, it is made up with more back-story, a better- written tone, appropriate costume design, acceptable special effects that don't look dated and a better film score.