31 Days of Horror: Day 10 - Hellraiser 2 and 3

I enjoyed “Hellraiser” so much last night that I decided to make tonight a double feature of “Hellraiser” sequels:  “Hellbound: Hellraiser 2” (1988) and “Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth” (1992).  With nine movies in the series to date, I expected the earliest ones at least to be watchable, and I was only partially disappointed.

In “Hellbound,” Dr. Channard, a psychiatrist with a long interest in the Cenobites, learns about the events that unfolded in the first movie, acquires the bloody mattress containing the remains of Julia, whose body was ripped apart by the Cenobites, and brings her back to life.  Of course, initially she is a bloody mass of bone and tissue just as Frank was when she resurrected him, but Dr. Channard quickly remedies this by providing fresh bodies for her to feast upon.  He also just happens to be treating a young girl named Tiffany who doesn’t speak a word but is an expert in solving puzzle boxes.  He uses her to summon the Cenobites. 

Meanwhile, Kirsty, the daughter of Larry, Frank’s brother, who also died in the first film, receives a call for help that she believes comes from her father:  “Help me!  I’m in hell.”  Answering the call, she, too, seeks out the Cenobites.  This time, however, when the box is opened, the characters are transported to their own personal hells.  The different hells are linked, and Kirsty and Tiffany find each other and collaborate in the search for Kirsty’s father.

In some ways, “Hellbound” is more watchable than the original “Hellbraiser,” not because it’s a better movie, but because it’s less disturbing.  It places more emphasis on the sympathetic characters, Kirsty and Tiffany, there’s not as much gore, and the gore effects it does have aren’t as realistic.  The movie is also much more ambitious.  The horror of “Hellraiser” was confined mostly to a single room, and this was very effective because it made the movie a bit claustrophobic, and the horrors seem inescapable.  The elaborate and somewhat cheesy sets in “Hellbound” detract from the bodily horror by drawing too much attention to themselves.  The movie also suffers from an origin story of the Cenobites that tries to humanize them.  How could anyone think it’s a good idea to make the demons in a horror movie a bit sympathetic?  Despite these flaws, however, it’s not bad as far as sequels go.          

This is especially true when it’s compared to “Hell on Earth.”  The less said about this one the better, so I’ll be brief.  Pinhead, the main Cenobite, is embedded in a marble column decorated with demonic sculptures.  Promising him untold pleasures of the flesh, Pinhead enlists the help of a night club owner to free him from the column, so he can unleash hell on earth.  In an effort to stop him, the soul of the man Pinhead used to be, before opening the puzzle box and being transformed into a Cenobite, contacts Joey, a journalist who is researching a story on the puzzle box, and explains how she can stop Pinhead.

There’s little trace of the visceral horror that makes the original movie so disturbing.  Most of “Hell on Earth” is wasted showing Joey traveling around New York City conducting research.  When the Cenobites finally appear, they chase her through the streets of the city, looking utterly ridiculous.  A good example of the depths to which “Hell on Earth” sinks is the CD-player Cenobite that ejects CDs from his stomach and throws them into the faces of his victims.  The ending features a struggle between Pinhead and his former self that again left me wondering how a series that started with such promise was entrusted to such incompetents.

 

A general rule of horror series is that with each sequel they get progressively worse.  It’s hard to imagine “Hellraiser” sinking much lower and being able to sustain six more sequels.  I am, however, watching the beginning of “Hellraiser 4: Bloodlines” (1996) as I write this, and it’s immediately clear that the execs at Miramax found someone with a greater imagination for shittiness than me to mess this one up:  it starts in space with a robot opening the puzzle box.

31 Days of Horror: Day 9 - Hellraiser (1987)

An important question I had before watching “Hellraiser”: which monster cereal will go better with it, Booberry or Frankenberry?  So far, the choice has been easy.  If it involves the supernatural, Booberry; if it features mad science, Frankenberry.  But what about a movie that revolves around a puzzle box that summons pale-skinned humanoids with multiple body piercings and mutilations?  Not an easy question, so I had a bowl of each.

Before tonight, it had probably been around ten years since I had seen “Hellraiser,” and it was much more disturbing than I remembered.  It’s the gory tale of what happens when Frank Cotton, seeking to test the limits of pleasure and pain, acquires a puzzle box that summons beings known as Cenobites who oblige by providing him with the extremes of both.  But the pain clearly outweighs the pleasure as his experience ends with hooks piercing his skin and ripping his body apart.  He’s later resurrected when his brother cuts his hand while moving into the family home where Frank died.  Blood from the wound seeps into the floorboards and revives the remaining bits of Frank that were left when the Cenobites destroyed his body.  When they find out that he has escaped them by returning to life, they come looking for him.

“Hellraiser” is disturbing both in its subject matter and its gore effects.  Frank is joined in his depravity by Julia, his brother’s wife, who is drawn to Frank’s hedonism and has an affair with him.  When she learns that he has returned from the dead, she aids in his recovery by seducing men and luring them to the house, beating them to death with a hammer, and leaving their corpses for Frank to eat.  As he regrows tissue, Frank is a gooey, slimy, bloody, mass of bone, nerves, and muscle.  Scenes filled with hooks piercing skin and then ripping it apart are enough to make even seasoned veterans of gory horror cringe.  Horror doesn't get much more visceral than this.