Vulgar Display of Power Pt 2 (the Exorcist II: The Heretic, 1977)

Looking at the basics? The Exorcist II seems like it could be a winner. Returning cast members, an established director and dependable new cast members…

And yet?

Father Lamont is in Rio. He is struggling with his faith, and attempts to exorcise a demon from a young woman, but he fails and she kills herself. When he returns to the United States, the Diocese assigns him to investigate the death of Father Merrin four years prior.

This brings him into contact with Regan, now eighteen and having pushed the horrors of the first film from her mind. She is working with the psychiatrist Dr. Tuskin who believes she can help Regan recover those lost memories.

The investigation takes Lamont deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole leading to one of Father Merrin’s early exorcisms. And then things go crazy. Giant Locusts, exploding houses, duplicate Regans…and the end result is a crazy mess.

This film is just so bizarre and it’s attempts to build off the first film miss a distinct aspect. Sincerity.

Here, we see Lamont is a man struggling with his faith. And that is something that horror really can explore well. The first film does that. In part, it features Karras and his doubts, but how they are played out against Merrin’s confidence. The Exorcist II tries to recapture the spiritual horror of the first film, but instead ends up seeming like a hilarious joke.

October 12, 2018 0

Vulgar Display of Power Pt 1 (The Exorcist, 1973)

It is hard to come into the Exorcist without preconceived notions. The stories of people vomiting or running out of the theater in terror may even set some people up for disappointment.

On an archeological dig Father Merrin discovers some rare and mysterious artifacts. He suspects this is a portent of coming evil.

Elsewhere, Young Regan lives with her mother, a well known actress. Regan is exhibiting strange behaviors, and at first, her mother seeks medical intervention. In addition, there are strange noises heard in the house. But as Regan’s actions get more and more disturbing and hard to write off as “puberty”, she becomes more desperate.

Meanwhile, Father Damien Karras is a preist who tends to favor psychological answers over faith ones. He finds his own faith in a precarious place. Karras is brought in by the Catholic Church for consultation. He initially pushes for psychiatric treatments, and believes there is nothing darker at play.

Karras is also being questioned by a police Detective, Lt. Kinderman. Kinderman seems genuinely interested in Karras and they strike up a friendship through the course of the film.

Reluctantly, it is determined that Regan is afflicted by a demonic entity. Father Merrin is brought by the Church t lead the exorcism. What follows is a battle of will and faith.

The Exorcist has earned it’s status very honestly. Even today it is an unsettling watch. It is not the special effects or shocks that are behind this. Instead it is the film’s steadfast sincerity. The movie does not treat this as entertainment or a joke. And it is this sincerity that gives the more shocking stuff their real power. And it also makes it easier to overlook some of the more outlandish moments, such as a head turning all the way around.

The performances are top notch. Jason Miller plays Karras with a genuine pain… a man plagued with hurt and doubt. Max Von Sydow imbues Merrin with a strong gentleness. And Linda Blair takes Regan from an adorable child to gut punching monster.

I have often said that you take from the Exorcist what you bring to it. If your world view is hopeless, it will seem like a hopeless film. I have always tended to a more positive approach and feel that the film ends on a truly hopeful note.

The Exorcist is not schlock, even when it indulges more standard horror tropes. Instead, it uses those shocks to explore faith, life and meaning. There is a wonderful and brief exchange between Karras and Merrin. Karras asks Merrin why the demon chose Regan. “Why this Girl?”

Merrin responds: I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as… animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us.

I think the movie seeks to challenge that. That it aspires to refute the demon’s assertion. That maybe we are not merely animal and ugly. That we can be more.

October 12, 2018 0

Sweet Suffering Pt 10 (Hellraiser: Judgement, 2018)

While the studio had entertained the notion of a full reboot, they settled on a sequel instead, to be run by make up effects designer, writer and director Gary J. Tunnicliff.

Three detectives (two of whom are brothers) are tracking a gruesome serial killer. But asa they search for clues and information, they find that their killer may not be exclusively of this world. One of the brothers is haunted by nightmares after a terrifying experience in which he is brought before the Auditor.

The film adds an entirely new bit of mythology, that kind of ties Pinhead to an old school religious demon role. The Auditor sits and has those who open the box sit and confess their sins. They then feed the confessions to Assessor who then vomits them to the jury who give judgement…adding a whole trial process is kind of interesting. It is more gross than horrifying, and really, not the kind of grossness you would normally associate with the franchise. They also introduce an opposite to Pinhead in a

The Auditor is probably the most interesting addition. He types the confessions using the Confessor’s own blood. This creates quite a visual. However, at the same time, the color schemes for scenes involving Pinhead really dull the character down. While the Actor looks a little more like Bradley’s Pinhead in make-up, the dark blues and bright whites light Pinhead in a distinct and ominous way that Judgement fails to do. And this is just not Doug Bradley…and so it never really feels like Pinhead for me.

The final product is some interesting ideas, but nothing all that compelling to watch.

October 11, 2018 0

Sweet Suffering Pt 9 (Hellraiser: Revelations, 2011)

When Dimension realized they were about to lose the rights to Hellraiser, well that called for a sequel. Revelations is, admittedly, very clearly meant to be a Hellraiser sequel. It brings back a lot of the imagery and general atmosphere of the first few films. It is all a masquerade though.

The film begins with a found footage sequence in which Nico and his buddy Steven are on their way too Mexico to cut loose and left their oppressive rich lifestyle behind. The footage leaps to Nico being terrorized by Pinhead. We cut to the boys families who are gathered together to pretend they do not remember their missing sons or some such thing.

Suddenly, Steven shows up, exhausted without Nico. The film reveals the dark secrets of the family, and the truth behind where the boys have been. This treads very similar ground to the original film, but done not quite as well.

One of the glaring problems is…well, this is the first Hellraiser film to not feature Doug Bradley in the role of Pinhead. His performance was always a highlight in every Hellraiser film (save Hellworld). While the dialog for Pinhead is not amazing here, imagining it being delivered by Bradley instantly imagines it would have looked and sounded better. The actor chosen for Pinhead has such a different structure, with the makeup and costuming, he looks almost doughy. This is a little odd, because Stephan Smith Collins is not a heavyset man. But the end result is a Pinhead who looks almost goofy and lacks the gravitas of the original.

Maybe if the studio had managed to pay a proper wage and worked on the script with Bradley, this might have been a pretty decent quality sequel. Instead it is all surface and is just a grab to retain the rights to a property.

October 10, 2018 0

Sweet Suffering Pt 8 (Hellraiser: Hellworld, 2006)

Henry Cavill was in a Hellraiser movie, y’all.

Hellworld is the third film in the franchise from Director Rob Bota. A group of friends are invited to a party centered around a popular online game called Hellworld shortly after the suicide of a friend. The party turns out to be trap for the group as they are killed one by one by Pinhead is remarkably un-Pinhead like ways.

Lance Henrickson is here to make things seem a bit classier when Bradley is away…but while this is the first film since Bloodlines to have actually been written for the franchise? It is the one that seems the most ignorant of the history of the franchise. When did this game pop up? Are the Cenobites now urban legends of a sort? Why is Pinhead killing people with a meat cleaver? We get a convoluted twist that implies it was all a drug induced torture…and yet, the film then shows Pinhead is real and…this film is just terrible. Even Bradley cannot save it, because the script has Pinhead so drastically out of character.

It does not help that each of the three films by the same director do not feel remotely connected. The dialog for Pinhead does not feel right, the motives make no sense, even with a franchise where such things are all over the place.

October 9, 2018 0

Sweet Suffering Pt 7 (Hellraiser: Deader, 2005)

Amy is a hardened reporter who is provided with a shocking video tape of a cult in Romania in which young teens are committing suicide and then being brought back to life by their mysterious leader. She heads off to Bucharest to find the truth of the story.

Much like the prior two films, Deader was not part of the Hellraiser films originally. Once decided, they added a quick back story that tied the cult leader to the toymaker mythos established back in the fourth film.

Hellraiser: Deader is incredibly disjointed, with all of the Pinhead stuff feeling forced into the story.Bradley gets a few snappy moments towards the end, but largely, his presence feels very much like an afterthought.

I guess I would not declare the film as being outright terrible…but it is not all that interesting to watch either. And it certainly adds little to the franchise.

October 8, 2018 0

Sweet Suffering Pt 6 (Hellraiser: Hellseeker, 2002)

Did you know that “Cenobite” means the member of a religious order? I did, because when I was looking up cast and crew on the IMDB, every Hellraiser film has this trivia fact.

Anyways, much like Inferno, Hellseeker was an unrelated script that got turned into a Hellraiser film. They retrofitted one of the characters to be Kirsty Cotton from the first two films and were able to get Ashley Laurence to return to the role. Allstate’s Mayhem is married to Kirsty, and he is a bit of a sleaze. The film focuses on Trevor (the aforementioned Mayhem, Dean Winters) after a car accident has claimed the life of his wife. As he works to piece it all together, the police seem to think the accident may not be an accident.

And there is a lot of evidence to suggest Trevor is less a victim and more of an…asshole. Selfish assholes are kind of the bread and butter of the Hellraiser franchise. Through flashbacks, it is revealed Trevor gave Kristy the Lament Configuration as a gift with sinister motives.

Truthfully, the film’s twist moment is not terrible…however… (big Spoiler ahead)

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October 7, 2018 0

Sweet Suffering Pt 5 (Hellraiser: Inferno, 2000)

Helmed by director Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister and Marvel’s Doctor Strange), in some ways, the Hellraiser: Inferno is both a departure and return to the ideas of the first film.

Homicide Detective Joseph Thorne is investigating a serial killer, but he is also dealing with his own vices, drawing him further and further away from his wife and daughter.

After finding the Lament Configuration puzzlebox at the scene of a crime involving one of Thorne’s informants, people in his life start to turn up mutilated. Add to this hallucinations of strange bondage geared demons, Thorne finds the lines of reality becoming blurred.

I referenced that this film is both a departure and return to the early films of the franchise. The focus is unique, Inferno is about Thorne and his corrupt nature. The Cenobites seem almost incidental. And, in a way, they are. Inferno was a screenplay that Dimension films owned that was outside the franchise. It was not a Hellraiser film. The studio decided to turn it into a Hellraiser movie, thus requiring a script rewrite that added in Pinhead and his cenobites. This actually works in the films favor, as Pinhead is back into his role as an impartial executor of someone else’s rules.

Bradley gives the role of Pinhead that other worldly regal ton, making this one of the better films of the post 2000 entries.

October 6, 2018 0

Manic Monday (Venom, 2018)

Before Sony worked out a deal with Marvel Studios to bring Peter Parker into the MCU, they had planned a Spider-Man Cinematic Universe. This included a Sinister Six film, Black Cat and Venom.

But the Marvel Deal does not include any of those ideas…and so Sony is trying to develop the properties sans Spider-Man. In the case of Venom though? It make some sense. Spider-Man 3 had condensed the Venom story and did it pretty poorly. This does not change the idea that a Spider-Manless Spider-Verse is a bad idea. Spider-Man and his villains are pretty tightly tied together. Venom does keep a lot of the core ideas of the character. A gooey alien symbiote with violent tendencies attaches to Eddie Brock as a host.
Eddie is a reporter who ruins his life when he cannot hold back his disdain and accuses Carlton Drake of ruthlessly killing the desperate and poor to achieve his scientific success.

When he is smuggled into Drake’s compound he gets infected by a parasite that calls himself Venom. Eddie and Venom need each other, as a Symbiote cannot survive long in an oxygen rich environment without a host, and Eddie needs Venom to survive as he is hunted by Drake’s men.

I am…not entirely how I feel at this point about the film. Venom has a great cast, and I liked Hardy’s manic performance. I really liked the idea of making Eddie some sort of VICE styled journalist. It makes for an interesting approach, rather than a guy being driven by jealousy.

On the other hand, the film takes some time to get going, because there is a lot of setup. And while the film has some laughs, it is not as darkly funny as it could have been.

I guess, I would say that Venom is…not terrible. It is watchable with decent effects and a great cast. I will say…the post credit scene kind of makes me want to see a sequel.

October 5, 2018 0

Sweet Suffering Pt 4 (Hellraiser: Bloodlines, 1996)

So, Bloodlines was one of those cases of “This is the last one”. I mean, they did not actually make the mistake “the Final Chapter”…but this film seems to have been intended as a last hurrah for Pinhead and his band of merry cenobites. And they throw it all out there…the origin of the Lament Configuration is here. It was made by a toy maker hired by man interested in dark magics. The act has cursed his family line ever since, and the film is divided into three parts.

The film actually opens on a space station, where Dr. Paul Merchant is being held prisoner and is being interrogated. He has summoned Pinhead to finally bring an end to their feud once and for all. He was interrupted by security and finds himself having to tell the story of his family and their connection to the dark world of the Cenobites. This of course goes back to the origin of the Lament Configuration. Pinhead makes no appearance in this sequence, so points for consistency.

In this story, a demoness is called forth in a spell that ties her to the Lament Configuration. Her summoner is betrayed by his power hungry protege Ben Wyatt. This moves us to the next story, set in the present day of 1996. Ben Wyatt is apparently still alive and has grown bored and complacent. The Demoness, named Angelique, wants to journey to America and find the toy maker’s descendent John. He is an architect and has designed a building that contains the visual inspiration of the Lament Configuration.

The attempt to build a coherent mythology within the series is an understandable move. But honestly, it never seems to feel like it fits all that nicely into the series. It ends up with a couple mentions down the road…but it is not really a game changer. On the other hand, since the finale is set in the future, it presents no trouble with Cenobites popping in and out of future films.

The film works with both practical and digital effects, and the digital effects are…well, okay. The practical makeup looks nice though. Bloodline is okay…but it also seems unsure with what it wants to do with Pinhead. He is not the leader of hell or anything, defeating him might mean he is gone…but what greater evil are they really stopping? At the same time, Pinhead seems to be playing a role more like the first two films, where he is a guy doing a job. But this is certainly not the most exhausting film of the franchise.

October 5, 2018 0