Sweet Suffering Pt 3 (Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth, 1992)

The second film appeared to close the door on Julia, Kirsty and all the Cenobites. But New Line wanted to resurrect the semi-dormant franchise.

Waxwork director Anthony Hickox takes the reigns for this film. The film makes some leaps in which young rich brat JP finds the statue last seen in the prior film, now petrified. He is sold the statue for his night club.

We then meet frustrated reporter Joey and her cameraman Doc. They are waiting for a story to come through the door at the local emergency room, After Doc is called away for another story, Joey is witness to a patient being rushed into the emergency room covered in chains hooked to his flesh.

As Joey tries to piece together the mystery of the young man’s death and how it is connected to a strange little puzzle box, JP has awakened Pinhead, who is wanting to be freed.

Hellraiser III builds upon a Pinhead mythology, suggesting his evil had grown so powerful, death could not stop the evil. Joey is helped in her fight for the truth (leading her to trying to stop Pinhead) by Eliot, the human soul who had become Pinhead.

The film gives us a whole new batch of Cenobites, and when Pinhead suggests they are not quite the same caliber as his previous compatriots, he is not kidding. One Cenobite is a bartender who lobs bombs, another is a DJ who shoots CDs at people. There is a almost funny chase through…well, nearly empty streets (in a supposedly big city with an active nightlife).

I have, actually, always had a soft spot for this film. Primarily because…honest to god? Pinhead has some incredibly good dialogue in the film. Sure, he has some jokes, but even a lot of those are delivered with style by Bradley. Pinhead takes a central role here, and he is not merely doing someone else’s work. He has his own goals, as he works perfectly as a tempter.

Hell on Earth has great pinhead moments, but not a ton of other great stuff to support it. I mostly like Joey, Doc and Terri (a young woman who is in an abusive relationship with JP)…but really, without Doug Bradley’s Pinhead performance, this would be a far weaker film.

October 4, 2018 0

Sweet Suffering Pt 2 (Hellraiser: Hellbound, 1988)

Hellraiser: Hellbound picks up right after the first film and we find Kirsty under psychiatric observation.

The police, of course, think she is…well, a bit crazy. Doctor Channard is a famous psychiatrist (he runs the Channard Institute) and along with his protege Kyle, is overseeing Kirsty.

But Channard harbors a secret. The Institute’s basement is full of especially disturbed patients (it is reminiscent of the worst of the asylums that made the news in the 80’s). Kirsty has seen the skinless body of her father begging for her to help him, and she becomes obsessed with the notion. She convinces Kyle to investigate. It turns out that Channard is obsessed with the Lament Configuration and has done a crazy amount of research. He has several of the boxes. Kyle hides and witnesses Channard sacrificing a patient to bring Julia back from the first film. This sets everything in motion.

One of the interesting things is that it is kind of clear that although the Cenobites were the most memorable aspect of the films, the filmmakers wanted Julia to be the central villain. As Doug Bradley himself has noted, Pinhead and the Cenobites are more dispassionate observers. They are simply there to do their assigned duty.

The film delves deeper into the mythology of the Cenobites, or rather, it adds a mythology. Bradley said he had been told by Barker that Pinhead had once been human, and the film establishes he was a soldier in the 1920’s. The film actually attempts to redeem the Cenobites, by having them fight the other threats of the film. It ends up not quite working, but again Bradley’s performance is terrific.

The film also has some really interesting visuals. Hell is a confusing and seemingly lonely place. Pinhead warns Kirsty that everyone is in their own hell. She finds her uncle Frank and his hell is a constant teasing of his lust…beds slide out from the walls, women writhing under a sheet…but when Frank removes the sheet there is nothing their. He is facing an eternity of being unable to satiate his lust.

On the other hand, the film falls into the trap of a punning villain, which feels out of place next to the proper Pinhead.

Hellbound is kind of interesting, but also disappointing in how it deals with the Cenobites at the end of the film.

October 3, 2018 0

Sweet Suffering Pt 1 (Hellraiser, 1987)

Clive Barker pulled off quite a feat as an author…his first directing gig was also a movie adapting his own short story. It opens with Frank Coffin, who is in search of the ultimate pleasures. He is given a strange box (known as the Lament Configuration) with he brings to his family home. It is a puzzle box, but when he opens it, he is taken to a place of torment and pain. The film jumps ahead and introduces us to Kirsty, her father (and Frank’s Brother) Larry and her step mother Julia, who are moving into the house where we last saw Frank. Larry is a decent sort of guy, but Julia is shown as cold towards he and Kirsty. It is revealed her real passion was with Frank, with whom she had a sordid affair.

The house is full of rotting food, and Larry suspects it was Frank that left the house in disarray. When Larry gets a cut and spills blood on the floor of their attic, it starts a chain reaction. The result is that Frank returns from wherever he was…it is a process, and he needs blood to fully restore his body. Julia discovers Frank hiding in the attic and proceeds to help him.

Kirsty also finds Frank and this sets off the finale in which she accidentally calls forth the Cenobites, lead by Pinhead. In a bargain to save herself, she tells them about Frank.

What is interesting here is that this is really not about the Cenobites. They are minions of hell, simply doing their job. The true villains are Frank and Julia. Pinhead, with his leather gown and chalk white skin, a head covered in spikes is a memorable visual. His fellow Cenobites are quite creepy. The film is not particularly interested in setting forth any detailed mythology. Who are the Cenobites? Well, beyond their job, we don’t really know. How does it work? Well, you open the Box…where does it come from? The film is not concerned with this things. And that is fine in this film. It is a bit slow moving and a heavy focus on expository dialog delving deep into answering the mysteries would likely just bog it down more.

Doug Bradley gives Pinhead a regal presence. He is proper, even in his hellish role as a torturer (his primary mode of operation is chains with hooks on the end). While the film is slow at points, it is quite gory when it gets to the horror (though the most squeamish moment is probably when Frank, disguised as her father puts the moves on Kirsty).

Hellraiser is a decent film debut for Barker and Pinhead is a hard to forget addition to the pantheon of horror icons.

October 2, 2018 0

Party with Zachary Levi! (Blood Fest, 2018)

As a child, one of the patients of his father killed Dax’s mother. Dax grew up obsessed with horror movies. He is excited to go to the ultimate horror gathering, Blood Fest.

It all seems awesome when they first arrive…but then Dax and his friends make a horrifying discovery…

The man behind Blood Fest wants to make a real life horror movie…and he has enlisted gamers, psychos and technicians to create monsters and slashers. All the attendees have to do is abide by the rules and they just might survive. Might.

Dax is a huge horror nerd, of course. So they use his smarts and formulate a plan get to an access gate just outside of Clowntown.

Blood Fest does not even try and take it’s premise seriously. This helps to make it easier to ignore the goofier elements (like the scientific creations of monsters) and just pretty much go with the flow of the story.

The cast does pretty well here. Jacob Batalon is primarily the comedic relief, but his character Krill is a likable goof. Robbie Kay and Seychelle Gabriel mesh well together, while Chris Doubek plays the actor embarrassed by his horror icon status humorously and sympathetically.

There are no real scares in the film, but that is fine, it is more a film made out of a goofball love of the genre and that worked really well for me.

October 1, 2018 0

Party Time! (Hell Fest, 2018)

Hell Fest is the story of some college friends who go to one of those Horror Theme Parks and find themselves stalked by a serial killer. This has been done before, but this film plays it straight. This is not a tongue in cheek thriller.

Natalie arrives to visit her best friend Brooke, who informs her they have tickets for Hell Fest, a massive and extremely popular haunted theme park.

Shortly after arriving, they cross paths with the film’s serial killer. Wearing a mask (that is revealed to be a common mask for employees to be wearing in certain sections of the park) he appears to pick victims by watching for those who behave jaded. If you make a big deal about how not scary he is… well, Natalie and her friends are there when he claims a victim. And then he chases our six leads, dispatching them one by one and not being caught, because the rest of the attendees are assuming it is all part of the show.

There are some genuinely tense moments and even one of the better cell phone scares I have seen in horror recently. At the same time, the film is not self aware at all. I mean, it clearly was made by people who understand slashers, but it follows the formula almost to the point of being a bit slow.

The film lacks the enjoyment of horror that the whole premise seems to need…it simply treats itself to seriously.

Seriously though, if I never have to hear the line about how Halloween is the one time of year it is okay for all women to dress slutty again, I will be so thankful.

Oh yeah…and filmmakers? Stop treating Tony Todd like a promotional prop. He is a great actor and deserves to be more than a movie’s “horror cred”.

October 1, 2018 0

Panic Inducement

Hello and welcome to October at Tripping Through Gateways!!! As with Every October, this month is going to be filled with the scary movies. This year’s theme is Satanic Panic. This means all the movies I am looking over will have religious connections. Of course, God and the Devil, angels and demons…light versus dark…all at war with each other. The Exorcist Films and the endless series of films they spawned. The Prophecy movies, the Omen films…countless knockoffs…and also, I am throwing in Hellraiser for good measure.

Hellraiser really doesn’t get all that religious, to be honest, certainly not in the fashion of, say the Omen or the Exorcist. But I have not gone through the series on the blog yet. To be quite frank here, the Hellraiser franchise has one of the worst bad to good ratios of any iconic franchise…often, even when there is a good idea…it gets buried under crap.

So, everybody…let’s panic!

October 1, 2018 0