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

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

The Hunter or the Hunted Pt 12 (The Predator, 2018)

Shane Black, writer and director of the terrific films Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and the Nice Guys returns to the franchise he was part of at the very beginning. Black played Hawkins…who told terrible jokes to Sonny Landham’s Billy that he constantly had to explain and Billy only finds funny once.

Predators did not reignite the franchise, and so eight years later we have an attempt to reboot the series. This film is firmly set in the continuity of the films Predator and Predator 2, with references and imagery to them, but not in a way that would be confusing to someone going in blind. It never acknowledges the third film, but it makes sense that nobody is aware of those events as they took place on another planet.

The film opens on Quinn McKenna, a military sniper with PTSD. He is on a mission when he comes into contact with a predator. The military tries to silence him by sending him to a military psychiatric hospital. There he meets a group of troubled soldiers. Meanwhile Dr. Casey Brackett is brought in to help study a captured Predator. She wants to speak with Quinn, so the prison bus is routed and they arrive as the Predator is breaking out and…well, okay…so the film is a bit all over the place in the beginning.

By this, I mean they introduce a ton of characters and that means it takes awhile to get to the meat. But when all the threads come together, the film begins to pick up. The finale is crazily packed with action and violence.

I like Black’s attempt to deal with human situations like Autism and mental illness. Admittedly, at times the conditions of the soldiers can feel a bit more like they are jokes, but I still found myself liking the characters enough that when the carnage starts, I wanted them all to make it out alive.

The film has a pretty solid cast. I always like to see Thomas Jane pop up and Olivia Munn gets to be pretty badass and have more character than her role as Psylocke a couple years back in X-Men: Apocalypse.

The Predator tries to give the Predators a larger goal than simply hunting people, and it is not terrible. It is good enough to work anyways. While it is a bit slow on the start, it eventually becomes a fun action sci-fi movie.

It is too bad that the film is mired in a controversy that was brought about by Shane Black. He skipped over traditional casting and gave his friend a small role hitting on Munn. What nobody, including Munn, knew was that he was a convicted sex offender. He had attempted to “entice” (legal term) his 14 year old cousin into a sexual relationship. Black knew his friend was an offender. Munn petitioned the studio to cut the scene, which they did. Munn faced little support in the beginning (with Black and the rest of the cast backing out of a press junkett, leaving Munn to be interviewed alone).

The cast has, since stepped up and Black apparently had been unaware of the seriousness of his friend’s situation and has apologized. He has said he is working with Munn privately to try and repair the damage. Considering the film clearly left open for a sequel, I would like to see Olivia Munn return. Black really dropped the ball with his actions, as he did not at least make cast mates aware.

That said, I still really did enjoy the film, and in spite of flaws, it is certainly an entertaining entry to the franchise.

September 15, 2018 0

The Trouble With Boys (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, 2018)

Lara Jean lives with her two sisters and dad. Lara Jean lives a rich fantasy life dreaming of the perfect romance. The love of her life is her close friend Josh…who is dating her older sister Margot. The night before going to college overseas, Margo breaks up with Josh. Now, Lara Jean has dealt with her biggest crushes by writing a love letter that she saved in a box. They are addressed, but never sent (of course). But then, one day, her crushes receive their letters…leaving Lara Jean in a freaked out state.

She wants to avoid Josh, and ends up in a situation where she and an older crush Peter, whom she is over and who recently was dumped by his girlfriend (and Lara’s Bully), create a fake public relationship. At first they are at odds, doing this for selfish reasons. But as is so often the case, their defenses start to drop around each other the longer the longer relationship goes on. It complicates her relationship to Josh and her family, coming between her and her family’s close connection…especially with Margot.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before breaks no real ground in the romantic comedy genre…and why the end surprised me I am not sure. I mean, maybe the misdirect at the open of the film caused me to leap to the wrong conclusion and this may be a strength of the film.

But in spite of a cliched plot, this is a pretty charming teen film. Lana Condor is both sympathetic and likable as Lara Jean. And really, the whole cast is pretty charming, which allowed me to be less annoyed by the cliches. Lara Jean’s motive for being closed off to people outside her family is understandable, and the family dynamic is effectively sweet. John Corbett plays her father, and there is a scene where he and Lara have a dinner in a cafe, and he apologizes for not talking about their mother more, that he has let them down with how he dealt with their loss when she died years earlier. And then he shares a story about a date in the same cafe, and telling Lara Jean that he see the same spirit in her. It is a tender moment between father and daughter that also gives her permission to open up to the world.

This is a sweet film and I genuinely enjoyed it.

September 11, 2018 0

You Know Ethan (Mission: Impossible: Fallout, 2018)

The Mission Impossible franchise is kind of…well, a weird one. I thought the first one was okay…but the second film was a mess. J.J. Abrams streamlined things a bit and made an improvement with the third film. Brad Bird and Christopher McQuarrie directed the fourth and fifth installments…and these turned out to be the most entertaining films of the franchise. With the sixth film, Fallout, McQuarrie is the first director to return to the franchise.

The actions of the previous film have had an impact on the world terrorism scene. Ethan, Luthor and Benji lost weapons grade plutonium on a mission, and their attempt at cleanup ends up being overseen by the CIA who assign their top agent and assassin Walker to join the IMF. Angela Bassett’s Erika Sloane states that the IMF is like a scalpel, but she prefers a hammer.

Full of twists and turns, McQuarrie keeps the action going and strives to avoid being to predictable, though some of the tropes of the franchise seem unavoidable. Nobody stops the secret weapon five minutes before the countdown will end…because where is the drama in that?

Cruise does not show any signs of quitting, and he manages to keep up a convincing performance as an action hero within the franchise. Hunt is portrayed as the guy who has the small picture in mind allowing his higher ups focus on the bigger picture. Two different characters inform Ethan that he pretty much cares about the individual lives so they don’t have to.

Cruise, Rhames and Pegg have good comedic chemistry and play well together as a team. He and Rebecca Ferguson have a good tension, but thankfully, Ilsa continues to have an agency beyond a potential love interest. The film manages to make every character feel pretty important, and saving the day falls on all of their shoulders.

I really enjoyed the film…but here is my one caveat regarding the Mission:Impossible Franchise. I have enjoyed the films…but find them hard to remember. I remember I liked them. I just do not really remember much about them later. I wonder if Fallout will continue this trend.

September 1, 2018 0