Craig Sheffer – Tripping Through Gateways

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.

The third and final (to date) Tales From the Crypt film is Ritual. You would not realize it is a Tales From the Crypt film though. The reception to Bordello of Blood resulted in the third film being released scrubbed of any Tales From the Crypt Connections. The “Tales from the Crypt Presents” was added to the DVD Box when it was released in the U.S. as a direct to video release, but the film remained as it was in theaters.

This means that the film lacks anything connecting it to the series. Unlike the first to films (which opened and closed with the Crypt Keeper voiced by John Kassir) There is no Crypt Keeper host. No actual references in the titles, no entering the Crypt Keeper’s house and no comic book cover. The irony here is that while they removed those things to avoid the connection after the failure of Bordello of Blood, this generic Voodoo horror thriller desperately could use the flavor of Tales from the Crypt, or at least an actual alteration to the formula as Demon Knight had done.

Written by the Director of the first Fast and Furious film Rob Cohen and the film’s Director Avi Nesher it is loosely based on the 1943 film I Walked With a Zombie.

It tells the tale (get it???) of a disgraced Doctor named Alice (Played by Jennifer Grey) who takes a job in Jamaica tending to a young man with encephalitis. He believes he is a zombie under a curse. And someone seems to be using Jamaican Voodoo to attack Alice.

There is a bit of humor to see that as the films went on, they had less star power than the original show. But the film tackles a topic the show already did, and the show did it in the so much better. This film lacks the humor that was such a big part of the TV series. Which results in a dull and boring film with low level effects. It is not that the film lacks talent, it is that they have a guy like Tim Curry and just give him nothing to do. Why would you want to do that?

Of course, based on this image? Maybe leaving the Dreadlocks sporting Crypt Keeper out of the film was a good idea…

Tag: Craig Sheffer

Sweet Suffering Pt 5 (Hellraiser: Inferno, 2000)

Boys and Ghouls At the Movies Part 3 (Ritual, 2006)