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Hellraiser IV: Bloodline
(directed by "Alan Smithee" - really Kevin Yagher and Joe Chappelle, 1996)
Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (known more commonly as just Hellraiser: Bloodline) requires the strengths and story components from the previous Hellraiser movies to construct an 80-minute editing and reshoot mess that turned an ambitious project for a horror sequel into an incoherent and sloppy freakshow that spans three different centuries, one in which puts the monster Pinhead into outer space. To fully get this film, you have to be aware of what happened in previous Hellraiser films, although the stories from those movies don't matter at all. You needed to have seen it all, though, for horrific events occur in this movie which might seem random and silly unless you know why it's happened before.
Pinhead, which in my opinion is an iconic horror figure on the same level as Dracula or Frankenstein or Freddy Krueger, is what's called a "cenobite" -- a demon that resides in hell and works with a group of other cenobites, although he is their leader. There is this thing called a puzzlebox that people play with and it opens a gateway to hell which allows cenobites to come to them. Often the puzzlebox has hooks and chains shooting out of the box and attaching themselves to your body. In the previous Hellraiser films, we saw how this baby worked and we even explored Hell itself and saw that cenobites were once human and became cenobites -- disfigured people/creatures that have their skin badly reconstructed into something that looks painful and torturous, that wear leather outfits and whatnot -- we know they start off human and can be transformed into these things.
Hellraiser: Bloodline is basically a movie told in flashbacks. An engineer who built a space station in the year 2127 and who is using it for purposes nobody understands is arrested and interrogated by a woman who learns that he is a descendant of a man named Phillip LeMerchand, a French toymaker that designed the puzzlebox that opens the gateway to Hell. He did this without knowing what he was getting into, as he was commissioned by an evil magician intent on summing a demon, which he does by skinning a woman, speaking an incantation and letting the demon take over the woman's skin. He calls her Angelique and she ends up being a sort of Pre-Pinhead in the 18th century. Skipping ahead to the year 1996, we find Angelique still around and learning that the toymaker's bloodline is still around. A brilliant architect in New York obsessed by dreams involving the puzzlebox, which have been carried through his family by blood, he ends up meeting Angelique and later Pinhead, both who want to use his talents for creating a gateway to Hell that will open even wider in the world than what the smaller puzzleboxes can do. After this segment, we cut back to the 2127 period in space with the latest descendent of the toymaker -- all of these guys are played by actor Bruce Ramsey.
Sound complicated for an 80 minute film, yet? Despite the unique storyline, intended to be one of those "final" films of a horror series, meant to kill Pinhead off forever, the movie studio intervened and Hellraiser: Bloodline became nothing more than a freakshow slasher film, with people dying in strange ways or being turned into cenobites and demons. The final sequence in space is nothing but Pinhead and his cenobite clan dispatching the officers who have come to arrest the guy who built the space station.
I used to LOVE this movie when I was a teenager, but now I think it's rather slow and boring. Still, I love the concept of Hellraiser doing a movie that takes place in three separate time periods and I love Pinhead in outer space on board a space station. I enjoy the cheesy acting of Bruce Ramsey, which actually seems pretty passionate for what it's worth. I enjoy the French demon woman, Angelique, who confidently seduces and destroys men in her path. There's a lot of bizarre, surreal imagery and a lot of fun moments -- there's even a pair of siamese twin cenobites and even a growling dog cenobite that has chattering teeth and eats pigeons. I also appreciate the hilarious idea of having the evil puzzlebox being opened by use of a robot and remote control gloves so that a person doesn't have to be harmed by it. This was also the last, good Hellraiser film as the sequels afterwards were direct-to-video and totally lacking in most of the strange and sick elements that gave the first four Hellraiser films power, originality and twisted beauty.
This, to me, is a timeless bad movie.
(directed by "Alan Smithee" - really Kevin Yagher and Joe Chappelle, 1996)
Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (known more commonly as just Hellraiser: Bloodline) requires the strengths and story components from the previous Hellraiser movies to construct an 80-minute editing and reshoot mess that turned an ambitious project for a horror sequel into an incoherent and sloppy freakshow that spans three different centuries, one in which puts the monster Pinhead into outer space. To fully get this film, you have to be aware of what happened in previous Hellraiser films, although the stories from those movies don't matter at all. You needed to have seen it all, though, for horrific events occur in this movie which might seem random and silly unless you know why it's happened before.
Pinhead, which in my opinion is an iconic horror figure on the same level as Dracula or Frankenstein or Freddy Krueger, is what's called a "cenobite" -- a demon that resides in hell and works with a group of other cenobites, although he is their leader. There is this thing called a puzzlebox that people play with and it opens a gateway to hell which allows cenobites to come to them. Often the puzzlebox has hooks and chains shooting out of the box and attaching themselves to your body. In the previous Hellraiser films, we saw how this baby worked and we even explored Hell itself and saw that cenobites were once human and became cenobites -- disfigured people/creatures that have their skin badly reconstructed into something that looks painful and torturous, that wear leather outfits and whatnot -- we know they start off human and can be transformed into these things.
Hellraiser: Bloodline is basically a movie told in flashbacks. An engineer who built a space station in the year 2127 and who is using it for purposes nobody understands is arrested and interrogated by a woman who learns that he is a descendant of a man named Phillip LeMerchand, a French toymaker that designed the puzzlebox that opens the gateway to Hell. He did this without knowing what he was getting into, as he was commissioned by an evil magician intent on summing a demon, which he does by skinning a woman, speaking an incantation and letting the demon take over the woman's skin. He calls her Angelique and she ends up being a sort of Pre-Pinhead in the 18th century. Skipping ahead to the year 1996, we find Angelique still around and learning that the toymaker's bloodline is still around. A brilliant architect in New York obsessed by dreams involving the puzzlebox, which have been carried through his family by blood, he ends up meeting Angelique and later Pinhead, both who want to use his talents for creating a gateway to Hell that will open even wider in the world than what the smaller puzzleboxes can do. After this segment, we cut back to the 2127 period in space with the latest descendent of the toymaker -- all of these guys are played by actor Bruce Ramsey.
Sound complicated for an 80 minute film, yet? Despite the unique storyline, intended to be one of those "final" films of a horror series, meant to kill Pinhead off forever, the movie studio intervened and Hellraiser: Bloodline became nothing more than a freakshow slasher film, with people dying in strange ways or being turned into cenobites and demons. The final sequence in space is nothing but Pinhead and his cenobite clan dispatching the officers who have come to arrest the guy who built the space station.
I used to LOVE this movie when I was a teenager, but now I think it's rather slow and boring. Still, I love the concept of Hellraiser doing a movie that takes place in three separate time periods and I love Pinhead in outer space on board a space station. I enjoy the cheesy acting of Bruce Ramsey, which actually seems pretty passionate for what it's worth. I enjoy the French demon woman, Angelique, who confidently seduces and destroys men in her path. There's a lot of bizarre, surreal imagery and a lot of fun moments -- there's even a pair of siamese twin cenobites and even a growling dog cenobite that has chattering teeth and eats pigeons. I also appreciate the hilarious idea of having the evil puzzlebox being opened by use of a robot and remote control gloves so that a person doesn't have to be harmed by it. This was also the last, good Hellraiser film as the sequels afterwards were direct-to-video and totally lacking in most of the strange and sick elements that gave the first four Hellraiser films power, originality and twisted beauty.
This, to me, is a timeless bad movie.