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yendiHellraiser III: Hell on Earth. 1992. Directed by Anthony Hickox. Written by Peter Atkins. Distributed by Dimension.
This movie is the cinematic equivalent of a Twinkie. I know that there's nothing nutritious here, and that the experience won't even be that enjoyable. But for some reason, I'm compelled to keep devouring it, hoping that it'll be better than last time.
A little background: Hellraiser was a fine (if flawed) little horror film about a cute little puzzle box and the nasty demons it summons. Of those demons, the one called Pinhead (because he had a face that was perforated by pins, not because he looked like a clown named Zippy) was the one that caught everyone's attention, likely because of the backlash against the growing acupuncture fad*. Hellraiser 2 was a mediocre and sloppy sequel, but filled with enough nifty ideas that it was still a solid little horror movie.
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, on the other hand, is just bad. Mind you, it's still leagues better than Hellraiser: Bloodline (aka Cenobites in Spaaaaace), Hellraiser: Inferno, Hellraiser: Hellseeker, Hellraiser: Deader, and Hellraiser: Hellworld**. And since those films didn't exist when I first saw it, I can't use their suckitude as an excuse for enjoying the third movie. It's just a bad little guilty pleasure.
You want a "plot" summary? There's not much to summarize. Following up the moronic ending of Hellraiser II: Hellbound, in which Pinhead was trapped in a large and ugly sculpture, he's now frozen inside it, unable to talk like he could at the end of that movie. He eventually gets freed when some blood splashes on his face (it's good to be owned by a rich junkie), and massacres a bunch of clubgoers. Meanwhile, a reporter who looks just like the first Dax on DS9 uncovers the Secret Origin of Pinhead, which is that he used to be this guy, you know. After an epic confrontation involving a bunch of gimmick-based Cenobites, Pinhead's human self sacrifices himself to keep Pinhead from destroying the world, and everyone's happy (except for the hundreds of dead folks and anyone in the audience).
Yeah, that's pretty much it. This movie is stupid, stupid, stupid, and even a few good moments (like the opening scene of chains coming out of nowhere to kill a kid in a hospital) don't make up for the massive amounts of suck. But let's talk about the one great scene, as well as the stupidity that arises from it.
The massacre at the club is fucking brilliant.
It's five minutes of chains coming out of nowhere and ripping people to shreds, combined with the doors being locked (and lots of panicking). It's grotesquely beautiful, and enhanced by silly but wonderful individualized deaths, in which a sucky DJ gets sliced open by his own CDs, or a guy sees his drink coalesce into an icicle, which then spikes him in the face. It's one of the best massacres in recent horror history (much better than the Jason Visits a Rave scene in Freddy Vs. Jason, for one). The coda of the scene -- the screams fading into nothingness as blood pours out under the locked door of the club -- caps it off perfectly.
But that scene -- easily the high point of the movie -- leads right into the low point. See, as we learned in Hellraiser 2, Cenobites aren't born; they're made. And Pinhead decides to make a handful of Cenobites out of clubgoers (as well as reporter Terry Farrell's cameraman). We get:
Disco Cenobite. The crappy club DJ has now been turned into a walking broken jukebox, spitting out razor-sharp CDs that fly through the air, slicing open his victims.
Flaming Shot Cenobite. The bartender from the club turns his previous skills into a force for evil, spitting flaming bursts of alcohol at people. It's like the dark side of Tom Cruise in Cocktail. You can almost hear Disco Cenobite spinning "Kokomo" when this guy appears.
and
POV Shot Cenobite. The poor cameraman who only dies because Terry Farrell convinces him to go to the club gets turned into a cenobite with a camera for an eye. He extends the camera to impale people.
These three guys tell us one thing: Pinhead has a lousy imagination.
Anyway, I should spend a few minutes talking about the other significant point of the movie, which is the Secret Origin of Pinhead. See, the guy he used to be was a World War I vet, but he felt ennui, so he opened a demonic puzzle box***. Naturally, he got chains in his side, and became a Cenobite. The idea that Pinhead's "human" side could fight to stop his demonic half is vaguely interesting, and it does add a little bit to the character, for what it's worth.
Overall, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth is a bad movie, but one that's watchable. Terry Farrell is always fun to look at, of course, and she's a lot more engaging here than she is on Becker, for what it's worth. And we do get an early appearance by Paula Marshall, which is always wonderful****. And Doug Bradley, as Pinhead, is as creepy as ever. I've admitted to being a fan of director Anthony Hickox, which is probably one reason I keep sitting through this film, but he doesn't show nearly as sharp a directorial vision here as he does in his campier flicks. That said, he does do a nice job with that massacre scene, and with some of the early moments featuring Pinhead encased in his pillar. Writer Peter Atkins, who gets worse with each screenplay he pens (and who didn't exactly start at Shakespearean heights to begin with) doesn't give anyone much to work with, and the F/X crew simply can't keep up with the level of gore the action sequences demand.
For all that, I still look back somewhat fondly on Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. Not only does it represent that last theatrical gasp of the franchise, but even the moments of utter failure (like the gimmicky Cenobites), are still enjoyable in a cheesy way.
*Not really.
**I hear that they pay a big Madison Avenue agency lots of money to come up with names for these movies, and there's tons of market research behind them. I bet that Hellraiser: Deader tracked real well in the much-sought-after "comparative adjectives with nothing to modify" demographic.
***If he'd been alive in the '90s, he'd just have listened to a Sunny Day Real Estate album. Just think about how much pain emo music could have saved the world if it had prevented Pinhead from being created.
****Paula will be in the American remake of Manchild, btw, which means I'll have to watch at least one episode.
This movie is the cinematic equivalent of a Twinkie. I know that there's nothing nutritious here, and that the experience won't even be that enjoyable. But for some reason, I'm compelled to keep devouring it, hoping that it'll be better than last time.
A little background: Hellraiser was a fine (if flawed) little horror film about a cute little puzzle box and the nasty demons it summons. Of those demons, the one called Pinhead (because he had a face that was perforated by pins, not because he looked like a clown named Zippy) was the one that caught everyone's attention, likely because of the backlash against the growing acupuncture fad*. Hellraiser 2 was a mediocre and sloppy sequel, but filled with enough nifty ideas that it was still a solid little horror movie.
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, on the other hand, is just bad. Mind you, it's still leagues better than Hellraiser: Bloodline (aka Cenobites in Spaaaaace), Hellraiser: Inferno, Hellraiser: Hellseeker, Hellraiser: Deader, and Hellraiser: Hellworld**. And since those films didn't exist when I first saw it, I can't use their suckitude as an excuse for enjoying the third movie. It's just a bad little guilty pleasure.
You want a "plot" summary? There's not much to summarize. Following up the moronic ending of Hellraiser II: Hellbound, in which Pinhead was trapped in a large and ugly sculpture, he's now frozen inside it, unable to talk like he could at the end of that movie. He eventually gets freed when some blood splashes on his face (it's good to be owned by a rich junkie), and massacres a bunch of clubgoers. Meanwhile, a reporter who looks just like the first Dax on DS9 uncovers the Secret Origin of Pinhead, which is that he used to be this guy, you know. After an epic confrontation involving a bunch of gimmick-based Cenobites, Pinhead's human self sacrifices himself to keep Pinhead from destroying the world, and everyone's happy (except for the hundreds of dead folks and anyone in the audience).
Yeah, that's pretty much it. This movie is stupid, stupid, stupid, and even a few good moments (like the opening scene of chains coming out of nowhere to kill a kid in a hospital) don't make up for the massive amounts of suck. But let's talk about the one great scene, as well as the stupidity that arises from it.
The massacre at the club is fucking brilliant.
It's five minutes of chains coming out of nowhere and ripping people to shreds, combined with the doors being locked (and lots of panicking). It's grotesquely beautiful, and enhanced by silly but wonderful individualized deaths, in which a sucky DJ gets sliced open by his own CDs, or a guy sees his drink coalesce into an icicle, which then spikes him in the face. It's one of the best massacres in recent horror history (much better than the Jason Visits a Rave scene in Freddy Vs. Jason, for one). The coda of the scene -- the screams fading into nothingness as blood pours out under the locked door of the club -- caps it off perfectly.
But that scene -- easily the high point of the movie -- leads right into the low point. See, as we learned in Hellraiser 2, Cenobites aren't born; they're made. And Pinhead decides to make a handful of Cenobites out of clubgoers (as well as reporter Terry Farrell's cameraman). We get:
Disco Cenobite. The crappy club DJ has now been turned into a walking broken jukebox, spitting out razor-sharp CDs that fly through the air, slicing open his victims.
Flaming Shot Cenobite. The bartender from the club turns his previous skills into a force for evil, spitting flaming bursts of alcohol at people. It's like the dark side of Tom Cruise in Cocktail. You can almost hear Disco Cenobite spinning "Kokomo" when this guy appears.
and
POV Shot Cenobite. The poor cameraman who only dies because Terry Farrell convinces him to go to the club gets turned into a cenobite with a camera for an eye. He extends the camera to impale people.
These three guys tell us one thing: Pinhead has a lousy imagination.
Anyway, I should spend a few minutes talking about the other significant point of the movie, which is the Secret Origin of Pinhead. See, the guy he used to be was a World War I vet, but he felt ennui, so he opened a demonic puzzle box***. Naturally, he got chains in his side, and became a Cenobite. The idea that Pinhead's "human" side could fight to stop his demonic half is vaguely interesting, and it does add a little bit to the character, for what it's worth.
Overall, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth is a bad movie, but one that's watchable. Terry Farrell is always fun to look at, of course, and she's a lot more engaging here than she is on Becker, for what it's worth. And we do get an early appearance by Paula Marshall, which is always wonderful****. And Doug Bradley, as Pinhead, is as creepy as ever. I've admitted to being a fan of director Anthony Hickox, which is probably one reason I keep sitting through this film, but he doesn't show nearly as sharp a directorial vision here as he does in his campier flicks. That said, he does do a nice job with that massacre scene, and with some of the early moments featuring Pinhead encased in his pillar. Writer Peter Atkins, who gets worse with each screenplay he pens (and who didn't exactly start at Shakespearean heights to begin with) doesn't give anyone much to work with, and the F/X crew simply can't keep up with the level of gore the action sequences demand.
For all that, I still look back somewhat fondly on Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. Not only does it represent that last theatrical gasp of the franchise, but even the moments of utter failure (like the gimmicky Cenobites), are still enjoyable in a cheesy way.
*Not really.
**I hear that they pay a big Madison Avenue agency lots of money to come up with names for these movies, and there's tons of market research behind them. I bet that Hellraiser: Deader tracked real well in the much-sought-after "comparative adjectives with nothing to modify" demographic.
***If he'd been alive in the '90s, he'd just have listened to a Sunny Day Real Estate album. Just think about how much pain emo music could have saved the world if it had prevented Pinhead from being created.
****Paula will be in the American remake of Manchild, btw, which means I'll have to watch at least one episode.