Sunday, January 3, 2010

Hellraisers.

I just finished watching Hellraiser VIII: Hellworld. This is officially the end of the Hellraiser movie series, which ranges from the original from 1987 to the aforementioned, which came out (straight to video, I may add) in 2005. I have officially seen all of them, and as it was quite an arduous and occasionally painful venture, I feel that it behooves me to reflect upon it.

The series began in a stroke of genius based heavily upon Clive Barker's novella The Hellbound Heart. The first movie bore a strong semblance to the novella, and the second movie bore a strong semblance to the first. The third made slightly less sense and took some deviation from the previous two, but I would still consider it to loosely resemble Clive Barker's original brainchild. This movie marks the loss of the Cenobites' ambiguity: they are no longer angels to some, demons to others; it is quite clear that Pinhead and his posse are truly "bad guys" bent on the destruction of humanity.

The fourth movie was completely different, and was mainly just backstory about the Lemarchand box, the man who made it, and all of his offspring and offspring's offspring. It weasles its way into the future (approximately 200 years ahead, in fact) and we get to see the ultimate destruction of Pinhead, the doorway that one may open to get to hell (the Lament Configuration), and a space ship all at once. You'd think the series would be through, but remember, we still have 200 years of destruction to map out.
The fifth movie was, perhaps, the ultimate failure in the series. It made very little sense, had no likeable characters in it, and the only real reason you could call it Hellraiser at all was because it had Pinhead in it...albeit about ten minutes of him in total. Even Doug Bradley, the actor that brought Pinhead to screen all eight times, admits that this is his least favorite of all the films. Here is proof, from an interview that I recently stumbled upon:
*Marcus:: Now which is your favorite installment and which is your least favorite installment in the HELLRAISER series?
Doug:: I would say that my favorite is still the first movie and INFERNO is my least favorite.
Marcus:: Inferno was number 5 right?
Doug:: Yeaaaaah*
This movie was also the first in which Pinhead goes from being the aggressor to a sort of immoral compass, where he tortures the torturers and wags his finger at those who do wrong upon others.
The sixth movie has Kirsty in it again, but not even she can save it from being lumped in with the fifth movie and the seventh movie. All of these movies have less and less Pinhead, less and less plot line, and make less and less sense. Kirsty has gotten married to an all-around chump, and she ends up trading his soul and the souls of four of his friends and lovers to get Pinhead and his cronies off her back for good. The seventh involves some strange cult that is headed by a distant relative of Lemarchand whom we never met in Hellraiser IV: Bloodline. He looks like he's trying to be Trent Reznor, he can bring people back to life by making out with them, and he can't open the Lament Configuration...which is his ultimate goal in life! At least, I think it is. I couldn't grasp all of the fragments of plot in this movie long enough to have it make sense.
This brings me to the eighth movie...oh, the eighth movie. It had more Pinhead than the last three movies combined! It had a creative (although I use this term loosely) drugged-then-buried-alive plot of which Edgar Allen Poe would have been proud! It...still made very little sense! Despite the marked lack of a decent plot, I must say that this was my favorite of the last four gomers. The acting wasn't nearly as bad as V-VII; on some level I found the group of dumb teens in the movie to be endearing. Pinhead was still spanking the baddies of the world. His last line in any of the H films was, "I should have taken care of you long ago!" Ouch, Doug, ouch.
All in all, if ranking the Hellraiser dynasty in order from most liked to least liked, I would have to put them like this:

1. Hellraiser- can't beat the original
2. Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth
3. Hellraiser IV: Bloodline
4. Hellraiser II: Hellbound
5. Hellraiser VIII: Hellworld
6. Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker
7. Hellraiser VII: Deader
8. Hellraiser V: Inferno