All the Rest of the Hellraiser Films

After some consideration, I have decided to continue my reviews of the Hellraiser series from several years ago. After all, I am somewhat of a completionist – I can't just walk away from such a lucrative, long and historic franchise in horror, and an inspiration for so many other movies. But I also don't have the time or sanity left to actually thoroughly review through all of the rest of these films anyway. So instead, I will just provide brief summaries of what they are about and you can make your own decision.

Hellraiser: Deader

In this installment of the Hellraiser series, our protagonist is a woman who goes to Bucharest to investigate a mysterious cult and instead finds trouble waiting, which is totally surprising and stuff in a movie. I mean, when was the last time you ever heard of a movie that had conflict, trouble or problems driving its plot forward? This is really pushing the edge. The main character gets slowly drawn into the world of the Cenobites, slowly becoming more and more insane and occult driven as the runtime goes on. As an added bonus, Pinhead even appears, which is a rare thing for these films.

Hellraiser: Hellworld

In this movie, a disgruntled online gamer finds a copy of The SIMS in the trash behind his job at Denny's and plays it, only to find out that it's the Cenobites' copy of The SIMS! In it, you can make your own cast of players to act like robots with no ideas about how people really act, who open mystical boxes and end up tortured by the Cenobites, at which point the game becomes unplayable and hellish. It got very low reviews on Amazon and is now considered a collectible.

As he plays more and more and begins to neglect his job, friends and other interests, the Cenobites take over his brain. Once the gamer has become completely consumed by Pinhead's evil powers, he begins to participate more actively in Gamergate discussions, becoming more and more convinced it is a legitimate journalistic concern which has merit as a serious social problem. As he reaches the point of no return and is convinced lies about female game developers sleeping with members of the press to get good stories make for good debate, his soul is banished to hell forever where the Cenobites torture him for all time.

Hellraiser: Revelations

A film in which Pinhead has a crisis of faith and considers joining the Catholic church to repent for his years of torture, rape and unspeakable insanity. After all, he reasons with himself, if Jesus had two nails driven through his hands, surely he, with all those nails in his skull, would fit right in with the churchgoing crowd. Most of the movie is taken up by Pinhead seeing the light and going back to convince the other Cenobites to accept Christ as well by showing them why their particular methods of torture were "un-Christian."

The film was panned for being an extremely transparent propaganda vehicle for the director's obvious Christian bias, and given every Razzie award for the year it came out, but it was a hit with the kinds of people who used to bomb abortion clinics, but now just post irate comments on Twitter about God and stuff. The director infamously went on a long Facebook rant about how anyone who didn't like the film was an atheist hater who just wanted to ruin America with God-hating lies.

Most people forgot this movie existed and instead made up a totally different, random plot on Wikipedia, IMDb and Netflix as a joke, which is now taken as the real plot, as nobody has ever actually watched this film.

Hellraiser Unleashed

Art from here: http://erikkadoster.deviantart.com/art/Mini-Pinhead-48238181

The next installment in the Hellraiser series was a self-aware parody film in which Pinhead is portrayed as an incompetent doofus who can't do anything right and has a creepy lecherous side to his personality. The Cenobites are played by low-rent comedic actors nobody had ever heard of, who spend the entire movie referencing pop culture and swearing. The plot is a thinly veiled and generic pastiche of SAW, Paranormal Activity and the Purge, with numerous references to completely unrelated things just to be random. The addition of a "Mini-Me" Pinhead in the film's second act was highly criticized as gimmicky and out of touch with modern day pop culture.

One particular scene, in which Pinhead battles a grizzly bear with a chainsaw and then fucks a prostitute over the bear's body, was lauded as “so bad it's good” by Internet commenters, despite the fact that the rest of the movie was completely unwatchable dross that was “bad” on purpose.

Cenobites Spinoffs – Three Films Total

The one on the right used to be captain of his Varisty football team until he broke his ankle and made a pact with the devil to get it fixed, teaming up with the school's convenient occult nerd and wide-spanning library of Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque occult books to do so. Unfortunately he then became a Cenobite. The guy on the left was trying to shop for Christmas presents for his kid, but he was dyslexic and accidentally Googled "Satan" instead of Santa. Then he was immediately dragged down to Hell just for that, and became a Cenobite. These things were explored in excruciating detail in the three Cenobite spinoff movies.

Capitalizing on the wildfire popularity of the Hellraiser series, movie studios decided “too much of a good thing” was not a phrase that really needed to exist. So they made the Cenobites spinoffs, a series of films directed by an acclaimed fantasy movie director, who saw fit that their epic saga was told in three gigantic movies that sucked up more money than many small countries have to spend on food and education: "Cenobites: Origins," "Cenobites: The Continuations of Those Same Origins," and "Cenobites Go to the Beach and Get a Tan But Instead Just Bake Like Raw Lobsters."

The storyline chronicled a group of Cenobites who had separate lives and stories, usually involving coming-of-age storylines building up to overly dramatic falls from grace, and overt, un-subtle winks to the audience about what they would become later. Also included are lots and lots of exposition scenes where characters do nothing but read from books. The films are scored to very ominous "BWOMMMMM" Hans Zimmer soundtracks.

This guy actually had no tragic past. He was just an overweight albino who liked to wear sunglasses, and so he put his talents at BDSM torture to the first thing that came along. Fortunately (?) he got this instead of 50 Shades.

In interviews, the director said he thought he could make even more movies out of this story by splitting the ending of the third one into three more movies, like the Hydra myth where if you cut off one head, more sprout up in its place.

Upcoming Hellraiser Remake

I recently had a chance to learn about the upcoming remake, so I'll tell you guys about that now. The remake will be done a little differently than its source material, with half of the film being devoted to Pinhead's gritty, super-realistic and dark backstory. Apparently in another life, he was a super nerdy, shy kid whose mom and dad were both strippers and he got beaten up every day at school by bullying redneck kids who went and alternatively watched both of them strip just to get material to make fun of him later – or so they dubiously claimed. After years and years of this, he goes insane and sticks a bunch of pins in his head.

Then, the events of the first movie are played out in half the time in a rather uninspired manner, with the characters being “updated” versions of the ones from the first ones.

Which, really, just means they swear more and act like worse people. So it's fine. I'm sure this will be a hit with people and really revitalize the series enough for some completely unrelated team to ignore it and make a Netflix TV show rebooting it again in a few years.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

REVIEW: Candyman (1992)

I apologize in advance for the excessively gory images that you are about to see. But if they stop even one person from watching this horrible movie, then I've done my job well.

Urban legends are like the modern oral folklore. One could say they are simply a passing-down of the traditions from times before man had the written word to convey expressions and stories. If that’s the case, then Candyman is the modern equivalent of stories back then told by dumbass 15 year olds trying to scare their little siblings with tons of tasteless gore.

Director: Bernard Rose

Starring: Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd

IMDb

I really don’t know where to begin with this. It’s not like the movie has absolutely nothing going for it…they have a cool setting and they start off with a decent build up. But after that? Nothing. Even worse than movies that are all-out bad from the start are the ones that have something going but then do nothing with it, like a cool looking car that peters out on you after twenty minutes on the freeway without even hitting 80 mph. And to top it all off, this is another tale “inspired” by the “brilliance” of that lovable Clive Barker…my heart can barely contain its joy…

Well we start off with some idiot telling a story about a girl who cheated on her boyfriend while babysitting with…Joseph Gordon-Levitt from Looper?

Well, as long as Bruce Willis didn't come back trying to kill a bunch of little kids, I think it's OK that he's in this house where his girlfriend is babysitting.

And they have a rather bizarre method of foreplay…telling stories about a supernatural serial killer called Candyman who appears when you say his name five times in a mirror and then guts and disembowels you with a bloody meat hook. They even start groping one another and the girl even takes off her shirt while they’re talking about this! How perfectly insane!

"Oh baby, talking about people getting murdered with a rusty hook and disemboweled really turns me on! Almost as much as picking each others' noses or talking about our embarrassing bowel movements after eating Chipotle!"

Anyway, they get killed and we get introduced to the real main characters – Highlander 2 survivor Virginia Madsen and her best friend, Token Intelligent Sophisticated Black Woman. They’re doing a study on urban legends for a graduate school class, and throughout the first half hour we get a lot of different people telling stories to them, sometimes when they don’t even plan it, about various urban legends they hear of, including the Candyman story. It’s kind of hokey, but it actually does create some suspense…suspense that the rest of the movie will fail to live up to.

Madsen’s husband is a dorky looking professor at the same school, because that happens so much! And their marriage is so good that she immediately gets jealous whenever a young girl even looks at him the wrong way…yeah, I’m sure she’s a great catch…pfft.

Madsen and her friend discover an interesting fact about their apartment building; that it was actually built the same way as another building called Cabrini Green where everyone apparently lives in fear of the Candyman who was mentioned before. So they hatch a plot to go break into Cabrini Green while dressing like they’re going to experience a winter in Russia.

Off for a Siberian winter in ghettoville...

Inside, they find some pictures and graffiti on the wall that all points toward the larger-than-life Candyman myth that has taken hold of Cabrini Green – I really like the setting here, and more movies should utilize this kind of ghetto urbanized city setting for a horror movie plot. Again though, the movie will eventually even throw this out the window and replace it with overwrought hokey nonsense masquerading as something “deep.” Doesn’t that sound fun?

We also get the story of Candyman told by a fat guy who looks like Ben Franklin’s loser cousin…apparently he was a slave who fell in love with a white noblewoman and got her pregnant, so a bunch of villagers killed him with bees.

Trouble strikes, however, when Madsen talks to a little boy who tells her to go look in the public bathroom where some other little kid allegedly got his balls cut off by the Candyman. She goes inside, finds some bugs using the toilet, and gives them some privacy:

After that, she’s confronted by some gang members who give her a black eye for using their favorite bathroom…because a black eye is always the WORST thing a whole group of violent thugs can do to a vulnerable white woman who they have cornered! I’m totally convinced!

But seriously, THIS is what I mean when I say the movie had potential! We could have had a very interesting take on urban legends by having the whole thing end up a hoax perpetuated by gang members who want to rule the neighborhood. Maybe some slight supernatural leanings would have been OK if they were really vague, but if I was re-doing this story, I sure wouldn’t have gone full-out Nightmare on Elm Street mode after this. Ugh. What could have been a great commentary on poverty and believing in myths reduced to a third-rate slasher horror movie with as much imagination as a pet rock. That’s great, guys. Just great.

OK, back to the review, back to the review…so after telling on the gang members, Madsen is confronted again in the parking lot by the real Candyman! He talks in a cool voice and…that’s really about it. If you thought Pinhead was too white, or the guy from Lord of Illusions was too lame, well Candyman is for you!

The Lord of Disappointingly Boring Scenes cometh!

I’m not going to lie…after this scene, the movie just gives up. It doesn’t even bother to try anymore. The movie just turns into a really bloody slasher movie with nothing good about it. Disappointment, thy name is Candyman…I’ve seriously rarely ever seen a movie just up and stop dead in its tracks like this, just cease to be relevant or meaningful on any level beyond hey, look at our cool special effects! Well, not since The Dark Knight Rises, anyway.

But I digress again…do you like severed dogs’ heads and screaming, crying women and lots of blood all over the place? Is that your idea of what constitutes real fear? Well then you’ll love this scene.

OOH, A DOG'S HEAD! LOOK AT ALL THIS GORE!!!

And there's some BLOOD and KNIVES and SCREAMING and oooh, just so creepy, right?! WE ARE THE EDGY ONES! LOOK AT US AS WE BREAK SOCIAL TABOOS! So violent and gross!

Apparently Madsen has been framed for the murder of a dog, the kidnapping of a baby and the smearing of a ton of red paint all over the walls…amazing…and the cops who were previously very understanding to her plight are now total jackasses without even one inch of any kind of humanity towards her!

After another scene in which the Candyman brutally murders her best friend for no reason...

This just pisses me off. I know characters die in horror movies, it's just part of the territory, but this was just SO BADLY DONE of a scene! There's a difference between adding kills to scare the audience and just being straight up cruel, which is what this is. Needlessly, relentlessly cruel. Why did this character deserve to be murdered in such a brutal, undignified way? What was her crime outside of being dumb enough to take a minor role in a Clive Barker film? Fuck you, Candyman.

...Madsen is institutionalized and kept there on drugs for a whole month. The doctor calls her into his office one day seemingly at random, and to prove that the Candyman is real, she decides to look into the randomly placed mirror on the wall and say his name five times. Even though she KNOWS HE’S GOING TO POP UP AND KILL THE GUY…she just does it anyway! What, did the drugs addle her brain so much that she forgot he was a killing machine? Did she think he was just going to sit down with them for a polite discussion about how he framed her for all the murders so far? Oh well, who cares…GORE!

Killing off a random doctor who was just trying to help? Great job, Virginia Madsen...great job...you deserve a Darwin Award at this point. If she had just SHUT HER DAMN MOUTH and NOT summoned him from the mirror, this whole thing could have been avoided. 

Then she finds out her husband is shacked up with one of his much younger students, but really Madsen herself was already a student to begin with…so really, he just moved from one nubile young woman to another. What a pedophile. I bet he and that weird priest from Pinocchio’s Revenge would get along fine.

"I actually listen to his confessions every week..."

So she runs off to look at the ocean while Candyman intones some more pseudo-intellectual poetry over the scene, because that’s really all he’s got besides framing random young women for murder. He should look into other hobbies, like doing movie trailer voice-overs, since that one deep-voiced guy who used to do them has sadly passed away – I think Candyman would be a great substitute personally. He has just the right amount of dramatic deep-toned grittiness in his voice...hey, wait, what was I talking about again? The movie is so dull that I actually completely went off topic.

How is a film with this much admittedly decent gore effects so BORING anyway? It's practically the eighth wonder of the world. By all human logic, there should at least be some kind of enjoyment out of how ridiculous and tasteless the gore is, but the tone of the movie is so suffocatingly serious and somber that I can't even enjoy the gore! It just comes off as mean spirited, ugly and unpleasant.

But what the hell is Candyman's plan, anyway? Kill everyone who can help Virginia Madsen until she goes so crazy that she has to love him? That’s stupid. Almost as stupid as this scene:

Yeah, maybe a better dental plan is in order.

He forces her to come die with him in a big bonfire conveniently happening that night, only she stabs him with a big burning stake and saves herself and the kidnapped child. After that, we get a scene of her husband and his new fuck-buddy hanging out in his apartment as he cries in his room about how Madsen is dead…how are we supposed to feel bad for the scumbag who just ditched the woman he married in a time of need to start dating someone probably not even 21 yet?

"I'm looking in a mirror while wearing a sad expression...aren't I so deep and tormented?"

The movie doesn’t know either, because after that, he says Madsen’s name five times and she somehow appears to him in ghost-form and kills him with a hook! The film then ends on a “shocking” gore sequence, which maybe would have been shocking if we hadn't seen the same effects like 12 times by this point...

Aw, man, now she'll have to clean the bathroom and everything!

Are you surprised? I’m not! Why would anyone be at this point? I can think of painful surgical procedures more enjoyable than this movie. How did anyone ever find redeeming qualities in this? All the decent ideas in the beginning are just thrown in the garbage in favor of tastelessly done gore that adds nothing to the atmosphere or overall story. The Candyman himself is dull as hell and doesn't do anything half the time besides just intone boring monologues at a snail's pace, and the whole thing is just a drag to watch, too, as it tries so hard to be all deep and profound, with all its deep-voiced narrations over wide-panned shots of the city, when really all it is is a stupid slasher movie huffing and puffing to try and make itself look cooler and more serious.

Candyman is a very nasty, stupid, unpleasant movie with nothing at all to say and no real value to anyone who wants more out of a film than gore effects Tom Savini could do better on one of his off days. It doesn't even work as a gore flick because the whole thing tries so hard like I mentioned – the people who want some over the top gore will be bored by the attempts at being all artsy and atmospheric, which are as clumsy and hamfisted as I've ever seen. It pleases neither audience.

This is one of the worst movies I've ever reviewed on this site, and I feel very confident in saying I cannot see what anyone finds appealing about it. As a straightforward horror flick it’s a boring plod-along, but as an attempt at being anything else – anything with more atmosphere or cerebral satisfaction to its scares – it's just sad and a total waste of brain cells from everyone involved. Candyman can go right to hell and I am glad I will never have to sit through this crap again!

Images copyright of their original owners.

REVIEW: Lord of Illusions (1995)

Am I dreaming? Is this movie part of some kind of freakish, nightmareish sub-reality in my mind brought on by some guy sticking his fingers in my head? Is Clive Barker stupid or actually so subtly gifted and talented that I can’t even perceive how great he truly is? Was the Kennedy assassination the work of a lone gunman, or was there something more at work? For the answers to all of these questions…don’t watch this movie, because it’ll just confuse the shit out of you and you’ll spend your time pondering the answers to those questions PLUS the myriad more brought on by the film’s insanity. Trust me. I know. I’m a survivor of Lord of Illusions.

Director: Clive Barker

Starring: Scott Bakula, Kevin J. O'Connor

IMDb

After watching this, you will be transformed! Transformed into someone who hates the art of cinema! Into someone who thinks the only way to make a good movie is lots of referential crap to dated stuff that nobody watches anymore, plus tons and tons of gore! Transformed into a mindless slave of the Clive Barker cult of nonsense!

The film begins with some people going in to stop this fat, balding guy who apparently has magical powers from using those powers to do something with a girl he kidnapped – it’s not entirely clear what his plan is. Except, of course, for being a fat, balding guy with no charisma, charm or acting skills…seriously, what is the draw to this guy? People are apparently worshiping him and lining up to join his magic cult thing, but this is the first really big hole. Who would follow this guy? He’s about as charming as a wooden fence post.

So yeah, I’m not kidding here, THIS is the leader of these mercenaries…rebels…whatever the hell they are:

What is that? The bastard child of Steve Buscemi and a weedwacker? Well, whatever, he goes in and tries to save the girl, telling her it will be OK but not actually saving her yet. Isn’t that the best kind of rescue? Also, why do they always gag people in movies where they can still talk? Doesn’t that go against the point of a gag?

She can clearly still talk through that, and as we'll see in a few scenes, she can still pick up and use a weapon even with her wrists tied like they are. So basically this is a failure of a hostage situation.

Then we see the best method of villainous plotting ever conceived – hanging out behind a rotating wall and then dramatically revealing yourself when you could have just stabbed your enemy from the start when he came into the room:

I guess the plot here is that this magician guy, Nix, is obsessed for some reason that is never fully made clear with that Steve Buscemi lookalike, whose name is Swann, and so he wants to “show him the truth of the flesh” or some inane bullshit; you know, the usual Clive Barker formula. Have a guy intone deeply and say cool sounding things that mean nothing, and then play some gory shots over it that also mean nothing. Maybe his philosophy is that two meaningless things, when put together, will create something of substance. But I think it’s fair to say it just annoys the living piss out of his audience and makes him look like a giant tool.

Then Nix gets shot in the back by the hostage girl he tied up. Gee. Maybe you shouldn’t have left her hands untied enough for her to use a gun. And maybe you shouldn’t have been so unobservant as to let her near that gun in the first place. You’re really not much in the brains department either, are you Nix? How the hell are people following this guy again?! They bury him underground and say he’ll never come back, but since the movie still has an hour and a half left, how much do you wanna bet he comes back?

They're putting down their bets right now...and hoping to win! The woman in the middle is putting all her rent money on the table even.

Oh, and this was all in less than the first ten minutes, by the way. Isn’t that a beauty? I’ve talked about so much already and the movie isn’t even close to starting its main plot yet. Ugh…

We then fast forward 13 years to New York City, where some private detective named Harry D’Amour gets a house call from his boss, generic frumpy white businessman. The conversation that follows is – I’m not gonna lie here – probably the most generic movie conversation ever made in the history of cinema. The guy in the suit says he has a job for D’Amour, who is skeptical about it while popping a bottle of beer. But we know he’s going to say yes and just go. Why wouldn’t he? When in the history of movies has the drunken, down-and-out detective ever said no to the One Final Job?

5 o'clock shadow? Rich 1%er boss with one last mission for him? Alcoholism problem? All checked off! You are officially the lead character in your very own terrible detective story...and seriously, how poorly acted is this character anyway? He blends into the background so much you almost forget he's even there most of this movie. I mean, he's only supposed to be our moral center of things. I guess that wasn't important.

So he ends up in Los Angeles chasing some guy who apparently is conning someone. He follows some guy to a fortune teller’s office where he finds a guy holding the fortune teller hostage, having already stabbed him several times in the chest. Then D’Amour is attacked by some bald bodyguard guy. How will D’Amour beat this guy? He slams the door in his face aaaaaaand that stops him cold!

Ugggghhhhhhh doors!!! I was trained for everything except fighting through them! Doors are my mortal enemies!

When the bodyguard FINALLY gets through the door several minutes later, D’Amour throws him out a window. Truly this guy was the best henchman ever. Then the other guy leaves as well, leaving D’Amour to tend to the wounded fortune teller, who dies. What are D’Amour’s chilling, poetic words to summarize witnessing such a painful death scene? None other than “Shit.” That’s all he says, and isn’t it just perfect? I think I’ve heard better eulogies from a five year old flushing her goldfish down the toilet.

So I guess the story behind this is that someone or something is killing off all the members of the squad who brought down that Nix character 13 years ago. Why did the killer take 13 years to get started with that brilliant plot? Because that fits the time this movie was released in the mid 90s. There literally is no other reason besides that. D’Amour gets hired by the wife of that Swann weirdo who is now a big time stage magician, who wants him to figure out what the hell is going on. Even though…he was already doing that anyway and didn’t need to be hired twice. Oh, wait! I know the reason!

"We have no reason to be attracted to one another besides the fact that I'm the main hero in a poorly written film noir detective story! Let's have sex!"

Literally without even saying anything, you know they’re going to have sex before the movie ends. It’s that friggin’ obvious. Why else even have this shit in the movie at all, if not for a cheap and poorly written romantic “plot”? This movie is as predictable as a weather forecast in the middle of a drought. I know it’s trying to be all homage-y to classic film noirs and detective stories, but god, would at least a little bit of energy and cleverness be too much to ask for?

Then D’Amour ends up going to one of Swann’s shows with the wife, whose name is Dorothea. The show is…well, it’s not really much of a magic show. It’s more like what would qualify at the video store as “special interest.”

Is that the Yogurt statue from Spaceballs?

Yeah, nice Power Rangers poses there you morons.

If you like seeing a bunch of mostly naked men wrapped up in metal wiring dancing around a statue of an ambiguously Indian-looking idol statue, well, then you would be in for a treat. I just imagine here all the people who brought their young children to see this, expecting a magic show. Wouldn’t this be just so strange to them?

Then Swann performs his ultimate trick – bloody, violent death!

Eh, I've seen better magic shows. 7/10.

And in the words of Harry D’Amour to describe the situation: “Shit.” That about sums it up.

Afterwards, D’Amour investigates some other magician guy and comes across the name Nix, which he figures is connected to the deaths of all these people, and when he asks Dorothea about it, she sends her butler to tell him to stop working and go home. So he finds out what she was looking for and she doesn’t like it? He DID HIS JOB, WHAT SHE ASKED HIM TO DO, and her response is telling him she doesn’t like it? What the hell? Is some kind of semblance of a logical sequence of events REALLY THAT HARD? Jesus Christ, Clive Barker! What’s wrong with you? Can’t you even just…try, for once, to write something that isn’t totally talentless hack work and just, maybe, I dunno, might be a crazy idea, TELL A REAL STORY? God!

So after that D’Amour ends up going over to Dorothea’s mansion where they have this conversation:

D’AMOUR: [Swann] thought Nix was coming back, didn’t he? Didn’t he?

[DOROTHEA slams her hands on the table and looks distressed.]

D’AMOUR: I can’t help you unless you talk to me.

DOROTHEA: Nobody can help me.

Normally dialogue like this wouldn’t be anything worth pointing out, except for what follows:

I mean really, REALLY?! "Oh, I just want to help you solve this crime" = making out with a stripper pole between your boobs? What universe is this?

Well, I called it, and it was totally predictable that they would end up having sex. But honestly, what the hell led to this? They were talking about the case and then, bam, they were making out, and one scene later they were in bed. Did Barker just miss a page of the script where they started flirting with one another? There was no build up to this at all! Usually there’s…something, at least, like a scene or two of them sort of being coy with one another, but here it’s literally just a totally unrelated conversation leading to them doing it! It’s like a parody of a film noir rather than a homage. But then again, expecting Clive Barker to start understanding anything about human interaction now would be an exercise in futility.

Then we see the worst special effects this side of Cube II: Hypercube as the ghost of Nix chases them around the palace and stuff:

If they were going for "childish red crayon scribble" then they got that one 100% correct!

After that, we find out that Swann is actually still alive, and faked his death so that the ghost of Nix would leave him and his loved ones alone. This is so stupid that even a dunce like D’Amour can point out the holes in it, like that Dorothea was the one who actually shot and killed Nix to begin with, so why wouldn’t he go after her anyway? It all just comes to point out how much of a goddamn pussy Swann is, and him being alive…really adds nothing to the rest of the movie, seeing as it’s almost over. So why add it? To pad out the running time, of course!

So apparently that one guy from earlier, who killed that fortune teller, is the main villain now as he kidnaps Dorothea and takes her to the site from the beginning of the movie, where they raise Nix from the grave as the incarnate of Frank from the first Hellraiser movie:

Can you tell this was made by the same guy yet? If the poorly written story and lack of serious atmosphere didn't give it away...

He almost kills Dorothea, but D’Amour saves her. Nix decides that he wants to explode Swann’s brain, so he does exactly that, rendering him a brainless vegetable. Then we see that he corrupts D’Amour by sticking his fingers in his head and making him see other people like this:

Well to be fair watching Clive Barker movies for too long makes me see people that way too.

…until Dorothea shoots Nix in the head and kills him!

Oh, did I say that kills him? I’m sorry. I meant he’s still alive after being shot! I always get those two confused…and seriously, can’t this shit JUST END ALREADY?! They push him down into a hole and kill him that way. What did we learn from this? That if you push people into holes and shoot them, they die? What the hell was the point of any of this garbage? I feel ill just thinking of the time wasted on this that I could have been using for something more productive, like watching paint dry, or reading my neighbors’ tax returns.

Lord of Illusions’ only real illusion is that it somehow got green lighted. You thought you were getting a good movie, movie studios? Well POOF! Bait and switch and you’re left with Lord of Illusions. God, what a mess. Did people ever really take this seriously? I mean Hellraiser is one thing; that at least had an iconic and memorable main villain. This? This has N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Sigh. It’s like Clive Barker has some kind of magical spell over his audiences blinding them to his talentlessness…some kind of strange pull over the minds of the weak…

…nah, people are just too easy to please and that’s all there is to it.

REVIEW: Hellraiser (1987)

Have you ever wondered what would happen if your dead occult-obsessed brother came back to life in the attic of your new house and needed human flesh and blood in order to sustain himself and eventually return to his old self? Me too. This is Hellraiser.

Director: Clive Barker

Starring: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093177/

"We are demons to some; angels to others."

-Pinhead 

This is one of those classic horror movies that polarizes audiences even to this day. It was made by resident cheap-ass hack director Clive Barker in the days before he was responsible for movies like Midnight Meat Train and Candyman, and while I don’t have much vitriol to espouse upon it, I’m not raving either, and even if you like this movie, there are certainly some really goofy things about it that I have to point out or else I’ll never be able to sleep right again! Well, okay, maybe not. But…just get on with it.

The movie starts out with a guy named Frank buying an ancient Rubix Cube from a man who you know is trustworthy because his fingernails are dirtier than the underbelly of a gas station bathroom sink:

PERSONAL HYGEEEEEEIIIIIINNNNNEEEEE!

Anyway, then he goes back to his house and sits in a big circle of candles:

Not even a Satanic ritual could make this movie any good. And what, did that puzzle box thing come with instructions as to what to do?

Then we get the greatest puzzle never solved by man!

Are you shocked yet?!

Then we see our actual main characters of the film, Larry and Julia, a couple of unlikable assholes moving into a house. Larry’s daughter Kirsty is also in town and although she makes a big to-do on the phone about not coming, she ends up coming over in two scenes anyway – spoilers! There’s also a couple of guys helping them move who apparently will ogle any woman who comes by, including Julie as well as Kirsty – they really have no shame, do they? They do it RIGHT IN FRONT OF LARRY.

I especially love this one line where the younger doofus says to Kirsty, “she’s got her mother’s looks,” thinking that Julia is her mother. Larry curtly responds, “Her mother is dead.”

"I was directed to be as big of a douche as I possibly could! Hur hur hur..."

Yeah, you get back to work, you stupid idiot you.

Then we see Julia going up to the attic to fantasize about the one time she had sex with Larry’s brother Frank, who was the guy from the opening. Yup, the movie’s focal character is a lady who continually fantasizes about screwing her husband’s brother – isn’t that just charming? I don’t even think it was an ongoing affair – the movie makes it seem like it was just one time that they had sex, and she just never got over it. What a sad sap.

I actually kind of think this is an interesting plot point, and a decent enough commentary on marriage, but the way they present it is just a bit awkward with it just being a one night stand she had and keeps fantasizing about constantly – maybe if they didn’t keep cutting to flashbacks of the two of them screwing every time Julia is on screen it would be a little more tasteful and realistic, but as it is, the movie just comes off as comical, which I know it wasn't going for…but enough of that; we got BLOODY HANDS to show as Larry cuts himself on a conveniently protruding nail while trying to move the mattress, and then whines about it for like a whole scene like a big wuss:

I’m not sure hands bleed THAT much, movie, not from a cut from a nail…and why did he come all the way up to the attic like that instead of just running to the sink to clean the cut out? And why didn’t those two other morons help him with it? Was that just not in their contract? Are they only obligated to help women they can sexually coerce later?

Also now we see that the floors are able to soak up blood; how convenient! And in return they spit out a bloody skeleton of Larry’s dead brother Frank, who looks like an anorexic Freddy Krueger.

This whole bulimia thing is really getting out of hand...

So then we see a dinner scene in which Julia’s thoughts are dominated by that one night of sex with Frank all those years ago and apparently nothing else at all, literally. I guess it must have been pre-etty good…and Larry just makes stupid conversations…that guy is kind of lame actually.

But you know what ISN’T lame? Random hobos watching you when you go on a date afterwards!

In between his porn reading sessions and his street peddling for change to buy more porn, he just ogles any couple who walks by I guess, being that there's NO WAY he can know Kirsty is going to be involved in the film's events, which is what the movie is actually suggesting...

I also found it weird that Kirsty and her date go home but sleep in different beds…kinda defeats the purpose of a one night stand there, guys.

Meanwhile, Frank the skeleton blood boy in the attic tells Julia that she has to help him become whole again by feeding him human blood and flesh, and like any sane person she doesn’t question it one bit; just starts picking up guys at bars while looking like distilled 80s loneliness, sunglasses and sports coat and high heels and all. The guys she picks up are pretty much the nerdiest guys Clive Barker could find on short notice; probably his Sunday Dungeons and Dragons group.

And yay, probably the worst possible way of hiding a body: when your husband comes home, make sure NOT to just leave the body in the empty attic where no one even goes, and DO drag it across the hallway where it could be very visible if he happened to walk past at the wrong time. You’re so smart, Julia!

I don't think I've ever seen a worse attempt to cover up a murder in a serious film. This is pretty much rock bottom on the list of stupid things you can do.

While that’s going on, Kirsty sees the weird homeless guy in her pet shop and he eats some bugs and then disappears randomly; glad that scene was in the movie!

Frank gets crazier and crazier, even going so far as to cut a dead rat up over the bed while Julia and Larry attempt to have sex! How utterly shocking! Julia gets freaked out so much that she starts crying, and of course Larry thinks it’s his fault – you’ll have to excuse him. He is just a true blue simple country boy from the sticks! I just love the look on his face here:

"All I knows how t' do is milk cows!"

Kirsty goes to her dad’s house but sees Julia inviting in one of the idiots she picked up from a bar. She also sees Frank killing him, and Frank tries to calm her down, but I don’t think that works very well when he looks like he took a bath in a pool of human entrails. And when that doesn’t work, he tries the sexual harassment route that…pretty much makes no sense, being that we never even saw any evidence that he acted that way towards Kirsty before. Movie, if you want to tell a gross-out sub-plot like this, BRING IT IN EARLIER. Don’t just shove it in randomly to shock the audience for two seconds and then discard it later! 

I'm sorry, but it’s really hard to defend liking this movie when it has scenes like this one. He calls her all kinds of creepy pet names and it’s just downright despicable how much this movie is pandering. It’s just so odd because Barker actually has some very solid scares and atmosphere in this movie – why did he need to resort to scenes like this? It’s not just this one time, either…almost every time Frank is on screen, we get this kind of lewd, low-brow garbage haphazardly forced in that just takes the viewer out of the movie. Ugh.

Kirsty steals his magical Rubix cube and summons the Cenobites, renowned the world over for giving piercing artists more money than anyone else. These characters are pretty vaguely defined right now, but they’re supposed to be some kind of demonic figures who make people repent for various sins they’ve committed, or something like that. I don’t know – they are cool looking, but they don’t really get much screen time here.

Look at this guy. He's too cool for the actual movie he's in.

The Cenobites make a deal with her that they’ll let her live if she brings them to Uncle Frank, who escaped from their torture dimension place, because yeah, these guys look like they’d be the type to make deals…and also, how come these guys can't just find Frank themselves? It seems like they should be able to, given all the other stuff they can do! Are you really telling me these intergalactic torture aficionados with magical powers can't find one little escapee from their dimension? I'm sorry, I just think it's a little silly that these guys don't take any precautions in case this ever happens. Sure, you could say they never thought it would - but no; these guys seem way too smart to even let it happen, let alone be so incompetent that they have to rely on a puny little human to help them recapture their prey.

She goes back to the house and gets jump scared by her mom’s arm on the stairs even though she should have clearly been able to see her coming down:

"AHH! AN ARM!" Seriously, weakest jump scare I've seen in a while.

Uncle Frank has apparently, somehow, it’s never explained, taken over Larry’s body, and Kirsty takes a long time to notice, despite the fact that he has blood all over his face and hands…

Yeah, not noticeable at all when you're sitting right in front of him, right? You could make the argument that she was just in shock. But frankly, I think that's a bit of a stretch.

Is everybody in this movie just blind? No, really. Tell me the truth.

Frank kills Julia by accident – real smart bad guy this movie has! – and then goes up to the attic where Pinhead kills him and he utters the line “Jesus wept.” Why? Because it would later sound good as a soundbyte on many black metal albums. Then the Cenobites start to blow up the house and try to kidnap Kirsty, only her boyfriend shows up – man this guy has bad timing. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on, but it all just really starts to drag. The film finally ends with that crazy hobo from before picking up the Rubix cube and turning into a winged hell-spawn and flying away…yup, that’s the end. Phew. Doesn’t make sense? Who cares, it’s over!

I can’t say I hated this movie, but it had a few big problems. I really don’t think the three main characters were well written, which is bad because we see them constantly. Sure, you don’t have to make every character likable and honorable, far from it - they can be loathsome wretches; but these characters are just too simplistic. Frank is just so blatantly crude that he’s almost a caricature, and he doesn’t have much at all in the way of character depth or texture – he’s pretty much a cardboard cutout; nothing he does really paints a good picture of a character. He just serves as a plot device for gross-out scenes. Julia is blindly stupid and doesn’t have any real personality beyond “Oh, I really miss that one night stand I had twenty years ago before I was married!” And Larry is so bland he might as well not even be there. These characters are the focus of the movie, so even though there are other things I like, the blunt, rather caveman-like character construction and writing makes it really hard to get into at times.

However, the film does have a great morbid atmosphere to it when the Cenobites show up, sort of like a darker Nightmare on Elm Street or something, and the story progresses in a rather noir-meets-occult type of fashion that reminds me of really old school Gothic horror. Doug Bradley is a great actor as Pinhead, and whenever he’s on screen the movie is suddenly really awesome.

If this film had just focused more on giving us that chilling elegant-yet-perverse dichotomy of scares that it is so good at yet only really shows us in like 2-minute intervals, rather than trying to let the trinity of unlikable assholes drive the movie forward. As it is, Hellraiser is flawed and boorish but still pretty interesting, if not an absolute gem of its genre…but hey, at least I don’t have to review any of the sequels! I mean, there are like a dozen of those things! Why would I ever subject myself to that?

What’s that? You’re daring me to do it? You don’t think I can survive a whole month of reviewing these things? YOU’RE ON. THIS IS PROJECT HELLRAISER!

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