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Okay so this movie sucks. The first Hellraiser is a classic, dark, psychological, subtle and gory all at once. The second one is enjoyable if only for the expansion on the history of the Cenobites, but it's one of those sequels that would be absolute shit if not for my curried flavor for the original. Hellraiser III marks the fall of the series but is probably the last watchable one. Even that's a stretch.
In the first Hellraiser, our main antagonist has some rockin' snakeskin boots. Hellraiser III does not disappoint in this category. The best part is, this guy is supposed to be hip.
The box of doom figures less prominently in this film, as it's absorbed by the torture columns that the Cenobites use. The rules of the box get bent radically in this film, as Pinhead can show up pretty much whenever he damn well pleases.
The story here is totally secondary. Basically, a night club owner finds a piece of "modern art" that is actually Pinhead's tomb. A reporter catches wind of the goings-on at the nightclub and attempts to unlock the mystery of Marchand's box. It's interesting to note that in the first film, several scenes had to be cut out to make it more palatable to audiences: extended sex scenes between Julia and Frank, a spanking scene, and a scene with Frank's fingers going into the flesh on someone's neck. Five years later, a scene like this is not only in the film but a focal point for several minutes...
Bound girl? Check. Excessive nudity? Check. Excessive violence? ...
Double check. When Pinhead gets loose in the nightclub, he basically begins killing at random to sate his lust for blood, which strictly speaking goes against his purpose as a Cenobite but obviously no one cares about consistency by this point. The murders, which were skin-crawl-inducing and imaginative in the first film, are just plain silly by now.
Ol' Pinny finds his way to a church after his bloodbath in an attempt to lure the reporter to him, and he strikes a very sacrilegious pose. The effect should be chilling, but maybe he shouldn't make faces like this.
One of the reporter's friends falls victim to Pinhead, and becomes a Cenobite herself (again, this isn't how it works, but who cares). The only reason I'm including this is because I'm rather fond of female Cenobites, as my choice in Halloween costumes will attest.
After defeating Pinhead and his creations, the reporter drops the box of doom into a wet-cement slab at a construction site (why there was wet cement in the middle of the night during a full-scale Cenobite attack is anyone's guess). She should know better ...
This movie has the special distinction of being one of the few I hadn't seen prior to my marathon, and in spite of all the bad press I heard about it, it haunted me and stuck in my head. Or maybe that was just Robert Downey, Jr. Also, my man worked on this movie, so I immediately like it a little bit more.
This is one of those fantastic movies where the ending is completely open to interpretation. Is there a killer, or is the main character batshit insane? If you see this movie I would love to hear what you think, but my belief is the literal reading of the film. With that in mind, I will give you my spoiler-laden synopsis. A small east coast town was evacuated and flooded decades ago to make a dam (it was filmed at the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts, for trivialists).
A young boy, abused, ridiculed, and cross-dressed by his mentally ill mother, is chained to a bed and left to drown. He barely escapes, but as a result loses his mind and must be committed. Years later he escapes into anonymity, and years later still he begins to systemically kidnap and drown little girls (not as a sexual fascination, but as a way of completing the family his mother denied him). A mother begins to feel a psychic link with him and has insight into all of his murders. Which becomes all the more painful when her daughter disappears at his hands. This shot cuts between the mother running to the end of the pier and the body being slowly hoisted out of the water, and it's heartbreakingly beautiful.
As the mother seemingly loses her grip on reality, she begins to tap into the murderer's repressed memories, of his near-death in the drowned city, of his absent father and his cracked mother. She begins to retrace his steps in an attempt to discover his hideout and stop future murders.
Her increasing unwellness leads to her commitment, strangely enough to the same institute the young boy was sent to. She sees visions of her husband's death when he tries to follow a tip regarding their daughter's death, which no one believes of course. Eventually at her insistence and the revelation of several facts she couldn't have known without being in the murderer's head, cops are dispatched to the location in her premonitions. Oh look, he brought the doggie with him for protection.
Tapping into the murderer's memories, she finds his path of escape and follows it to his hideout, an old apple orchard out in the boonies. He is expecting her, and leads her to the next little girl he has kidnapped and tells them they are one big happy family now. Awww.
In a dramatic climax, the mother ends up sacrificing her life to lead him to the authorities, since with her daughter and husband gone she feels meaningless. He is reintroduced to the mental institution, under maximum security this time. He feels no remorse or concern since he is, after all, batshit insane and therefore safe from Death Row. He thinks he is safe until he hears a familiar, unrelenting voice in his head ...
So they recently remade Friday the 13th, which is a lie because technically they remade Part 3. The first one features Mrs. Voorhees as the killer, and the second one has Jason as a burlap-sack-wearing hillbilly. The Jason of legend, hockey mask and machete, does not appear until Part 3. I digress.
Our plucky heroine from Part 1 is attempting to live a normal life after her near-death encounter. Jason is having none of that.
Even the crazy old man from Part 1 gets it. Lesson to be learned? Don't star in a sequel if you made it out of the first one.
I know that when someone's about to go down on me, nothing gets the mood going like a little harmonica and '80s hair.
This girl is going to die. How do I know? She gets a panty shot.
Jason is an equal-opportunity murderer. In a wheelchair? He'll still give you a death worthy of a horror film.
Jason takes a cue from Michael Myers and arranges his victims in various frightening poses. Here, the artist prepares his medium.
Our new plucky heroine is touched by the devotion a little boy has for his mother.
See what I mean, he's hardly scary at all.
