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Hellraiser, Hellbound:Hellraiser 2, and Hellraiser 3:Hell On Earth
So recently I decided to purchase a copy of Hellraiser 3: Hell On Earth. There's a lot of things wrong with this, most of which have to do with the fact that I've been known to tell anyone with whom I ever end up in a discussion about the Hellraiser movies (which is more that one person, which says a lot about my life and the people I associate with) that Hellraiser 3 sucks ass. However, over the last few days I felt the (unexplicable) urge to watch Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 for absolutely no reason whatsoever.[1]
So I just finished watching most of Hellraiser 3, and I felt the urge to write something about it, because I'm pretty sure that Hellraiser 3 is the worst fucking movie I have ever fucking seen in my entire fucking life. [2] Just sayin'.
But here's the other thing, OK? The thing about Hellraiser 3 is that not only is it totally fucking awful, it also makes no sense at all within the context of the other Hellraiser movies. In order to explain this, let me give you a quick synopsis of the Hellraiser movies.
Hellraiser
OK so there's this dude named Frank and he likes fucked-up shit. One day he's playing with this box and then he gets killed by chains. Later, Frank's brother Larry and Larry's slut wife move into Frank's house. Through soft-focus flashbacks, we learn that Frank fucked Larry's slut wife, and apparently swung the big beef in such a manner that Slut Wife lady gets all misty just thinking about it. Larry cuts his hand moving a bed and bleeds on the floor and somehow this brings Frank back from some weird place where he has been stuck getting tortured by dudes and pulled on by chains. (This probably all makes more sense if you also directed Night Breed, which also made no sense.) Slut Wife gets all randy thinking about bumpin' uglies with a dude with no skin, and brings a series of tossers over for a little of the old pinch n' squeal, which ends with her tonking them on the head with a hammer and Frank sucking their blood. Eventually, Frank has a smoke and this other chick figures out what's going on andthen she punches Frank in the dick. We learn that there's this fucked-up box that summons these fucked-up dudes who like to do freaky shit, and they show up and the chick tricks Frank and he gets killed by chains (again.)
Hellbound: Hellraiser 2
Anyways, Hellraiser 3 starts out kinda like this, and then somewhere in the middle the FUDWLTDFS show up and suddenly the movie takes off in a completely different direction. Basically, the head FUDWLTDFS is the Pinhead guy who is the recognizable face of the franchise. In the first 2 movies his deal was he wanted to do fucked up shit, and when someone opened the box he came from (somewhere) and gave them an aggressive handjob (or something) before killing them with chains. That was pretty much his deal.
Anyways, in Part 3 suddenly that dude's all like "I want to take over the world and make everyone do fucked up shit." Not only is this totally fucking boring, but it makes the second half of the movie play out like the most bondage-oriented episode of X-Men ever; Pinhead recruits a bunch of new FUDWLTDFS, and they're all super lame. There's the dude who was the Club DJ, and now he throws CDs that kill people. There's the guy who was the club bartender, and now he mixes drinks with gasoline and then breathes fire to ignite them. There's the dude who was the TV cameraman and now he kills people with a camera and says "that's a wrap!" Are you fucking kidding me? It's like they hired a bunch of 3rd graders to design superheros and then asked people at Goth Night to design costumes for them.
The other problem with this is that it doesn't make any fucking sense, especially in the context of the first two movies. I'm not saying that the first 2 Hellraiser movies are masterworks or anything, but they were cool because they were all about horror in a somewhat abstract way; the FUDWLTDFS (in the movies they're called "Cenobites," but there's no fucking way I'm playing that game) were interesting because while they were clearly meant to be scary, they weren't exactly the "bad guys." In fact, their whole presence seemed largely neutral; they didn't care about good or evil or whatever, they just wanted to put their finger in your butt. With this in mind, having Pinhead suddenly become the bondage version of Skeletor in Part 3 just seems like movement in the wrong direction.
OK then!
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