The Bad...

Hellraiser

Okay, so I admit it! I was the last person on the planet to watch "Hellraiser." I've been meaning to, but I was always too busy driving metal spikes into my head. I finally ran out of spikes the other day and decided to give this movie a wack.

Over the years many people have told me how scary "Hellraiser" was. One woman I know asked that I never even mention the name of the movie because it had so scared her. I was like, "it was so scary that you can't handle anyone mentioning the name???? I gotta have this! :-P~~~~~~~~~~~~~" A guy I know also said it scared the bejesus out of him and he'll never watch it again. A bunch of other people said it rocked, it was scary, etc.

So I had high expectations going into it. Man was I disappointed! I've been more scared by a "Little House on the Prarie" episode. Grossed out? Sure. Apparently Clive Barker has a maggot fetish, and the bug eating scene was equally gross. If you haven't seen this movie, I suggest not watching it while eating. The countless grossouts (the low brow horror writer's escape hatch) were enough to ALMOST make me stop eating!!! ME!!!! That's when you KNOW a movie is gross! (if you don't know me, look at the picture on the home page again)

Since I am not into maggots, I doubt that I will ever watch it again so I guess this IS a movie that one can only stomach once.

But scary? Please. A fruit cake is more scary! Okay, that's not saying much because fruit cakes (and the people who bake them) are actually pretty frightening. But I CAN say that a box of Corn Flakes has scared me more than "Hellraiser."

Don't get me wrong, there are some original ideas and effective moments. The Cenobites were original villains and their makeup was great. Everyone talks about Pinhead (probably because he got most of the lines) but my favorite was Chatterboy. I don't think you could take him anywhere because the chattering would get on everyone's nerves, but I wouldn't mind hanging out eating corn on the cob with him. He is certainly equipped for it. Other new or interesting things about the movie were the box, the chain hook thingys, and the whole idea of Frank trying to come back from the dead by seducing the Bimbo into killing for him.

Speaking of this, what kind of negative return ratio do we have going on here??? Bimbo's husband (whose name also escapes me so I shall call him Moron) spills a couple teaspoons of blood on the floor and that is enough to revive Frank from a heart beating underneath the floorboards to a sinewy skeleton. Not all the way back from the dead, certainly, but that's a LOT of progress for that amount of blood. And he was more alive at this point than Tom Arnold's career. But then an ENTIRE HUMAN BEING (who usually carts around a lush four GALLONS of blood) is only enough to slap on one coat of flesh over 10% of Frank's body! Two more entire human beings and Frank can still look no better than Calista Flockhart on a diet! What gives? Is this Death's version of a high first returns casino scheme? The first time you gamble they let you win big so that you'll keep coming back for more? Of course every time after that you win less and then you start down a losing streak that would make the Golden State Warriors wince. I guess if the killing had continued it would have gotten down to needing four gallons of blood to put a flesh coat on one pinky.

But Frank looked good. The physical special effects were excellent. The electronic special effects, on the other hand, looked like someone had drawn on the negative with a Crayon. My first generation Atari had graphics that were more convincing. A Travis Twitt concert light show would be more dazzling than what happened whenever someone touched the box.

I can't end this without talking about Kirstie, Frank's niece. This walking intelligence vacuum (she is so stupid that she sucks intelligence away from anyone else who comes into contact with her) sits there and talks to pseudoDad at the end for about five minutes, she HUGS him repeatedly, and she doesn't notice that he has about two KEGS of Blood Jerricurl in his hair! How could she not see that? They say that stupidity is blind, and never has that been more evident than this scene. The scariest part of this movie was the thought of someone this retarded walking around in possession of the doorway to hell.

There is a scene at the end where Frank is strung out like a research monkey. He has the Mulder face stretching thing going on, he has hooks on every part of his body, and in about three seconds he is going to be ripped apart. (how exactly do hooks in your flesh make your head explode? If the hooks had been in his skull it would have exploded as soon as they pulled, but his face was stretched so they had to be in his flesh. I have a theory. My theory is that Frank actually starting pondering the plot of this movie and his head exploded out of self-defense)

So the writers (Clive Barker and whomever he was smoking pot with at the time) were faced with a dilemma. Here he is, face stretched out, tongue pornographically licking his now Angelina Jolie sized lips, and he needs to say something before he explodes. Something profound. Something meaningful. Something that might fool people into believing that they have not wasted $5 for a ticket to see this freak show. Something that they can take with them to dwell on during the resentful silence in the car on the way home as the person who dragged the others in the car to see this movie feels the silent waves of loathing emanating from his or her victims.

So what does this CRACK team of brilliant writers come up with between bong hits?

"Jesus Wept."

Jesus Wept?????? That's it??? That's the nugget of wisdom we are to take from this movie? I'll bet he DID weep if he was tricked into seeing this bomb! If you had only two words to speak before you died, wouldn't you try a little harder than that? How about, "I'm sorry." Which would Clive Barker speaking directly to the audience in shorthand for "I'm sorry that this 94 minute visit to hell felt like it lasted 94 years!"

Do you want hell, boys and girls? Do you want to open a doorway to hellish torture and pain? You don't need to pay large sums of money to a smoking, cryptic speaking, man in a dismal store for an Atari box! All you have to do to visit hell and feel real torture is to rent "Hellraiser."

That is all the hell one person can stand.

Shadow Dog sez:

Fortunately for me, this movie only lasted 14 minutes in dog time. And that is the only good thing I can say about this hellish mutt of a movie.

Hellraiser 2

So now we have it. Hell isn’t having car trouble passing through Davenport, Iowa on the Saturday before Memorial Day. Hell isn’t a doubleheader between Devil Rays and Rangers. Hell isn’t standing in line behind Grandma “Penny Payer” Morgan as she tries to pay for 10 pounds of roast pork with a purse full of coins. Hell isn’t a wife with a credit card. Hell is having to endure “Hellbound: Hellraiser 2.” Oh, and according to that movie, Hell is endless corridors and less than ten people. Where WAS everyone? I would have thought I’d see the original Bozo the Clown, whoever invented leafblowers, William Gaines, and whoever talked Steven Speilberg into making “1941” but apparently the day this was filmed was a Hell Holiday because no one was there!

Yes, I did it. I foolishly gave the movie another chance. I would like to say that it was either this movie or “A Simple Plan” (which is a no brainer choice) but there were actually a couple other movies available. What happened was I wanted to see if time, an increased budget, and computer graphic improvements made this sequel any better, or at least scarier, than the first one.

One roadblock to H:H2 being any better was the fact that so much of “Hellraiser” is IN H:H2! The hapless viewer is treated to about a half-hour of the original movie even before the opening credits. Even more old footage is slipped in under the guise of flashbacks and dreams during the first ten minutes of H:H2. I would like to say that the makers of the movie were committed maintaining continuity and wanted to make sure that all of the audience was fully briefed on the finer more complex points of the original movie’s plot. Of course, I would like to say that I am a seven foot tall billionaire who is hung like King Kong. Sadly, reality demands admission and I can’t cover for the fact that “Hellraiser” ‘s plot could be summed up on a 3 X 5 card or 20 seconds of footage. So the old footage was just tedious padding that allows you to endure not only the Hell of H:H2 but also relive the pain of the original all in one package!

When I finally, gratefully, turned off H:H2 last night the first thing that came to mind was how great an agent Pinhead has. Okay, that was the second thing that came to mind after “where the >:-# did I put the Demerol?” I mean, all these years I have been hearing about how awesome Pinhead is, how he is the ultimate villain, better even than Freddy Kruger. His face adorns the cover of all 16 Hellraiser movies. I’ve always admired his commitment to self-mutilation. Anyone can get a tongue stud or nose ring, but this dude was SERIOUS. So imagine my shock as discovered that Pinhead is a PUNK! :-O He let someone who had been in hell for 15 seconds beat his ass like a Phil Collins drum! Of course, his three buddies also got trashed, but they haven’t been getting the press Pinhead has. If you are going to rank in my top ten villain list you have to last longer against a newbie than it takes to warm a donut, for crissakes. After this dismal performance, Pinhead now ranks 2,305 on my villain list, ahead of the bad guy in “Power Rangers” but below Magnum P.I. What? Oh he was evil! Don’t tell me that Magnum has had you fooled all these years?

Speaking of Pinhead’s buddies, I noticed that Clive Barker is either a sexist or unimaginative. In the first movie none of the Cenobites had names, Pinhead was listed as “Lead Cenobite” or something like that. In this movie Pinhead is named as such for the first time. Fat boy is listed as “Butterball” and Chatter Boy is listed as “Chatterer.” What is Sore Throat listed as? “Female Cenobite” !! Female Cenobite??? They couldn’t do any better than that? I came up with “Sore Throat” in three seconds and I am an unpublished hack with three jokes and two stories to tell! How about “Tracheotogirl?” They couldn’t come up with ANYTHING? Or was it that they didn’t want to? I think there should be an investigation launched into this to find out if this was a sexist dig.

What else did we have? More maggots! Can anyone explain to me what the >:-# maggots have to do with hell? And what does wanting to throw up have to do with horror? Grossouts are the refuge of incompetent horror writers. What is in “Hellraiser 3” ? People EATING maggots? Perhaps by “Hellraiser 12” we’ll have someone making a pet out of a maggot and raising it to adulthood where it can go into radio and challenge Howard Stern or become the next executive producer of Sliders or something.

And don’t even get me started on how weak the plot is. Since when have doctors been able waltz out of insane asylums with a trunk load of patients? Is there is a drive through lane for added convenience? How exactly would the good doctor explain what he was doing? “I’m taking Stinkin’ Joe out for a stroll. NO, I haven’t brought Firey Sue, Mush Head Fred, OR George W. Bush back yet! I’m still using them!” Things used to be a lot easier for power mad insane psychiatrists before insurance companies took over medicine. Now the real rulers of Hell, Insurance Companies decides what treatment patients get and when they are released. If a doctor suddenly released a dozen of his nuts he would beg for a “Hellraiser” marathon rather than endure what Insurance Companies can unleash on those who draw their ire.

I mentioned how unscary the first movie was. "Hellbound: Hellraiser 2" makes the first movie seem as scary as an IRS audit of the tax return you filled out while drunk and picking income numbers at random by looking through a phone book. I've been more scared by a Barney episode. I've been more frightened by a bowl applesauce!

Before I go I have to comment on this unnamed city where all of this is taking place. Apparently this is the gateway to hell (which leads me to believe it is supposed to be Cleveland) because there are at least 4 box-doorways to Hell in this one city! Out of all the cities in the world, this one city has more gateways to Hell than a sidewalk in front of “Toy’s R Us.” Doesn’t this leave the rest of the world Hell deprived? There are plenty of people in the rest of the world who want pain and suffering! How else can we explain the popularity of “Friends” and “Who Wants to be a Millionare” ? People need Hell! Where is this greedy city and why are they so selfish? You know the rules! Take two hits and PASS! It’s time to pass the boxes!

Oh well, I guess the rest of us will have to subsist on H:H2 for our pain needs until this city stops hoarding the Hell. >:-#

Shadow Dog sez:

Words can't express how much I hate Dexter for forcing me to watch this horrid movie with him. BARK! BARK!!
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