Horror-A-Day: Hellraiser - Bloodline

Well, one day of greatness is better than none, I suppose. The Thing helped cleanse me from a steady diet of junk I had been subjecting myself to for the most part this Halloween season. However, the visual joy of John Carpenter's atmospheric and bloody masterpiece was not the start of a trend. Again, no one to blame but myself. The follow up is a movie of great potential that was struck down in the process of production leaving a hollow mess to grace the screen. Better luck next time, I guess.



The thirteenth day of the marathon sees me revisit the hell world of Pinhead and his Cenobite minions. I did not choose the first classic or even the strong bloody exercise of part two, the third one was tempting, but I chose to go a step further to where the series was really beginning to take a turn downhill. I went for Hellraiser: Bloodline, the fourth of the series and the last one o have been released theatrically.

Historically, his long running series has stood apart from is brethren like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween. This series has always been a bit more enigmatic. However, this outing sees the series try to give itself some epic sized explanatory back story. It s also known a the one that sent Pinhead to space and we all know that once the killer his the airlock bad thins tend to happen to the quality. There is a notable exception with the delightfully goofy Jason X.

Anyway, this fourth film covers three generations of the same looking and seeks to give the ever present puzzle box some history of is own. It starts in the future on a space station designed by Paul Merchant (Bruce Ramsay) to be used in an experiment which he hopes will result in the extermination of Pinhead and Hell itself. However, he is caught and engines to relay the story of the box. It ages back to the 1800's when Phillip Merchant (Ramsay), a toymaker, creates it for a magician interested in the occult. This opens the doorway and leads to the introduction of the demon Angelique, not to mention a whole bunch of death.

Jump to the present day and we meet the next in the bloodline, an architect named John Merchant. He has just made a building with some familiar patterns in it. Angelique shows up and then the box shows up followed shortly by Pinhead.

We eventually make it back to the future where Paul is trying to put an end to Pinhead once and for all. Will his plan work? Why don't you check out he movie.

It is not a very good one. There are stories of studio tampering and Kevin Yagher's leaving the director's chair and disowning the film (hence the Alan Smithee credit). It seems clear that this is not the intended vision. It is muddy and we don't get much time to care about any of the victims.

The best thing about this movie is Doug Bradley's presence as Pinhead. He has such a great presence on the screen, regal, evil, strangely inviting. The guy is great in this role, and a real nice guy. I got to meet him at the Saturday Nightmares convention last June.

Anyway, maybe I will venture into the later sequels, but I am scared....