1/5 A Rich, Brilliant Horror Turning Point, Wasted
  by Sir Charles Panther (Alexandria, Virginny, USandA)
I just watched this movie again, for the first time in probably 15 years.

The Hellraiser book, and then the movie rewrote cinematic horror, creating a new epoch and new touchstone characters. This was not so much as bad 80s fashion updating tired zombie-wear, but an entirely new look and conception of what exactly the demons of hell are all about. Gone were the picthfork-poking horned hobgoblins and fire-illuminated cave walls, traded for BDSM-looking, leather-clad, hell-science modified ministers of eternal torture--ultimate and enduring evil by way of the Borg meeting The Matrix. It was revolutionary and incredibly powerful, with Pinhead leading the way as the new face of modern horror. Things were looking up for the genre.

And then it all went off the rails with this awful sequel, the first in an increasingly pathetic and lame series of just plain bad schlock-horror attempts. The way was lost.

This movie's vast promise, and its so original horror images are completely compromised by a spirallingly nonsensical plot and lame effects. The cenobites lose their dark luster as unquestioned and unquestioning minions of the Beast and become impotent, pathetic victims in a ridiculously one-sided hell-demon smackdown. Hell is unleashed on the world, but then it's all okay and things get all cleaned up. By the end, it's almost like we're watching just another movie of the week, concluding with a trite and contrived setup for the next bad sequel.

The start of the film is promising, with a stark Euro design feel to the film, the interiors close and dimly lit, with the crimson of the blood, when it finally comes, as a powerful visual contrast. But then we start the slowly mushrooming bog-down in getting Julia's body back together, with no understanding of why she's back, how she's back, etc. The bloody chain-mattress is inspired, but its power is forgotten and lost. Then we get the puzzle box, solved and opened, and hell creaks into our dimension once more, and the cenobites arrive. And they're so talkative now (not Butterball or Chatterer, though), engaging in polite debate with the idiotic Kirstie, with lame dialog about "knowing your flesh." I mean, they're the demons of hell, and they're somehow bound by the esoteric strictures of formal rhetoric? There appear to be some kind of rules, but no one says what they are, or how they work, or who pays attention to whether they're followed or not. What exactly is the meaning of a red card in hell?

And we descend into the labyrinth, with its idiotic representations of the damned. There are laughing clown graphics, like something out of a late-stage Night Gallery rerun. A guy juggles eyeballs into blood-filled palms, which to me looked like something out of a bad Billy Idol video. There are naked women under sheer cloth, with and without blood, root-encrusted dark passageways, jingling chains, etc. It's just so cheezy, so weak, so low-budge and ultimately it just doesn't make any sense. The evil doctor is betrayed by Julia--duh--and then he comes back as the baddest of the bad cenobites. Wait a minute--this newbie, this cenobite rookie--all of a sudden is more powerful than the demons who have been there for decades, even centuries? How, and why? Then a gigantic maggot-head-tail-thingy with some kind of spinning brain gurgler zaps the doctor, and he floats around at the end of this thing--what the in the hell is that, and what's at the opposite end? Then the ultra-cheeziest of the effects come, with the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion claymation effects of the doctor's evil, evil hands/tentacles. It's just plain bad.

In the end, the girls get out, hell seals up, the beast is put back (safely) into hell, the doctor gets his, Julia gets hers, etc. The epilogue is the evil doctor's house being packed out, and one of the movers just happens to stumble upon the bloody mattress. No, wait: the still-wet bloody mattress, in a room and house filled with boxes; the packers have already been there, and we have to figure the authorities have done whatever they're going to do, and all of them just, like, didn't notice or chose to leave this undeniable thing in the middle of the room? "Uh, we're going to pack up now. We'll just leave this bloodstained suicide/homicide mattress alone, m'kay?" It's just absolutely, unforgivably stupid, a hollow and contrived ending to set up the next bad sequel.

Bottom line: See it for the cenobites, and for the early mattress scene. Watch it once, so you can say you've seen it. But don't ask any questions about character motivation, continuity, time, space or common sense, background, context or purpose. Expect nothing more than 90 minutes of low-budge, badly constructed monster chiller horror theater, and a bad setup for the inevitable sequel.

2/5 Decent Opening, Confusing 2nd Half
  by The JuRK (Our Vast, Cultural Desert)
I watched HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER 2 last night and...it made about as much sense as the first time I saw it.

The opening was interesting and it was nice to see Ashley Laurence back, but the movie carries on with a conventional horror structure without thinking through the Hellraiser landscape.

Kirsty, Ashley's character, charges into the alternate universe to rescue her father. But armed with what? Everyone else is easily massacred but Kirsty is completely impervious to everything. Why? Does she have something special or has she tapped into some power to combat the evil? Not really. She's the lead character so she's never really threatened. And the reason she went charging in is pretty much discarded and never resolved.

There's a brief and disappointing "battle" between the Cenobites and the new Cenobite on the block, but it's over before you have any idea of what just happened. Looked cool.

Also good to see Clare Higgins back...but what exactly was she in this?

In the second half, I just went along for the ride since things happened that didn't make a lot of sense. These movies have a cool concept...but I don't think they've really thought things through. They think of cool images and scenes but they never really applied a lot of logic to them.

4/5 Horror is the Genre for the Cool People
  by KF (Lexington Park, MD)
I like Doug Bradley, and I like the strange place the idea for this series of movies came from. There are certain very memorable lines in this movie; a doctor obsessed with the occult finds himself in Clive Barker's Hell, horribly disfigured, and looks about the twisted, grim landscape with something like eagerness and says, "to think I hesitated" [to come to Hell]. There's also a self-mutilation scene which is absolutely horrible, and therefore really great.

4/5 "...time to play..."
  by A Hermit (Southwest Pa.)
This is one of those rare occaisions where a sequel actually holds up to the original, and where it can't be a hit every time, understood, too many times the sequels only cash in on the original's success.

Where the first installment in this series tells a story, with some very dark visuals, this one focuses, and relies heavily on nightmarish imagery. Yes, there is a story, and it picks up right where the first one left off, but this installment seems to want mostly to throw a whole lot of bizarre and scary images at you. I have stated elsewhere, I don't enjoy gore for gore's sake, but where it's warranted, why not do it right? There is a segment early on, which is SO horrible to watch, so controversial, so gratuitous, I get uneasy when it's on. This, of course, is the mental patient who is wearing the straight-jacket. The intent, obviously, is to upset and unbalance the viewer, and it does so, in spades. You gotta feel for this guy, even knowing it's just a movie.

A large part of the film takes place in another realm, and it flows like a fantasy film, which is, in its own way, what it is. This takes the edge off, because this, and the first installment, have some intense graphic violence. There is something in people, they have a morbid fascination with seeing pain and suffering. And where films like this aren't mainstream, they have a very loyal following nonetheless.

An enjoyable feature, for me, anyway, is the extras. There is a plethora of interviews with the people involved in the making; the director of this, and the first one, some of the actors, and various people who made it what it is. But, to its detriment, this takes the covers off, and the movie no longer has its aura of mystery. One of the fun things about watching a wierd movie, is thinking, "...how did they do that?..." Of course, it's nice to have the answer at your disposal, but looking behind the curtain, it's often disappointing to see the little, unassuming man pulling the levers.

The first two are the only ones in this series I bother with, as I saw and didn't like the third, or fourth. I have seen little clips of the others, and as can be expected, they drove it into the ground.

"What's your pleasure, sir?"

5/5 Hellbound has my Heart
  by Virginia L. Anderson (Ghost Town USA)
Like Julia claiming Frank's heart in this piece. Hellbound has my heart. This my favorite horror film of all time and the extras are to die for!