We have reached a milestone in this series. In 1996, I was five-years-old and was finally conscious enough to remember things. This is the first movie I'm reviewing that I remember existing at the time. I saw commercials for it on TV. Obviously, my parents did not let a Pre-K kid see Hellraiser IV: Bloodline in 1996. It took me almost twenty years, but can I finally correct my parents' mistake?
No, my parents were right to keep me away. Hellraiser IV sucks hard.
Pinhead is not the only horror icon to go to space. Jason did it in Jason X, Leprechaun did it in Leprechaun 4, and Jeff Bezos did it earlier this year. Unfortunately, for space slashers, the SciFi aspect is just a shallow gimmick. It's a bad sign of a franchise totally out of ideas. Most of these movies suck, even Dracula 3000 sucked.
But I had hope here with Bloodline. It was the last Hellraiser that mattered. The last one where anybody cared on any level. After this, all the movies all went straight-to-video. Series creator Clive Barker would no longer have any involvement at all. And even the scripts were mostly repurposed concepts that had nothing to do with Cenobites. Pinhead got shoved in last-minute and suddenly you had a Hellraiser movie. I don't recommend any of those sequels. Or this movie.
As bad as space slashers are, I don't think Hellraiser necessarily doesn't work in space. The whole concept of Hellraiser is that our reality is a small bubble of sanity in the midst of vast oceans of infinite pain and kink. There is something inherently disturbing about space. It's a reminder that we're helpless beings in an infinite darkness. I also like the idea that even a future civilization is helpless against the Cenobites. We can conquer physics and travel the stars, and it makes no difference. Even our greatest selves in our wildest imaginations of achievement are helpless before the forces of pure sexual chaos. So there could have been something here.
Basically I was hoping for Event Horizon. That isn't a perfect movie, it's often a very dumb movie, but it did something with a spooky spaceship.
Hellraiser IV is a victim of a pair of gentlemen called Bob and Harvey Weinstein. These two, admittedly, would go on to commit far more terrible crimes than mishandling the Hellraiser franchise. I mean no disrespect to their human victims when I discuss their cinematic ones. Still, I hate these guys. I could go on four hours about all the movies they ruined. They took a creative and vibrant horror concept with unforgettable imagery and turned into pure trash. Hellraiser III was already extremely dumb, but at least dumb on an impressive scale. Cenobites fights cops in the street. Our current movie is just cheap and sad. It is nothing but connective tissue between kills. Hellraiser was and still could have been so much more. The Weinsteins only could imagine another slasher series, so that's what we got.
Hellraiser IV: Bloodline, before the producers tore it apart, had big, ambitious ideas. It is a three-part saga centered around three men of the Merchant family (all played by Bruce Ramsay) and their centuries-long battle against the Cenobites they accidentally unleashed upon the world. This family is the one that invented the Lament Configuration box, and have some kind of genetic memory that keeps them returning to it. Bloodline's story goes from Early Modern France to the depths of the cosmos.
Instead, the Weinsteins gave this project only four million dollars, the shoot was a disaster, and then they butchered it after the fact. There are three directors who worked on this project: Kevin Yagher, Joe Chappelle, and Rand Ravich. The final directing credit goes to "Alan Smithee", a fake name directors use when they've disowned their movie.
The movie comes off rather sad. The spaceship sets are pathetic for a major motion picture. They look like they were filmed in a basement. The movies does get a better-looking sets for France and modern-day Manhattan. If you have very little money, it is easier to find a handsome house and a loft apartment to film in, versus building a spaceship. As for the acting, it's all not great. Doug Bradley can still go a cool Pinhead, at least. Bruce Ramsay is not great in any of his roles. But a very young Adam Scott got his first role in this movie. So if you ever wanted to see a demonic vixen eat Adam Scott's face, I guess rent Hellraiser IV.
Admittedly, there is good gore. Kevin Yagher had a background in special effects, so at least he knew how to pull off some spectacular if preposterous kills. The Cenobites haven't lost a step when it comes to tearing people's faces off with hooks. There's a Twin Cenobite with actually a awesome make-up and prosthetic work. Pinhead has a Chatterer dog now, he also looks great. He's a good boy.
But violence is not what made Hellraiser Hellraiser, it never was. I enjoy gore, sure. However, what's intriguing about Hellraiser is also what makes movies like Phantasm or From Beyond or even yesterday's Lord of Illusions. Jason Voorhees is a very simple concept: he's a big guy with a big bladed instrument who will kill you. Pinhead is not just going to kill you, he's going to transfer you to a realm of horny nightmares. He isn't from a Christian Hell, he's from a Hell beyond paradigms of good and evil. Instead now, in Hellraiser IV, he's just the Devil. He's mundane now. You know everything you need to know about him already.
"I cannot die, I am eternal!" rants Pinhead. He's not wrong. There will be Hellraiser sequels for as long as they make movies. They've made six more Hellraiser movies since Bloodline. And don't worry, they're not done. However, when it's all said and done, if this is all Pinhead can be, maybe he's better off dead.
Next time we travel to 1997, the year of Final Fantasy VII, every mom in the world crying over Princess Diana, and our next movie, Anaconda.
We're at the year of my birth! Nice!
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