Review: Hellraiser – Hellworld

Hellraiser Reviews

Look at this crude photoshop job with the head of Pinhead and the green Matrix text you can tell from the cover how much writing effort was put in

I don’t think I’d have bothered with this film if not to complete my reviews of all the Hellraiser films. It is the film that’s furthest from the original film, being little more than a slasher film tarted up in Hellraiser trappings and fused with a thin veneer of cliché computer gamer. The direction is okay, the acting variable but good enough but what really lets it down is the story. I never felt involved in the story because it never felt like a Hellraiser film and the Hellraiser trappings were a constant reminder of that.

The film opens with a teenager digging a hole in a cellar. This is Adam () and although he is central to the story we don’t get much insight into his character apart from flash backs to this scene where he kills himself by pouring petrol over himself and burning himself to death.

At Adam’s funeral we learn from his buddies that Adam killed himself because he was obsessed with a computer game called Hellworld. I have no idea how that is supposed to work but the film will not be exploring this deadly game in any way at all. Hellworld seems to be this film’s introduction the Hellraiser mythos, showing that film is flirting with fourth wall. Adam’s friends are the usual gang of five clichés of the genre: there’s the pretty jock Mike (Henry Cavill in a pre-Superman role), the perky punky Allison (Anna Tolputt), the cheerful asthmatic joker Derrick (Khary Payton), walking cloud of depression Jake (Christopher Jacot) and last of course Chelsea (Katheryn Winnick) the nice girl destined to be the last one standing. None of Adam’s family is present because his mother is in a mental hospital after finding his body while his father has never been around is constantly abroad on business. And that’s it for Adam’s backstory. The friends are all feeling guilty for not intervening to prevent Adam from killing himself but it’s difficult to justify blaming them even if they were all playing the Hellworld game too. Unfortunately the theme of guilt and blame are going to be central to the story. The funeral scene ends with Chelsea opening the coffin and getting grabbed by the corpse before waking up because she was having a nightmare.

Forward two years and Chelsea is studying in her when Mike comes to her door to try to scare her with a Cenobite mask. He’s really there to show her a Hellworld website with a game whose prize is an invitation to party at somewhere called Leviathan House, a reference so obvious it gets lampshaded by Chelsea rolling her eyes. Mike tries to talk Chelsea into going but she really doesn’t and remarks that Derrick and Allison wouldn’t be interested. Cut to Derrick and Allison who are eagerly playing the game at their computer to win themselves invitations. This means that only Chelsea doesn’t want to go but on the day of the party she shows up in her SUV to drive them up there.

They get to the very large Leviathan House and inside the party is in full swing. The place is decorated with Lament boxes and bright neon signs and there are several bars for the partygoers. By an amazing coincidence Jake arrives just behind them to open contempt from Allison and fake friendliness from the others.

The host of the party (Lance Henriksen) bursts out a pair of double doors and greets the five, identifying them as newbies and after seeing their invitations he invites them in for drinks and an introductory tour of the house. Only Jake and Chelsea turn down the offer of drink, Jake because he doesn’t drink and Chelsea because she’s driving. His office is full of Hellraiser paraphernalia and busy hands are soon picking things up and playing with them. Allison quickly regrets spraying herself with perfume from a bottle and Mike finds his fingers stained with ink from the Cenobite design tarot cards he plays with. There’s a sense of significance about these events.

As he takes them down to the basement he tells stories about the house’s past as a convent and then later as a mental hospital with the tragedies involved in both periods. The basement basically looks like a pathology lab with shelves full of specimens of deformed foetuses and body parts and surgical tools lying around. Allison, Mike and Derrick seem impressed but Chelsea needs a bit more than theatrical props to scare her. She gets it when the host grabs her arm and sticks a pin deep into it. Chelsea feels strange she has a sudden vision of Pinhead pulling the pin out. It only lasts for a moment then everything’s back to normal but she’s very wary of the host and tells him to stay away from her.

The host takes them back upstairs to enjoy the party and introduces them to some fairly pointless scheme where everyone has a numbered mask and a mobile phone and if you fancy someone you call their number. It sounds something from a middle class middle aged swingers party and not really something for college students. While on the subject of the party goers the whole thing seems very tame and vanilla and the crowd are a bit plain and boring despite the sex and gratuitous bare breasts. There is no difference between this crowd and that of any other nightclub and they don’t seem like Hellraiser fans. This might be justified by later revelations but it goes unnoticed by the friends.

They split up at the party so of course this is when they start dying off. Aliison sees a room with a large “Keep Out” sign on the door so she enters because she’s naughty. She finds a torture chair and sits on it and suddenly it locks her in place and a nasty looking pair of rotating saw blades lock in place in front of her face. The host appears and engages the motor for the blades which slowly come towards Allison’s throat and slices it open. Pinhead appears and tells her Adam was right

This is followed by a scene where Jake meets the host who gives him a puzzle box made by Adam. When Jake examines it nails spring out and pierce his fingers. This is a bit strange because it seems this scene should have come earlier.

Derrick is dancing with a woman when he loses in inhaler and it falls down a grate into the basement. He wheezes down stairs and recovers his inhaler in the pathology lab. He takes a puff and lies down to recover. Pinhead appears and chops off his head.

Mike got together with a woman who gives him a blowjob. Afterwards she takes him down to the basement with promises of more sex but when they get to pathology lab she locks him in and leaves. Mike tries to pretend he’s not freaked out by the props and by the headless corpse dressed in Derek’s clothes but they unsettle him then he sees Derrick’s head in a jar and freaks. A Cenobite enters the room an operates a winch that drives a huge hook into Mike’s back and drags him around until he dies and then Pinhead appears and tells us that it just beginning.

This just leaves Jake and Chelsea among the friends and the film changes pace. Jake goes to bar to try to get a drink but everyone ignores like he’s not there. He follows a woman into an upper gallery area and they make love but she turns out to be a ghost of a nun. Chelsea was following someone who looks like Adam and ended up locked in a room. She tries to call the police but when they arrive the host convinces them that one of his guests is drunk and playing joke. Chelsea tries calling them and telling them to look up at the window she is watching them from but they can’t see her and eventually leave.

I’ve talked about this long enough and this film’s last act has a fairly uninteresting series of chases and fake outs around the house by Chelsea and Jake as they figure out what’s going on. Jake realises that whole thing was set-up to get them there and what they are experiencing has stopped being real some time ago. Chelsea has discovered that their host is actually Adam’s father and he blames them for Adam’s death. The whole thing was a very elaborate murder plot but the host wanted to make them suffer using the Hellword he blames for the death of his son. He drugged them with some kind of magic drug that can somehow fully create a convincing reality with help of subliminal suggestions. All five have been buried in coffins since their visit to the basement and everything since was created by suggestions delivered through the phones left in the coffins. It just seems too elaborate and would only ever work because it is written that way in the script. Anyway Chelsea and Jake are both rescued by the police who got phone call from this place, probably from Adam’s ghost since the house is empty and the host has fled.

All the earlier appearances of Pinhead and the Cenobites in the film were just from the imagination of the victims, explaining their out of character behaviour but as the host sits in hotel examining the puzzle box he brought with him it turns out to the genuine article and it opens. Pinhead and the Cenobites arrive and introduce the host to hell with an impressive blade on a chain and one of those CGI effects of a body falling to bits after a cartoonish delay. It is far too little and far too late.

I think the problem with this film is that it was thrown together with a low-budget and a script that was barely more than an outline. It was made back-to-back with Deader but instead of incorporating the Romanian location into the script this tried to pretend it was somewhere in America.Overall is it is just a run-of-the-mill slasher film and Pinhead and the Cenobites are reduced to a mere cameo

Rating 5.0/10

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Review: Hellraiser – Deader

Hellraiser Series

Back to the interrupted series of reviews of the Hellraiser films and this Is last one I will be reviewing until Hellworld arrives on Netflix. It has no connection to of the other films except for Pinhead and the puzzle box and they are sidelined for most of the film and reduced to a couple of walk-on parts. It isn’t terrible and the film has a grimy sleazy downbeat feel too it but it really seems pretty far removed from the original Hellraiser

Amy Klein (Kari Wuhrer) is a journalist who is willing to go that extra mile to get her story and we see her at the start off the film waking up in a crack den in a filthy room full of unconscious crack-heads where she has been researching a highly successful article called “How to be crack whore.”

Back at the office the magazine her boss Charles Richmond (Simon Kunz) isn’t too interested in her crack whore article. He has something he wants to show her and he puts on a videotape sent by a woman called Marla (Georgina Rylance). It shows a cult of young people and their leader Winter (Paul Rhys) then a cult member shooting herself in the head. Amy thinks this a bad taste snuff film but Charles tells her to keep watching. Winter inhales her dying breath then breaths into her mouth.The woman comes back to life and is warmly greeted by the other cultists When the tape finishes Amy wants to know what the hell she just watched and Charles tells her that is her assignment. The parcel with the video has a return address in Bucharest and Charles has already booked her a seat on a flight there, knowing Amy well enough to know that she’ll take the assignment.

In Bucharest Amy goes straight to Marla’s apartment. Amy bribes the landlord to let her look around for five minutes. The place is stinking and full of flies. In the bathroom she finds Marla’s body sitting on the toilet tied up with rope so the body doesn’t fall and that’s where the stink and the flies come from. She finds a parcel with the words “help us” scrawled on it. In Marla’s hand she finds the Lament Configuration puzzle box and she takes that too.

Back in her hotel room she finds another videotape and a key in the parcel from Marla begging whoever finds the tape for help and she mentions Winter using the puzzle box as a gateway to the power he uses. Amy picks up the box and wonders what Marla meant by opening it. After a few moments playing about with it the box opens and after moving about it close and sits. Then chains burst out and grab her face. She has vision of her abusive father and Pinhead (Doug Bradley) appears and says ominously, “Don’t think for a second that you’re not in danger,” then the room goes back to normal. Her phone rings and it Marla begging for her help.

Marla did mention in her video a contact that will lead Amy to Winter and his Deader cult. She goes to the underground station and after passing a woman in a cheap plastic jacket bleeding in her seat she gets on a train at the last car which unlike the others is covered in graffiti and its windows are blacked out. A guy who acts like a bouncer lets her in when she mentions the name Joey. She has to walk through a sleazy display of freaks and naked flesh and body modification and naked bodies and people who hold cardboard photos in front of themselves until she gets to Joey (Marc Warren) a smart arse English guy. Joey tries to warn her away from going near Winter and his crowd but Amy is determined and when she brings out the puzzle box Joey gets very unsettled. He gives her the address of Winter and his cult.

Amy gets off the train and standing at the platform in the station she gets the impression she’s being watched. She looks on the other platform and Winter is standing there and he walks towards her. Amy has flashbacks of her father locking her in a cupboard. Just then a subway train arrives and Winter jumps in front of it. Amy alerts the station staff and they stop the train to look for a body but of course there’s nothing there. She explains again to security guard what she saw when she sees Winter on the platform getting on a train and runs down to try to catch him while the guard chases after her. She gets grabbed a bunch of security guards on the platform. At the police station Amy get released by her boss Charles. Amy wants to know what they were going to charge her with and Charles tells her they were going to commit her to an asylum. Charles offers to drive Amy to her hotel but she says she’d rather walk.

Amy gets in a cab to take her Winter’s address in a rundown part of the city. The gate is padlocked but the key Marla left opens it. She goes in a door down stairs then down more stairs and lands in thick mud at the foot of the stairs. She goes down a tunnel and sees German shepherd dog that ignores her. She goes down dark passageway using her lighter and she hears whispers. When she turns a corner the passageway get narrower then even narrower and narrower again until she has to squeeze through. The lighter goes out and when she gets it lit again the wall seems to move with insects feeling the light. A hooded figure with knife come up behind her and raises the knife and Amy she sees person attack her and screams

Suddenly she’s now in wide passageway and a black man shushes her and tells her to follow him. He leads her to the cult as Winter brings back a skinny guy with bug eyes who was killed by knife and we see him return to life. Winter goes to a separate room and Amy follows him and she passes the Deaders they all proudly show off their fatal wounds. In a back room Winter is sitting in armchair and greets Amy by name and says he chose her which Amy strongly doubts. Amy brings out the puzzle box and asks Winter what it is. Winter says it’s a family heirloom (hinting that he’s a descendant of Le Merchand) and it’s a way to cheat death and a gateway to a world of everlasting pleasure and it belongs to him. Winter wants to know what she’s up to and he repeats what Pinhead said earlier, “Don’t think for second you’re not in danger.”

Winter needs her help to claim what he says is his. Amy doesn’t want to be like them, like Marla who killed herself and Winter says she can’t die but because she’s not alive but the more she doubts the deader she will become. For some reason out of nowhere Amy talks about how her flesh is real and she is real which seems to a response to the first video, not to something Winter just said. This is a line that gets a little well-rehearsed rant from Winter about how solidity is an illusion and how we are all essentially nothing [and since the film took its time to rant on the subject I’m going to give my thoughts. I know that an atom is usually said to be empty space because the matter in atom makes up a small fraction of the volume of an atom. But this ignores the fact that the atom has a field of force, especially electric field and it is the combination of the forces that create the macroworld concept of solidity. Just because it means something else at the molecular level it doesn’t mean matter and humans are not really real. Rant over.]

When Winter grabs her Amy gets flashbacks of her father again and she’s suddenly on the death-bed in the main room and Winter wants to know what she saw when she opened the box what is she afraid of. He needs her take next step so he can claim the box’s powers and he holds a knife at her throat and Amy screams.

She wakes up in her bathtub and sees the muddy boots that confirm she went to Winter’s place. That night she dreams of her father beating her with a belt and she wakes from nightmare. There’s a dull thunk sound and blood starts trickling down her shoulder and pooling on bed. With horror Amy discovers she has a knife in her back poking right through so that the tip comes out her front. She screams confused she thinks it’s a dream and sobs over and over that this can’t be real. Amy uses a cupboard door in bathroom to pull out the knife.

The phone rings and its Marla saying only he can bring you back. Pinhead suddenly appears and denies he had anything to what happened to her. He asks Amy why, as she stands bleeding, she feels no pain and Amy guesses that she’s dreaming but Pinhead says she has been recruited as a soldier in another man’s war. Winter thinks he cheated death but Pinhead wants their souls. Amy screams and throws something at him but he vanishes. Amy uses towels to absorb blood from her wounds but it doesn’t really work very well.

Amy goes to the subway station and the blood pools at her feet. She uses newspapers to mop up the blood and hide it from a security guard. She gets on Joey’s carriage and begs him for help. Joey tells her they all pieces in Winter’s puzzle and suddenly everyone on the train is dead and there’s chains and blood and severed limbs and a Cenobite torturing the living. She meets Marla and they get off the train. Amy just wants to go home and Marla says that where she’s going. She reveals that she was the person who stabbed Amy. Amy thinks of the phrase, “Fear is where you go to learn,” and suddenly she’s in the monochrome past back in her father’s house.

Amy wakes up in a hospital chained to a bed. Charles is there trying to get her released. An English doctor comes in a gives her a clean bill of health and undoes the restraints. Amy wanders out into psychiatric ward and little girl draws her picture with a half evil monster face and that freaks her out. She runs out to corridor where she sees Marla looking alive in the waiting area. Amy asks why she is there and we get lines lifted out of Barkers original story about ultimate pleasure and conditions of the nerve endings the likes of which your imagination could not hope to evoke then Marla just drops it as something they say, whoever they are. Marla tells Winter can’t solve puzzle and he needs someone who can that is willing to join him. Amy starts bleeding again and sees the door to her father’s house and she relives the memory of when she murdered her father with a knife. As her father falls down dying from his wounds Amy falls down dying from her own wounds.

Amy wakes back in Winter’s place lying on the bed. He holds out knife for her to complete her journey and end her suffering. After screams and tears Amy takes the knife and while Winter the Deaders goad her on she lifts up the knife as if to stab herself but she doesn’t do it and instead picks up the puzzle box and tosses it. It opens and Pinhead and a few other Cenobites appear in a lightning storm

Winter gets hooked up and pulled apart. The Deaders are all standing conveniently in two straight lines so they are all killed by just two chains punching through the two lines. That just leaves Amy and Pinhead wants her too but Amy picks up the knife and stabs herself and the puzzle box flashes blue, Pinhead screams “NO!” and the whole building implodes.

Charles is watching the news. His secretary aks if there had been any word from Amy and Charles says no. His secretary asks if he thinks something happened to her and Charles has no idea. The secretary shows in a young female journalist and Charles talks about showing her a tape that might interest her.

This film has something interesting things going but it suffers from being shoehorned into the Hellraiser series because it really feels like a completely different story with Hellraiser elements pasted in. The Deader story is quite good and I thought the scene when Amy discovers the knife in her body was very well done thank to a convincing performance from Kari Wuhrer. I also thought the scene in the narrow passage was very tense and it got my claustrophobia working along with my dislike for crawling things moving about that I can’t see. The train scene was a bit cheesy with the freaks on display bit. The biggest failing of the film is the attempt to marry this story to the Hellraiser mythos by having the iconic puzzle box do whatever the hell the script needs it to do. I know that as an anonymous low-budget horror story I may have never seen this if it was not a Hellraiser film but it would have been interesting.

Rating 6.5/10

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Review: Hellraiser – Hellseeker

This is the sixth Hellraiser film and just like Inferno it is pretty much a standalone film but it does have Ashley Laurence back as Kirsty Cotton but not as the main character. This is more like a mystery thriller where the main character has partial amnesia and real memories are mixed with fantastic elements. It is more straightforward than Inferno but not quite as good. While Inferno got a UK DVD release, Hellseeker can only be found on Netflix UK.

Kirsty and her husband Trevor (Dean Winters) are driving down a road approaching a bridge and they are fooling around affectionately and Trevor doesn’t notice he’s in the wrong lane and a truck is coming at them. He swerves the car off the bridge and into the river. They both struggle to get out of car and Trevor gets out but he can’t get Kirsty’s door open. Trevor gets to the surface and calls for help then dives under to try to get Kirsty’s door open but it’s too late and Kirsty stops moving.

The scene cuts to a hospital where Trevor is just coming round. This is weeks after the crash but Trevor is not aware of the passage of any time. He got a headache at work and arrived at emergency but the doctors think his reaction is not unusual this soon after the accident. He gets given an injection and suddenly he’s in a hellish hospital surgical theatre where the surgeons cut off the top of his skull and probe his brain to activate his memories. Just as abruptly Trevor is back at the normal hospital and a young junior doctor Alison is asking him if he’s okay. Trevor asks about his wife. Police Detective Lange (William S. Taylor) wants to talk to him about the crash because Kirsty is still missing. Trevor mentioned the door being locked but when they fished to car from the river the doors were open. On the bus ride home skinhead with loud music on ghetto blaster turns music up when Trevor asks him to turn it down. In apartment Trevor looks at photos remembers happy times with Kirsty

Trevor goes to work at Cubic, some anonymous office job with computers, numbers and cameras watching everyone all the time. One of his colleagues Brett (Trevor White) greets him with a snarky jibe but Trevor doesn’t seem to remember who he is or anything else about his job. He finds a tatty card pinned to his cubicle “All Problems Solved” and an address. He flashes back to going into some rundown industrial unit. Inside there are women  working on sewing machines, a large woman sitting wearing a leather outfit with conical tits and a full face mask and at the end is a counter. He sees objects displayed behind the glass of the counter. A large hairy man appears and says “I can see into your soul,” and Brett interrupts the memory.

Bret tells him he should get a snack beacuase some headaches are caused by low blood sugar. Gwen (Sarah-Jane Redmond) his supervisor comes in. She seems mad at Trevor but this turns out to be sex play and she kisses Trevor forcefully and he has another flashback, this time to having sex with Gwen. He pushes her off and she tells him she’ll see him later and to go get some work done. Back at his computer he gets a looping video of him making out with Gwen.

Lange calls and asks him to come to the station. Lange say there was no sign of an accident, no skidmarks on the road. Trevor’s story doesn’t make sense because it looks like the car was deliberately driven of the bridge. Lange wants to know if anything happened before the accident. Trevor flashes back to the accident and this time they were not smiling and playing before the accident but instead Kirsty looked very unhappy

Back at his apartment he sees a man in a mask hanging around outside. He looks out his window a sees the man in the window of the building across the street looking back at him. Then Trevor throws up a load of water and a large eel comes out of his mouth. There’s a knock on the door and its his neighbour Tawny (Jody Thompson) showing off her new tattoo just above her pubis. She’s coming on to him but he doesn’t respond so she goes back to her own apartment. Trevor finds a video of his 5th year wedding anniversary  where he gave Kirsty a gift and it’s the Lament puzzle box.

There’s another knock at the door no-one is there so he looks in the corridor then goes back to his apartment and Gwen is in there and she want sex. She strips and forces him into a chair. She wants the video camera, a normal part of their sex play so she sets it up but Trevor tells her to leave because he’s not interested. Gwen gets very angry and leaves. But the video keeps recording them having sex. Trevor tests it out and the recording is live. Then Cenobites put a plastic bag on Gwen’s head and kill her while Trevor watches in horror.

At work Brett is snarky again but gives Trevor address of a massage therapist acupuncturist called Sage (Kaaren de Zilva). She gives him the needles and leaves him to rest. He remembers back to the Hairy Guy who sells him a musical puzzle box but in the memory it is a sphere. He nods off on the therapy table and Pinhead (Doug Bradley) appears and shoves one of his own needles right through Trevor’s throat and asks if he prefers pain or pleasure

Detective Givens (Michael Rogers), Lange’s partner wants to talk to him about the fact that Kirsty was very wealthy with an inheritance from her father and Uncle Frank. This gives Trevor a motive for wanting Kirsty dead and Givens doesn’t trust him

Back at his apartment Tawny comes in and makes out with him and she strips wants to be tied up to a chair. Trevor doesn’t say no to this woman and they makes out but suddenly she turns into a Cenobite with the skin on her face stitched together and she screws a face mask onto Trevor’s mouth and pushes a plunger thing into his throat and he wakes in bed. Trevor finds Tawny tied to the chair dead. Trevor goes to wash the blood from his hands and Pinhead appears in the mirror and say “ All Problems Solved”. The blood disappears and the body is gone. Trevor goes to Tawny’ apartment and knocks on her door and  is relieved when she answers but she acts like she doesn’t know him and her husband comes to the door.

Lange calls again and down at the station he wants to know how Trevor knows Gwen Stevens since she’s gone missing. He sees Brett leaving the station and panics. He has another flashback to hairy guy selling him puzzle box and this time it’s the familiar cube.Trevor tries to pay for cube with money but the hairy man tells him that’s not the price which he will find out for himself later.

At work he wants to talk to Brett about what he said to the police. Lange is waiting in his cubicle asks him about the cube and what happened in the car. Trevor still claims it was an accident. In the break room Brett tells Trevor he’s leaving and mentions a plan they had to get their hands on Kirsty’s money. Trevor got the  puzzle box knowing it would drive Kirsty crazy

On a bus he gets headache and goes to a therapist and gets some special therapy with extra rogering and a happy ending or at least an icepick into the skull. Next he’s in an ambulance and turns out he fainted on the bus. Another flash and he’s in the hospital again and he asks for Dr Alison but no-one knows who she is. He goes to her office and its empty except for a janitor having a fly smoke. In corridor he finds Dr. Alison and tells her about dreams janitor asks who he is talking to and it turns out Dr. Alison is not there and Trevor is confused again. Back on the bus Trevor remembers Kirsty shouting at him about the cube, about his betrayal and she knew about his affairs

Trevor goes back to the industrial unit but it’s empty. Pinhead appears in the reflection in a puddle. He promises Trevor he’ll soon know what’s going on. Trevor thinks Pinhead is the killer but Pinhead just says “The killer is among us,” Outside he runs into Brett who has a gun and mentions their plan to kill Kirsty and make it look like a suicide  so they can get her money and split it between them. Since the plans is now all screwed up Brett uses the gun to shoot himself through the head

Trevor goes to Sage the therapist but she’s been killed and there’s the ice-pick in her head but I’m sure it’s nothing that a 100C dilution of stabby knives won’t cure. The police arrive at Sage’s led By Lange who arrests Trevor. Lange tells him they found a body in the river and are bringing it into the morgue but he doesn’t confirm that it’s Kirsty. Lange leaves and Givens comes in and wants him to tell the truth about everything that happened but Trevor sticks with his story of the accident.Tawny’s husband is in the station and he wants to kill Trevor. Lange takes Trevor down to basement past various people being tortured and he locks him in corridor. Then he reveals that Lange and Givens are really a two-headed freak, the two heads of one being.

In the morgue Pinhead confronts him for the final reveal. Pinhead wanted him to get to Kirsty but Kirsty offered them a deal: five souls in exchange for hers. She killed all his lovers and his partner Brett with his gun and shot him in the car causing the car to plunge off the bridge. Trevor only believes it when the body in morgue turns out to be his own and he’s the one who is dead, while Kirsty lived. The police and doctor are all really the emergency crew that were at the accident and Alison is a paramedic who talks to the dead as if they can hear her

This story is more straightforward than Inferno but it isn’t being told linearly so giving an impression of more depth than it really has. The acting was good enough but no-one really got pushed very much in their roles. The Hellraiser elements were integrated into the story quite well even if the Cenobites did seem peripheral to the story and the cube barely got used. I think the budget must have been limited because there wasn’t a lot of special effects and most of  the deaths weren’t very gory. It not the worst of the sequels but it isn’t really essential viewing either.

Rating 6.5/10

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Review: Hellraiser – Inferno

This is the fifth Hellraiser film and as far as I know this went straight to video. It is also a standalone story with no reference to what has happened in past films. Some people dislike this change but I think it fits quite well with what Clive Barker was creating with the original Hellraiser. The story itself is intriguing, confusing, and violent and it reminded me of the film Angel Heart. I think this a good film and find it tiresome that it often gets just dismissed because it’s one of the lesser-known Hellraiser sequels.

Police Detective Joseph Thorne (Craig Sheffer) gets a call to a murder scene where the victim has been ripped apart by hooks. The scene has a ritualistic look with the remains arranged inside a square of candles. One candle is sitting on a box, the familiar Lament configuration puzzle box of course. Thorne gets presented with another puzzle, in form of a the severed finger of a child embedded in the wax of the candle. From the victim’s belongings they find his wallet with driver’s license and Thorne realises he knows the man from high school. We get a hint of what type of man Thorne is when we see him pocket a couple of hundred dollars from the wallet

Thorne goes back to home but he doesn’t stay, telling his wife Melanie (Noelle Evans) he has to leave because he’s working a case. In reality he’s leaving to pick up a prostitute called Daphne (Sasha Barrese) and as his self-serving narration says he thinks this keeps his marriage going. I’m not sure what his excuse is for the cocaine he uses all the time but I’m sure he’ll have one. He has sex with her then goes to the bathroom where he examines the puzzle box. Not really sure why he’s got it there but he solves it and the puzzle moves by itself but the walls don’t open up and Pinhead doesn’t appear. Instead the lights flicker and Thorne enters a strangely lit room. It is child’s bedroom and he hears a child calling for help through another door and he’s in a corridor where he sees a pair of strange cenobites with stitched-up eyes who kiss and stroke him push their hands inside his skin . He breaks way  from them following the child’s cries for help until he meets Pinhead (Doug Bradley) who rips his face off then he wakes in the motel room’s bathroom.

Sasha Barrese (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thorne goes to work and while he’s there he gets a call from Daphne who is very frightened and begging for his help. There are ghastly sounds of a bloody struggle and then the phone line goes dead. Back at the motel room Thorne finds her body hung up in the shower. He tells his partner Tony (Nicholas Turturro) that he was there the night before and slept with Daphne and begs for his help covering up any evidence of that. He also plants evidence incriminating Tony because Tony is honest and not happy with covering stuff up for whatever reason. They also find a second severed finger and from its freshness Thorne knows the child is still alive.

Back at the station Thorne helps to narrow down the search parameters for their search for a match on the fingerprints found on the box. This brings up a quick match to Leon Gaultier (Matt George) a man working in a body piercing/tattoo shop. Thorne gets a name from him of the owner of the box, the Engineer. Leon also says “Hunt for the Engineer the Engineer will hunt you.”

Thorne talks to his snitch Bernie (Nicholas Sadler) who is a drug dealing paedophile scumbag and he has an ice cream van. Bernie clams up when Thorne asks him about the Engineer but Thorne doesn’t take that and threatens him with jail. Bernie tells him a story of how brutal the Engineer is and repeats that thing Leon said about hunt the Engineer and the Engineer will hunt you. Out in the car Tony is waiting and he wants to know if he got any information and the way he asks it makes it clear he knows Thorne get his cocaine from Bernie. Tony really wants them to come clean about Thorne sleeping with Daphne the night before. Thorne tells that won’t be happening and tells him about what he did. Tony is not happy but he’s really getting a measure of how much of a bastard Thorne is.

While Thorne is sitting in a bar drinking a kid appears and gives him a videotape. He shoves into it the video player in the bar. It was shot in Bernie’s van and we can hear Bernie is being brutally whipped and begging for mercy that doesn’t come. We don’t see this happening, just the legs of the killer and barbed whip he’s using. But what we hear paints an awful picture of what’s happening. After he’s finished killing Bernie he crouches down to the camera and we see his distorted eyeless hell face. The killer then shows the camera a freshly severed finger. When he tries to show he tapeito the other cops back at the station the tape is blank. The captain orders him to see the station counsellor before he goes back to work because he seems on edge.

Thorne goes to see the counsellor Dr. Paul Gregory (James Remar) but he makes up an excuse and arranges an appointment for another time. He gets told that they’ve found Bernie. Bernie is chained to his steering wheel and the flesh on his back is ripped open, exposing his spine. Tony mentions that they haven’t found a finger at this scene and Thorne shows them that it’s in the cash register but he only knows that from the video that no-one else saw but Tony can think of another source of information. They find a mobile phone in his pocket with a message about meeting a Mr Parmaggi about finding the Engineer.

The next scene is fascinating but I‘m not sure what the point of it is. Thorne and Tony drive out to a remote bar in the middle of the night. Inside there are several tables of people in cowboy hats silently playing poker. Thorne sits at a table and asks about buying when Mr Parmagi (Michael Shamus Wiles) appears in his Grand Ol’ Opry gear, six-shooter included. Thorne asks him about the Engineer but Parmagi just gives him a cryptic answer. Thorne wants him to tell the Engineer that he won’t stop looking but Parmagi assures him that the Engineer doesn’t want him to stop. Thorne spots the hell faced killer get up from a table and leave so he follows into the woods where two Asian cowboys in long leather coats beat the crap out of him.

Thorne goes back to the station house and talks to Dr. Gregory and tells him he thinks he’s going crazy and tells him about the Engineer. Gregory has heard about the engineer and tells him about a cop who got so obsessed with finding the Engineer he ended up shooting himself in the head. Gregory has a picture of the puzzle box and Thorne brings it out asks him about it. Gregory tells him the legend that if you open the box they come for you and take you to hell. Thorne say they didn’t take him to hell and Gregory suggests that means they‘re still here.

Thorne goes home where Melanie is upset that he wasn’t home and didn’t even call to tell her where he was. Then she sees how badly beat up he is and she cleans his cuts and Thorne nods off. He wakes when the phone rings. Melanie answers it then tells him it was from his mother who said something about getting a visit from The Engineer. Thorne rushes to nursing home where they live. His mother sits by his father’s bed knitting asking him why he’s doesn’t come to see them anymore. His father is so ill he’s bed-bound. Thorne goes through a door and into that strange child’s bedroom he was in before and the door slams behind him. He hears ghastly noises of his parents screaming and the violent tearing of flesh. Blood starts oozing under the door and Thorne pounds on the door. Then he wakes up at home and the phone is ringing. Just like in the dream it’s his mother and Thorne rushes to their nursing home. His parents are missing but they discover that the mattress of his father’s bed is soaked in blood. On the cabinet beside the bed is a gift box containing two more fingers and a card with an address on it.

Outside the hospital he runs into Tony who really wants to have a word with him. Tony thinks Thorne’s out of control and he tells Thorne that no-one else has any evidence that the Engineer even exists. The link between all the victims is Thorne himself. Tony wants to take Thorne in to see the Captain and they struggle and Tony tell him he needs help but Thorne ignores him and drives off. He goes to the address on the card and finds a telescope trained on a window across the street. Tony is chained to a chair and the hell face killer is whipping him to death with a chain then he puts a severed finger in Tony’s mouth. A telephone in the room rings. It is the Engineer and he tells Thorne to go home.

At home he finds his wife and daughter chained to a revolving wooden pillar, freezing to death asking him when he’s coming home and why he lies to them. Also there is Dr. Gregory. He reaches out to his daughter but they both crack and crumble away. Then Gregory tells Thorne that they got a match on the fingerprint from the finger in Tony’s mouth. It’s Thorne’s fingerprint. Gregory tells him when he said go home he didn’t mean here but his first home.

Gregory offers to help him understand. Thorne says “you’re the Engineer” and Gregory smiles and transforms into Pinhead who tells him he must go back home. He goes a through door and is back the strange bedroom now we find out it was his bedroom and the 7-year-old Thorne is there. Downstairs his parents are a young couple. In the kitchen his Mom makes brownies. Time shakes up the house and ages everything including his mother who has bloody holes where eyes should be and she comes at him with a knife until he shoots her and has to do the same when his father attacks. Next Daphne attacks then Tony until he shoots both of them and then it’s Bernie attacking him and getting shot.

There are cenobites in the corridors of the building. In one room he see himself standing inside, then he is standing inside. A boy with several missing finger is on a chair in front of him. The hell face killer appears and Thorne takes his gun out and hell face rips off his mask to reveal he is Thorne only he’s Thorne’s hungers and desires and the boy is his spirit. His flesh is killing his spirit, Pinhead tells him before hooks on chain tear him apart.

And he wakes up the hotel bathroom with Daphne sleeping on the bed outside. He thinks it was just a dream when Daphne calls screaming and in despair Thorne shoots himself in the head. Then wakes up in the hotel bathroom again knowing he’s in hell and there’s no escape.

I know some people who loved the original film will not accept this film but I like that they tried to do something else without burdening itself with trying to recreate the original film’s tone or stay in the same continuity. Another thing people may dislike is that this film is not straightforward and I’m not all that confident I fully understand it myself. It is diffcult to even figure when we really entered the hell vision being controlled by Pinhead, was after he opened the box or is everything from the start a trip through Thorne’s hell? Is Thorne really a killer or are the brutal murders a symbol.of the way he abuses those he knows? Is it Thorne that Gregory is talking about when he mentions the cop who got obsessed with finding the Engineer until he went crazy and shot himself?  Why did Thorne go to a remote poker club and get beat up by Asian cowboys? It can be infuriating to not have clear-cut answers.

One of the best things about the film are the performances of Craig Sheffer and Nicolas Turturro, playing the experienced dirty cop and the idealistic rookie who learns fast.This film really does make nice use of sound to convey the bloody murders with a brutality that would be difficult and expensive to show and feels gorier than it really is. I think this is a good film and I would still have enjoyed it if it had no connection to the Hellraiser series. If you haven’t watched it already give it a go. And then come back tell me what it was about.

Rating 7.5/10

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Review: Hellraiser III – Hell on Earth

The first three films in this series are a perfect illustration of sequel decay. Hellraiser is a low-budget classic horror with a dark visceral feel and a nice tight straightforward story. Hellbound: Hellraiser II expanded on the story and many of those who worked on Hellraiser returned. It is less focused and makes less sense than the original and has more spectacle and a larger body count. Then we get this film. Only one of the original cast returned, Doug Bradley is back as Pinhead who has been reduced to the status of a powerful evil misanthropic villain hell bent on conquering the world.

In an art gallery there is a sculpture with the very familiar face of Pinhead. Later flashbacks in the film indicate that it is supposed to be that cheap-ass column from the end of the second film but this looks much better than that, full of twisted limbs and faces. Wealthy club owner J.P Monroe (Kevin Bernhardt) is interested in buying it from a man dressed like a bum who is very vague about the ownership of the sculpture or its price.

Joey (Terry Farrell) is a junior news reporter desperate for a breakthrough to reporting on the main news stories but her latest assignment at the emergency room of a city hospital turns out to be a wash-out on one of the quietest nights in the hospital’s history. She feels even worse when her cameraman Doc Fisher (Ken Carpenter) gets called away on a “real“  story. After he’s gone a patient gets rushed in, a young man whose body is pierced by black metal hooks on chains. Joey tries talking to a young woman who came in with the patient to find out what happened but Terri (Paula Marshall) is too upset to tell her much more than her name and that it happened at the Boiler Room. While Joey is distracted by the boy in the emergency room getting his head pulled apart Terri sneaks off.

Joey tries to convince her colleagues back at the TV station about what she saw but she’s told no pictures then it didn’t happen. She finds out that the Boiler Room is a nightclub and goes there to look for Terri. This the place owned by J.P. Munroe and he has it decorated according to his own grisly taste with mannequins and dolls wrapped in barbed wire so the Pinhead sculpture fits in perfectly. Joey asks around about Terri and gets directed to J.P. who of course comes on to her but she rejects him and leaves her card for Terri to contact her.

Joey is awoken from a nightmare about her father, who died before she was born, by a phone call from Terri. Terri is looking a place to stay after her boyfriend J.P. kicked her out so Joey offers her a spare room. Terri happily accepts but she’s nervous and thinks Joey just wants to use her to get the information about what killed the boy at the hospital. Joey assures her that’s not the case but insists that she still has to find out happened. Terri rummages in her bag and brings out a puzzle box. She says it came off the sculpture. It was Terri who found the sculpture and told J.P. about it so next day Terri and Joey go to investigate the gallery. The gallery is locked up and a neighbour insists it’s been that way for months but Terri says she was there just last week with J.P. Joey is thrown by the apparent dead-end but Terri uses her burglary skills to get them in. They start looking through the paperwork to see if they can find any papers about the sculpture. There they find all the documents from the Channard Institute. Terri thinks that now Joey has what she wants she won’t want Terri around but Joey tells her that she has place to stay for as long as she needs it.

At the Boiler Room J.P. seduces Sandy (Aimée Leigh) a naïve young woman who he takes to his apartment and screws her giving us this film’s compulsory nude scene. After he’s shot his load he‘s no longer interested in her and is openly contemptuous of her. Sandy is angry and upset at being used and doesn’t notice how close she is to the sculpture. Pinhead’s eyes open and hooks on chains burst out of the sculpture and rip off her skin. They seize her and drag her screaming into the depths of the statue where she gets transformed into part of the sculpture. J.P. is shocked and frightened and tries shooting the sculpture but Pinhead just spit out the bullets. Pinhead offers to fulfil J.P.’s darkest desires in exchange for more flesh.

Joey gets visited in her dreams of her father by the spirit of Captain Elliott Spencer who was Pinhead but was freed when he was reminded of his humanity by Kirsty Cotton before being attacked by the Channard Cenobite and killed. Elliott warns Joey that the evil was driven out of him was too strong to be destroyed and now threatens to bring its evil to Earth. Pinhead is after the puzzles box to destroy it since it the only thing that can send him back to hell.

Terri is sitting in Joey’s apartment and gets a call from J.P. saying he’s sorry and wants her back. Having a new friend and place to stay has given Terri enough self-respect to turn down J. P. But she hears phone message left on Joey’s answering machine making her think Terri will be moving away leaving her homeless and alone again so she takes the hump and runs off into J.P.’s clutches. Back at J.P.’s apartment he makes all the right sympathetic noises and beckons Terri to come to him right next to the sculpture. Just before J.P. succeeds he starts getting too anxious and tries to grab her but she fights back and manages to knock him out with a knuckle-duster.

Terri goes to leave but Pinhead offers her the chance to dream and all she has to do is feed J.P. to the sculpture. She agrees to the deal and she kick s his unconscious body toward the statue. J.P. comes round just in time to protest before he’s seized by hooks on chain and his head in penetrated by a pair of pistons. J.P.’s blood allows Pinhead to free himself from the sculpture. Pinhead explodes through the door into the nightclub and unleashes his lethal magical powers on the club’s patrons, slaughtering everyone.  This scene reminds me of the climaxes of the first two Wishmaster films but it isn’t really as imaginative.

Joey sees a news report about a major disaster at the Boiler Room. She rings Doc who agrees to meet her there and she lifts the puzzle box and leaves. When Joey gets to the Boiler room there’s no-one else is sight, no cops and no TV news crews. She enters the club and discovers bloodbath inside with mutilated corpses everywhere. She sees Doc’s headless corpse and realises she sent him to his death. Pinhead appears and offers to end her misery quickly if she gives him the box. Joey refuses and he tries to grab it and it zaps him.

Joey escapes from the club and runs off through the streets so Pinhead creates some new cenobites and sends them after her. The barman been turned into the Barbie Cenobite, his face wrapped and barbed wire and breathing fire. The club’s DJ has been turned into the CD Cenobite with his head full of slots for lethally sharp CDs which he throws to kill people. The third of these cenobites is Doc whose camera has been fused with his head to transform him into the Cameraman Cenobite with his lethal lens and ability to blow up TV sets. The original cenobites were disciples of pain and they were terrible to behold because their mutilation represented their devotion to their cause. These cenobites seem to be a lame attempt at injecting a contemporary feel and they pale in comparison to the originals. As they chase Joey they kill many passers-by and blow stuff up.

Joey runs into a church and tells the priest about being chased by demons. The priest tells her that demons aren’t real, that they are just a metaphor. That’s when Pinhead makes his entrance, blowing off the doors again. He makes his way to the altar and the priest tries to ward him with a cross. Pinhead chides him for worshipping a graven image and melts the cross in the man’s hand. Even more show-boating follows with a drawn out scene of Pinhead removing spikes from his head, piercing his hands and doing a Jesus impression. He follows this by removing a piece of flesh from his abdomen and forcing it into the priest’s mouth in a crude parody of the communion. Just to show how pointless this whole scene is it comes to an end when Joey uses the puzzle box on Pinhead and escapes which she could have done as soon as he appeared. The scene didn’t further the plot and seemed to be included for cheap shock value.

Joey gets to a building site so at least that will minimise collateral damage. There are two more cenobites waiting there, Terri and J.P. These two are better than the other ones and are more interested in causing pain than major property damage. The other cenobites arrive and Pinhead gloats but then Joey solves the puzzle box and it sends all the cenobites to hell, which is bit of an anti-climax

But it’s all a trick as Joey finds herself in her dream of her father who is no longer dying. He says that he’s a reward to Joey for defeating Pinhead and he asks for the cube which she hands over. Of course her father turns out to really be Pinhead who grins as he takes his true shape then laughs at his victory. The scene changes abruptly to an empty wooden room and Elliott is there. This is the room where Elliott solved the puzzle and was taken to serve hell. It was apparently Elliot’s plan all along to get Pinhead into Joey’s dreams so Elliott can get him. Elliot rejoins with Pinhead but Pinhead is dominant and sets on his sights Joey but she manipulates the puzzle into a long sharp spike and stabs it into Pinhead’s heart causing him to be dragged in pieces into the puzzle spike.

I know that the different behaviour of Pinhead is explained in the film but it’s not a change that I like and the new cenobites were a pale shadow of the original ones. I don’t know if I would have been happier with this film if it was not a sequel to Hellraiser but it is and I can’t honestly rate it any other way. Even the musical score was sacrificed to the marketing dollar by featuring a heavy metal soundtrack, something that I usually enjoy but not this one. The original music does still appear especially towards the end but it does little to recreate the original’s tone. It is certainly watchable and more entertaining than many other horror films but as fan of the original I am disappointed

Rating 6.5/10

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Review: Hellraiser

This is one of my all-time favourite films so this will not be a very neutral review.What Clive Barker writes is so graphic and full of beautiful inhuman monsters. This film is that imagination made flesh and, as dated as some of the effects may be, there is no denying the power of the ideas and the imagery in this film

There is a puzzle box, the lament configuration created by an 18th century toy-maker Lemarchand which can open doorways to a world of experiences beyond pleasure and pain and acts beyond good and evil, under ministrations of the Cenobites of the Gash. Frank Cotton buys the box because he has become jaded with what the normal world has to offer. Frank prepares an attic room in his family home and sits down with the box. When he solves the box it tears a hole through to hell and the Cenobites come. These four Cenobites have been each been hideously mutilated and deformed, wearing their bleeding scars as a demonstration of their devotion to physical sensation. The head Cenobite has been nicknamed Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and he may be all that is known about this film by people who haven’t watched it. His name comes from the grid scarred into his shaven scalp with pins hammered into each intersection of scars. He and the other cenobites wield cutting tools and use hooked chains to tear into Franks flesh to provide him with the new experiences he thought he craved, eventually tearing him apart and torturing the pieces.

Some time later Frank’s brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) moves into the house with his wife Julia (Claire Higgins). Larry is much more normal than his brother and is trying to hold on to his marriage to Julia even though she seems to have grown cold on him. Julia looks round the house and finds signs that Frank was staying there and we find out that she had an affair with Frank when he came home to attend Larry and Julia’s wedding. Frank quickly grew bored and left but Julia can’t stop thinking about him.

Julia is drawn to the attic room where Frank died and where memories of her passionate affair with Frank are much stronger. Larry is downstairs trying get their new bed up the stairs into the bedroom and he rips his hand open on a nail. He runs up the stairs to Julia, nearly passing out at the sight of his own blood and needing her help to know what to do. His blood drips on to the floorboards and is sucked away unnoticed. Julia says they need to go to a hospital for stitches. Fortunately Larry’s daughter Kirsty (Ashley Lawrence) has just arrived and she drives them to hospital.

Meanwhile Frank’s remains in the attic have absorbed Larry’s blood and given him a way to escape from hell. Other effects in the film have dated but this scene is so well done and so disgustingly awful that its still very effective. CGI just doesn’t ooze realistically or evoke the visceral response you get from real fake goo and gore. Frank oozes out of the floor boards slowly and comes together as a half-dead revenant still more dead than alive.

That night after retuning from the hospital Larry is having a party drinking, chatting and joking with his friends and his daughter Kirsty. Julia slinks off upstairs early claiming to have a headache and she goes up to the attic room. There she discovers the barely-formed Frank and is horrified until Frank tells her who he is. Frank begs for her help, telling Julia that blood brought him back and more blood is needed to restore him. Later that night Julia returns to the attic and tells she agrees to help.

Next day Julia goes to a bar and picks up a guy. She takes him back to her house with the promise of sex and takes him up to the attic room. There she smashes his head in with a hammer. Frank crawls out of the shadows and hungrily devours the man’s blood while Julia leaves to clean herself up. Afterwards Frank is a bit more meaty but he still needs more blood meaning Julia has to find more victims. As she keeps going she stops being disgusted by what Frank makes her do and starts to enjoy it

Larry gets worried about Julia. He thinks that she never leaves the house and her mood is always off. He asks Kirsty to drop in on Julia, thinking that she might be feeling lonely. When Kirsty does drop by she sees Julia going into the house with a strange man. She watches a while longer then she hears the man’s screams from the attic room and rushes up the stairs. There she is greeted by shocking sight of the man partially drained and begging for help. Frank grabs the man back into the room and greets Kirsty lecherously. She does not recognise the skinless monster until he introduces himself as Uncle Frank. Frank approaches her menacingly but backs off as she clutches the puzzle box. Seeing the panic in Frank’s eyes she seizes her chance, throws the box out of the window and runs down the stairs and out of the house, then picks up the box keeps going. She keeps walking until shock hits her and she passes out in the street.

When Kirsty comes to she’s in a hospital bed.The doctor gives her the box, saying she was found clutching it outside and he leaves it with her. Kirsty examines the box then starts moving the parts causing it to play music.  The walls of her room rip open to reveal a long dark corridor. Kirsty tentatively explores the corridor , until she find the way blocked by a creature with huge teeth and large tail and a long lethal stinger which chases Kirsty back into her room. Four Cenobites appear to take Kirsty to hell for opening the box. Kirsty pleads ignorance but the Cenobites are not interested and have no mercy. It is only when she mentions Frank escaping them that they take an interest. She offers them a deal, if she can lead them to Frank they might let her go free.

Kirsty gets out of the hospital and goe back to house worried about what Frank and Julia might do to Larry. Unfortunately Julia and Frank have already killed Larry and Frank is now wearing Larry’s skin. They convince Kirsty that the body is Frank’s and that Larry had to kill him. The Cenobites appear in the attic and tell Kirsty that they want the murderer, which she thinks means her father Larry. Kirsty goes to warn ‘Larry’ and Julia that they must all leave then she realises that Larry is actually Frank. Frank stabs Julia and comes after Kirsty who has run up to attic where Larry’s body is. Frank gloats about what he’s done but Frank’s confession is what the Cenobites are waiting for. They capture him with hooks on chains and they rip him apart once again.

Kirsty flees but the Cenobites still want her too. Fortunately she still has the puzzle box. Each part of the puzzle that she solves banishes one of Cenobites to hell until she has it solved, while the house falls to pieces around her.

As I said above this is one my favourites films. I think that the story is just brilliant and is so original that I really cannot think of any films that similar to it. If you know any please let me know because I’d love to see them. I still get excited when I put this on to watch and that is not at all typical of me. I think this really demonstrates the ability of young inexperienced film-makers determined to get their ideas onto film with little concern for how things should be done or how things had been done in the past. It is a tribute the fantastic job the make-up people did to create the look of the Cenobites in this film that even though they are hardly in the film for more than few minutes it is the image of the Cenobites that lasts long after the film is over.

The main cast is all pretty good but Claire Higgins really did a great job with Julia as her character develops from frustrated housewife to serial killer and lover of a monster. Frank was played by three different actors. The pre-hell Frank was Sean Chapman and he’s okay. Much better was monster Frank played by Oliver Smith, a really creepy performance. Then when Franks puts on Larry’s skin he’s played by Andrew Robinson who plays Larry, and is even better and creepier.

Now bring on the sequels prequels and remakes

Rating 10/10

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