Saturday, June 13, 2015

Franchise Review: Hellraiser [IV]: Bloodline (1996)

 
Wow, really? We're already going to space with this franchise? It's only the fourth movie. You don't go to space until way later when you are just shit out of ideas and don't even care about being good anymore (unless you're Jason X and you end up being totally awesome). Hellraiser: Bloodline actually just goes all over the fucking place in space and time, literally, and I don't really have much of a clue about what I just watched.

We start off in the year 2127 on a space station, where a guy named Merchant (that name should be recognizable) is manipulating a Terminator-looking robot into solving the puzzle box but some SWAT guys crash the party just as Pinhead shows up. The SWAT guys interrogate Merchant, and we get a whole history lesson on the family that built the first puzzle box and how they might hold the power to keep Pinhead out of our world.

Bloodline is interesting to say the least. I'm not calling it horrible just yet because of what may come in later films, but there is definitely something wrong about this entry and how it fits into the franchise. Somewhat jumping the shark so early and taking the story into the future is definitely not the choice I would have made, even if a good portion of the film actually takes place in different time periods. It's not a total train wreck, though, which is very surprising - especially considering the huge reservations I was having during the opening credits when the director was listed as "Alan Smithee." There were actually two directors for Bloodline, and they both were so disappointed with the movie that neither one of them wanted their name on it. Ouch.

The main thing that I didn't like about the movie is that the main villain is not really Pinhead so much as this other chick named Angelique. And the even further problem with that is that we have no idea who Angelique is or what her background is. She appears during the portion of the film that takes place in 1796, when the box is first built by a toymaker named Phillipe LeMarchand. LeMarchand built it for a creepy, pancake makeup-wearing guy named de L'Isle who uses it to summon a demon through the body of this random chick his assistant, Jacques, killed and she becomes Angelique. But what kind of demon is she and where did she come from? Later on in time and in the movie there is a Cenobite version of her (I think), but was she a Cenobite to begin with? Is she from the same realm of Hell as Pinhead and that's how he knows her (because they act like frenemies for most of the movie)? When Pinhead finally does show up, it almost feels weird that he's there and that he doesn't fit in with the movie because he hasn't been the main villain so far.

I do have to give Bloodline props for some cool things that it does. There isn't an abundance of great kills or anything (and one of them is basically a repeat of what they did in the previous movie) but what is there is pretty good. First of all, Pinhead's pet demon dog - we'll call him Fido - was both hilariously bad and hilariously awesome. Fido is the first BDSM dog I've ever seen who is not really that terrifying because all he can do is click his teeth really fast. How adorable. Fido doesn't get a crazy amount of screen time, though, so don't go into Bloodline expecting to see a lot of him. The repeated death is when the twin security guards become the Siamese twin Cenobite, and the effect looks just like when Spencer and Pinhead merged together in Hellraiser 3. The only real standout kill for me was in the portion in 1996 when Merchant is very cleverly decapitated with one of Pinhead's chains that has a nifty attachment on the end of it. This was also surprising because the audience was probably expecting him to survive.

I'm not entirely sold on their explanation of what ends up defeating Pinhead. Light? Really? Just... light? Please tell me there was something more to this that I didn't care enough about to really pay attention, because I really hate to believe that Pinhead was dispatched with by LIGHT. And being blown up in space, sure, but mostly light. Kind of dumb, I'm sorry. Not sorry, though, to say that I kind of really liked the whole thing at the end where the space station turned into a giant puzzle box and explodes. It was a cool way to make the scope of the movie and the story that much bigger, and really, it was a fucking good idea.

I very much enjoyed the cast. Doug Bradley is of course back as Pinhead, but several other recognizable faces show up as well. Rimmer, one of the futuristic SWAT people on the space station is Mark Greene's wife from ER. Merchant's wife Bobbi is Kim Myers from Nightmare 2. Merchant's son Jack is child actor Courtland Mead. Jacques is a guy whom I randomly recognized as one of David's boyfriends from Six Feet Under. It's really a good cast all around and they each do a great job with their roles, never once either hamming it up or dumbing it down.

So what was my overall experience like with Hellraiser: Bloodline? I wasn't a big fan of the story, which was just way, way overreaching - going to space, jumping time periods, being really fucking confusing and not making any sense. I really can't give the movie any points for that. However, the execution is not too shabby when you really look at it. Like I said before, it's not a total train wreck, but it definitely could have been better.

13 comments:

  1. What struck me was the Pinhead/Angelique subplot. The movie devotes a fair bit of time in the middle section to setting them up as antagonists (although I think maybe your term "frenemies" is better), and then it's just sort of dropped.

    It feels like there was a different, more Pinhead/Angelique heavy movie in there somewhere. Maybe there was in an earlier version of the screenplay, and what we see is what was leftover after multiple rewrites.

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    1. That's what I think - that there had to have been more to the story than what was put on screen and it got lost somehow. Really would have helped the movie a lot to develop that further.

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  2. Hellraiser Bloodline was a film really crippled by studio interference. There were forced script rewrites, budget cuts, and reshoots and edits done behind the director(Kevin Yagher)'s back. It's a real shame, because from what I've read, the original script was a lot better than the mediocre product we got instead.

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    1. Ah, such bullshit. Even for a Hellraiser sequel, I hate hearing that stuff like that happened. At least the directors' names aren't on the movie so they don't have to wear that their whole careers.

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  3. Farewell, Pinhead. Stuck in space with the remains of a blown up giant Leprechaun and Uber-Jason.

    Until the franchise went direct to Video.

    Here's my "idea" to what Angelique might be: it is hinted sometime in the movie that Angelique looked surprised to see Pinhead's current appearance and was even lectured by the Prince of Hell that "hell had since changed". Further more, in the deleted scenes, Angelique created her own set of cenobite minion.

    The way I see it, Angelique is (or was) a chief cenobite much like Pinhead, but since she's the first demon to be summoned out of the box and remained out of hell for centuries, one would speculate that Hell changed over the time which can also be said to the appearances of its residents. Angelique is the "old world" cenobite while Pinhead's current incarnation is the "modern world" cenobite, they're the same but Angelique just missed out all the bondage and mutilations and shit.

    Until she got sucked in the box, and Leviathan had its way and "updated" her.

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    1. Nice! I like that explanation a lot and it really makes sense for the weak background that is established in the scenes between Pinhead and Angelique.

      I thought she looked pretty cool as a Cenobite.

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  4. The thing that bugs me about this movie: In Part 2 we were told that Pinhead (at least when his human half is intact, which it is in this film) only tortured people who subconsciously want it.

    Plunging the entire world into Hell would, obviously, mean torturing a lot of people who don't want it. It's like the writers never even saw the previous movies!

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  5. I love every HR sequel. This is my 2nd favourite after Inferno

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    1. Oh, just wait for my Inferno post - I LOVE that one.

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    2. I'm excited for your write ups on this series.

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  6. Wow, sounds like a messy movie. But there are some good ideas in there too. It is so frustrating when a film hints at what it could have been, but somewhere along the way it got lost.

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    1. It's just very confusing and out of place with the series, I think. There's some nice attempts at a history lesson but it doesn't feel right.

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  7. I love this 4th part but definitly not for the same reason than you. I think the past scenes are just great and not only because at this moment the story takes place in France but because characters are very charismatic and specially De L'Isle and Angelique. And this protagonist is specially interesting in this franchise because we never seen before or after a cenobite like that : strong, vicious as Pinhead able to challenge him.

    However as you said "something wrong", everybody know this film had a terrible production with some different problems between producers and directors (Chapelle and Yagher) and that why the final cut is so...shitty and boring sometimes. BUT if you can i suggest to watch Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (Special Edition). Under this name is hidden a unofficial version of this film with several scenes never seen before (specially about past and furtur events). Even if these new scenes don't have FX and globally a poor quality the film is definitly BETTER. REALLY!!!
    Of course you'll definitly hate Angelique because she more present, but it was a great experience for me to watch this version and also a big regreat to don't have an official director's cut release by Miramax (even if the studio released a bullshit dvd with this denomination is actually not).
    No Hellraiser 5 is not so bad is actually the reverse.

    Miramax released recently a producer's cut of Halloween 6...20 years after the cinema version so i hope to see one day the name about this 4th Hellraiser !

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