The Hellraiser Project: Hellraiser: Deader (2005)
We are methodically nearing the end of Dr. Royce Clemen’s The Hellraiser Project (read all about it here), in which he sits through and reviews all eight movies in the Hellraiser series.
We left on on Part 6, Hellseeker (read the review here), which was posted by our collaborators in this insane and sadistic little experiment, Geeks of Doom!
Today brings us to Hellraiser: Deader, and things don’t appear to be getting any better for our reviewer…
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
The long and interminable death-march through all things Hellraiser continues this week, ruining whatever minuscule Holiday cheer I might have had left. Between bad radio, horrible TV, long lines, ill will, greed and familial resentment, what could make someone’s week worse? PINHEAD! It’s like opening a Pabst Blue Ribbon at the end of the worst day of your life. Sure you could splurge on the good stuff and lift your spirits, but seriously, why fight it?
And as I near the end of this project, it’s like when you’re a kid and mom makes broccoli. She won’t let you get up from the table until you’ve finished and you have just TWO PIECES of that insufferable green shit left. It looks like a mountain, doesn’t it? I swear this has gotten so surreal and maddening that I’m hearing a monotone computer voice telling me I can have cake and grief counseling if I make it out alive.
And you are SO AWESOME if you got that…
Anyway, the seventh and penultimate Hellraiser film is Hellraiser: Deader. Now just look at that title and you can see the ignorance and bankruptcy of the Hellraiser franchise crystallized. Hellraiser…Deader. Kinda like “PERFECTER” or “UNIQUER,” ain’t it? But it’s fitting, though, using something that isn’t even a word in the title to something that isn’t even a movie. I’ve stopped trying to pin down the question of which Hellraiser movie is the worst. It’s like going through a college football town in Mississippi and trying to spot the white-trash housewife with the biggest black eye and the most retarded offspring. It’s not only pointless because of the huge number of contenders, but it’s in very poor taste.
Hellraiser: Deader stars Kari Wuhrer and co-stars the wet paper bag she’s unsuccessfully been trying to act her way out of for the past ten years. She plays Amy Klein, renegade reporter extraordinaire. We first see her come out of a stupor in a junkie hovel in London and then she files her first story, entitled “HOW TO BE A CRACK WHORE.”
Seriously.
Her editor introduces her to a tape of a cult called “The Deaders.” They’re scrawny, pale Joy Division fans who lure gullible young folk into their lair and force them to kill themselves. Then their leader named Winter (whom we know is the leader, for he is the scrawniest and palest of them all) French kisses them and they come back to life with their wounds still intact. What point there is to this whole exercise is a mystery to me and, in all likelihood, a mystery to the guys who wrote it.
Anyway, Amy tracks down one of the cult members to find that she offed herself in the bathroom. And guess what she’s holding in her hand? Yup, it’s the Rubix Cube o’ Doom.
But unlike the past few Hellraisers, they actually integrate Pinhead into the plot this time instead of having him pop up every forty minutes or so to remind the long-suffering fans of this franchise why they picked up the DVD in the first place. The Deaders, it seems, have gained backdoor entry to Pinhead’s realm of pleasure and pain, and our boy is not happy. They’re ILLEGALLY DOWNLOADING DEATH! That’s just bullshit!
And they also eat the skin off the fried chicken and put the pieces back in the bucket.
Fuckin’ dicks…
As I was watching Hellraiser: Deader, I became aware of two things: That this is the first comprehensible Hellraiser movie in terms of narrative since, well, EVER! And that this was the first R-rated film that Kari Wuhrer’s been in that she hasn’t gone topless. At the very instant I came to these realizations, whatever foul imp that lords over these movies ended all that “quality” bullshit in one scene. Our old pal and Hellraiser mainstay “The Dream Sequence” is back, and the nudity is all drenched in blood, depriving anyone of any single moment’s reprieve from this terrible, terrible movie. I’m not gonne be a dick and say that female nudity is a must have for a horror movie. Remember the hot lesbian scenes that WEREN’T in The Descent? But it’s gotten to the point that I’m panhandling for spare change here. When you get a quarter it just makes your day, and then the director had to go and ruin it for all of us. There’s a reason people keep hiring Kari Wuhrer and it sure as hell ain’t for her talent.
But as I said, the first forty minutes actually make sense, but the downside of that is that it makes Hellraiser: Deader really, really boring. I could fault the Hellraiser movies for a lot of things, like a lack of originality, being pretentious, not making any sense, being poorly made and not having enough acting talent to fill out a daytime soap in the Ukraine, but they were never THIS dull. You really don’t know what you have until it’s gone…And know I DO know what I had and I know there’s no way I’m gonna come out on top, here.
Now in regard to Pinhead, I must say this: I’m an atheist by all accounts and measures, but were I a religious bloke, I would no longer fear Hell. And I have the Hellraiser movies to thank for this. Because Pinhead, from movie to movie, just keeps getting fatter…and fatter…and fatter. This leads me to believe that there is a Dunkin Donuts SOMEWHERE in Hell, thus making it not as bad as we’ve been led to believe. Especially since we ALL know that if you go to Heaven, it’s just gonna be mile after mile of vegan food co-ops. God, no wonder Pinhead keeps trying to get his hands on that brightly colored gold box throughout all these movies. He thinks he’s gonna peel back the foil and “OOOHH! CHOCOLATE!”
Seven down and one more to go and I can feel the vice tightening. I’m just surprised I’ve been through seven movies about torture and pain and I haven’t made a single waterboarding reference.
Until now.
Dammit…
So for those of you keeping track at home, that’s…
GOOD’UNS-0
SHITTY’UNS-7
Check out where it all started - The Hellraiser Project Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (Geeks of Doom link) Part 4 (Geeks of Doom link), Part 5 and Part 6 (Geeks of Doom link).
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