The Hellraiser Project: Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)
For those of you following along at home, we are on Part 5 of The Hellraiser Project (read all about it here), in which our good Dr. Royce Clemens reviews all eight of the Hellraiser films. To read where it all started, read Part 1 and Part 2. Our evil collaborators the Geeks of Doom have Part 3 and Part 4.
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
It’s been a week and I have a splitting headache, a lowered sex drive and a woefully depleted will to live.
Yup. It’s another Hellraiser movie.
And I actually had hopes for Hellraiser: Inferno, which is the first of this eight installment series to bypass the cinema and go straight to the No Man’s Land of your video shelves. People who like the Hellraiser movies told me this one was terrible. People who despise the Hellraiser movies told me this one was actually kinda interesting. All this bodes well for me, right?
HA! No it doesn’t. This movie is unsatisfactory, but it’s unsatisfactory in new ways. Gone are the slasher archetypes and the artsy-fartsy fucking-equals-pain Goth air that lends the series a pretense that I find oh so easy to loathe. In Hellraiser: Inferno, Pinhead goes all Noir and shit.
But wouldn’t ‘cha know it? It fails miserably at that as well. Should I praise this installment for wanting to go in another direction, be different and possess a firm directorial hand? Or should I piss on it for doing all these things poorly? Should I actually go so far as to recommend my first ever Hellraiser movie? Or should I keep my standards high?
Ah, but while this is indeed the best of the Hellraiser franchise that I’ve seen to date, it’s not a very good movie by any other stretch of the imagination. When in doubt, dear readers, blame Craig Sheffer.
You remember Craig Sheffer, don’t you? He was in A River Runs Through It and…um…You know, he’s that guy David Boreanaz stole his entire line of DNA from? And here, he’s in full-on, past-his-prime, bloated Alec Baldwin mode. Only Baldwin’s funnier…At least intentionally.
Sheffer stars as Detective Joseph Thorne. He’s apparently seen Bad Lieutenant one too many times and he himself has started doing drugs, beating the crap out of witnesses and cheating on his wife with hookers. Thank God we do not see his Little Sheffer. Anyway, at the beginning of the movie, he’s investigating the death of a former high school classmate. I don’t think I need to tell you what’s entailed in the crime scene, do you? Needless to say, chains, hooks and the Rubix Cube of Doom are found.
On a related note, the Rubix Cube of Doom, the movie tells us, is called “The Lament Configuration.” See, if more people knew that, fewer would be disposed towards touching the damned thing.
So he steals it from evidence, gets the shiniest teenaged hooker known to man and after the deed, he fiddles with The Box when he’s sitting on the crapper. It opens, the Cenobites pop up and then he wakes up like it was all a dream. But later in the day, his hooker shows up dead in the hotel room. Then a whole bunch of other people that Thorne knows start getting killed in gruesome ways and it all leads to him.
Turns out that it’s the work of a shadowy killer named “The Engineer.” And everyone who knows of him tells Thorne the same thing…
“When you hunt The Engineer…THE ENGINEER HUNTS YOU!”
I’m gonna scream that every time I swat a fly. Because it’s…just…AWESOME!
Sheffer doesn’t kill the movie outright, but he did make a whole bunch of threatening gestures towards doing so. He’s got the gravelly-voiced Batman thing going and every time he says something like “This child was still alive!” I kept expecting him to put on sunglasses and to hear The Who start up, CSI: Miami style. He is THAT cheesy.
But the movie fails structurally as well. But the damned thing is, if any of you are bold enough to actually go against my wishes and rent this movie, I can’t spoil it for you. Let’s just say if you saw this past week’s episode of Family Guy, you’ll know what direction this story’s headed.
But the fundamental area this movie succeeds in is, oddly enough, where all the other movies have failed: the thematic intent of the Cenobites. Much more imagination went into their design in this feature than they did in the past four films. In lieu of just some fat guy or a dude with CDs in his skull, (or a guy with pins in his face) there are these two twin female sisters with their eyelids sewn shut and really long tongues. I have to tell you that the whole S&M thing that must be the appeal of these movies became a little bit clearer. It’s like their design furthered the concept of these creatures from beyond the far reaches doling out “pain and pleasure, indivisible from one another.” It’s still not my cup of tea, and I still don’t see how you can build a single movie around it, let alone eight, but I came just a little bit closer to finally getting it.
So naturally, what happens when something like this succeeds in a Hellraiser movie? It’s not featured prominently at all. In fact, Pinhead is only in three scenes in this picture, and yet he fulfills yet another place in the Pinhead Revolving Wheel of Intent. In the third movie he was Monty Hall, in the fourth he was Elmer Fudd and in this one, he’s McGruff the Crime Demon. Yes, he actually helps Sheffer solve the case.
Christ…
Anywho, five movies and I still have yet to find a single recommendable motion picture. If this franchise goes eight straight for shittiness, I’ll pee my pants. Partly because it’s something to root for, and I must take consolation where I can find it. Partly because it’ll be over and I made it out alive.
And partly because my Netflix subscription will be unclogged from these movies, and I can start watching Battlestar Galactica on DVD. Keep my eyes on the prize…
So for those you keeping score at home, that’s…
GOOD’UNS-0
SHITTY’UNS-5
Available from Amazon
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