The wasted potential of the Hellraiser movies

[Mad Dog McMutt]

I feel like out of all the movie series to ever exist the Hellraiser films were the biggest waste of potential. The first 2 were great and the 2 after that were ok, but everything after that was pure garbage. Most of the movies after the 4th one were actually different scripts with Pinhead shoehorned in just so the company could keep the license. The cenobites were way more frightening than any other horror movie icon because they liked to focus in on pain and torture. The idea of a puzzle box unlocking these torture creatures from another dimension was just pure genius. What a shame this franchise just went down the gutter in the creativity department. The latest movie seems to misunderstand everything the previous movies established. They are taking the hell thing too literally. How could nobody come up with a decently creative written story with this franchise? Does anybody else feel this way?

[Andrew NDB]

In rewatchings it's pretty staggering how the quality level dropped after Hellraiser II in terms of the story and "Dark wonder." Still, I enjoy III for the most part and most of Bloodline until maybe the last 10-15 minutes. Also, 5 "Inferno" was fairly cleverly told. 6 "Hellseeker" I enjoyed as well, as it brought back Kirsty and gave her a little more to do.

It's kind of like after they explored the box and explored hell and showed us how it all worked (with I and II)... they suddenly had no idea what to do with the franchise. They just turned Pinhead into Freddy, basically.

[Mad Dog McMutt]

The thing that is so sad is that Pinhead could have been above Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers. He should have been number 1 because torture demons that come out of a box is more interesting and intriguing than any slasher villain. They had so much to work with and yet they couldn't write a decent story. It's like being given an erector set only creating a box with it. All of the movies after number 4 are filled to the brim with day dreamed fake out scares and Pinhead usually only comes in the last 10 minutes.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Mad Dog McMutt

The thing that is so sad is that Pinhead could have been above Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers. He should have been number 1 because torture demons that come out of a box is more interesting and intriguing than any slasher villain.

III is where the wheels came off. That's where they got a little bit more budget and tried to make Hellraiser like a Summer blockbuster thing. It didn't work and Hellraiser never recovered.

[Mad Dog McMutt]

They could have easily have come back from that. Bloodlines was decent in my opinion.

[Leo656]

Most good ideas cannot sustain being Franchised.

Once it becomes about "leaving a loophole so we can do the next one" you're not telling stories anymore but packaging and selling a commodity. You can't do your sincere best work with the material because "preserving the brand name" becomes paramount above all.

It's true of most things but in horror it becomes incredibly transparent. Almost every single horror series is just one or at best two "sincerely good" movies, followed thereafter by a long line of stuff that was made to sustain rights and earn some quick and dirty cash.

It's funny, I own a DVD collection of most of this series, but only ever bothered with the original. I got the sequels collection for a song but I've heard such awful things about everything after III that I just never got around to them. The whole "We pulled an old script out of a drawer and stuck Pinhead into it" approach might be Perfectly Hollywood but I can't see anything good coming from it.

[Mad Dog McMutt]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Most good ideas cannot sustain being Franchised.

Once it becomes about "leaving a loophole so we can do the next one" you're not telling stories anymore but packaging and selling a commodity. You can't do your sincere best work with the material because "preserving the brand name" becomes paramount above all.

It's true of most things but in horror it becomes incredibly transparent. Almost every single horror series is just one or at best two "sincerely good" movies, followed thereafter by a long line of stuff that was made to sustain rights and earn some quick and dirty cash.

It's funny, I own a DVD collection of most of this series, but only ever bothered with the original. I got the sequels collection for a song but I've heard such awful things about everything after III that I just never got around to them. The whole "We pulled an old script out of a drawer and stuck Pinhead into it" approach might be Perfectly Hollywood but I can't see anything good coming from it.

Was the song Hellraiser by Motorhead?

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Mad Dog McMutt

They could have easily have come back from that. Bloodlines was decent in my opinion.

No, the box office didn't support it. III was its first and last big shot at being a horror juggernaut. And as a result Bloodline was given a tiny budget (i seem to remember hearing the original director quit about halfway through it, too) and was already billed as the final movie in all the marketing. It was a quick burial of Hellraiser.

[neatoman]

Aren't all but the first two movies just a case of "Hey, this script sucks and will never make money as is, let's rewrite it to be a Hellraiser sequel!"?

Eh, anyway, I have noticed something interesting about the first movie though. The book was set in England and that's where the movie was filmed, but they added a few American actors and had several of the British actors fake American accents because they thought it would do better if people thought it was an American movie. Of course, the filming locations are very clearly not in the US and many actors don't even bother with faking an accent, so it doesn't come across like it takes place in America, more like some weird fictional US/UK hybrid nation.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by neatoman

Aren't all but the first two movies just a case of "Hey, this script sucks and will never make money as is, let's rewrite it to be a Hellraiser sequel!"?

No, that was just all the direct to DVD sequels (5-8 ). The last couple (9-10... maybe there's an 11th by now?) were original Hellraiser scripts but they only filmed them for like a $500 budget each. And a different Pinhead actor.

I and II were the only two with direct Clive Barker involvement, though. And you can tell. Even the definition of what Hell is and what the Cenobites are is different after II.

[neatoman]

I'm assuming you meant 500.000 dollars, in which case the last two were actually even lower than that, closer to 300.000 each.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by neatoman

I'm assuming you meant 500.000 dollars, in which case the last two were actually even lower than that, closer to 300.000 each.

Jeeze. Even lower than I thought.

[IMJ]

The original movies are anachronistic as.... well... hell..... but the crazy blend of sci-fi and horror was off the hook, man.

I recently re-watched of these, but only got as far as the first three. The trailer for the unmade newly proposed movie still lingers online and man, what a trailer it is.

[neatoman]

So, here is the final paragraph of the book:

She turned it over in her hand. For the frailest of moments she seemed to see ghosts in the
lacquer. Julia's face, and that of Frank. She turned it over again, looking to see if Rory was held
here: but no. Wherever he was, it wasn't here. There were other puzzles, perhaps, that if solved
gave access to the place where he lodged. A crossword maybe, whose solution would lift the latch
of the paradise garden, or a jigsaw in the completion of which lay access to Wonderland.
She would wait and watch, as she had always watched and waited, hoping that such a
puzzle would one day come to her. But if it failed to show itself she would not grieve too deeply,
for fear that the mending of broken hearts be a puzzle neither wit nor time had the skill to solve

Seems like it implied a sequel would focus on finding realms other than hell and ways to go there, had the franchise gone in this direction it would have been more like a horror version of Myst.