Franchises: Hellraiser. Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

This was the last Hellraiser released while I was still going to Harold's on a regular basis, and while I do remember seeing its VHS there, it left the least impact of the four. I can't even remember whether or not I looked at the back of the box, and while I probably did, there was nothing there that freaked me out like with the first two, and the cover didn't leave much of an impression, either. And yet, ironically, even though I wouldn't actually see it until many years later, my first actual glimpses of anything Hellraiser-related are tied to it. First off, I've previously mentioned the show, Cinema Secrets, which aired on AMC on Friday nights. The first episode I ever saw, which was all about horror films, had a short segment showing Doug Bradley getting into his Pinhead makeup, as the show's narrator said, "Hours in the makeup chair, while 138 pins are stuck in your head. Hot, uncomfortable costumes. Not to mention, all the evil that you must do. How do they ever relax?" It then cut to Bradley, with his makeup on but out of costume, playing football with Garry Tunicliffe in a parking lot outside the makeup trailer, as the narrator commented, "Pinhead makes his point as the quarterback from hell." Given what I now know about the franchise's production history, I'm sure that was shot during filming on Bloodline. And then, there was the home video trailer, the first of several such trailers on my old VHS of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (very, fitting, as we'll see), which I got back in 2002. It was actually a rather scary trailer, I must say, especially for someone who was still leery of this franchise from the images I remembered from that video store. Starting with nightmarish sounds and captions declaring, "FROM CLIVE BARKER, THE MOST TERRIFYING STORY TELLER OF OUR GENERATION...", it then showed a shot of a spaceship heading towards a station, as Don LaFontaine said, "Far from Earth, but frighteningly close to Hell, a new dimension in terror has a very familiar face." You then got your first glimpse of Pinhead as he came closer in the darkness, with flashing lights around him, before he declared, "I am forever!" The narration gave you a brief breakdown of the film's rather epic, multi-generational plot, as well as fast-paced clips, culminating with Pinhead exclaiming, "Welcome to oblivion!" Then there were hyperbolic blurbs, one from the dubious "Academy of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy" (seriously, who are these people?), proclaiming it, "A NON-STOP NIGHTMARE!", and another from the "World of Fandom" magazine (never heard of them, either), calling it, "THE MOST TERRIFYING HELLRAISER OF ALL!" The trailer finally ended with Pinhead laughing evilly.

I saw that quite a few times over the years but, while I simply didn't have the courage to finally see the original Hellraiser until I was in my early 20's, I had no real interest in Bloodline because it was often derided as being just another one of those "horror icon in space" movies. And since I saw Jason X for the first time during that period and didn't like it at all initially, I wasn't too eager to see Pinhead's escapades in zero gravity. Like with all of the movies after Hellbound, I only decided to seek Bloodline out when I bought The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy in the summer of 2010, which made it seem like even the really bad ones had some merit. I was especially intrigued by the idea that the film's story took place across hundreds of years, from 18th Century France to 1990's America and, finally, in outer space in the 22nd Century, and that it concerned descendants of the Lament Configuration's creator attempting to finish it all. Also, while I had a hint of the movie's very troubled production beforehand, and that Joe Chappelle worked on it, as well as Halloween 6, that book was where I learned just how seemingly cursed Bloodline was, and that Chappelle had replaced the original director after the initial bout of principal photography (I would learn more behind-the-scenes stories concerning that when I listened to Gary Tunnicliffe's interview with Midnight's Edge). Now, I was morbidly curious to see how the movie held up after so much drama. 

By the time I got around to Bloodline, I'd seen not only the first three movies, but also Hellseeker, Hellworld, and Inferno (in that order), so I was already aware of just how much of a roller-coaster ride this franchise can be in terms of quality. I finally managed to get a hold of a copy of the DVD at McKay's, along with Deader, around mid-2011, and let me tell you, if nothing else, it was nice to see a movie with real production values after so many micro-budget, direct-to-video flicks. As for the movie itself, I was, and am still, surprised to find it fairly coherent after so much bad luck and strife behind the scenes, with a good number of reshoots that resulted in it being released nearly two years after production started. It's also much closer in tone and nastiness to the first two than Hellraiser III, especially during the first act; the acting, though still not Oscar-worthy, is a lot better; the new Cenobites are much cooler and not at all laughable; and even though he's not quite as prominent this time, Doug Bradley is still awesome as Pinhead, with more memorable scenes and instances of dialogue. But, on the other hand, the most memorable section of the timeline kind of gets shortchanged, the movie tries but never reaches the tone and feel of the first two, and you can definitely see the interference and behind the scenes drama, just as you could with Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. In the end, it's watchable, but also a big missed opportunity.

In the year 2127, onboard the space-station Minos, Dr. Paul Merchant, the station's engineer, uses a robot to solve the Lament Configuration, summoning the Cenobites. However, he's interrupted by a heavily armed security team who come onboard and take him into custody, his erratic behavior having convinced the company that he's lost his mind. One of the squad's officers, Rimmer, talks with Paul, who tells her that he's planning to finally end something that began hundreds of years ago. Thinking the only way to get her to let him complete his work is to tell her the whole story, Paul first tells her of how, in late 18th Century Paris, France, his ancestor, Phillip LeMarchand, a toymaker, was commissioned by Duc de L'Isle, a libertine aristocrat, to create the first Lament Configuration. Unbeknownst to Phillip, de L'Isle was a Satanist whose specifications for the box made it a portal to Hell. Right before Phillip delivered it, de L'Isle and his young assistant, Jacques, murdered a young peasant woman, and once they had it, they flayed off her skin and used the box to summon a demon named Angelique. Inhabiting the skin, Angelique was now under de L'Isle's control. Witnessing this, a terrified Phillip came up with the plans to create another box that would counteract the Lament Configuration. But when he attempted to steal it back, he found that Jacques had murdered de L'Isle and taken control of Angelique himself. The two of them then murdered Phillip, who learned that his bloodline would be forever cursed due to their connection to the box. 200 years later, in 1996, architect John Merchant had built a New York skyscraper based around the box's designs, unknowingly getting the attention of Angelique. Managing to break free from Jacques, she traveled to the building and found the Lament Configuration hidden within its foundation. She managed to summon Pinhead, and the two of them plotted to force John to create a way to keep the gateway to Hell open forever. John, meanwhile, had been perfecting his ancestor's plans to create a way to close the gate. He eventually tried to use it to banish Pinhead and Angelique, and while it didn't work and he was killed for it, his wife managed to banish the monsters with the box. Now, onboard Minos, Paul intends to permanently close the gateway between Earth and Hell, and destroy the Cenobites. But the security team's arrival has complicated matters and time is running out.

Unlike with Hellraiser III, Clive Barker would be involved with Bloodline from the start, with him and Peter Atkins pitching ideas to Miramax executives about a film that took place across three different time periods in three acts. The studio greenlit this concept without an outline, and Atkins wrote an extremely ambitious screenplay, wherein he made the family at the center of the story the Lemarchands, the name of the man who first created the Lament Configuration, as stated in The Hellbound Heart. But because Miramax and Dimension were only willing to give the film about the same budget as the previous films, around $4 million, the script had to be scaled back. During both production and post-production, Barker, despite being involved from the get-go, wouldn't be as hands-on as he was with the reshoots for the previous film, as he was also directing Lord of Illusions and acting as producer on Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh around that time. And after the initial cut of the movie didn't go over well with the studio higher-ups, who requested that the story structure be rearranged and new scenes added, Atkins, after writing three of these new scenes, later became unavailable for any further rewrites. Thus, Rand Ravich, who wrote Farewell to the Flesh, along with Mark Kruger, was brought in to replace Atkins.

As for a director, the studio initially approached Guillermo del Toro, who'd recently impressed everyone with Cronos (and would go on to do Mimic for the studio, which prove to be nearly as troubled a production as Bloodline), and Stuart Gordon, who came very close to getting the job, but backed out when he and the producers couldn't come to terms. In the end, special effects maestro Kevin Yagher was given the opportunity to make his feature directorial debut with the film, after having directed two episodes of Tales from the Crypt. Though Yagher was initially reluctant to direct a sequel, he loved Atkins' screenplay and opted to come aboard. But when shooting began, he probably wished he hadn't, as the movie was set with problems, from the initial cinematographer being almost immediately replaced and, according to Doug Bradley, the art department and camera crew all being sacked within the first week, to the assistant director having to leave for a couple of weeks, people getting sick (a child actor in the film caught the chicken pox), and even a fire breaking out at the initial shooting location. And then, though he managed to complete the shoot on time and budget, Yagher wasn't enthusiastic about having to rearrange the movie's structure and shoot new scenes, and decided to just leave and move on to other projects.

In his Midnight's Edge interview, Gary Tunnicliffe, who was head of the makeup effects on this film and a number of those to follow, said that Yagher really didn't help himself during shooting, especially when it came to dealing with Bob Weinstein. According to him, Yagher initially brought on a lot of people he'd worked with on Tales from the Crypt, as well as Francis Kenny, a cinematographer who was more known for shooting family-centric films. As I said, a lot of

them were gone within a week, with Kenny being replaced with Gerry Lively, who'd shot Hellraiser III, and Yagher, according to Tunnicliffe, rather than fessing up that he'd made a mistake in hiring those people, became indignant towards the higher-ups, copping an attitude of, "How dare you?!" He went on to say that, when Weinstein asked to see some footage, Yagher, rather than editing together a trailer or some scenes from what he had, decided to wave a DGA edict that allows a director to edit their footage for ten to twelve weeks without showing anything to studio executives. Moreover, he's said to have had a massive blow-up with Weinstein over it; Weinstein, in turn, decided right then and there that, regardless of what he thought of the edited footage, Yagher was going to be sacked. Now, of course, there are two sides to every story, and, originally, it didn't seem like we had Yagher's side... but then, I found a YouTube Channel called Barkercast, which had interviewed him about Bloodline at a convention in 2018. Yagher sat down in a hallway with the hosts and, though he came off as very friendly and willing to talk about it, he also didn't say anything that he hadn't already said at the time, which I paraphrased up above. He also mentioned that Weinstein suddenly turned on him, but because of how bad the audio was in that video, I couldn't quite make out the details. According to Tunnicliffe, however, Yagher has, over the years, gotten a very skewed, one-sided view of what happened and becomes angry whenever someone challenges him on it. He mentions that it led to his relationship with Yagher souring, and, while Tunnicliffe does come up briefly in that interview when one of the hosts mentions Hellraiser: Judgment, there did seem to be a sense of, "The less said, the better," when it came to that. From my position, there might be some truth to what Tunnicliffe said went down. I met Doug Bradley at Texas Frightmare Weekend in the spring of 2011 and he told me that Yagher did kind of isolate himself from everyone else, rather than allow them to help him make the movie better. Take that for what you will. Regardless, when the movie was reshot, edited, and prepared for release, Yagher decided it was too far removed from what he'd originally envisioned and used the "Alan Smithee" pseudonym in place of his own name.

It really can't be a coincidence that, after he'd just finished his first bout of filming on the equally troubled Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Dimension brought Joe Chappelle onto Bloodline to direct the reshoots (as I said in my review of that movie, Chappelle sort of became Dimension's golden boy for a little while afterward). According to Doug Bradley, much of this hardly counted as "reshoots," it was actually all-new material. And what's more, Tunnicliffe has said that most of the more well-received parts of the final movie, specifically the first act in the 1700's, was shot by Chappelle, who brought in his own cinematographer, and that there's very little of Yagher's work in there, with most of it being the middle section in modern day New York (looking at the theatrical version and two available workprints, I kind of feel that Tunnicliffe is exaggerating in that respect). Although neither of them are credited as the final movie's director, both of their names do appear in the ending credits, as Yagher's effects company created some creature effects all their own and Chappelle gets a "special thanks" credit.

Despite how contentious its production, post-production, and release may have been, there's also a poignancy about Hellraiser: Bloodline, as it is the end of an era for the franchise. Most notably, its not so good box-office performance would lead to the franchise going straight-to-video and streaming afterward, something it still hasn't escaped. This would also be the last one written by Peter Atkins and the last that Clive Barker himself would have any official involvement with until the 2022 reboot. Starting with the next film, Tunnicliffe and Bradley would be the only key people left over from the franchise's theatrical days (save for when Ashley Laurence returned in Hellseeker), and Bradley himself would bow out of the franchise after Hellworld.

The constant factor of the movie's three-act structure is that actor Bruce Ramsay plays three different characters over the course of it, starting with Phillip Lemarchand, the 18th Century French toymaker who creates the Lament Configuration. Unaware of the evil it will conjure as a result of Duc de L'Isle's specifications, Phillip is quite pleased with the box when he finishes it, and when his wife, Genevieve, isn't impressed with it at all, he decides to deliver it to de L'Isle's chateau immediately, hoping he'll find some appreciation there. Regardless, he's also hoping that the payment he will receive will allow him to give both his wife and their unborn child a better life. But, despite being paid as soon as he delivers it, his curiosity leads him to hang around the chateau, and he witnesses de L'Isle and Jacques' summoning of the demon, Angelique. Horrified, Phillip later tells a coroner friend of his, Auguste, what he saw, and despite Auguste's skepticism, gives him the idea to create another box that will close the gates of Hell. But, when Phillip tries to retrieve the Lament Configuration from the chateau, he's caught by Angelique and Jacques, the latter of whom tells him that his bloodline will be forever cursed thanks to his part in opening a path between Earth and the Netherworld. Phillip is mortally wounded, but Genevieve and their unborn child manage to escape, continuing the bloodline.

In the second act, in 1996 New York, Ramsay portrays John Merchant, an architect who's been plagued by nightmares about Angelique his entire life, and has also built a skyscraper which has the Lament Configuration's symbols, patterns, and, in some cases, its very form as part of its design aesthetic. Haunted by his dreams, whose origin he's unsure of, and rather awkward when it comes to the social part of his job, he's also been working on the Elysium Configuration, an apparatus that can produce perpetual light with mirrors and lasers, using his ancestor's initial drawing for an anti-Lament Configuration as inspiration. He's visited by Angelique, who quickly makes him realize who she is, saying his nightmares and the building are due to his cursed bloodline. She begins seducing him, hoping to persuade him to create a permanent gateway between Earth and Hell, and he has dreams about the two of them having sex and finds himself drawn to her. But, when the recently summoned Pinhead becomes impatient with Angelique's seductive approach, John finds himself racing to save his wife and son, as Pinhead abducts them in an effort to make him cooperate. John attempts to get them to safety, but is eventually forced by Angelique to open the gateway, as she has a hold of his son. Instead, he attempts to banish her and Pinhead, but it fails, leading Pinhead to kill him. But, like with Phillip, John's son lives and carries on the bloodline.

Because the studio decided to make the third act onboard the space-station in 2127 a wraparound in order to get Pinhead into the film earlier than he was originally, Ramsay's third character, Dr. Paul Merchant, becomes a narrator for the first two acts, telling Rimmer his family's story so she'll understand what he's trying to accomplish. Onboard the space-station Minos, Paul, after making his crew return to Earth, reroutes all of the power to his personal quarters, and has a robot inside solve the box and summon the Cenobites. Unfortunately, the arrival of the security team throws a huge monkey wrench in his plan, as they take him prisoner, thinking he's gone mad. Even after he tells Rimmer his story, adding that, like John, he first began to realize his family's cursed nature through his dreams, she's unconvinced, and it's only when the Cenobites escape his quarters and begin killing the team that she allows Paul to finish what he started. It turns out that the space-station itself is the perfected version of the Elysium Configuration. Using a hologram of himself to distract Pinhead, Paul is able to not only activate it and destroy the Cenobites, but also escape back to Earth with Rimmer.

Genevieve Lemarchand (Charlotte Chatton) doesn't have much of a role in the film's first act, but even though she doesn't think much of the Lament Configuration when Phillip shows it to her, unintentionally insulting him in the process, she does genuinely love him, and looks forward to the life they'll have when their child is born. But after Phillip's attempt to steal the box back from Duc de L'Isle's chateau results in him being mortally wounded, Genevieve shows up just in time to see

him collapse in a doorway. Before he dies, he implores her to save herself and their child, which she does, continuing the cursed bloodline. In the second act, Kim Myers, who was Lisa in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge, plays John Merchant's wife, Bobbi. Bobbi gets a little more development than Genevieve, as she worries about John's recurring nightmares, thinking it's a result of his fanatical grandmother, who often raved about him being important. Regardless, she's very supportive of his work, telling him that he's

great at what he does. When Angelique arrives and begins seducing him, Bobbi does start to suspect an affair, especially when Angelique calls John late at night, when they're in bed, and he speaks in a hushed tone over the phone. However, both Bobbi and their young son, Jack (Courtland Mead), get caught up in the craziness when Pinhead abducts both of them and takes them to the building in order to ensure John's cooperation. Though John attempts to get his wife and son out of the building and confront Pinhead himself, Jack ends up back in Angelique's hands, while Bobbi is unable to escape the building thanks to Pinhead's Chatterer Beast. In the mayhem, Bobbi ends up with the Lament Configuration and is able to use it to banish the Beast. And while she's unable to save John, she's also able to use the box to later banish both Pinhead and Angelique.

Paul Merchant, on the other hand, doesn't have anything of a love interest, as the only human woman in his section of the movie is Rimmer (Christine Harnos), one of the security team that boards Minos to take him into custody, and there is nothing between them at all. Aside from their commander, Edwards (Paul Perri), who truly believes Paul is insane, Rimmer is the only other really memorable member of the team, which isn't saying much, as she does next-to-nothing of note.

Having apparently admired him before, Rimmer interrogates Paul about what he was doing, and when she refuses to leave the station without him, he decides to tell her his story. Even after he tells her, she's unconvinced, and puts him in a cell, thinking he really is crazy. However, when the released Cenobites begin killing the security team, Rimmer allows Paul to finish what it was he trying to do, and in the end, the two of them are the only ones who manage to escape the station alive.

The others are memorable mostly for how they die. Parker (Wren Brown) is lured into Paul's personal quarters when he hears what sounds like a trapped child calling for help, only to then die at Pinhead's hands (or the Chatterer Beast's, if you watch the initial workprint). Carducci (Pat Skipper) is lured to his death by Angelique when she uses her human form to make him think she's in trouble. And Chamberlain (Tom Dugan) comes across Pinhead in a corridor and, after asking, "What the

fuck planet are you from?", blasts him with his weapon. When that proves useless, he runs and hides, only to fall victim to the Chatterer Beast. Even with Edwards, one of the most memorable things about him is his death, which he receives from the Siamese Twins.

Though he's only in the movie for just a little bit, I find the character of Duc de L'Isle (Mickey Cottrell) to be pretty creepy and unsettling. When Jacques first brings in the poor peasant girl, de L'Isle puts on the mask of a warm, inviting aristocrat who feels empathy for the girl, allowing her to sit down at his very bountiful table, and even charms her with a magic trick. However, it's very clearly all a put-on, and once the girl has been tied to her chair, both de L'Isle and Jacques drop all pretenses, as the latter strangles her to death, while de L'Isle comments as she struggles, "She has spirit. Splendid." Once she's dead, he calmly turns to Jacques and says, "Now, we can begin." At that moment, Phillip Lemarchand arrives with the completed Lament Configuration, and de L'Isle, after complimenting him for being, "As precise as your pieces. As timely as your toys," takes the box, has Jacques pay him, and bids him good night while chuckling menacingly. Then, after he and Jacques flay the girl's skin and string it up, de L'Isle summons the demon Angelique and has her inhabit it. That scene is quite spectacular and creepy, with the glowing blue lights that fill the room, the physical effects of the summoning, and de L'Isle repeating the same incantations over and over, getting louder each time until he's shouting it. Once Angelique has taken form, de L'Isle is completely confident in his control over her, assuring the nervous Jacques that a summoned demon is a controllable one. However, at some point, Jacques takes command of Angelique himself, murdering de L'Isle.

Adam Scott has an early role here as Jacques, who initially comes off as a bit awkward and unsure of himself while helping de L'Isle murder the girl and summon Angelique. But, once de L'Isle reassures him that a summoned demon like her can be controlled, Jacques clearly gets an idea in his head, rolling said fact over on his tongue. When Phillip returns to the chateau to retrieve the Lament Configuration, de L'Isle is dead and Jacques is using Angelique for his own desires. He also knocks Phillip to the floor when he's caught, telling him that his family will be forever cursed for his part in opening the gates of Hell, and then orders Angelique to kill him and, "Come back where you belong." This possessiveness and treating her like his property goes on for 200 years, to the point where he refuses to allow Angelique to go to America to confront Jack Merchant. He goes as far as to tell her that he couldn't care less what she wants, which turns out to be a big mistake, as he ends up standing in Hell's way, the number one no-no that comes with commanding a demon. With that, Angelique is able to brutally kill him and make her way to New York.

It was in the reshoots that Angelique (Valentina Vargas) was changed from a demon who, after being summoned by Duc de L'Isle and Jacques, commissions the Lament Configuration herself, to a being whose origin is tied to the box (although, as I'll get into later, the connection is not all that clear and doesn't make sense). After the peasant girl is murdered and Angelique brought forth to inhabit her flayed skin, she's under the complete control of de L'Isle and then Jacques, although she does certainly desire more. When she first meets Phillip Lemarchand at the chateau, she immediately becomes seductive towards him, saying she wants his "pliant fingers" to play with her. But Jacques intervenes and orders her to kill Phillip, much to her chagrin. But, 200 years later, Angelique reads about John Merchant in a magazine and realizes that Phillip's bloodline has continued. And when Jacques unknowingly stands in Hell's way by refusing to let her go and confront John, she's able to finally break free of him and brutally pay him back for the two centuries she's spent obeying his every depraved whim. When she first arrives at John's skyscraper in New York, he's attending a banquet in his honor, and her first appearing within his sight disturbs him, given his dreams about her. She then seduces a man into joining her down in the basement, where she breaks the Lament Configuration that Joey, in the previous movie, placed into the cement at the construction site out of the building's foundation. Tricking him into solving it, she's able to summon Pinhead and shows him the prototype Elysium Configuration. Though both of them are intent on him using it to open the gateway to Hell and keep it open, Angelique wants to seduce John into it, an approach that Pinhead quickly loses his patience with. Despite the clash this creates between them, they do succeed in luring John to the building to open the gateway, only for him to attempt to close it and destroy them. Both Pinhead and Angelique are then banished by Bobbi Merchant.

While Angelique is just as seductive as she is exotically beautiful (as well as creepy, given what she says about Jack when she's holding him hostage in front of his father), I also find her to be one of many missed opportunities within the final film, especially since they didn't go with the original, more contentious dynamic between her and Pinhead (I'll get more into that when I talk about him). Also, even though she speaks perfect English, Valentina Vargas' voice was inexplicably

dubbed. It's a really good dub job, mind you, and the voice fits Angelique just fine, but why they went that route is anyone's guess. Finally, during the third act in the future, when Angelique appears as a full-on Cenobite, she has a very cool design, with the flesh on the top of her head split in half and pulled down by hooks that stick into her shoulders (Gary Tunnicliffe said his inspiration came from watching Sister Act and imagining a nun's habit done through flayed skin), and she's still kind of attractive, regardless. But, as with all

Cenobites, she's now totally subservient to Pinhead, and doesn't have any character anymore. I do like the moment when the squad's commander, Edwards, tries to banish both her and the Siamese Twins Cenobites with the Lament Configuration, but can't figure it out, grumbling that it's nothing but a box, and she takes it, commenting, "Thank God for men of reason," as well as when she uses her human image to lure another man to his death, but otherwise, she's rather wasted here. In fact, after the scene with Edwards, she disappears completely for the rest of the movie.

Like Angelique, the twin security guards (Jimmy and David Schuelke) at Jack's skyscraper become another very memorable-looking Cenobite. While on patrol (one telling the other that someone asked him if he would do it with a woman who was once a man), they find a door not on their chart and follow it down several dark hallways until they blunder into Pinhead's inner sanctum. When faced with him, they're chained up and put through a horrific process where the sides of their faces are

literally tied together, flesh-to-flesh. You don't see them in Cenobite form (Mark and Michael Polish) until the third act, where they show that they're able to come apart into two separate, yet fully formed beings, as well as make another person's flesh apart of themselves, reducing him to a set of empty, bloody clothes on the floor. While they're silent in the theatrical version, they do say something to Edwards in the workprints, though I can't quite make it out.

After getting to let loose and chew the scenery to his heart's content in the previous film, Doug Bradley has to dial Pinhead back again here, although he's still not as stoic as he was in the first two films, carrying on his desire to break free of Hell's mandates and wreak total havoc upon the Earth. Also, while he has more screentime and dialogue than the first two movies combined, he's not as prominent as he was in Hellraiser III, and despite the studio's desire to have him appear earlier, still doesn't officially enter the story until near the forty-minute mark. That's when Angelique summons him and, upon noting his appearance, comments, "Things seem to have changed," to which he says, "Hell is more... ordered since your time, Princess, and much less amusing." Then, she shows him the Elysium Configuration and Pinhead, seeing its potential, declares, "This is not a room. This is a holocaust waiting to wake itself." But, as Angelique goes on with her plan to seduce John Merchant into using the machine to permanently open the gateway, Pinhead soon grows impatient with her method, noting, "Human acquiescence is as easily obtained by terror as by temptation." Eventually, he decides to take matters into his own hands, abducting Jack and Bobbi, bringing them to the building, and ordering John to do what he wants in order to have them back. Despite John's attempts to get his family out of the building so he can deal with Pinhead and Angelique himself, he's thwarted and forced to activate the machine. Pinhead is enraged when he tries to actually close the gateway and destroy them rather than open it, and kills John by decapitating him, before he and Angelique are banished by Bobbi using the box. Then, in 2127, when Paul Merchant summons them on Minos, Pinhead, after waiting a long time for him to do so, admits that he's glad he's finally decided to "play," and insinuates that Paul himself feels the same. The security team's interference allows the Cenobites to escape Paul's personal quarters where they were imprisoned, and Pinhead, knowing he has some kind of plan, orders his minions to kill everyone onboard the station. Once only Paul and Rimmer are left, Pinhead wrongly believes he's won and will soon be free to begin his uninhibited reign of terror upon the Earth. But Paul has an unexpected surprise in store for him.

Another of the changes from Kevin Yagher's initial cut to the final film was the dynamic between Pinhead and Angelique. Originally, due to their different ideologies, their relationship was much more adversarial and even violent, with Pinhead punishing Angelique at the end of the second act for an attempted betrayal. There are still hints of that contentiousness in the scene where Pinhead tells her there's no reason to keep up this angle of temptation, to which she disgustedly says, "You are

no different from that beast who sucks the bones you throw to it!", but in the editing, their relationship was made one more of sexual tension than outright hostility. That's especially true in the theatrical version of the aforementioned scene between them, where Pinhead suggests he likes her true form as opposed to the human one she's had for the past 200 years, telling her, "I can smell the exquisite stench of what you really are!" Sprouting hooks from the tips of right hand's fingers, he runs

them across her face, then puts his hand on her shoulder as she looks at herself in the mirror again, saying, "Temptation is illusion. But the time for trickery is past. In this game, we show ourselves as we really are... The beauty of suffering." And when Angelique says he's no different from the Chatterer Beast, he retorts, "And you, Princess? What are you?", as he hooks into the skin above her cleavage, causing to blood to ooze out, something she seems aroused by. They then removed a moment following that where Pinhead becomes 

enraged when he knows she's keeping secrets from him. Also, as much as Yagher may have wanted to make a completely different movie from Hellraiser III, Pinhead's desire to run rampant on Earth without having to be summoned by the Lament Configuration is the same as his desire in that movie, with the only difference being that he's not as wild as he was there. And also like in that movie, he creates his own Cenobites, specifically the Siamese Twins, and it's suggested he created the Chatterer Beast himself as well.

As usual, Pinhead has so much great dialogue to spout and Doug Bradley delivers it with such menacing gravitas. Like before, while he doesn't have one-liners per se, he does have some darkly humorous moments, like when he lets a dove he's cradling fly up into the air, only for the Chatterer Beast to snatch it it. Pinhead then asks, "Still hungry? Ready for something that screams?" During the third act, when the man named Parker finds the destroyed robot which Paul manipulated

into solving the box and he says, "What the hell is this?", Pinhead emerges from the darkness, answering, "The remnants of a most unsatisfying victim. Still, you're here to change all that, aren't you?", before ripping the guy apart. And best of all, when John Merchant says, "For God's sake!", Pinhead exclaims, "Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks?!" Of course, there are also his awesome speeches, like when the twin security guards confront him and Angelique, saying, "Don't

make us put some pain on you!", and he angrily retorts, "Pain. How dare you use that word?... What you think of as pain is only a shadow. Pain has a face. Allow me to show it to you, gentlemen. I... am... pain." He chains them up, adding, "I know your fear. I hear it. 'Please, don't separate me from my brother.' I give you my word, that will never happen." He then tells Angelique, "A less, Princess. Work with me, or for me," before putting the twins through the painful Cenobite transformation process. Pinhead's dialogue about

little Jack Merchant is especially creepy, like when he has a hold of him in front of Bobbi in their apartment building: "Young. Unformed. Oh, what appetites I could teach him." Bobbi begs him to let Jack go in an anguished voice, only for Pinhead to chuckle and comment, "Oh, you suffer beautifully." Later, when John confronts him in the skyscraper over Bobbi and Jack, Pinhead tells him, "Oh, I understand... why you love this boy. You have plans for him. Hopes, and dreams. A whole imagined future where you love him, and watch

him grow... Then complete your work. Although the boy will not die here, for a thousand years, his dearest wish will be that he had!" But his best moments come aboard the station during the third act, when he looks at the Earth and says, "Glorious, is it not? Perfect. The creatures that walk on its surface, always looking to the light, never seeing the untold oceans of darkness beyond. There are more humans alive at this moment than in all of its pitiful history. The Garden of Eden. A garden of flesh." And, during his and Paul's final confrontation: "Two minutes. Two centuries. It all ticks by so quickly. You are so very like your ancestor, did you know that? I have the distinct sense of déjà vu. The same defiance, the same faithless hope in the light." "And what do you have faith in?" "Nothing. I am so exquisitely empty."

When Gary Tunnicliffe was put in charge of the makeup effects, one edict he had was to go back to the original look for Pinhead's makeup, after the odd way it came off in the previous film. While he doesn't look as odd as he did in Hellraiser III, I don't think he looks exactly the way he did in the first two movies. Plus, he's lit in so many different ways here that he tends to look different from one act to another (which could also be a result of the several periods of reshoots done so long after principal photography). Speaking of the way he's lit, I especially love that they photographed him in a lot of blue light, especially during the third act, as I think he looks really cool that way.

Regardless of its production troubles and debate over who exactly shot what, there's no denying that there was some talent behind Hellraiser: Bloodline. There's also a very good reason why the first act in 1796 is often considered the movie's high point, as it looks positively amazing. While much of this far too short section is spent primarily at Duc de L'Isle's chateau, it's a feast for the eyes, regardless, with how de L'Isle's introduction and his and Jacques' flaying the woman's skin is lit entirely by the light of the fireplace, making it look

beautiful on the one hand, yet also eerie and uncomfortable when the scene turns sinister and, ultimately, gruesome. And when de L'Isle summons Angelique, the place is bathed in a blue, unearthly, flickering light emitting from the opening in the floor, creating the feeling that he really is open a gateway to the bowels of the Earth. Once the ritual is finished and Angelique has been given flesh, a bit of the blue light remains, blending nicely with the red from the fireplace. There's also some nice contrasting bit of lighting in

some other scenes, like in Phillip Lemarchand's home, while the scene with Auguste the coroner has a gray sort of feel to it, which goes nice with the environment we find him in. Speaking of which, the production design is also one of this first act's strong points, such as the bountiful dining table and elegant room de L'Isle is sitting in when we first meet him, which suddenly turns rotten and maggot-infested between cuts. The woman also notices chains hanging from the roof, and a 

pentagram is revealed on the stone floor when they move the table for the ritual. Also, while we don't see much of the Lermarchand home, we get the feeling that they are fairly poor and that Phillip wants a better life for his family. And Auguste's mortuary is as dreary-looking as it should be.

As much as Gary Tunnicliffe may have felt that the middle section in modern day New York is the weakest part of the movie from a visual standpoint, it kind of makes sense to me, since this is the world we all should be most familiar with. Also, when Angelique manages to break free of Jacques' hold and she later summons Pinhead, its look does start to become more visually interesting, with the constant blue light pouring into the rooms through the walls, especially Pinhead's lair within John's skyscraper, which is positively bathed in it, along

with a lot of darkness. And call me crazy, but I think seeing Pinhead in such a normal environment as the apartment building where John and his family live is unsettling in and of itself, as he's so very out of place. Where the production design is at its best here is definitely the interiors of the skyscraper, specifically the room that houses the Elysium Configuration, with large, moving versions of the box's four sides on the walls, ceiling, and floor, the latter of which has an

amazingly beautiful version of it that Pinhead stands in the middle of in one overhead shot. During the latter part of this act, when Pinhead and Angelique have truly taken the building over, we see their influence on it, like the appearance of a door that wasn't there before; a creepy, dark corridor with the familiar slatted walls and streams of light coming through them, hanging chains, and corpses and pieces of body parts and animals hanging from the walls and ceiling; and Pinhead's inner sanctum, with those rotating, wooden pillars with more body parts hanging from them, more hanging chains, and the ferocious Chatterer Beast.

The third act, onboard the space-station Minos, has the classic sci-fi/horror look that Alien popularized, with the dimly-lit, claustrophobic corridors, and overall metallic look to the environment. It may not be totally original, nor is the abundant use of that blue-white lighting scheme and spots of steam, and there isn't much in the way of truly memorable set decorations to differentiate the rooms, save for all of the old-fashioned stuff we see Paul Merchant has stashed in the back of the control room outside of his quarters, but I won't lie, I'm a sucker for

these kinds sets, so I can't help but kind of like what I see here. I also like seeing the movie's take on futuristic technology, like the robot which Paul manipulates to open the Lament Configuration with a pair of special gloves (I really like the way the robot looks like a skeleton, with a slight H.R. Giger touch to it), the digital video feeds he gets from inside his quarters and of the ship that's approaching the station, the light bars that keep Paul imprisoned when he's been arrested, and so forth. It's a lot better than what you might expect from the movie where "Pinhead is in space."

Memorably unsettling and beautiful imagery abound throughout the movie, particularly in that first act, where you get a short montage of Phillip sketching and then crafting the Lament Configuration, before showing it to Genevieve; the horrific sights in the scene where Duc de D'Isle and Jacques murder the woman, like when she sees that all of the nice food on the table has become rotted and filled with maggots, and the grisly aftermath where the two of them flay her skin, which is effectively done through montage, cutaways, and

shadows, but also shows more than enough to know that what they're doing is beyond ghastly; and all of the amazing imagery and shots we get during Angelique's "birth." There are also memorable images during the other acts, like John Merchant's evocative dreams of Angelique, the Elysium Configuration, the close-up of Pinhead holding the dove that he feeds to the Chatterer Beast, the beast itself, the scenes with the twin security guards and their transformation into

Cenobites, the robot that Paul uses to open the box aboard the station, the way Angelique uses a reflection of her human form to lure a man to his death, shots of Pinhead in the blue lighting of the station's corridors, and that shot of him looking at the image of the Earth. As we'll get into, there are also plenty of other gory sights and setpieces besides those I've mentioned, and whether or not you think it's worthy, the film's finale is certainly a memorable one on a visual level.

Unlike Hellraiser III, Bloodline does to try to go more for the dark, taboo, Gothic tone and feel of the first two movies, and it certainly succeeds in being almost as nasty and grisly. Also, instead of the more stylistic cinematography and MTV editing that Anthony Hickox brought to the previous film, Bloodline, despite being one of the shortest films in the series at just 84 minutes, has more of the leisurely, methodical pace of the first two, and even though it goes through a fairly epic story in such a short time, it never feels rushed, at

least to me. Yeah, I wish there was more stuff in the 18th Century (which there was but it never made it to the final film), but other than that, I'm fine with the pacing. And unlike with III, the story and acting are better to the point where I'm not antsy while waiting for Pinhead to finally start his rampage. But, as much as it tries to be like the first two, it never quite gets there. For one, its very slick look, while more visually appealing than the almost TV aesthetic of the previous one, makes the grisly visuals feel less effective than they were

when filmed through the sort of grimy, unpolished lenses that Robin Vidgeon shot them with. For another, it just doesn't have that uncomfortable, icky sort of feel that the first two, especially the original, gave you. It comes very close in the first act, with the murder of the woman, the birth of Angelique, and the scene with Auguste, where he's dissecting a body while talking with Phillip (those latter two are the scenes in this one that really get to me), but during the second and third acts, as

much as it feels like the filmmakers are trying to evoke that feeling with the shirtless man who solves the Lament Configuration and dies a horrible death for it, the dark corridors with the hideous decorations and shafts of light coming through the walls, the sight of the chains and one of those flesh pillars, and the similar imagery onboard the Minos, it just doesn't come off like it did before. In fact, while I still instinctively cringe when that man is fiddling with the box, those close-ups of the hooks penetrating into his flesh have lost some of their effectiveness by this point.

Due to the studio's interference, the story, though well-told for the most part, in my opinion, isn't as strong as it could've been. Even if you didn't know the motive, making the third act into a wraparound is still an obvious ploy to get Pinhead into the movie as soon as possible; for God's sake, he's literally the first thing you see after the Dimension Films logo, as they use a close-up of his summoning, which is repeated several times throughout the movie itself. Speaking of which, when Paul finishes telling Rimmer his family's

story, and then explains that he was summoning the Cenobites when she and the others burst in on him, we actually flashback to that, even though we already saw it at the beginning of the movie. It's not as egregious as that recap of the first movie which Kirsty gave to Dr. Channard and Kyle MacRae in Hellbound, and there is something of a payoff to it, as we get a conversation between Paul and Pinhead that we only heard a little bit of the former's side of during the opening, but at the same

time, you can't help but feel like, "You already showed me some of this." And after watching the workprints, I can say that the story does work better when allowed to play out linearly.

While I can definitely follow the story enough to enjoy it, the reshoots and reworked plot points do end up creating some plotholes. The biggest have to do with Angelique herself. When they changed the nature of her summoning in order to directly tie her to the Lament Configuration, the ritual that we see de L'Isle and Jacques perform flies in the face of what's been previously established about the box, as it's de L'Isle himself who makes the whole thing work, while the box just randomly moves its several times during it. Even then, it's not clear

how exactly it's connected to the ritual; the only thing that does fall in line is when Angelique is banished with the box along with Pinhead, and she later reappears as a Cenobite, now completely subservient to him (and, one would assume, Leviathan). Speaking of which, if the form we see Angelique take for much of the movie is her inhabiting the woman's flayed skin, how does Pinhead know who she is after she summons him? If this was the way she naturally looked and how everyone down in Hell remembered her, it wouldn't

be a big issue (even though Elliot Spencer didn't first become Pinhead until over a century after Angelique was summoned to Earth, we can assume that he would know about her, as well as how differently Hell operated back when she was down there), but since that's not the case here, and also because Pinhead mentions her "true form," it becomes confusing. Finally, during the second act, it took me a while to realize that the large room where Pinhead tries to make John open the

permanent gateway actually was the Elysium Configuration, and that he meant for him to use the machine in the opposite manner for which it was intended. It's probably because I wasn't sure exactly how the device works in and of itself (I got the basics, that he's trying to create a device which can generate perpetual light, but not how that was supposed to destroy the Cenobites and permanently close the gates of Hell), as well as that, even though John tells Bobbi it's not ready yet and

doesn't know if it will work, he doesn't give a demonstration at the banquet being thrown for him or at any other time until the end of the second act. Plus, it's never even called the Elysium Configuration in the theatrical version. Now, I understood it perfectly during the third act, as Paul says that the space station itself is meant to be the device, but during the second act, it was much less clear.

While Gary Tunnicliffe and those at Image Animation took care of the look of the Cenobites and much of the gore effects during the initial shoot, Kevin Yagher's own company tackled the Chatterer Beast, a creature that I absolutely love. A monstrous dog-like Cenobite, this thing really is Chatterer re-imagined as a canine, as the flesh on its face is pulled back with hooks and wires, revealing its sharp teeth, and its lower jaw often chatters rapidly. Some muscle and even a bit of the jawbone is exposed, there are several leather

collars, one of which is spiked, around its neck, and a harness around its back and a bit of its legs, it has no hair on its gruesome, rather anorexic body, and according to the script, it's meant to have been created by Pinhead himself using both dog and human body parts. The beast proves to be rather ferocious and quite fast and agile, as it chases Bobbi throughout her husband's building and others through Minos' corridors. What's especially cool is that it's brought to life practically, using puppetry and a man in a suit (Jody St. Michael), the latter of whom does a pretty good job at it.

In terms of gore and makeup effects, Hellraiser III doesn't have a patch on Bloodline. Less than fifteen minutes in, we get the flaying of the peasant girl, with cutaways to chunks of flesh being dropped on the floor, Duc de L'Isle and Jacques washing and rinsing their hands of all the blood, a shot of the girl's skinned legs as she's dragged across the floor, blood being poured out of a pitcher, and some snippets of her empty skin hanging from chains. And during Angelique's summoning, you see closeups of the empty skin as it fills with mass and

becomes rigid with bone. In the very next scene, when Phillip visits Auguste, you see him cutting into and opening up a corpse, with a close-up of the torso's flesh being split to reveal the muscle and organs underneath. A few minutes after that, we see de L'Isle's brutalized corpse at chateau, with blood covering the wall to his right and behind him, and worms and big, thick, green larvae all over the Lament Configuration on the table next to him. When Angelique later kills Jacques, she slashes up his face, bites a chunk out of his left

cheek, sticks her clawed finger into the hole she leaves there, and finishes him off by ripping his guts out. We get the familiar close-ups of hooks piercing into the man's skin when Angelique has him solve the Lament Configuration, which is only a prelude to the creation of the Siamese Twins Cenobite. After the twin security guards are chained up beside each other, half of a spiked mask digs into one twin's right side and the other's left. Then, a small bar is deployed between them, a

whirling screw emerging from each side and digging into the other sides of their faces. Extracting a long string of bloody flesh, it ties it around the bar in the middle, and the twins have blood extracted and are pumped full of a blue liquid through their backs. And at the end of the second act, John Merchant is killed when Pinhead fires a hook at him that goes completely through his neck and out the back, deploys twin blades, and is pulled back through, slicing his head off in the process.

The third act has even more gruesome deaths in store for the security team onboard Minos. Parker gets hooks into both sides of his body, including two on each side of his face that then rip the flesh clean off, before another chain goes right through his noggin. Carducci gets pulled through a mirror by Angelique, which results in his head getting lopped off, and while Chamberlain's death by the Chatterer Beast happens offscreen, we do see what the Twin Cenobites do to Edwards. They seem to

literally melt him and absorb his flesh into themselves, leaving nothing more than a bloody mess on the floor. The Chatterer Beast meets its end when Rimmer traps it in a room and pressurizes it, causing it to explode, and at the end of the movie, when the Elysium Configuration destroys Pinhead, we see a shot of his face badly damaged, with his right eye missing, right before he's blown apart (unfortunately, you can clearly see the mesh with the latex within the eye).

Given part of its story is set in space in the distant future, it's inevitable that there would be a fair amount of visual effects here. In fact, you see some even before we get there, during John's failed attempt to defeat Pinhead and Angelique using the Elysium Configuration; the light effects are badly dated, however, as is the compositing of Pinhead into some of these shots. The exteriors of the space-station Minos and the ship that arrives there appear to be done through a combination of early digital effects and miniatures, both of which look

fair for the time. That said, the digital work for when the station turns into the Elysium Configuration at the end doesn't look that good, and neither does the CG Lament Configuration, which you see in full close-up, when Paul has the robot open it, or the digital effects used for the wide shots of the Twin Cenobites separating and beginning to kill Edwards. The mirror effects for when Angelique kills Carducci look kind of cool, though, as do the holograms that appear throughout this section and the opening.

The summoning of Angelique is the movie's first true standout scene, and while not quite on the level of Frank and Julia's rebirths in the first two movies, it is most definitely spectacular in its own way. Once he and Jacques have flayed the woman's skin and hung it up by the chains, Duc de L'Isle begins speaking some incantations that cause a bright, blue light to filter up through the seams in the tiled floor. The floor collapses in on itself, with the blood and organs from the woman that were

discarded falling down into the void. The room begins to shake violently, and the Lament Configuration begins to work itself (there's a shot of it opening that I have a feeling was taken from the first movie), all while de L'Isle continues speaking the incantations. During all of this, Jacques has taken refuge behind a statue in the room, as the chains descend down into the void; outside, Phillip Lemarchand, who's been watching ever since he delivered the box, runs in terror. By this point, the flayed skin begins to shake, as de

L'Isle is now shouting the incantations. That's when the skin becomes filled with mass and uniform from bones within it, and the eyes snap open, completely black; she then blinks, and they become the girl's normal, brown eyes again. De L'Isle yells, "Walk now amongst us!", and then, the shaking and glowing recede, as the fully-formed Angelique stands up on the floor. De L'Isle walks over to her and raises a mirror in front of her, letting her see herself; he also gives her the name of Angelique (which makes her seem like a random demon they summoned and then named, rather than a specific one who already had that name and who Pinhead knows when she later summons him).

When Jacques refuses to allow Angelique to travel to New York to confront John Merchant in 1996, he pays a painful price for standing in Hell's way. After he tells her that the only thing that matters is what he wants, Angelique, acting submissive yet seductive, tells him to close his eyes, adding that this new "game" might hurt. She holds up a black, clawed finger and scratches him hard below his left eye. He recoils from the pain and Angelique, reminding him of de L'Isle's lesson, grabs him by

the throat and slams him down on the table. Realizing he's in trouble, Jacques makes the excuse that he was being a bit hasty but Angelique isn't having it. She slams him back down when he tries to get up, menacingly tells him to enjoy himself, and slashes violently across his face, mocking him for how he always likes things to be rough. She then appears to go in for a kiss, but actually tears off a piece of his cheek, as he yells in pain. He tells her it hurts, and she, in turn, pulls him off the table and slams him against the wall. Her eyes now

black and demonic, she lifts him up against it, and in an unearthly voice, tells him that he made the very mistake de L'Isle warned him about it, as the Lemarchand bloodline has endured. She presses her clawed finger into the hole in his cheek, pulls it back out and licks the blood off. She then gently places him back on the floor, but just when Jacques thinks he's been spared, Angelique rips into his torso and pulls out his guts. He collapses to the floor, dead, and she looks at her arm, which has now returned to normal.

After appearing at the banquet in John Merchant's honor, the sight of which frazzles him when he tries to give a speech, Angelique watches him and Bobbi leave in a limo. Spying a man nearby, she comes up with an idea. Pretending to walk into him and drop her bag, she initially acts angry, calling him an idiot. But after he frantically puts her stuff back into her bag and hands it back to her, she "apologizes" for her rudeness, saying she'll now have to find a way to make it up to him. She leads

him down into the basement, clearly having promised him sex, and through a door. Asking him if he likes games, she walks over to a pillar that's part of the building's foundation and feels it with her hands. She tells him to close his eyes, and then punches through the concrete, pulling out the Lament Configuration which Joey left in the cement at the construction site. The guy is more intrigued than alarmed by the sound of this, and when Angelique says that he can look, she gives

him the box. In the next cut, he's shirtless and working the box, while she has her hands on his shoulders, sensually rubbing them, and telling him, "I have such sights to show." A part of the box rises up and goes back into place, as those familiar, otherworldly streams of light start pouring through the walls. The box then flies out of his hands, rolls across the floor, comes to a stop, and works itself a couple of times. The chains burst out of the box, hooks into the man's torso and face, and the wall directly in front of him splits open. He gets a

glimpse of the Chatterer Beast within the blinding light beyond the wall, and the chains then suddenly let go of him and return to the box. Falling to the floor, he scrambles up against the pillar, when a long, hooked chain flies out of the wall and drags him through the opening. He can be heard getting torn apart inside, and that's when Pinhead emerges and recovers the box, before seeing Angelique.

During the latter part of the second act, while John is off meeting with Angelique, Pinhead decides to put into motion his own plan to make him open the gateway. At their apartment building, Bobbi leaves Jack alone to go down to the basement and do the laundry. After walking down a dark, spooky corridor with a flickering light, she starts putting the clothes in the washing machine, when she hears a commotion upstairs, followed by Jack screaming for her. She runs back upstairs and into the

apartment to find him gone and the place seemingly ransacked. Frantically running out the back, she finds him at the bottom of a flight of stairs, seemingly unharmed, but then realizes he's being held hostage by Pinhead. Following a moment when John comes home to find both of them gone, and the magazine with his photo on the cover stuck to the wall by a knife, with blood leaking from it,  we then see that Bobbi and Jack are now at the skyscraper, held hostage in

Pinhead's inner sanctum. Seeing the box lying on the floor nearby, Bobbi picks it up, only for the Chatterer Beast to lunge at her, causing her to drop it. John makes his way through the building and promptly arrives at where they're being held. However, the beast prevents him from approaching them, and Pinhead appears and makes his demands known. But when he's next leading the three of them down to the Elysium Configuration, John gets them to make a break for it through a door on the right. Running to the elevators, John sends Jack

down one of them, and tells Bobbi to take one of the stairways. He then goes back and confronts Pinhead himself; unbeknownst to him, however, Jack's elevator is dropping down the shaft, out of control. During their confrontation, Pinhead emits the sound of Jack yelling for his father, and John, realizing he's in danger, runs out of the room. Bobbi, meanwhile, encounters the Chatterer Beast on the stairwell and runs back the way she came, with it right behind her. She tries to barricade herself inside the room where they were being held

hostage using a table, but the beast manages to break through the door. When it does, it knocks the box towards her and she tries to figure out how to work it. The beast walks across the table, its jaw snapping continuously, but just when it gets to the edge and is about to attack, Bobbi figures out the box and banishes it. At the room housing the configuration, John finds Jack being restrained by Angelique, who tells him to begin his work, or else.

With no other recourse, John begins working the console that activates the machine. Pinhead arrives but, after John sets the sequence in motion, and with Angelique again threatening Jack to make him compliant, he attempts to fill the room with perpetual light instead of opening the gateway. Bright lights beam into the room and the energy bounces around Pinhead and Angelique. While they're distracted, John has Jack come to him at the console, but then, it fizzles out. Enraged at this,

Pinhead glares at John, who quickly makes Jack get away from him. He deploys the chain and hook that decapitates John, laughing evilly as he his head falls to the floor and the body falls over, quivering. Bobbi shows up and Jack runs to her, as she prepares to banish them with the box. It flies out of her hand, lands on the floor, and deploys some chains that ensnare Angelique, pulling her toward it. It begins the process of sending them both back to Hell, with Pinhead yelling up at the ceiling, and the expulsion of energy destroying the machine. The box appears to take some of its debris and fuse it into itself before everything fades to black.

Like I said, once we finally get back around to the year 2127, we get a repeat of something we saw in the opening, where Paul Merchant summons the Cenobites using a robot. There's a nice beat where, after the box flies out of the robot's hands and rolls across the floor, before working itself again, the robot has something of a confused reaction, right before it's destroyed and Pinhead emerges from the darkness, followed by Angelique and the Siamese Twins Cenobites. We then mostly just watch the

Cenobites kill off the security team one by one, with Parker getting the flesh ripped off his face and pulled up into the ceiling by Pinhead when he investigates what he hears inside Paul's quarters, and Carducci falling prey to Angelique when she pulls him through the mirror and into the Cenobites' realm, decapitating him in the process. There's a moment where Chamberlain is faced with Pinhead in a corridor, and when his weapon has no effect on him, he drops it and runs. He hides

around a corner and watches Pinhead as he walks by, seemingly without seeing him. But just when Chamberlain thinks he can breathe easy, letting out a loud exhale, he turns to his right when he hears a chain rattle and the Chatterer Beast lunges at him. Hearing the sound of him dying over their comm-links, Rimmer realizes how right Paul was about the Cenobites and allows him to do what he was attempting to when they interrupted him. While Paul works at a console elsewhere, Edwards goes to his personal quarters and finds the Lament

Configuration among the robot's remains, Paul having told him it will protect him. When faced with Angelique and the Siamese Twins, Edwards tries to use the box against them, but when he can't figure it out, Angelique takes it from him and the twins proceed to kill him. After Paul has one of his last confrontations with Pinhead, he meets up with Rimmer in a hallway and tells her to get to the shuttle, as they only have five minutes left. He also promises that he's going to join her, just as he said he would. While making her way to the shuttle,

Rimmer runs into the beast, which chases her back down the hallway. She runs through one door, closes it behind her, then runs through another across from it, closes it, and opens the first, letting the beast inside. Telling it to "play dead," she pressurizes the room, causing the beast to explode.

Following one last meeting between Paul and Pinhead, Paul, after the latter sees a notification that the shuttle is launching, suddenly disappears. Mystified, he then sees Paul appear on a video monitor, revealing he's inside the shuttle's cockpit with Rimmer. He explains that what Pinhead was talking to was a hologram, adding, "See, it's all done with mirrors. Like this." He presses a button, activating a satellite with a laser orbiting in front of the station. The laser fires a light that bounces

around and ensnares the station, much to Pinhead's shock. Paul tells him it's an endgame, as an explosion rips through the station, which begins to close in on itself in the shape of the puzzle box. Despite defiantly yelling that he can't die, Pinhead is blown back against the wall by the shaking, exploding station. The structure closes completely and Pinhead is engulfed in a blinding light, as Paul tells him, "Welcome to oblivion." Pinhead, in a guttural voice, says, "Amen," before the station explodes and the movie ends with Paul and Rimmer heading back to Earth.

The film's music was the work of the late Daniel Licht, who was not only a former college friend of Christopher Young's, but whose first film score was for Tony Randel's post-Hellbound release, Children of the Night. He also scored Randel's following two films as director, as well as the first two of Dimension's numerous Children of the Corn sequels, so his being chosen for Bloodline wasn't that surprising. In The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy, Paul Kane is highly complimentary of Licht's work here but, like with Randy Miller's original music for Hellraiser III, it doesn't stick with me that much. It's obvious that Licht was trying to do something similar to what Young had done before, with some big, orchestral pieces and occasional use of a chorus, like for the birth of Angelique, but it just doesn't leave that much of an impression on me. The same goes for his main title theme over the opening and ending credits, which has something of a motif that you hear repeated now and again, but it sounds so generic. And while Kane was highly complimentary of the music for the chase scenes with the Chatterer Beast, to me, it's like a softer, more electronic version of the Engineer's theme from the original movie, and it's often covered up by the sound effects. I do kind of like this low-key, ominous music that plays during scenes like John's confrontation with Pinhead and the first true one between him and Paul during the third act (I may be nuts, but it makes me think of a piece of music I once heard on Batman: The Animated Series), but that's not really saying much. I hate to sound like I'm constantly kissing Young's ass but, the truth is, the pieces of music from Bloodline that I remember most are the few times they used his original themes. Unlike with the previous movie, they're used very sparingly, with a touch of the Hellbound main theme for when Pinhead is first summoned, which is reused, along with the original Hellraiser theme, for when he kills John Merchant and Bobbi banishes both him and Angelique with the box. Like I said in previous reviews, this would be the last time those themes would be used until the 2022 reboot.

Like the Producer's Cut of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, there has, for some time, been an alternate version of Hellraiser: Bloodline, a workprint put together after Kevin Yagher left the film, floating around the bootleg circuit and on various streaming platforms that, for some, is superior to the quite flawed theatrical version. And also like the Producer's Cut, it took a long time for this version to get an official home media release, specifically in Arrow Video's Quartet of Torment 4K/Blu-Ray set of the first four Hellraiser movies in late 2023... or so it seemed. I only just now learned that what's on this set (which I don't own, by the way; I had to look up the differences on Movie-Censorship.com) is a different workprint than the one most are familiar with, which had appeared on some German Blu-Ray releases of Bloodline. I have seen that workprint, having watched it on Internet Archive in preparation for this review, but this one feels more like a complete cut, and the image quality, though not perfect, is much better, whereas the more well-known one has no music and is often missing effects shots, with onscreen text instead describing what we should be seeing. At the same time, the Arrow Video workprint is missing some moments from the first one, and other moments that were later redone for the theatrical version are instead replaced with what would appear there. For instance, in the original workprint, Jacques dies without Angelique laying a finger on him. He simply becomes ill, falls to the floor, and dies some horrible death that was never filmed; in the Arrow Video workprint, however, they retain Angelique's brutalizing him. Similarly, Parker is attacked by the Chatterer Beast instead of being ripped apart and hoisted away by Pinhead's chains, but in the Arrow Video workprint, the latter death is used instead. And speaking of which, there are more instances of gore in this version, like with the creation of the Siamese Twins Cenobite, stuff that likely had to be cut later to ensure an R-rating.

One thing that Arrow Video makes clear before its presentation of the workprint is that, even though his name is retained in the opening credits, this is not Kevin Yagher's director's cut. Indeed, the initial cut of the movie he completed during principal photography is said to have been 110 minutes long, whereas both of the workprints are not much longer than 79 minutes. Both of these assemblies do seemingly preserve much of what he shot, particularly in the second and third acts, but I think they were also trying to mesh it with the material

directed by Joe Chappelle that the studio demanded, particularly the murder of the peasant woman and the birth of Angelique at the beginning, which is not how it was originally scripted or shot (unless I really missed something). As it was originally intended, both of these versions tell the story in a linear fashion, with Phillip Lermarchand initially appearing during the opening credits, making the Lament Configuration, and after Duc de L'Isle and Jacques murder and skin the woman, then summon the demon, it cuts to

John Merchant waking up in bed screaming, having been dreaming this (there's an additional scene here where both he and Bobbi go to console Jack, who was awakened and frightened by John's screaming). Much of both of these alternate versions are set in 1996, with occasional flashbacks to 1796 or, in the case of the Arrow workprint, through John's dreams. For instance, after Angelique removes the box from the building's foundation, it cuts to John asleep, dreaming about Phillip meeting Angelique, introduced by de L'Isle

as a princess who designed the box. And later, when John has another dream, this one involving his grandmother, who was only mentioned but never seen in the theatrical version, John sees Phillip looking through a window, watching some men play with the box. Suddenly, the men are strapped to their seats and their faces start burning hideously, before John, again, wakes up in terror, saying his grandmother was trying to warn him about something. In this version, that's all that

remains of the scene from the first workprint where Angelique presented the box to some gamblers, prompting them to solve it with the promise of a gradual striptease, only to reveal her true, demonic nature; the shots of Phillip watching through the window would later be used in the theatrical cut for him watching Angelique's summoning. This version also completely removes a scene from the earlier workprint where Angelique kills de L'Isle when he threatens to murder Phillip, showing that,

rather than being betrayed and murdered by Jacques, he himself made the mistake of standing in Hell's way, as the Lemarchand bloodline must live on. The scene between Phillip and Auguste, where he first comes up with the idea for the Elysium Configuration, is also not here, nor are any of the scenes with Genevieve (as she doesn't appear in the other workprint, all of her scenes were likely part of the reshoots).

In general, Angelique comes off better in the workprints than in the theatrical version. For one, you get to hear Valentina Vargas' actual voice, and her exotic accent nicely fits with the character. Second, her seduction of John makes a little more sense, as the flashback to Phillip meeting her shows how he was immediately taken with her, and it occurs not long after John sees her at the banquet and the sight of her causes him to momentarily fumble during his speech. After that, she meets him formally, making him realize who she is, and tells

him they have work to do and she'll be in touch. Instead of hitting you over the head with John having dreams of her trying to seduce him and the two of them having sex, we instead have his dreams about his grandmother and her attempt to warn him, as well as Angelique calling him at early morning hours, leading to the two of them meeting up at his office. Notably, despite being tempted, John rebuffs her advances, and Angelique becomes enraged, making a not so subtle threat towards his family. This leads to him running back home

urgently, which was never explained in the theatrical version. And third, we get more of that initial antagonistic relationship between Angelique and Pinhead. Although the scene between the two of them in front of the mirror is still here, after he pierces her above her cleavage, he removes the hook, licks the blood, and angrily reveals that he knows he's been keeping something from him, i.e. stuff she's discussed with John during their meetings (it's suggested he learns this from her 

blood). Also, during her confrontation with John before the second act's finale, she expresses her wish to use the Elysium Configuration to destroy those who would subjugate her, making her a god all her own. And during the climax, Angelique tries to have John destroy Pinhead using the machine, only for Pinhead to dodge the lights by expelling a chain from his mouth and hoisting himself up to the ceiling. He then deploys some chains that ensnare Angelique and drag her to the center of  

the floor, and after Pinhead kills John, Bobbi arrives and banishes them both using the box, causing the room to explode. Speaking of the room, I'm glad there's a scene here where John tries to demonstrate the Elysium Configuration at the banquet, only for it to not work. Had this been kept in the theatrical version, I don't think I would've been as confused about it.

The workprint transitions to the third act in the same manner it did at the beginning: Paul Merchant wakes up from a nightmare, suggesting that he just dreamed everything we saw. Following a brief flashback to Phillip drawing the initial concept for the Elysium Configuration, Paul shaves his long hair with a knife and meets with a priest (played by 50's sci-fi favorite, Kenneth Tobey), asking for forgiveness for both himself and his ancestors, and then asks him to pray that he succeeds in banishing the Cenobites for good.

During this scene, the countdown prevalent throughout the theatrical version is revealed to be the time when the planetary constellation necessary for the Elysium Configuration to work will be active. When it's time to begin, Paul makes the priest disappear using a remote control, revealing he was a hologram. As he prepares to solve the box, he's continually contacted by Rimmer, telling him that he's committing a crime and will be boarded. Ignoring this, he manages to solve the box and summon the Cenobites, only for the security

team to break in and for Parker to knock him out. Paul awakens in his cell after having a dream where a bunch of horrific imagery flashes through his mind, and then, as the Cenobites kill the security team, he tries to make Rimmer and Edwards understand what's going on. A moment between Rimmer and Paul where she asks him what he was trying to do and he says the station is a trap meant for demons is all the explanation he gives her, rather than him telling her his family's

story. Following Paul's penultimate confrontation with Pinhead, there's a scene between him and Angelique, and, rather than a mindless servant to Pinhead, like in the theatrical version, she retains some of the person she once was. She asks if he remembers her, and also says that the past means as much to him as it does to her and that they can reclaim it. Then, Pinhead appears, along with the Siamese Twins, and alludes to the "pleasures" they have prepared for Paul, adding, "Your ancestors

have been there before. The Labyrinth still rings with the echoes of their agony." Though Paul says it will all end with his death, Pinhead insists only his bloodline will end, but that the "game" will go on for eternity. After Angelique gives Pinhead the box, she suggests that Rimmer will be a nice gift for the Chatterer Beast.

Another major difference with the third act is the ending, which is more bittersweet and was one of the really big changes the higher-ups at Dimension demanded. Here, Paul doesn't make it off Minos; instead, Rimmer escapes by herself after killing the Chatterer Beast, while Paul is still in that same room with Pinhead, Angelique, and the Siamese Twins. Following another battle of wills between Paul and Pinhead, in which the former tells the latter that he's human and will die human, Paul says, "Let's play." Like in the theatrical version, it

turns out that Pinhead has been confronting a hologram, but here, Paul appears behind him. The last bits of dialogue remain the same as in the theatrical version, as Paul activates the Elysium Configuration (the reveal that it's the station itself is immediately spoiled here, as the station is always shaped like the box) and the place begins shaking and light encircles it. In a truly awesome way to end the movie, Pinhead impales Paul with a chain, Paul pulls himself up to him, and as they're face-to-face, tells him, "Welcome to oblivion," right before the station explodes.

As interesting as these workprints may be, the sad fact of the matter is that Hellraiser: Bloodline will always be a movie that could've been so much better than it turned out, one, had the studio been willing to invest the money necessary for the initial screenplay, and two, had there not been so much drama on the set and during post-production. As it stands, it's certainly ambitious with its three part structure, across three different time periods, and there's some truly great stuff to be found in it, like the first act in 1796, some truly gnarly makeup and gore effects, some very memorable Cenobites, above average acting for this kind of film, and Doug Bradley, once again, being great as Pinhead, despite not being as prevalent. Unfortunately, while the story is told well enough, you do wish that the first act was a little longer and that it was done linearly, the music score isn't the greatest, as much as it tries, the movie just can't attain the grisly, uncomfortable vibe as the first two, and once you know about it, you can definitely see the production problems coming through, especially in how Angelique isn't as effective a character as she should be and how the rewriting, -shooting, and -editing created some notable plotholes. As I said at the beginning, it is watchable and I would recommend it to fans or those who are just getting into the franchise, but it could've been so much more.