Franchises: Hellraiser. Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

Truth be told, when I first started to get into these films, I hadn't planned on going further than Hellbound, given everything I'd heard about how the franchise eventually went. And had I not gone to the Fright Night Film Fest in Louisville, Kentucky in July of 2010, there's a good chance that I wouldn't have. But I did, and there, I bought the awesome book, The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy, by Paul Kane, which went in deep on each and every movie that had been released up to that point (in other words, everything up to Hellworld), both in terms of production and themes. Upon reading it, my curiosity was piqued and thus, I decided to take the full plunge, even though I knew it was probably going to lead me into some pain (and it did). Like the first two movies, I also saw Hellraiser III's VHS box at Harold's, but it didn't leave as much of an impression, as there were no nightmarish images on its back. Instead, what I remembered most was a shot of Pinhead from what I'm sure was the scene in the church. I did also see a tiny clip of it in a cable promo, talking about movies that were coming soon to whatever that channel was, but that was all I'd ever seen until I got the DVD in early 2011 (which was hard to come by at that point). From what I gathered from the book, this one was much more of a typical mainstream horror movie of the times, and not nearly as hardcore as the first two. I also gathered that this was the film where Pinhead is truly the star, and where the backstory with the character of Elliot Spencer was fully developed. I wasn't sure about the images and descriptions of some of the new Cenobites, particularly CD, but on the whole, this one sounded like it would at least be entertaining. And make no mistake, it is, but in a low-rent, B-movie sort of way. This is indeed the Hellraiser that's the most like a slasher movie, with Pinhead at the center as a new answer to the horror villains that came before him (most specifically Freddy Krueger, as there are definite Nightmare on Elm Street elements to this story). Thus, it's not surprising that it tends to get trashed by diehard fans of the original and Clive Barker (although, at the time, it garnered a better reception than Hellbound, including from mainstream critics), but if you can turn your brain off and enjoy for what it is, it can be a fun ride.

However, that's not to say it isn't problematic, as it most certainly is. Aside from Pinhead, none of the other characters are that interesting, including the lead, and there's a lot of very rough acting throughout. Also, the script still doesn't completely explain the confusing ending to Hellbound or the fates of the other Cenobites, it takes a while for Pinhead to finally be unleashed, there are elements added to the mythology that feel as though they belong to a different franchise altogether, and the movie has a rather generic visual style, with director Anthony Hickox also getting a tad too stylistic and even melodramatic in his camerawork. But, above all else, Hellraiser III marks the start of the long, painful period when Dimension Films and the Weinsteins had control of the franchise, and while they didn't interfere as much this time, they would begin to do so en masse with the next one.

At the Pyramid Gallery, an art dealer's store in New York, nightclub owner J.P. Monroe buys a bizarre, unsettling-looking pillar. Around the same time, Joanne "Joey" Summerskill, a young television reporter eager for a story that could elevate her flagging career, is at a hospital, when a young man is wheeled in on a gurney, with hooked chains embedded in his flesh. In the emergency room, she's horrified when the chains become animated and rip the man's head apart. Intent on getting to the bottom of this, Joey traces the young woman who brought the man in to the Boiler Room, Monroe's nightclub. Though she gets no help from Monroe himself, the woman, Terri, contacts her that night, offering to tell her what she knows in exchange for a place to stay. She says she directed Monroe to the Pyramid Gallery, having thought the pillar would be a nice addition to his place, and that the club-goer claimed the chains came out of a box he removed from it. In his loft above the Boiler Room, Monroe is bitten on the hand by a rat and unintentionally splashes blood on the pillar, causing a strange reaction. Joey and Terri go to the Pyramid Gallery, only to learn it's been closed for over a month. Regardless, they break in and look through the files inside, Terri finding a file from the Channard Institute, which contains drawings of the box. After looking through the file, Joey contacts the institute and has them send over videotaped interviews with Kirsty Cotton, wherein she explains that the box unleashes demons. Meanwhile, after Monroe has sex with a club-goer and then attempts to throw her out, she's devoured by the pillar. Pinhead now manifests within it, and he convinces Monroe to bring him more victims so he can be freed, promising him unfathomable pleasures at his right hand. Monroe then attempts to lure Terri back to him, intending to let Pinhead feed on her, but when she turns the tables, Pinhead convinces her to give him Monroe instead, promising everything she could ever want in return. With that, he's freed. At the same time, Joey, who's plagued by nightmares about her father dying in Vietnam, meets the spirit of Captain Elliot Spencer, who tells her of how he became Pinhead after solving the Lament Configuration. But now, he and Pinhead have become two separate beings, and he needs her help to stop the Cenobite, who's more demented and dangerous than before, now that his former humanity has been removed.

Like with Hellbound, plans for Hellraiser III began before the current film had even been released, but two factors led to it not being made as quickly. New World Pictures went bankrupt not long after Hellbound's release and the failure of Clive Barker's Nightbreed led to his and Christopher Figg's production company, Film Futures, falling apart as well. New World's co-chairman, Lawrence Kuppin, along with other executives, formed a new studio, Trans-Atlantic Pictures, and acquired the

sequel rights to some of New World's most successful properties, including Hellraiser. However, Barker initially had no involvement with the film, later saying that Trans-Atlantic weren't willing to pay his fee, as, "They wanted something cheap and nasty." He wouldn't become involved until post-production, when Miramax agreed to distribute the film through their Dimension label. While director Anthony Hickox claimed that Bob Weinstein then offered him more money to finesse the effects work and redo the ending, Barker said that Weinstein contacted him personally for his own opinion on the film, which he wasn't impressed with the rough cut of, and then asked him to come in and help fix it. Whichever account is true, in his extensive interview with Midnight's Edge about his history with the franchise, Gary J. Tunnicliffe, whose first Hellraiser credit was here, said that Barker was very heavily involved with the reshoots. He also added that Weinstein had his own ideas, summing it up, "If it's weird, strange, and creepy, it was Clive, and if it was kind of like, action-oriented... it was Bob." In the end, Barker did receive an executive producer credit on the film, and the opening credits begin with the banner, CLIVE BARKER PRESENTS. He also directed the music video for Motorhead's song, Hellraiser, and promoted the film around the same time as Candyman.

As had been the case with Hellbound, Peter Atkins wrote the screenplay for Hellraiser III, and did so with Tony Randel, who was also planning to return as director. But the heads at Trans-Atlantic, not wanting this film to be as dark as the first two, didn't care for Randel's approach and he left both the movie and the franchise altogether. I've read that, like with the sixth Nightmare on Elm Street, Peter Jackson was approached to direct Hellraiser III but he turned them down, as he didn't think his style meshed well the series' aesthetic. Ironically, the director they went with was, like Jackson, known for taking a much more humorous, tongue-in-cheek approach to horror: the late Anthony Hickox. Aside from Hellraiser III, I've also seen the two Waxwork movies and Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, and while they're definitely enjoyable, his penchant for horror comedy made him an odd choice for such a dark and deadly serious franchise. Barker had the same reservations and meet with Hickox to advise him not to get jokey with it. But, while Hellraiser III is definitely much more serious than his previous films, it's not nearly as dark or disturbing as the first two Hellraisers, and Hickox, for better or worse, does bring his own style to it. His way of working, which involved very fast shooting across long days and in-camera editing, also made it rather frustrating for the actors, and could also explain why a lot of the performances aren't the greatest.

As I said in the introduction, a big strike against the film is that, with few exceptions, the characters are both not that engaging or well-acted, and that includes our lead, Joey Summerskill (Terry Farrell). A young television reporter who's looking for a story that will launch her into the big time, we first meet her when she's reporting on a hospital emergency room, only to be very aggravated and disappointed that there's absolutely nothing going on, even wondering if the higher-ups at the news station somehow arranged for it to be dead. She's even more bummed when her cameraman, Doc, is called to cover a hostage situation, and learns there's already a reporter at the scene. But after he leaves, Joey gets the shock of her life when a young man is wheeled in with hooked chains attached to him, and then, in the emergency room, sees the chains float into the air, brimming with electrical energy, and rip the guy's head apart. As horrified as she is, she's intent on finding out what that was all about, and having briefly spoken with the woman who brought the man in, Joey heads to the Boiler Room, the club where she claimed it happened. Although she doesn't have much luck getting info there, she's later contacted by the woman, Terri, giving her a place to crash after her boyfriend throws her out in exchange for information. Terri shows her the Lament Configuration and leads her to the art dealer's shop where J.P. Monroe bought the mysterious pillar from which it came, leading Joey to learn about the Channard Institute and Kirsty Cotton. She's able to have videotaped interviews with Kirsty sent to her, and hears her talk about how the box summons demons, as well as that the box itself wants to be open. As she delves further into this, she begins seeing visions from Elliot Spencer, most often in her recurring dream about her father having died in Vietnam before she was born. He begs her for help, and eventually gets her to enter into the limbo he's trapped in, where he tells her his story, as well as that his evil side has become separated from him, is now loose on Earth, and must destroy the Lament Configuration to ensure he will never be returned to hell. Spencer then implores Joey to lure Pinhead into his domain, where he can take back control. Though unsure if she's capable of doing this, when Joey awakens and sees a news report of Pinhead's rampage at the Boiler Room, she immediately heads there, leading to their confrontation.

While it's nice that, like Kirsty, Joey proves to be another strong, female character, especially during the third act, when she refuses to allow Pinhead to trick her into giving him the box and has him chase her throughout the city, Terry Farrell's acting is painfully bad. Her delivery of her lines, like when she tells Terri about her dreams about her father, when she's joking with Terri about her not-so-good cooking skills, and her attempts to act horrified at what she sees at the Boiler Room, which includes

finding Doc dead, are just awful, and it doesn't help that they give her some real stinkers for lines. When she first enters Spencer's limbo, and sees a frozen image of him working the Lament Configuration, which she gets no response, she says, "Now what? I'm here. I just walked into madness for you. Talk. Talk!" And then, when she meets Spencer himself: "You have to help me. I don't understand. Am I dreaming this?" Speaking of which, where she really falters is when she plays

off against Doug Bradley as either Spencer or Pinhead, who's not only just better than her in general, but brings the expected gravitas to both roles. When he's spouting Pinhead's classically threatening yet eloquent dialogue, her responses are not only feeble by comparison but sometimes make no sense. For instance, "There is a secret song at the center of the world, Joey, and its sound is like razors through flesh." "I don't believe you!" Okay, maybe she means she doesn't believe that the world is as vile as he's making it out to be, but still,

that was such a random and badly-delivered response. The same goes for when she tells him, "I'm here to stop you and send you back to hell," and, when he tells her, "Just give me the box and I'll free you from the future," she says, "Free yourself from the past." She's not even that good at delivering one-liners, like when Pinhead appears at the church and tells the priest who doesn't believe in demons, "Then what the fuck is that?!", or, "Play with this, Pinhead!" Even though she manages to solve the box, the only reason why Pinhead is even

defeated is because he confronts her in the setting of her recurring dream (here's another winner from her: "You bastard! You invaded my mind!"), allowing Spencer to get at him, and then, she sends them both to hell. Though, at the end of the movie, Joey does the most sensible thing with the box: shoves it down into some wet cement and walks away, washing her hands of it completely.

At first, Terri (Paula Marshall), a drifter and J.P. Monroe's much abused girlfriend, isn't keen on talking with Joey about what happened at the hospital, but after Monroe throws her out, she offers to tell her in exchange for a place to stay. Though she's still freaked out by it, she does eventually get around to telling Joey about the box and points her to the place where Monroe bought the Pillar of Souls. Once Joey finds the information she's looking for, Terri expects to be kicked out again, only to be surprised when she tells her that she can stay as long as she wants. But, in a scene shortly afterward, Terri finds herself not only drawn to the box but also gets a call from Monroe, asking her to come back to him. Though she gets angry with him over how he awful he was to her and hangs up, she clearly finds him hard to resist. Then, a call comes through on Joey's answering machine, saying that she got a job in Monterey; Terri, thinking she's been betrayed, goes back to Monroe, leading to both of their downfalls. A running theme with Terri is that she's never had any dreams and thus, is fascinated to hear about Joey's recurring one when the two of them first meet at her apartment. She tells her, "I'm jealous. It's like everyone has another world except for me, ya know? It's just... just, uh, me, my bag, and a series of shithead boyfriends. It'd be nice to see somethin' else. Have a nighttime world." As a result, when Monroe tries to feed her to Pinhead, only for her to whip out some brass knuckles and knock him unconscious, Pinhead stops her from escaping by appealing to her desire to escape from her banal, dreamless world. He promises her, "Another life of unknown pleasures," and she, in turn, rolls Monroe into place so Pinhead can devour him. This gives Pinhead the last bit of strength he needs to break out of the pillar, and during the third act, Terri appears as a Cenobite, telling Joey, "I can dream now, Joey. Oh, you wouldn't believe what I can dream of now."

Like with Joey, they try to make Terri a character whom you should, if nothing else, care for: a tragic young woman who's had a crappy life, gets a chance at happiness when she moves in with Joey, and ultimately makes a deal with the devil due to a tragic misunderstanding. They also try to make her come off as street-smart in how she's able to get her and Joey into the Pyramid Gallery, and then comes across the Channard Institute file and its connection to the box. They even give her some

comic relief in how her attempt at making breakfast for herself and Joey literally goes up in smoke, as she burns everything, and when Joey allows her to move in indefinitely, she offers to do breakfast. Unfortunately, like Terry Farrell, Paula Marshall's performance is pretty lousy, with her line delivery coming off as so amateurish and stilted. Also, the attempt at humor between her and Joey after she fries breakfast is painfully unfunny (she calls herself, "A kitchen virgin," as she's never cooked before, and Joey then insists on boiling

some water herself, saying, "I like boiling water. I love it. It's a specialty of mine,") and she's not all that great at coming off as upset, either. Funnily enough, when she becomes a Cenobite near the end, her performance actually improves. Too bad she doesn't have much more screentime before she's banished.

J.P. Monroe (Kevin Bernhardt) is basically this movie's version of Frank Cotton. While he's not as depraved of a hedonist as Frank, and is genuinely horrified and distraught when Pinhead devours a woman right in front of him, he's still a spoiled, self-centered punk who thinks he's the king of all he surveys. When Joey meets him at the posh restaurant in the Boiler Room, he's surrounded by women, and when she asks him if he owns the place, he cups one woman's chin and answers, "And everything in it." He has no interest in helping her, either, and even offers her a red rose, his personal invitation to have a "private meeting" with him. The extent of his sleaziness is revealed when he has his bartender give this really hot blonde at the bar a rose, then he moves in, talks her up, makes her feel special, takes her up into his loft, has sex with her, and once he's done, very harshly tells her to get out. When she brings up that he gave her a rose, he retorts, "And tomorrow, I'll give one to somebody else. Now get dressed, and get out of here." She proceeds to berate him for being so horrendous, only for him to go, "Oh, yeah. Like you were at fuckin' gunpoint. Heh, heh. You stupid," and mock her. That's when Pinhead makes his move and feeds on her, and Monroe, once he gets over his shock, is immediately defensive when Pinhead suggests that he "enjoyed the girl" in the same manner as him, yelling, "No, what you did, that was fuckin' evil, man!" He goes as far as to take out a gun, which Pinhead deduces is the one he used to murder his parents for their fortune, and shoots, only for it to prove more than useless. Monroe then breaks down, but agrees to help Pinhead break free when he promises him everything he could ever want in return. And just when you think he couldn't be any slimier, he calls up Terri, whom he'd kicked out, says he wants her back, gets her to come back to his loft, and acts like he wants to comfort her when she's clearly upset about being "betrayed" by Joey and the way he hurt her (he even makes a sick joke about the woman who Pinhead devoured). He attempts to lure her over to the pillar by offering an embrace (he says the familiar line, "Come to Daddy,"), only for her to rebuff him at the last minute, prompting him to try to take her by force. That's when Terri turns the tables by knocking him out and she feeds him to Pinhead. Like Terri, he reappears as a Cenobite during the climax, claiming that what he's now experiencing, and what he intends to put Joey through, is even better than sex.

While Bernhardt's performance as Monroe is actually pretty decent (although, his reaction to the pillar literally absorbing his blood when he flings it onto it, then glowing slightly and emitting demonic sounds, is not at all natural; he just says, "Whoa," in awe), I can't say the same for Ken Carpenter as Doc, Joey's cameraman and biggest supporter. He doesn't have a lot of scenes, but he always tries to encourage Joey to keep her chin up, telling her that the story she's hoping for may show up sooner than she expects, and also calls one of the guys at the news station, Brad, out on his being a pig when he encourages her to show more thigh in order to get the higher-ups to notice her. He becomes intrigued in the story she's researching, offering to help in any way he can, and when Joey hears of the massacre at the Boiler Room, she calls up Doc, who opts to meet her down there. Unfortunately, he gets killed offscreen and is turned into a Cenobite, one who's very eager to get revenge on Joey. Unfortunately, Carpenter's performance is probably worse than either Terry Farrell or Paula Marshall. All of his lines come off like he's reading off cue cards, with no emotion behind them, and he even sounds dubbed. Things don't improve much when he becomes the Cenobite known as Camerahead, whose design is just as ridiculous as his name implies, and he spouts off bad puns like, "Ready for your close-up, Joey?", and, "That's a wrap."

When I saw her interview on the 20th Anniversary DVD of the first Hellraiser, Ashley Laurence hinted that she was in Hellraiser III but also made it clear that, by that point, she was ready to move on, as she wasn't all that enamored with Hellbound anyway and didn't want her character to just keep going on and on (but she did mention how she came back for the sixth one). In any case, Kirsty's "special appearance" here really is little more than a cameo, as she appears on grainy videotape footage from the Channard Institute (this was shot before the movie itself entered production), where she tells the silent, offscreen interviewer about how the Lament Configuration is a gateway to hell and summons demons, as well as curses at them over being filmed (I honestly can't image who she's saying this to). She also says that the box opens itself and wants to be opened. In addition, you see footage of her from Hellbound when Elliot Spencer tells Joey about how Kirsty "released" him by reminding him of his humanity.

Peter Atkins himself has a small role as the Boiler Room bartender who gives the blonde at the bar whom Monroe eyes the rose and, following the massacre at the club, is turned into a barbwire-covered Cenobite, dubbed "Barbie," whom Gary J. Tunnicliffe says was a late addition not in the script. Clayton Hill, who appeared as a zombie in Dawn of the Dead, and also acted as the weapon supervisor on that film, appears as the priest who, after insisting that demons don't really exist, is 

confronted by Pinhead when he enters the church. He tries to repel him with a crucifix, only for Pinhead to melt it in his hand, and when he confronts him over his desecrating and then destroying the altar, saying he'll burn in hell, Pinhead laughs and says, "Burn?! Oh, such a limited imagination!" He then forces him to eat a piece of his flesh. As he often did, Anthony Hickox has a cameo, both as a dying soldier in Joey's nightmare and on a TV talk show when Doc is flipping channels, and Zach Galligan, Gremlins-star, as well as the lead of Hickox's Waxwork films, has a blink and you'll miss him appearance as a club-goer who gets speared by a pool cue during the Boiler Room massacre.

I personally see Hellraiser III as the movie that most are probably expecting when they go into the first one, given how prominently Pinhead was featured in the marketing; in this case, it doesn't feel like false advertising, as he's very much the center of the story. In fact, for the first half of the movie, he's in the same sort of position as Frank and Julia in the first and second movies respectively: first revived by spilled blood and needing someone to bring him victims in order to fully restore himself. Moreover, after Frank failed to completely restore his body and had to wear Larry's skin, and Julia, despite succeeding, didn't get to do all that much once she became whole, Pinhead getting to run rampant after freeing himself from the Pillar of Souls feels like what these three movies have been naturally building to. And that's what's most entertaining about this one, as this is definitely Pinhead unleashed. Not only does he have more screentime and dialogue here than in any other movie but, now that he no longer has that lingering bit of humanity that previously gave him something of a moral code, he's free to fully indulge his own monstrous desires for death and torture. Thus, unlike in the first two movies, where his performance was often understated and melancholic, here Doug Bradley gets to play a sadistically gleeful Pinhead, laughing maniacally as he slaughters everyone in the Boiler Room, taking great pleasure in desecrating the church, to the point where he mocks Jesus' crucifixion and performs his own Black Mass, and evilly rubbing it in Joey's face when he uses her recurring dream about her father to trick her into giving him the Lament Configuration. He even gets genuinely and frighteningly angry at her at points, going far beyond the threats he made about how Kirsty would suffer if she tricked him and the other Cenobites. And while he and the others looked forward to having their way with Kirsty, Pinhead is especially sadistic here when he describes how he's going to make Joey slowly suffer over time.

Pinhead also has a lot of great dialogue here, showing just how seductive he can be in the scenes when he first awakens within the pillar and tempts Monroe and, later, Terri into helping him. When Monroe insists that his way of "enjoying the girl" isn't the same as what he did to her, calling it evil, Pinhead laughs and says, "Oh, how uncomfortable that word must feel on your lips. Evil, good. There is no good, Monroe. There is no evil. There is only flesh, and the patterns to which we submit it."

Monroe grabs his gun, which Pinhead recognizes as the one he used to kill his parents, and when he shoots him, only for Pinhead to harmlessly spit out the bullets, he collapses to the floor, sobbing hopelessly. Pinhead then uses some of the very same words he told the girl in the bar, "Don't flee from yourself. If you have a quality, be proud of it. Let it define you, whatever it is. By helping me, you will help yourself. Oh, yes. You want to. You always have. Your paintings, your sculptures. Look

at these tortured representations and then, imagine a world where the body is canvas, the body is clay, your will, and mine, as the brush and the knife." Monroe, hearing his bodyguards knocking on the door, backs away, but Pinhead continues his seduction: "There is a place at my right hand for you, Monroe. For a man of your tastes. Tastes I can help you to indulge: flesh, power, dominion." With that, Monroe agrees to help. But later, when his attempt to have Pinhead feed on Terri goes belly-up, Pinhead turns things in his favor by appealing

to Terri's own desires and vulnerabilities, telling her she can either go, "Back into that world you've always known: banal, hopeless, dreamless," or she can turn the key to, "Dreams, to black miracles, dark wonders, another life of unknown pleasures. It's yours, Terri. Complete the pattern, solve the puzzle." He then tells her that this "key" is lying unconscious on the floor, and Terri, getting the idea, pushes Monroe into position to where Pinhead is able to feed on him and burst out of the pillar. Later, when Joey first confronts him in the

midst of the nightclub full of his victims, including Doc, he tells her, "Unbearable, isn't it? The suffering of strangers, the agony of friends. There is a secret song at the center of the world, Joey, and its sound is like razors through flesh... You can hear its faint echo right now. I'm here to turn up the volume. To press the stinking face of humanity into the dark blood of its own secret heart." And he really lays it on her when he tricks her into giving him the box, evilly chuckling and saying, "Human dreams... such fertile ground for the seeds of torment. You're so ripe Joey, and it's harvest time... I'll reap your sorrow slowly. I have centuries to discover the things that make you whimper."

Pinhead's separation from Spencer also seems to have made him more powerful than he was before. Not only is he able to produce chains and hooks from just about anywhere in the real world, but he also seems to have abilities akin to both tele- and pyrokinesis, as things are often exploding around Joey when she's being chased down the streets and fairly innocuous objects are used as weapons both against her and some of the patrons in the Boiler Room. He also creates a fake newscast of his

massacre there as a means of luring Joey down, knowing she'll bring the Lament Configuration, which he plans on destroying so he can never be banished again. Speaking of which, Spencer tells Joey that Pinhead can't take the box by force, that it must be given to him, and you see that this is very literal, as it repels him when he does try to take it. Though this may seem like a continuity error, given how he's handled it before, I equate it as a consequence of the rules being different now that he's completely unleashed and no longer serving Leviathan's will.

While Fangoria may have declared him, "The new horror hero," back when Hellbound was released, this is the film where you can feel the filmmakers and the studio really pushing Pinhead as a horror icon, specifically as a darker, less juvenile alternative to what Freddy Krueger had become at that point. Not only does this come down to the increased screentime and his being the center of the story but also in how they do give him something of a sense of humor, albeit a dark and twisted one.

He doesn't have one-liners, per se, but he does have some intentionally funny quips and responses, like his first one, when Monroe exclaims, "Jesus Christ!", after he's devoured the woman and Pinhead retorts, "Not quite." Then after that, when Monroe shoots him, only for Pinhead to just spit out the bullets, he remarks, "Now, can we talk sensibly?" But these moments are amplified when he's freed from the pillar, like in how, before slaughtering everyone in the Boiler Room, he

simply asks, "Shall we begin?", and, during the scene in the church, he mocking says, "Thou shall not bow down before any graven image," before melting the crucifix in the priest's hand. By extension, while it is not only very sick but totally blasphemous, there's still a twinkle in Pinhead's eye and a nasty bit of glee in his voice when he forces the priest to take Communion of his own flesh and blood, saying, "This is my body. This is my blood. Happy are they who come to my supper." And at the end, when Spencer tells him,

"We're going to hell," Pinhead sneers, "Ladies first," before turning on Joey (in the trailer, they edited it to make it look as though he was saying that as an insult to Spencer). Also at this time, you had Pinhead making a tongue-in-cheek appearance in the Motorhead Hellraiser music video and at the MTV Music Awards, where David Spade refuses to let him in, not to mention coverage of the film in Fangoria magazine. Indeed, this was Pinhead's time to shine, although unlike Freddy, or Chucky, for that matter, it would be quite brief.

Bradley also gets to play the yin to Pinhead's yang as the spirit of Captain Elliot Spencer, who contacts Joey from the limbo he's been trapped in ever since he and his evil side were separated. This is a great example of what a truly talented actor Bradley is, and how sad it is that he got so typecast, as he manages to make Spencer a charming, proper English gentleman in his scenes with Joey, but also someone who's desperate to rein in the monster he's unintentionally unleashed upon the real world. Once he manages to speak with Joey, he tells her his story, about how, after his experiences during and after World War I, watching those around him either die in battle or drink themselves to death from the trauma, he decided to explore "forbidden pleasures," which eventually led him to the Lament Configuration. As he says, "I found the monster within the box, and it found the monster within me." He then explains how, as Pinhead, he had restrictions on how much death and torture he could wage, but after Kirsty reminded him of his human identity and his soul was freed, his evil side escaped and found its way to Earth within the pillar. Now, he implores Joey to use the box as bait to lure Pinhead into the realm where he has command, so they can then send him back to hell. During the climax, Pinhead's attempt at mental torture on Joey by entering her mind allows Spencer to confront him. He's then able to fuse himself with Pinhead and holds him back long enough for Joey to use the box to banish them both back to hell.

I really like this concept of Spencer and Pinhead not only being separate entities but the latter being the embodiment of Spencer's darkest, most depraved desires, now on a self-serving rampage because he's been severed from his human side and no longer having to follow Leviathan's orders, as it feels logical, given how one's Cenobite form is that anyway. It's especially potent when Pinhead straps and hangs Joey up in leather bondage when he's faced with Spencer and then attempts to get him to

indulge in those desires again, saying, "Why resist? You love this as much as I. After all, you made me. There is a world out there, waiting to yield to us. So much flesh, so many different pleasures." However, there are still a number of things the movie doesn't answer, like why Spencer's soul ended up in limbo after he and Pinhead were separated, or how exactly they were separated (it's obviously a byproduct of Kirsty reminding him of his forgotten humanity and the Channard Cenobite

reverting him, but we don't get the whole story), why Pinhead became trapped within the Pillar of Souls, or why the Lament Configuration ended up in there with him. We're also never told what happened to the souls of the female Cenobite, Butterball, and Chatterer after Channard killed and reverted them back to who they originally were. Where did their evil sides go? And like I said, the movie takes a hard left into Nightmare on Elm Street territory with how Spencer is able to find Joey in her dreams and how Pinhead is able to peer

into them and use them to trick her. Granted, there was an implied connection between the Cenobites and the Lament Configuration's doings and dreams in the first Hellraiser, with Kirsty having that one about her father that not only seemed to portend the future but was also filled with sounds heard in the Labyrinth and which accompanied the vagrant, but this goes full-on into it and it feels uncreative. Plus, Spencer's explanation that he was able to find Joey because of her dreams about her father's death in Vietnam, because, "A dream of one war is a dream of all wars," is so banal.

As much as I love his portrayal, I've always felt that Pinhead's makeup in this movie looked off. Although Image Animation again did the makeup effects, this time Paul Jones was the makeup coordinator instead of Geoff Portass and he changed the Pinhead makeup to make it faster and easier to apply, which is likely what led to it looking very different from the previous movies (as well as more uncomfortable for Doug Bradley to wear). It doesn't look quite as thick as before, with

with more of Bradley's facial features coming through, and this is amplified by his more expressive and heightened performance, as well as by Anthony Hickox often getting right up in his face and shooting him from low angles. Also, the pins are much bigger than before, which doesn't look so good, as it makes them look faker. The makeup looks really bad in the scene between Pinhead and Joey in the setting for her recurring dream, as it's out in broad daylight, which was not a good idea. More impressive is the Pillar of Souls,

which looks so much better than it did at the end of Hellbound. Instead of being wooden, with random objects and faces attached to it, it's now a carved sculpture, looking as though it's made out of marble or something similar, and has unsettling images of tortured and sinister-looking figures and faces embedded within it, as well as the Lament Configuration and, eventually, Pinhead's face sticking out of its side. While his makeup still doesn't look quite right, the sight of his face sticking out of the pillar is a memorable one, as

well as how he feeds on people by either hooking them and literally sucking them through the base of the pillar, making them part of it, or just killing them. And right before he's finally freed, the pillar appears to become flesh, with the sculptures coming to life and moving, slime and goo pouring out of it, and pieces of its flesh hitting the floor.

One character who's never explained is the man (Lawrence Mortorff) who sells the Pillar of Souls to Monroe in the Pyramid Gallery at the very beginning. This bearded, scraggly-looking guy (who kind of looks like Kris Kristofferson, don't you think?) suddenly appears behind Monroe when he's looking at the pillar and immediately offers it to him. He's very ambiguous about its price, saying it's, "Whatever you think it's worth," and when Monroe whips out some cash, the man takes it but also holds his hand, saying, "Exactly the figure I had in mind. Take pleasure in it." He never reappears afterward, and when Joey and Terri investigate the gallery later, they learn it's been closed for a month and the owner is in Hawaii. Given his dirty, homeless look, his eagerness to sell Monroe the pillar, and his talking about pleasure, I have a sneaking suspicion he's the entity who appeared as the vagrant in the first film and was more than likely the one who first sold Frank the Lament Configuration. Of course, that doesn't explain how he was able to escape the pillar after he also found himself in it at the end of Hellbound (what happened to Julia, for that matter?), but since so little else from that movie is explained, it doesn't really bother me.

In stark contrast to the grimy, dark visual style of the previous movies, Hellraiser III has a more polished, and, consequently, bland, look to it; in fact, it kind of looks like an early 90's TV movie, especially in the scenes set in Joey's apartment, daytime exteriors, and even Monroe's loft above the Boiler Room, with the nightclub itself sometimes being shot in a so-so manner. This is all probably a result of Hickox's very quick shooting style, which didn't leave much room for a more elaborate look. That's not to say that the movie

looks bad, because it doesn't, and there are some memorable, well-shot images here, many of them involving Pinhead. Also, the scenes that take place within Joey's dreams and Spencer's limbo do look kind of interesting, with the former using a lot of notable, sunset/dusk colors in the lighting. But the movie's aesthetic is still very different from the first two (it even gives you an example when it flashes back to scenes from Hellbound). Hickox also goes in for more dynamic and stylistic camerawork than Clive Barker and Tony Randel,

with a lot of dramatic, often angled, push-ins on somebody or something (a badly cheesy example is when Terri first shows Joey the Lament Configuration), as well as very fast, sped-up pans towards some characters, like when Pinhead is yelling within the pillar and during his confrontation with Spencer, dramatic visual and audio slow-mo in Joey's nightmares, and moments where the camera noticeably circles around the characters. As he often did, Hickox also designs

some shots with a character's face on one side of the screen, while the other shows something in the background. Sometimes, it's kind of cool-looking, but in a shot during the climax, where Pinhead's face is right up against the camera, while the strung-up, leather-bound Joey is in the background, it, again, further accentuates how strange his makeup design is here. And the editing is often much quicker than before, making it easy to see why Gary J. Tunnicliffe, for instance, refers to this as the MTV Hellraiser.

It may not reach the level of its predecessors, but Hellraiser III does have a handful of memorable imagery and shots all its own. Among them is the shot of Monroe framed in front of the rotating Pillar of Souls when he first sees it in the Pyramid Gallery; the image of the floating, electrified chains attached to the first victim in the emergency room, with close-ups of his blood dripping on the floor after his head has exploded; the sex scene between Monroe and the woman from the bar, with Monroe thrusting his arms out when he orgasms,

with the pillar in the background and Pinhead, unbeknownst to them, watching everything; the many shots of Pinhead's face within the pillar's side; the first shot we get of him once he's exploded out of the pillar, and when he later makes himself known to the club-goers (one time where a low-angle shot of him here looks good); the aftermath of his rampage there; the shot of him behind the church altar, framed in front of the stained glass window of a cross and between two

flaming candelabras, and posing like the crucified image of Jesus, laughing maniacally, as the window explodes behind him; the image of Pinhead and Spencer merging together, and the bizarre, squealing, penis-shaped creature that emerges from the floor beforehand; and the final scene of the office building whose visual aesthetic is based around the Lament Configuration. And while this one isn't nearly as gruesome and nasty as those before it, or many that came after it, there are still some memorably gory images to be found here.

Another notable difference between this film and the first two is that it was shot entirely in the United States. Moreover, while it's set in New York, it was shot entirely in North Carolina, specifically Greensboro, where the nighttime sequence of the Cenobites chasing Joey and battling the police in the streets was shot. However, even though I've never visited New York once in my life, I've never been completely convinced that this really is the Big Apple. Despite some actual establishing shots of Manhattan, and one shot early

on that does look an awful lot like Times Square (although it's probably a plaza in either Greensboro or Charlotte), those street scenes just don't have the look and feel of many other movies and TV shows I've seen that were actually shot in New York. Regardless, the switch from England to the U.S. has a noticeable effect on the franchise. Now, instead of the claustrophobic, very British-looking interiors of the Cotton House, or the sterile corridors and the horrific maintenance level cells of the Channard Institute (which now seems to be

in America as well, given how easily and quickly Joey is able to get a hold of Kirsty's videotape), we've got scenes set within Joey's nice-looking apartment, the offices of the TV station she works for, and the interiors of the hospital where she first sees the club-goer die. The most noteworthy setting is the Boiler Room, which has metal music blaring within it (the band, Armored Saint, features in one scene) and features some macabre examples of art design, like a dummy of a leather-bound baby in

the middle of a barbwire circle, with pliers on either side of it, a disturbing mannequin covered in barbwire, and a completely leather-covered figure on the wall, as well as a flaming sign behind the bar, along with the typical pool tables, the stage area for the band, women dancing, and the like. In stark contrast, there's a very fancy restaurant in the upper level, and above the club is Monroe's loft, where he keeps the Pillar of Souls and also where he has his sexual conquests (the loft is apparently

soundproof, as the music down below isn't heard until his security comes to check on him after he shoots at Pinhead). However, the place becomes a hideous, mass grave when Joey arrives after Pinhead massacres everybody. Unfortunately, the other world isn't nearly as imaginative as what we saw before, consisting of a field with a bright blue sky as the setting for Joey's recurring dream, a World War I battleground filled with trenches and

corpses as Spencer's purgatory, and a barracks for Spencer's confrontation with Pinhead, which is meant to be the place where we saw him during the flashback in Hellbound where he first opened the box, only it doesn't look as otherworldly. The construction site for the scene where Joey is cornered by Pinhead and the Cenobites leaves a lot to be desired as well.

Funny enough, the trickiest setting to create was the one that shouldn't have been that difficult: the church. However, since they were shooting in an area that's very much part of the Bible Belt, no church in North Carolina was going to allow them to shoot a scene where Pinhead not only destroys a number of stained glass windows, desecrates the altar, and mocks the crucifixion, but also performs a Black Mass on the priest, forcing him to take part in a demonic Communion. While the exterior looks like an actual church, when it came time for the

interiors, they used matte paintings for the most part, including for the shot of Pinhead at the altar, and likely filmed everything else on a soundstage made up to look like a church. One story I like is how, when some of the crew were still not crazy about the scene's nature, saying it was sacrilegious, Hickox brought up how it was no different to the many times that Count Dracula ran rampant in a church in the Hammer movies, which stopped the argument right there. 

As interesting as it is to see what new Cenobites are going to be unveiled in each successive Hellraiser, not only have none of them ever come out as cool or memorable as the original four (even Pinhead says as much about these during the third act), but sometimes, their designs are downright goofy. That's definitely true of the new Cenobites we get here, which are also just random in some instances. The most classic-looking one is the Terri Cenobite, or "Dreamer," who's a reworked take on the female Cenobite from the previous movies,

with a bald head, the skin of the forehead pulled back by hooks, hooks around her ears, an opened neck with a cigarette sticking out of it, and arms where the flesh is pulled back by wires, exposing the muscles. However, the only reason she's called "Dreamer" is because she tells Joey that she's now able to do so; otherwise, all she does in her brief appearance is repeatedly burn her with a cigarette. Monroe's Cenobite, "Pistonhead," is where the randomness comes in, as when Pinhead feeds on him earlier, he produces said piston out of nowhere

and rams it through his skull. When he appears in full Cenobite form at the construction site, he's hideously disfigured, with nasty-looking flesh, and that piston is constantly jamming back and forth. I guess its thrusting is meant to represent how he was a sex maniac before but now, is experiencing something that he finds even more pleasurable. Like Dreamer, he doesn't do much except menace and act like a perv towards Joey, while also whipping out some tool and smacking the back of

her legs with it. The makeup designs of those two are actually kind of cool, but with Doc's Camerahead design, with a constantly oscillating video camera lens sticking out of his right eye socket, as the whole thing is apparently jammed into that side of his head, it just gets ridiculous. Also, while at one point, he uses that lens to punch a massive hole through a guy's head, he also unexpectedly blows up a bunch of TVs in a storefront window just by looking at them. I have

no explanation for that random ability. The barman is turned into a big, chunky Cenobite who, because his head is wrapped in barbwire, is dubbed "Barbie." He can spew blasts of fire out of his mouth, alluding to the fiery sign for the Boiler Room behind his bar, and has a cocktail shaker full of gasoline, which he uses during the Cenobites' showdown with the police. And finally, there's the DJ who's turned into the very silly-looking CD Cenobite (Eric Willhelm) who, for better or worse, is probably the most memorable one. I have to admit, I kind of like him, as ridiculous as he is (not to mention how dated his aesthetic is), with how his head has CDs embedded in his noggin and a mouth akin to the slit in a player, his movements are stiff and robotic, with whirring sounds (methinks Robocop must've been an inspiration), and he produces CDs from his chest and uses them as shurikens.

It may not be as hardcore as the first two, but this film does have plenty of gruesome deaths and makeup effects courtesy of Image Animation, with the first arriving before the ten minute mark, with the chains hanging from the unfortunate club-goer, with some attached to his face, and the scene culminating with his head literally being ripped apart in a manner to where it basically explodes, followed by quick cutaways to the aftermath. Monroe gets a nasty, bleeding rat-bite on his right hand, and flings his blood onto the pillar, which

then absorbs it as he watches. Speaking of which, much of the more impressive makeup effects during the first half are courtesy of the pillar and Pinhead. When the woman Monroe banged is devoured, you get those still wince-inducing close-ups of hooked chains piercing into her flesh, followed by Pinhead literally ripping the flesh off of her and absorbing her into the pillar (the moment in this film that really gets to me; incidentally, her skinned form is actually Paula Marshall pulling double duty). You get more of the

former when Monroe himself is taken, followed by a grisly close-up of the piston getting jammed through his head. The biggest gorefest in the film comes during Pinhead's rampage in the Boiler Room, with one guy catching one of the hooked chains that come out of the darkness, only for it to recoil and rip off several of his fingers; Zach Galligan getting impaled by a pool cue; a woman getting a large icicle in her mouth; barbwire ensnaring the barman's head; a chain tearing off a

chunk of a woman's face; the DJ getting CDs sliced into his head, face, and mouth, as well as a leather strap across his eyes; various close-ups of people being gouged in the face with chains that pop up out of nowhere, with two getting impaled through their torsos by the same one; and an extended shot of blood oozing out from under the door after Pinhead traps everyone inside. 

When Joey arrives on the scene afterward, she finds the place littered with hideously mangled corpses and body parts, such as corpses hanging from the chains, a hanging severed head and a brain sitting in a blender, eyeballs in martini glasses, a guy on the pool tables with several balls jammed into his mouth, some people who were partially skinned, a chained guy with his head tied in decorative lights, dice in his eyes, and chips jammed in his mouth, and Doc's corpse, with his head sitting in his lap and his camera atop the

stump of his neck. During the climax, a random guy who gets caught up in the mayhem has a massive hole punched through his head by Camerahead's lens, another gets one of CD's personal throwing stars in his forehead, and Pinhead removes two of the pins from his head, pushes them through his palms, and then forces the priest to eat some of his flesh. During the final confrontation, when Joey is strung up, this very bizarre, bloody, phallic creature that looks like a

hideous cross between a flower and the Graboids from the Tremors movies explodes up through the floor and expels this hellish machine that, I think, is threatening to turn Joey into a Cenobite herself (Gary J. Tunnicliffe has said this was one of the reshoots that Clive Barker oversaw and that wouldn't surprise me at all). And finally, there's the practical, and very cool, version of Spencer and Pinhead merging back together, which makes me think of the effect of Alice and Freddy Krueger

separating from each other during the climax of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5, and is also something of a precursor to the formation of the Siamese Twins Cenobite in the next film. It is an awesome effect and a memorable visual, with nice details like Spencer's left eye becoming completely black like Pinhead's as he morphs into him, and when he's been completely absorbed, the right side of Pinhead's bulging, undulating head is still pale but has no pins, only for them to appear after a cut.

Visual effects-wise, Hellraiser III was the first film in the series, and one of the first movies overall, to make use of CGI. Mind you, though, there's not much here, and it ranges from passable, like the full-body shots of the woman getting her skin ripped off and the one club-goer's drink emerging from her glass, forming into the shape of Pinhead's head, and then morphing into the big icicle that skewers her through the mouth, to badly dated, like Joey walking through her mirror and into limbo, the digital elements of Spencer and Pinhead 

morphing together, a shot of Pinhead's head briefly morphing into a distorted version of Spencer's when he tells Joey to send him to hell, and the moment where Pinhead is actually sent back to hell. In the shot where Joey's father turns into Pinhead, the effect, although you can see it coming because of the obvious blue screen, is pulled off well enough, save for how Mr. Summerskill's bare arms remain; the goof is fixed in-between cuts. There's also the old-fashioned rotoscoped

animation for the charges of energy coming from the Lament Configuration, the chains, and when some water becomes electrically-charged during the chase through the streets; what looks like some stop-motion when the pillar begins to disintegrate and when Pinhead melts the crucifix in the priest's hand; and opticals for when the background behind Pinhead switches from the sky to the barracks' ceiling during the ending (a badly-dated blue screen effect). And there are a good number of physical effects during the latter half, with all of those chains flying and emerging out of nowhere, electric cables being manipulated, and plenty of explosions.

One problem with the movie's horror and action sequences is that they sometimes show their hand before anything significant happens. For instance, the very first one, with Joey at the hospital, begins with her suddenly walking down this long, dark hallway leading to the exit, and that, coupled with the sudden, eerie silence and the shot directly behind her as she walks down, lets us know that something's going to happen. Sure enough, when she reaches the door, we can hear the sound of an

ambulance's siren and see its flashing lights right outside, right before the paramedics and Terri wheel the critically wounded club-goer in on a gurney, with blood-soaked chains trailing behind him on the floor. The guy begs Joey for help through his oxygen mask and grabs her blouse, and one of the chains hits her on the side of her foot, leaving a bleeding scar. Regardless, after being denied entrance to the emergency room once the man is wheeled in, she tries to talk to Terri but gets little out of her aside from that it happened at the

Boiler Room. Just when she asks her to clarify what and where the Boiler Room is, loud electrical crackling and bright flashes draw Joey back to the emergency room doors. Opening them, she's shocked to see the chains attached to the man floating in the air, crackling with energy, as he convulses violently. The surgeons are unable to do anything, and within seconds, the chains drop and the man's head violently explodes, as a nurse lies slumped on the floor, horrified at what she saw. Joey stumbles back through the door (when she does, you can see that the man's head is still intact), coughing and sobbing over what she just saw.

While it doesn't do it a lot, there are some cheap jump-scares in the movie. When Joey is riding home after what happened at the hospital, a guy randomly bangs on the window next to her seat as it passes by him. Not too long afterward, when Monroe is in his loft by himself, he spies a hole in the Pillar of Souls and walks over to inspect it. Hearing some rustling inside, he does the cliched dumb thing and put his hand through the hole, reaching in as deep as he can go. Then, he

suddenly recoils, yelling in pain, and pulls his hand back to reveal a rat hanging off it. He swings his hand back and forth, finally managing to fling the rat off, but also splashes some of his blood on the pillar. That's when he sees it absorb the blood as it runs down across its side, accompanied by the sound of demonic wailing and screaming, and by it glowing (and again, his only reaction is to go, "Whoa," in amazement). As I said, the next few major sequences involve the pillar, with Pinhead 

first awakening and watching Monroe have sex with the woman, and decides to experience her afterward. After she gets through screaming at Monroe, the pillar deploys hooks that grab onto her, and they turn her around and raise her up in front of the pillar. Pinhead's eyes open and another hook shoots out of his mouth, anchoring into the woman's forehead. Her skin is immediately flayed off and Pinhead, screaming, devours her through the base of the pillar. When Monroe later tries to let Pinhead feed on Terri, he attempts to lure her

over to the pillar, feigning that he wants to embrace her. But when she, at the last minute, gets cold feet, he grabs her blouse, and Pinhead drops all pretenses, too, yelling and demanding that Monroe bring her to him. Monroe straddles Terri on his bed and, the way he pulls at her pants, it looks as though this is an attempted rape. He drags her off and across the floor, towards the base of the pillar, as Pinhead continues yelling in expectant hunger. But, Terri whips out some brass knuckles and knocks Monroe unconscious. She runs for the door,

when Pinhead stops her and manages to persuade her to let him feed on Monroe instead. Like with the woman, he ensnares him in some hooked chains, only to then randomly put the piston through his head. With that, Pinhead regains all of his strength, and as he yells, the pillar appears to become flesh, with some of the sculptures moving and even screaming. It slowly begins to fall apart, pouring out slime, and with beams of light streaming through the holes, until it explodes and Pinhead stands there, completely free.

Like in the previous films, bizarre and eerie phenomena portend Pinhead's appearance to everyone at the club: in this case, some of the macabre pieces of art in the place begin to move on their own and become flesh, notably in how a white, marble hand holding a heart squeezes it and actually blood oozes out. Suddenly, the door to Monroe's loft explodes, sending one man over the railing and crashing onto the bar below, while another man hanging on the ledge has to be helped

up. That's when Pinhead appears and, after looking at all of the stunned club-goers, begins his killing spree, as they start scrambling to escape. In addition to the numerous gory kills I described earlier, all while Pinhead laughs in sadistic delight, people are also trampled and slammed against the furniture, such as the pool table, the bar, and the tables up in the restaurant area. The only thing that kind of hurts the scene's momentum is how the DJ has virtually no reaction to his CDs suddenly flying

up into the air and hovering above him before they slice into him. Regardless, Pinhead uses his power to bar the windows and close the doors, locking them with chains to ensure that no one escapes. The last shot of the scene, with the blood trickling out from beneath the door, is not just visually gruesome but the sound is also unsettling, as the patrons' screaming eventually dies off, until we hear nothing but the sound of the whipping chains slicing them apart. Joey, after meeting with Elliot Spencer in his limbo, awakens to a news report of

the carnage and calls Doc up to tell him about it, asking him to then meet her down at the scene. However, Doc is unable to find the news coverage, and when Joey leaves, it's revealed that her TV set wasn't even unplugged, as it was a ploy by Pinhead to lure her down there so he can take the Lament Configuration. She encounters him in the club after walking through and seeing the aftermath of his rampage, including Doc's horrific corpse, and tells him that he'll have to catch her if he wants the box

that badly. That only enthralls him, as he tells her, "Oh, I'll enjoy making you bleed. And I'll enjoy making you enjoy it." He tries to take the box from her but it repels him, and she takes the opportunity to run out into the streets.

Thus begins the most extended action sequence in the film. Joey runs down the street, and right in front of a taxi, causing it to swerve and slam into a streetlamp, knocking it over. It crashes down in front of Joey and the cab itself begins to burn. Bloodied but still alive, the driver crawls out, while the electric cables suddenly float up into the air and menace Joey, sending her down the sidewalk. A fire hydrant explodes when she runs by it, and the cables land in the water that runs down the street

towards her. She just barely manages to outrun the electrified water and jump back onto the sidewalk, only for some hooked chains to suddenly spring out of a sewer drain and hook into her shirt. Though they piece into her flesh below, they then let go of her, sending her running again. More light-poles and cars explode around her (in the wide shots, you can see some pedestrians who aren't reacting to any of this), with one car on the road swerving to avoid the smoke. A manhole

explodes, flinging the cover at her. She ducks and it slams into the sign of a restaurant called Larry's (a possible reference?), and she continues running, with more explosions happening around her, and flames erupting through some grating on the sidewalk. She stops in front of a storefront window full of TV sets to catch her breath, when the set directly to her right switches on, revealing a video feed of her standing there. She then looks and sees that Doc has been turned into the Cenobite known as Camerahead. He angrily snarls, "Have you seen

what he did to me, you little bitch?! Have you seen?!", before she runs, as he blows up all of the TVs in the storefront, shattering the window. Joey runs into a random passerby and tries to warn him to get out before it's too late. He doesn't believe her, until Camerahead grabs him and punctures a big, bloody hole through his forehead with his lens, splattering blood on the wall beside him. He drops the man's body and continues after Joey, asking her if she's ready for her close-up; Pinhead isn't far behind him.

Rounding a corner, Joey sees the CD Cenobite shambling down the street towards her. First, however, he deploys one of his deadly discs and uses it to kill an innocent bystander (I think it's actually the same cab driver from before), then sets his sights on her. She continues running, as another car explodes beside her, followed by a theater marquee blowing up above her. She runs to the other side of the street, only for a brick wall there to explode, from which the Barbie Cenobite

emerges. He blasts his flame breath at her, causing her to recoil, and she then sees Camerahead and CD join Barbie in stomping down the street towards her. Just as she's about to run again, some police cars pull up at the intersection behind her. She attempts to warn the disembarking officers that their weapons won't do any good but, as expected, they don't listen. CD makes his point by flinging a disc and hitting one of the cops right under his nose. With that, the other two, a man and a woman, open fire on the Cenobites with a revolver and a

shotgun respectively. Joey takes cover behind them, when Barbie produces a mixer, shakes it up, and flings it at them. It bounces off the hood of one of the cars and douses both officers in its contents, which turns out to be gasoline (the female cop's exclamation, "Shit! Gasoline!", is yet another example of horrendous acting). Hearing this, and seeing Barbie open his mouth, Joey warns the cops to run before doing so herself. However, they're immediately engulfed in Barbie's flame breath, which also causes both of their cars to blow up. That's when Camerahead walks right up to the screen and says, "That's a wrap."

As controversial as it was to shoot, and as much as it may offend those who are very religious (although, I don't know why you would be watching this franchise if you're very religious), the church scene is pretty damn awesome. Shortly after Joey runs inside, only for the priest to insist that there are no such things as actual demons, Pinhead opens the door, backlit from behind, and stomps down the aisle towards the two of them, blowing out the stained glass windows on the walls as he

passes them. He melts the priest's crucifix right in his hand, then walks up behind the altar, knocks everything off but the candelabras, removes two pins (each of which are much longer than you'd expect and have a larva-like worm coiled around theirs ends), and stabs each through the palms of his hands, which causes the candles on the wall to explode, the marble of the altar to crack, and more windows to explode. The candelabras' flames flare upwards, as Pinhead mocks the pose of the

crucified Jesus, declares, "I am the way," and laughs maniacally, as the big window behind him explodes. The priest is horrified at this, with the altar crumbling, and rushes at Pinhead, only to be grabbed and forced down on his knees, as Pinhead mocks his "limited imagination" as to the tortures of hell, before forcing him to eat some of his flesh. But then Joey, while fiddling with the Lament Configuration, manages to get his attention and baits him into chasing after her again. She runs to a nearby construction site, only to be faced with Terri

as the Dreamer Cenobite and Monroe as Pistonhead. As she tries to figure out the box, the two of them move in on her, circling around and messing with her, touching her sensually and also hurting her in various ways. After she's knocked to her knees, Pinhead appears on a nearby ridge, telling her that he intends to let them "play with her," adding, "Our game will come later. And down the dark decades of your pain, this will seem like a memory of heaven." She then sees the other Cenobites approaching, to which Pinhead says,

"Ah, more friends come to play with you, Joey." However, she manages to figure out the box and holds it up at him. Although it initially just raises up and slides its pieces across, it then tumbles to the ground and works itself. It fires spots of light at each of the Cenobites, dissipating them and taking them back into the box, with Pinhead going last.

With everything suddenly quiet, Joey wonders if she really did it. Suddenly, the scenery around her transitions from the construction site to the field where she has the dreams about her father. She looks around her, then sees a man wearing a Vietnam-era combat uniform approaching her. Recognizing him as her father, who claims he was sent there by someone who said she'd done well, Joey runs into his waiting arms (and again, the movie shows its hand too earlier, as "Mr.

Summerskill" gives a menacing look for a brief moment). Appearing to recognize her, he says he was told that she'd have something for him she won't need anymore, and she promptly gives him the box. But then, it crosses her mind that he shouldn't know her name, given how he died before she was even born. That's when Pinhead drops his disguise and Joey, distraught at his peeking into her most private thoughts, tries to run but falls to the ground. Standing over her, Pinhead

removes a knife from his belt and prepares to kill her, when the two of them suddenly find themselves in Elliot Spencer's barracks. Just as he's about to send the both of them to hell, Pinhead strings Joey up by her wrists with chains, then ensnares parts of her body, including her face, in leather. While trying to tempt Spencer to give back into his depraved desires, he summons the bizarre creature that seems to prepare to turn Joey into a Cenobite. Spencer appears to acquiesce, only to grab Pinhead's hand, causing him to drop the box,

which then causes the creature, the straps, and the chains to disappear. The two of them struggle with each other, and then merge together, as Joey watches. Pinhead appears to completely absorb Spencer and, once it's done, prepares to flay Joey again. But then, Spencer momentarily takes control, telling Joey to send him to hell with the box. Joey grabs the box and tries to make it work, as Pinhead regains control and moves in for the kill. Despite cutting her hand, she manages to reshape the box into a dagger and, telling him to,

"Go to hell" (Ashley Laurence said that line so much better), stabs him in the chest with it. He staggers backwards, clutching at the dagger, which begins expelling energy, and his figure distorts before he's literally sucked into it. It then turns back into the box and falls to the floor.

When it hits, both it and Joey are now back at the construction site. With morning coming, she shoves the box down into some wet cement before walking off. A shot of the cement transitions into a marble walkway, and the camera pans up to reveal a building that now stands there. Moreover, as people pass through the rotating doors and into the lobby, it's revealed to be completely covered in designs and patterns based on those of the Lament Configuration, leading into a large chunk of the plot for the next film.

Although Christopher Young would never return to the franchise after the previous movie, his original themes did initially live on here, as they're used extensively within the score. Except for a brief instance of the Hellbound main theme when Pinhead enters the church, all of the previously used pieces of music come from the original film, such as the main theme, which is used over the opening credits, twice during Joey and Terri's talk in the former's apartment, when Pinhead seduces Terri into helping him, and during the ending scene in the lobby; the theme during Frank and Julia's affair, which plays during Monroe's first scene with Pinhead; and even the waltz for Frank's resurrection scene, which plays over the latter part of the ending credits, among others. The rest of the score was filled out with original music by Randy Miller, who worked with Russia's Mosfilm State Choir and Orchestra, making him the first American composer to do a score there since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Miller's work tries to be as big and grand as Young's, and he comes up with his own orchestral motif for Pinhead, but it really gets overshadowed by the extensive use of so much of Young's own work. Also, some of Miller's compositions for the action sequences, especially the street chase, sounds like the work of a wannabe Danny Elfman. Initially, they'd planned to score the movie entirely with rock and metal songs, but after a test screening went bad, they decided to relegate said songs to what you hear during the scenes in the Boiler Room and Motorhead's version of the song, Hellraiser, which plays over the first part of the ending credits. I'll admit, as much as I'm not a rock or metal guy whatsoever, I do enjoy the song (although, having heard it as well, I think I prefer the initial Ozzy Osbourne rendition). It may be one of the prime examples of the filmmakers trying to make this series mainstream but it's a nice close-out to this entertaining, if certainly B-movie level, entry.

That's really the thing you must keep in mind when going into Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth: this is very much a mainstream, B-level slasher movie, and if you're a diehard fan of Clive Barker and his original intent for Hellraiser, this movie may not appeal to you. What's more, the characters aren't all that interesting, the acting is often really bad, the camerawork and editing is sometimes a bit too stylized for its own good, the first half can make one a little antsy, there are some visual effects that

haven't aged very poorly, the new Cenobites are mostly too silly to take seriously, the original music is just kind of "meh," and the story not only doesn't tie up all the loose ends left by the previous movie but it also introduces some concepts that feel as though they don't belong in this franchise. All that said, though, Pinhead is most definitely the star here and is an absolute joy to watch run rampant, Doug Bradley is excellent as both him and Elliot Spencer, there are lots of great gruesome makeup, gore, and creature effects, the use of Christopher Young's original themes helps nicely, the title song is fun, and the latter half is a rather exciting thrill ride that never lets up until the end. This is definitely the only Hellraiser I could describe as traditionally fun, so if the first two were a little too heavy for you, than this might be more up your alley. In short, know who you are before going into this one.