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One of my favs of the series. I love when all the cenobites are walking down the street killing all the cops and the night club scene. Great movie.
Posted By: RedSabbath at 11:51am, September 20, 2008
(This review is about the Out-Of-Print Region 1 Paramount "Hybrid Cut" DVD version released in August of 2006.)
Hellraiser was a landmark film for it's time. Back in 1987, American horror fans hadn't seen a film so graphically surreal, so deep in plot, so....well British. It was a monster hit, giving tired franchises like Friday & Nightmare a run for it's money. So after one excellent sequel, now with Clive Barker acting as only an excutive producer, came the long-awaited third installment of the Hellraiser series:Hell On Earth. This time featuring only Doug Bradley's Pinhead and Ashley Laurence in a short cameo as it's only returning characters, Hellraiser III is a somewhat strange entry of the then existing series. Gone were the numerous surreal tones set by the first two, replaced with more action and could-it-be, gore in the process. Truth be told, it seemed that ole Pinhead followed the trail that Freddy had laid, get more American and speed it up a notch. Maybe even more than that....
Continuing from Hellbound, we find that Pinhead is cenobite-less, trapped in a monolithic statue known as the Pillar Of Souls. A young night-club owner J.P. finds the pillar in a specially shop, buys it, and displays it proudly in his bedroom/office there. His on/off girlfriend notices a clubgoer covered in chains holding the famous box, of which he stolen off the statue. Following a tip of the incident, a reporter, played by Terry Farrell (best known as Dax on Star Trek:Deep Space Nine), meets the young girl to investigate what had actually happened. Meanwhile back at the club, J.P. notices the statue seems alive and has a craving for blood, to which it's hunger is truly found out by a helpless female victim (probably one of the most memorable effects in the film) standing just too close to it. Pinhead escapes, and on a mission: to create a new cenobite army (some of the most over-the-top cenobites ever), take over the world, and destroy the Box once and for all, never to return to Hell in the process.
But after all this time and a total of eight films in all, where does Hell On Earth stand? Pretty damn good actually. Even though it's tone was different, it is truly an exciting chapter. The story rarely drags and when it comes to Pinhead himself, he probably has more screen time here than in any sequel. The effects are not only impressive and original, but extremely graphic. Gorehounds will love the film, with it's attack on The Boiler Room club scene being a neverending violent highlight. Even the subplot of Pinhead's human spirit Elliot telling Joey how & why he came to be and how to stop it are informative and add to the overall legacy of the series. In other words, this is one sequel you don't want to miss, or as known by many "the last truly great Hellraiser film".
Hellraiser III actually though has three different cuts out there a 91, a 93, and a 97 minute! However, this title is owned by Paramount Pictures, where their policy for their catalog titles are "No rating, no release", so when they finally released this title on DVD, ooops, someone over there pulled the 93 min instead of the 91 and pressed that, illegally making that "R" on the back cover to be incorrect. THIS is the version I'm writing about here now. So, after only 15 months, Hellraiser III left the shelves again, quite possibly for a long time here in the States, making this version OOP and for a collector like me, I like it! Sure, it isn't the 97 minute version, but what does that 3 and a half minutes have that mine doesn't? Not much: one bare-breasted dancer scene towards the beginning, and extended scene of Elliot & Joey seeing him actually buying the box in an Indian bazaar, and Terri's sad return to J.P. office. That's it! No more gore, THAT was put back IN to make the 93, so unless you want to go Region 2 for a fullframe presentation or buy the entire three films again in a limited addition pricey boxset, this is the best you can do..Extras are the original trailer for the film and a pleasant surprise, a 30 minute documentary called Clive Barker:The Art Of Horror. So if you can find a copy, buy it! It's a great addtion to any Horror library!
(RedSabbath Rating:9.0/10)
Well not a terrible movie but not even close to being decent the cenobites in this are absolutely horrible every single on of them except Pinhead. The gore was great (the only great thing about this film in fact you can't even use this film and great in the same sentence) Major disappointment from the first 2 bad bad film not recommended. But the next films in the series were even worse. Major disappointment not recommended if you enjoyed the first 2.
Well not a terrible movie but not even close to being decent the cenobites in this are absolutely horrible every single on of them except Pinhead. The gore was great (the only great thing about this film in fact you can't even use this film and great in the same sentence) Major disappointment from the first 2 bad bad film not recommended. But the next films in the series were even worse. Major disappointment not recommended if you enjoyed the first 2.
Well not a terrible movie but not even close to being decent the cenobites in this are absolutely horrible every single on of them except Pinhead. The gore was great (the only great thing about this film in fact you can't even use this film and great in the same sentence) Major disappointment from the first 2 bad bad film not recommended. But the next films in the series were even worse. Major disappointment not recommended if you enjoyed the first 2.
Well not a terrible movie but not even close to being decent the cenobites in this are absolutely horrible every single on of them except Pinhead. The gore was great (the only great thing about this film in fact you can't even use this film and great in the same sentence) Major disappointment from the first 2 bad bad film not recommended. But the next films in the series were even worse. Major disappointment not recommended if you enjoyed the first 2.
Well not a terrible movie but not even close to being decent the cenobites in this are absolutely horrible every single on of them except Pinhead. The gore was great (the only great thing about this film in fact you can't even use this film and great in the same sentence) Major disappointment from the first 2 bad bad film not recommended. But the next films in the series were even worse. Major disappointment not recommended if you enjoyed the first 2.
While it's a perfect example of a "B-movie", it's actually not horrible. By no means a great movie, but it delivers some very good gore and some mild supernatural thrills. Not very good, but not bad.
This movie while not some sort of classic is not horrible. I have not seen the movie since i was a teenager but then it was good. not great but good. i do remember some of the killing sequences being really cool. i enjoyed it.
Much much worse than usual for the Hellraiser series. I've only seen up until 'Inferno' but this is easily the worst in that span.
Almost all of the rules involving Cenobites are broken wide open, to the point where any lame jack-off who gets killed can become a cenobite, displaying their own stereotypical character traits as disfigurements/weapons. Pinhead is not the enforcer of Hell, playing by the rules that have been established, that he was in the first two. Instead he's unlocked from a statue only to become some kind of catch phrase spewing slasher villian we've seen a hundred times before. Killing anyone he feels like, and just kinda seems like a Freddy Krueger ripoff.
We later find out that Pinhead's human side has been seperated from his evil demonic form somehow at the end of #2, and the antagonist of this film is merely his manifested evil self on a rampage. So I had to justify this move in the series as "Ok, so without the counterbalance of his human side, Pinhead is kind of a douchebag."
Not that this is an awful movie. If it wasn't a Hellraiser it would easily be great corny 80's supernatural slasher fun. But it taints the classy tradition of this franchise with all of it's inconsistencies.
Lots of blood and guts though. Gotta love that.
For pure mindless entertainment, it recieves 4/10 (2 skulls), but I HAD to keep it below 50% just due to it's inclusion in an otherwise upscale series (mostly).
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