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Hellraiser - Bloodline

Hellraiser - Bloodline

List Price: $14.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!
Review: for some reason or another this movie got alot of undeserved negative reviews.There are alot of petty complaints that theres too much gore or that pinhead should not be in space.First of all,the hellraiser movies are all characterized by extreme violence and gore.Secondly,why is it hard to believe that hell or evil could not exist in space?There just hasnt been many movies that have explored the idea of malevolence in space outside of event horizon.The plot was excellent and pretty much summed up all of the series in one.Pinheads acting is superb and this is his best work of all time.The other actors arent academy award nominess but they do a sufficient job.Visually speaking this is the best movie of all the series.I would highly recommend this movie to any fan of the series because it's worth owning.BUY THIS MOVIE TODAY!!!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Hooked again!
Review: It's funny how the third installment of any series usually kills the franchise. Part Three of 'Rambo' didn't just finish the Russian Army. Part Three of 'Beverly Hills Cop' was probably seen by 12 people from coast to coast (pity them). And the third try at 'Halloween'....well, let's not talk about that. Of course, in movies, and especially in horror movies, death is not the end, so despite the fact that "Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth" pretty much drove a stake through Cliver Barker's Hellbound hearts club,it didn't stop the sequel from beating along.

And that's a good thing, because although 'Bloodline' isn't exactly gonna win any Oscars (unless you look closely and see that Oscar has nails driven through his face), it does a fair job of both washing the horrible taste of Part III out fans' mouths, telling a very inventive story, and both advancing and completing the mythos of the series. And it succeeds in spite of some horribly inconsistent effects, choppy editing and a bad performance by Bruce Ramsey, an actor who is not quite talented enough to play one role but somehow ends up getting three. Tell me, how easy IS it to get a casting director's job on a horror movie, anyway? Do ALL producers hire their idiot cousins from Debuth, or what?

Anyway, I won't get into the plot too much. The movie is essentially three stories which precede and follow the other Hellraiser movies in the 18th, 20th, and 23rd centuries. The first Ramsey character plays Lemarchand, a French toymaker who is conned into building the box for an evil, black-arts dabbling aristocrat who wants to open the gateway to hell. The subsequent stories follow the cursed Lemarchand descendents who each try to shut that gateway, with mixed success ("mixed" meaning one or more of them may end up as chum before the final credits). The story also follows the evolution of hell over the centuries (sexy siren demon Angelique versus hideously but stylistically disfigured demon Pinhead) as well as the tactics hell uses to lay claim to more souls (seduction versus dragging you in kicking and screaming via lots of fishhooks).

This is a pretty ambitious premise, and is not well served by the film's low budget (the French-revolution and modern sets are okay, and the exterior SPFX in the future are very good, but the interior of the space station looks like the access tunnel of an abandoned high school gym....HORRIBLY fake and shoddy, as if they ran out of money 2/3 of the way thru principal photography) or by Ramsey's bad acting. The truth is this guy looks a lot like Jean Claude Van Damme, and like Van Damme he can't emote to save his life....I kept expecting him to drop into a split and then bust Pinhead with a roundhouse to the jaw.

Furthermore, the device of telling 3 stories in one movie means none of them really get fleshed out. The most interesting part from the fan's POV is obviously the opening segment, where we see the box created and get a glimpse of the pre-Pinhead hell. Unfortunately, it seems there were some rather deep cuts made in the editing room, and it shows, since this part seems to stumble and leap along instead of flowing smoothly.

The new Cenobites, including the second version of Angelique, are the coolest designs since the first film. Unfortunately, there is a bit of carryover from Part III, where the producers tried very hard to turn Pinhead into a wisecracking Freddy Kreuger-type slasher instead of the deadly serious Grand Inquisitor. The character never really recovered from that treatment, which made him funny where he was supposed to be terrifying. In this outing he comes most of the way back, but is given too much screen time and too much dialogue (remember how little he was really in the first two films? This is just overkill) to be taken very seriously.

Overall, this is a very flawed movie, but if you are into this series, it has enough going for it to recommend for at least a rental. Which is more than I can say for 'Part III.'

PS - I see used phrases like 'fleshed out', 'deep cuts' and 'overkill' in this review and wasn't even trying to be ironic. Scary.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This one is more terrifying than the other 3!
Review: The story is very different than any other Hellraiser. Kirsty
is not in this one though! Once again, someone finds a little
puzzle box and solves it. Then, unlocking the doors of hell,
our feared demon, Pinhead, emperor of hell escapes. Pinhead then
kills again, after being regenerated he then has the chance to
rule hell and earth, But there are some minions that will stop
him, (In Hellraiser 3 Joey swore Pinhead would be sealed in hell
for all eternity!) But I guess the doors were unlocked unleashing Pinhead. Better than the original and hellbound and hell on earth!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: So dull it's almost mindnumbing
Review: The original Hellraiser was one of the scariest and finest horror movies ever crafted. Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 and Hellraiser 3 were... well, let's just leave it at that. Anyway, Hellraiser: Bloodline marks the first installemnt of the series under Dimension/Miramax films (a year or two before we'd be introduced to the first Halloween movie under the studio), and by the time you see the words "Directed by Alan Smithee" you know that this horror movie will be anything but horrifying. However, Bloodline does have a few things going for it that saves it from landing in a garbage dump: Doug Bradley returns once again as Pinhead and gives his best performace since the original film, the storyline attempts to trace the secrets of the "box", and most of the special effects are pretty well done. However, Bloodline is not without it's flaws. While the idea of tracing the origins of the box sounds like a good idea, the storyline is convulted and sometimes confusing and there are quite a bit of things never explained, not to mention Bruce Ramsay seems to be a bit over his head in his three different roles. Also, and this is my biggest complaint of the film, is that Pinhead is on screen for far too long. Bradley is entertaining as Pinhead, but he's just not scary anymore. Remember the first time you saw the original Hellraiser? Remember how seeing Pinhead the first time scared the absolute hell out of you? Bloodline just doesn't live up to that because now Pinhead is a comedian (just like Freddy Kruger turned into in the later installments of the Nightmare on Elm Street series) without much menace. All that aside, Hellraiser: Bloodline isn't the worst Hellraiser movie (Hellraiser 3 anyone?), but I strongly suggest watching the original before seeing this or any other Hellraiser film.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: "Bloodline" for the discerning Clive Barker fan
Review: Hellraiser Bloodline combines a story of a *particular puzzlebox's origins in Seventeenth Century France with Enlightenment era ceremonial magick/demonology. Le Merchande (as mentioned in the comics), a noted local toymaker, is commissioned by a wealthy ceremonial magician to craft the Hellraiser "trademark" puzzlebox (unknowingly) in order to raise the demoness "Angelique" and incarnate her in the flesh of a sacrificed girl/courtesan. Le Merchande is subsequently murdered, but survived by his pregnant wife, thus starting the "Bloodline". The bloodline manifests itself as dream sequences in future generations until "present day" (1996), when a descended architecht designs a building based on the puzzlebox. You may remember the building from the end of Hellraiser III.
Erotic demoness Angelique, living in delicious, ageless sin with the magician's apprentice for over three centuries, gets wind of the project and decides to "emigrate", bringing into play one of the GOLDEN RULES of the box and series in general. She, of course, is "humbled" by our hero, Pinhead, and initiated as a Cenobite. Classic Hellraiser follows, with another child surviving and continuing the bloodline into the future and a space station designed by his descendant, bent on ending the Bloodline and **displacing Pinhead and "crew".
Though the space station element is clear "genre" (all long running horror series went to space at some point), the ceremonial magick element is classic "goth horror" with both elements of historical accuracy regarding the nature of black magick and its historical practitioners, and a tribute to Hellraiser's Lovecraftian roots that Clive Barker emulates OH SO WELL...
As far as mainstream consumption goes, "Bloodline" is hard to grasp and the spacestation acting is by-and-large, mediocre. If, however, you are a devotee of Barker, Pinhead, and "the box", then Bloodline is a worthy addition.
*There are several boxes, as you may have noted in "HR II".
**Pinhead has NEVER been completely done away with, just as one cannot take out "the Devil" with a sniper rifle. He and our "inner pandora" are symbiotic.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Under-rated, dark, stylish horror
Review: While the director did make this an "Allan Smithee" film, this does not mean that you should automatically be frightened away, as "Bloodline" is a well-made movie. I believe the Smithee thing had to do with post-production editing, as always, but this fourth entry in Clive Barker's series is well worth a look. It is dark, nightmarish, with great make-up and gore (even the space scenes look better than the average computer-animated trash most super-huge budget movies are now using). Of course, as usual, we don't see enough of that lovable deep-voiced philosopher from Hell Pinhead, but that's not as much of a problem as in the next two sequels.

The plot is by far the most ambitous of the series, following from Barker's original "Hellbound Heart" story as it traces the origins of the demonic puzzle box 1700s France. We follow the "bloodline" of the creator of the box in three distinct episodes- 18th century France, present-day US, and a few hundred years future on a space station- a bloodline, played across centuries by Bruce Ramsey, that is always driven and focused on the box, creating, redesigning, destroying, whatever. Pinhead, with the aid of innocently named demon Angelique, are trying to create a super-portal gateway beyond the puzzle box, a gateway to Hell that will always be open, through Ramsey's John Merchant character.

The decadent stylization of 18th century France and the ominous Cenobite-infested skyscraper in present-day America are both very well done and very atmospheric, and sure, the ending- you know, closing the gateway "once and for all"- is a groan, but overall the movie is very well-done with an eye to style and atmosphere, and check out Pinhead's dog!- one of the highlights of the movie.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A real stinker
Review: This is an Alan Smithe film for good reason. The movie is pure and utter CRAP! Nothing in it is even remotly entertaining (with the exception of one minor story line). The only thing the movie had going for it was decent gore, which it succeds in, but otherwise a real clunker.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: To Set the Record Straight...
Review: I just want to be clear that director "Alan Smithee" is a pseudonym. For who? Who knows? It is used when a director is ASHAMED of the movie they did. For instance, David Lynch used "Alan Smithee" on the TV version of DUNE. If you see a director with this name STAY AWAY! I will only give BLOODLINE a 2, and that is only because it's part of the HELLRAISER series, and is worth watching with the volume down to get a good look at the nasty Cenobites. Buy this if you've got some extra spending money and everything else in the world that you already want. Otherwise, wait until your friend happens to rent it, and watch it in an altered state of consiousness.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A sloppy failure...
Review: Pinhead and the mysterious cube are back, this time in the future. We learn the origin of the mysterious cube through a series of flashbacks that have little impact on the overall story and are done in a flat, often boring tone that leaves the viewer wishing for something scary to happen. Scary? No. Gory? Yes. Too gory. This film packs on the excess gore and ignores everything else. But there is a time when gore is scary and a time where gore is pointless. This is the latter. It also marks the "death" of Pinhead but he makes another appearence in the fifth and upcoming sixth entries. The fifth, "Inferno," does not follow the others, yet it is the best of the series. So far, "Bloodline" is the worst.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: CENSOR ME!
Review: First off I couldn't give a damn whether this film was cut or that the editing thereof is a valid excuse for a terrible movie. Simply put it is not. I hadn't rewatched the first three Hellraiser films in many a moon prior to watching this and afterwards started questioning why at one point I had been terrified by any of the movies - yes it is that bad. And you thought Hell on Earth was a crock? Even the Motorhead theme tune at the end of that movie couldn't overtake this one for stupid Hellraiser idea time. Don't get me wrong the theme of the movie in itself is ok - explain the lament configurations origin over the ages. Where it goes wrong is in the execution - half assed attempts at tension and just rehashing the scares of the first 3 movies albeit in a TV Movie way. And as for the cenobite dog - even next doors Jack Russell could have decked it. All I can really say is skip this movie and purchase the far superior sequel INFERNO which at least returns to the themes of the first film and the original novella they were based on. And INFERNO isn't a bad lil movie to boot. Which cannot be said of this mediocre effort.


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