Hellraiser III: Hell on EarthRating:
Release Date: 13 November, 2001 Retail Price: $18.99 OUR Price: $15.19 You SAVE: $3.80! |
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth Reviews
No Justice in Hell
Hellraiser III is a big departure from the previous two films (although it was written be Pete Atkins, who wrote Hellbound). The beginning of the film presents us with lighting and locales that just seemed too representative of the early nineties time period.
A lot of the film doesn't make sense for the first hour, which is punctuated by dreams, and a few killings which just chalk it up to "slasher" status. Events are too formulatic, which cheats us out the novelty of Hellraiser I and II.
Things start to make sense after about fourty-five minutes, when we learn that Pin-head's human form has been split from his Cenobite persona, which has taken refuse in a statue, that talks to its owner.
The dialogue from Pin-head is a lot less all-knowing resident of Hell, and a lot more devil-on-your-left-shoulder. But at least his vocabulary stays intact. This doesn't save him from being degraded down to Freddy-status as just another evil voice in the shadows.
After being released from the statue, Pin-head goes out on a rampage, and making himself so damn public. Because everyone has seen him (not to mention an earlier hospital scene), the movie seems a lot less personal, and looses traction for it. The up side of this sequence is the end where you watch a closed door seep out blood with hook noises coming from inside for a length of time that just makes one feel slightly uncomfortable.
In the final moments, Pin-head creates his own Cenobites, which lessens their mystique. The last four were truely creatures of hell, but these guys just look like a make-up designer's wet dream.
All in all I thought it made a good horror film, but its desire to stay with a more conventional formula makes it a bad choice to carry the title Hellraiser.
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