Horrid Horror Movie Review: Hellraiser 4: Bloodline

Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of horror movies gone way too far. Their mission: to put serial killers on the moon, demons on space stations. To boldly bore where no one has been bored before.

Okay, so granted, I've never seen Jason X, but chances are, that ones coming soon, too. The formula for these movies seems to be the same, though: monster X gets put onto space station Y kills B amount of people before scientist Q finds a way to defeat them by trapping them on the station and blowing it up. Hellraiser: Bloodline follows the same pattern. The only thing is, the Hellraiser series was actually good before this movie came along. Okay, Nightmare on Elm Street is good, but seriously... Friday the 13th and Halloween are pretty much the same movie. Think about it, Jason Vorhees is a killer that wears a mask and carries a machete. Michael Myers is a killer that runs around in a mask and carries a machete. The only one up Halloween has over Friday the 13th is Joe Grizzly.

Hellraiser brought something new to the horror table, something that was needed for several years, but didn't get until 1987. You know what that was? PLOT! Hellraiser had a story that wasn't attractive girl X shows of assets T and A and gets killed by killer K (...lowns from outer space), rinse, repeat. Yes, we see breasts... but trust me, you'll regret looking at them (seriously, they belong to the oldest person in the movie) if that's why you're watching it.

It also brought one of horror's most iconic villians, the Lead Cenobite, or more affectionately known as "Pinhead." Pinhead was a monster (never really called a demon due to the fact that his realm was never stated as Hell) who portrayed pain as pleasure. Seriously, it sounds like he's getting off on the thought of hurting someone. He personified all that was evil, but did it in such an eloquent and articulate manner that you couldn't help but feel intrigued while frightened. He even appeared in a music video... but that didn't show off his epic monologues. Oh, yes... like a comic villain, Pinhead monologues. In, like, ever movie, too.

So, what is it that hurts this movie so much? An awesome villain in space should work. Well, when the movie starts, so does the head ache. We see the space station, an unfolded box with the designs of the Lament Configuration. Yeah... I can see where this is going all ready. Inside the space station, Dr. Merchant is using a robot to open the puzzle box via the power glove. The box flies out of the robot's hands, causing the the robot to beep (as in, "Oh, shit!") and explode due to Pinhead establishing his dominance over androids. A team of... space cops(?) enter and arrest Merchant. After bickering about what his problem is (and ignoring the man with his face covered in pins in the next room who just blew a fucking robot up), the sole female, Rimmer, goes to talk to him. Merchant... not Pinhead. After telling them to get off the station, Merchant starts telling Rimmer about how the Cenobites run through his bloodline.

He tells a story about Phillip L'Merchant (despite the fact that in France it'd be le Merchant and in the book The Hellbound Heart, it's Lemerchand), who is an 18'th century toy maker commissioned to build a box for the Duc d'Isle. Why couldn't it be a cake? He finally finishes the box, but it disappoints his wife, because it does nothing. L'Merchant gets mad, and tries to leave, even though his wife is both pregnant and horny because she tries to seduce him before he leaves. Meanwhile, d'Isle and his assistant, Jacques, lure a prostitute to the d'Isle mansion, only to tie her up and kill her. By the way, everyone has a British accent accept for Jacques... who not only has an American accent, but doesn't even try to act. L'Merchant drops off the box, but is suspicious of d'Isle, deciding to spy on them. Much to L'Merchant's chagrin, d'Isle and Jacques are using the box to summon a demon, only after skinning the prostitute and hanging her skin on hooks. In case you don't know what's going on from the silhouettes, d'Isle narrates it as if he was on This Old House.

Anyway, d'Isle manages to summon the demon into the prostitute, naming her Angelique. Yes... a demon named Angelique. You're too clever for me, movie. L'Merchant runs away from the house in disgust. Why didn't he run and get the police while they were butchering this woman? Why did he sit there and watch? To make it better, he goes to a doctor. The doctor doesn't believe him, because after the Renaissance, people stopped believing in God and demons, but tells L'Merchant to build a device to stop demons. This logic makes my brain hurt. So, after the Renaissance, people stopped believing in religion... but encourage building devices to stop demons...? Why, in case they were wrong? Are they that shakey in their belief system?

L'Merchant designs four walls that have a squiggly line enclosed in them. To get this... thing to work, he needs to retrieve the box. He heads to d'Isle's, but finds him dead while Angelique and Jacques do the horizontal mambo. He's caught trying to take the box, though, and is attack by a suddenly dressed Angelique, who also takes the box away from him. He manages to get enough strength to walk out of the room and run into his wife who broke in to save him. With his dying breath, he tells her to take their son to safety. Apparently, though, this isn't Dr. Merchant's last story, as he claims that two hundred years later, his grandfather's blood "remembered" the family legacy to destroy the box.

We enter the dream of John Merchant, who dreams that Angelique is holding his heart, and repeating that she knows what's in it. Well, yeah... you ripped it out of his chest! Ends up that he's a famous architect who built a room with four mirror squares with the Lament Configuration designs. Angelique finds this out by picking up an American magazine (she's still in France), and tells Jacques that they should go to America. He turns his head to show that he has the Davey Havok hair style, and proclaims, "Screw America!" in his American accent. He goes on to say how bad America is, even though he has American magazines, but is interrupted when Angelique attacks him. He tells her he was too hasty, but she kills him by sucking the skin off of his cheek, and putting a claw from her demon glove (seriously, you can tell she just put on a glove) in it.

While Jack is accepting his award, he sees Angelique, and stutters a quote from da Vinci, and walks off. One woman says, "Very nice speech," despite there only being maybe seven words in it. He goes home with his wife and kid, and goes to work the next day. Angelique, on the other hand, seduces a random fat man, and lures him into the basement. She tells him to close his eyes as she punches a pillar and pulls out the puzzle box. Wait a second... Angelique had the puzzle box. She had more made, but none of them worked. And she had it when Phillip died. So, this raises the question: HOW IN THE NAME OF BARKER DID IT END UP IN A PILLAR IN A NEW YORK BUILDING THAT JOHN MERCHANT BUILT?! Seriously, the movie screws up its own continuity in this scene. Another question is, if the Merchant family wants to keep the Cenobites from coming (and they need the box to come forth) why don't they burn the wooden son of a birch, so no one else can use it? It's that simple! They don't need a room with squigglies. Wait... Square room with squigglies...? No line pieces?

Anyway, Pinhead comes out, and tells Angelique that "Hell is more ordered." She shows him the room, but he panics due to the fact that he knows it can kill them. The next day, Angelique asks John to see the plans for the room, finding out that the mirrors will reflect lasers. The only thing is that he has never gotten it to work for longer than a few seconds.

John has a dream that he's boinking Angelique, and awoken by the phone. Meanwhile, Pinhead feeds a dove to the Chatterer Beast (a skinless dog), and lures twin security guards to him and Angelique, to show her how killing is done. The guards give him a chance to monologue, cumulating to another classic line: "I... am... PAIN!" It would've sounded better if Santa hadn't passed by on his sleigh though (seriously, listen to the music at 0:16). He then turns them into the Twin Cenobite by having a mechanism come out and twist their bodies into a siamese twin... thing. Pinhead exacts a plan to kidnap John's son, Jack, because the greatest suffering a parent can endure is the loss of a child.

Pinhead is caught by John's wife, who starts crying, causing Pinhead to say another badass line: "You suffer beautifully, but I'm here for business, not pleasure." Seriously, they need to make the movie about him. You know... like it supposed to be! Where more than halfway through the movie and Pinhead has had two minutes of screen time. He kidnaps the wife as well, and takes them to the building to barter with John. He wants John to make the room into a bigger lament configuration to summon more demons from Hell. No, seriously, he says "demons from Hell." Not once in any of the earlier movies, nor in The Hellbound Heart is Pinhead called a demon from Hell. In fact, I recall it being said that he isn't from hell. In fact, according the the sister mythos, Tortured Souls, the Cenobites are from Primordia. What is this demons from Hell shit doing in my Hellraiser movie? Let alone its against Pinhead's character of wanting punish people for opening the box, but it's not part of the series at all!

While walking to the room, John opens a door and leads his family to a corridor. He puts his son in an elevator (alone), tells his wife to take the stairs, and then turns around to face Pinhead. Pinhead makes the elevator cables snap, sending it falling until John agrees to help. His wife manages to find the box and trap the Chatterer Beast, and follows them. John turns on the lasers, weakening Pinhead and Angelique. Pinhead decapitates John, when John's wife shows up, but they are sucked into the box, bringing us back to the future.

Rimmer doesn't believe Merchant until she finds out that Pinhead killed one of her partners. Another one is killed by the Angelique (who pulls his arms through a mirror, yet his head goes missing), and yet another is being chased by Pinhead... then dies... somehow. Rimmer's commander finally wants to get out, but is told by Merchant that only the box can protect him. He grabs the box, and finds Angelique and the Twin Cenobite. When he can't get it working, the Twins come apart and reform into him. Merchant is having a nice little chat with Pnhead about the game ending. Merchant asks Pinhead about faith causing yet another epic line: "I am so exquisitely empty." When asked how the Cenobites can die, Pinhead utters his last epic line: "I am FOREVER!"

Rimmer traps the Chatterer Beast in an airlock, and pressurizes it until the beast explodes. No, movie. That logic works with our earth species, but not with beings from another dimension that cannot be hurt by earthly conditions. I'll give you credit for the idea, though. But if weapons and lasers can't hurt them, either can pressure. She makes her way to the escape pod, and waits for Merchant. Merchant is still talking to Pinhead, but disappears showing he was just a hologram. The space station folds up, killing the Cenobites. Merchant tells Pinhead, "Welcome to Oblivion," (a line Pinhead says in almost every movie), to which Pinhead replies "Amen," and blows up. The end.

There is something to be said that Pinhead is still awesome in this craptastic movie. But, he's not enough to save the movie. The writing is horrible, and breaks the continuity of the series and itself. The acting is bland (mostly), and the plot is the movie equivalent to a TV Show episode that's a clipshow. Do yourself a favor and read The Hellbound Heart and watch the first two Hellraiser movies instead.

For now, this is the Window Keeper signing off to clean out my toy closet. Now, where'd my puzzle box go...