Just watching Bloodlines and since it's close to Halloween I thought bumping this old thread would be okay.

I find the original Hellraiser to be the scariest. The Cenobites showing up, and altering the reality of your immediate surroundings to take you to a personal Hell for eternity is a horrible thought. But for some reason I find Hellbound: Hellraiser II to be a more fun film. I wasn't thrilled to find out Pinhead wasn't some ageless demon but it was still cool to see the characters deducing his original self. The introduction of Leviathan and exploring the labyrinth of mental pain was pretty inventive. Pinhead meeting his match was pretty shocking too for a horror film franchise only in it's second installment.

Watching Bloodlines right now and it's not that bad. I remember dismissing it along with Leprechaun in Space because of SF setting but I didn't know part of the story took place in the 18th century. Angelique is a nice new addition to the Cenobites.

It's too bad the studio wouldn't let the original director fulfill his vision, which was even more depraved and had more scenes taking place in 18th century France. Reminds me of the Epic's Hellraiser comics.

believe it or not, for some reason Hellraiser III creeped me out way more than the others in the series.

I and III IMO

I is the creepiest. II was batshit insane (in a good way). III was the "fun" movie. BLOODLINE had potential but it didn't quite work. I know I saw the DTV sequels (except for the latest one) but I can't say I remember anything about them.

I and II are definitely my favourites.

Hellraiser followed by Hellbound. So many great quotes between these two films...

"We have such sights to show you!"
"The box. You opened it. We came."
"It is not hands that summon us. It is desire."
"Go on... but trick us again child, and your suffering will be legendary even in Hell!"
"Jesus wept."

Hellraiser
Hellraiser III
Hellraiser: Bloodlines
Hellbound


and as far as the DTV sequels go, Inferno is bloody awesome. It turned into a detective-noir tale. I think that was Scott Derrickson's first film as a director (Sinister, Exorcism of Emily Rose).

you forgot: Hellraiser: Deader

/\ The poll is from 2004

I can't say much about the others as I've never seen them. Hellraiser always interested me growing up when I'd see a TV spot but never saw one of them till I got the OOP BD of it last month. FUCKING LOVE IT. It's so damn good.

I think I like Hellbound the best. I like how it expands upon the original and gets pretty crazy there. Hellraiser is second best followed by Hell on Earth. Whatever the fuck the fourth is called is dead last out of the first four. I quit after that because I don't know why. Probably respected myself too much.

I can't remember if I ever saw part 3 or not.

The first one is a classy picture. I feel goofy writing that about a movie involving gross out special effects, bug eating, cheap sex ect... but it's true.

Part two was one of those exciting movies that thrilled and scared me to an extreme you only get as a ten year old watching your parent's hidden VHS late at night. I've never been able to understand Roger Ebert's scathing review of Hellbound, which he critizes for being (I'm paraphrasing) "less like a movie than a real nightmare; it's just a series of horrible, frightening events strung together". That sounds like a good horror movie to me.

I was bugged for years by the VHS box, which had a picture on the back of Pinhead and the Female dressed in bloody hospital scrubs, even though such a scene wasn't in the actual movie. Has there ever been deleted scenes on one of the DVDs?

Hellraiser and Hellbound have been neck-and-neck for me, but I typically opt for the former. There's such a dark current of sadism and darkness that, while also present in the sequel, just feels so much... nastier there.

III is maligned, and justly so, but there are some great moments in the nightclub, and I mostly like the flashback sequences.

Bloodlines rocks. It was the first, and only, of the series I saw in theaters. The Victorian era stuff is very interesting, the modern day stuff is kinda boring, and all the space stuff is cool. It's uneven, and I love to see the longer cut, but of all the sequels past Hellbound I think it's the best.

I think Inferno is good when compared to the series as a whole, but it didn't do a lot for me the first time I watched it. Scheffer is perfectly fine in the lead role; I just didn't love the story. There are some good cenobite designs, though.

I don't think I made it through Hellseeker. I still haven't bothered with anything after that.

I just finished it. I wasn't too thrilled with the ending. I like the idea of Pinhead in the future, but he seemed a lot less scary in space. For one thing, he seems less powerful.

In the Victorian era scenes we were supposed to see Angelique create pseudo Cenobites, and they have some kind of perverse theater/carnival to lure victims.
I think all this was cut because the studio wanted Pinhead to appear sooner and have more screen time. Too bad.

It seems the director never even finished shooting his intended cut of the movie.

The Hellraiser franchise had a lot of potential that was squandered.

Instead of focusing on a single entity like Friday the 13th, Halloween, or Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser is a mythology, and they could do almost anything with it:

Old West Hellraiser
World War II Hellraiser (Nazi scientist finds one of Lemarchand's boxes)
French Revolution/Reign of Terror Hellraiser
Future Hellraiser (Blade Runner/Alien inspired Hellraiser)
Medieval Hellraiser
Crusades Hellraiser (Cenobites from Islamic mythology? Knights Templar?)

There are so many places this franchise could have gone; you can sort of glimpse this in Bloodline, but they never really followed through with it.

It's an overused pic but...



Cos I'd be down for all of those.

And you can find quite a few scenes that were filmed but not used on youtube. There are also scenes that made it to the trailer, but not the final film. On youtube, as well.

Exactly! Those are some good ideas.

One of them was used in the Epic comic anthology. A knight is fighting during the crusades

I can see the studio's point of view, especially back then, that taking the star out of the franchise would be a big risk.
But Hellraiser is the one horror film from the 80s that could have justified the idea of a franchise by just using the basic premise and exploring it with new demons and different settings.

I loved those EPIC comics from the early 90s! Some of those stories were REALLY freaky. I remember one of them was particularly hilarious. They really ran the gamut of style and storytelling.

There was one that COMPLETELY freaked me out (spoilers as it's quite disturbing):



That one damn story disturbed me for months...

I unspoilerized it and quickly realized I hadn't read that one. I found out about that series from the Checkers tpb collection of them. BOOM! recently republished the Epic anthology. I'll have to go to the comic shop this week and get some more of the reprints.

The quality in those comics is ridiculously high. Art and writing is all excellent. Easily one of the best anthology comics I've ever read, maybe even surpassing those old EC comics in creepiness.

My favorites:

Was the piano student blind? I think I remember that one...

yeah.

these comics sound awesome.

Oh god, now I remember the story with the pianist. And those razor blades...

Hellbound used to be my favorite untill I re-watched the original a few horror-thons back. It's hypnotic to me. It still has my favorite female cenobite too

Well you have to watch Hellworld now because the new Superman is in it!