Berta's 30

My dear friend Roberta just had 30th B-day.. I met her when she was like 18. She get fiercer and lovelier as the years go..

When u get your drink on.. you need to absorb the poisons with yummy pizzass


You need to touch azz



This dude had great looks


WERK for yer pizzass


Another great look!!



Me & Roberta McGee
]

Don't ask..


That's Chips


Darren knew Chip's but didn't know!!


Berta's hormone rage!


Happy Birthday MAMA!!

FiN

Brilliant

This is a big to do in the UK

Wass up!?!



FiN

Strange... Surreal... Nightmarish.......

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
Its one of my favorite ALL TIME movies.. REALLY!!
It reared its anticipated head a year after the first installment, and it is a direct sequel featuring three of the four members of the Cotton clan. It’s a mildly worthy, even if often misguided continuation of the story. As claustrophobic as the first movie is, Hellbound attempts the opposite by opening the story up with bigger effects and a larger playing field, all in the dimension of the Cenobites - a world that seems to indicate M.C. Escher is behind all of this madness. (Like Jim Henson’s Labyrinth for easily amused adults. {Me})

Synopsis: Kirsty is hospitalized after the events of the first film. She is overseen by Dr. Channard and his assistant Kyle. Neither of the two doctors believes her story about demons and skinless uncles. But after hearing a phone conversation between a police inspector and Dr. Channard, Kyle gets curious. He follows Dr. Channard back to his house where he sees him bring Julia back from Hell! He goes back to warn Kirsty and they end up back at the doctor’s house. After Kirsty is knocked out, the scene changes to Tiffany, a patient at the hospital who is a puzzle master (lucky break). She solves the puzzle-box and releases the Cenobites once more. Kirsty and Tiffany find a way into Hell where she is determined to find her father. Unfortunately for her, Dr. Channard has also made it into Hell and is doing some “downsizing”. Now Tiffany and Kirsty must defeat the now Cenobite Dr. Channard, and escape Hell…alive.
Hellbound’s opening scenario echoes Frank’s first encounter with the Cenobites, only this time the man attempting to solve the puzzle is Elliott Spenser, a Captain in the British Army circa World War I. We do not know his reasons for doing so or even how he came to be in possession of the box. Upon its opening, tiny knives spring forth and slice a grid across his head, followed by tentacles hammering nails into the symmetrical pattern: The genesis of Pinhead. (More on the big guy later…)

GET THEM OFF ME!!!


The film’s most stimulating character is Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham of Rome), a psychiatrist obsessed with the Lament Configuration and the Cenobites. His interest is fueled by intellectual fascination and curiosity, as opposed to Frank’s pleasure seeking agenda from the first movie. One of his great lines - uttered after a hellish transformation to both his body and mind - “And to think, I hesitated”.


Frank himself returns in a scene that’s another Hellbound highlight: He’s reduced to spending eternity in a room full of beds on top of which lay naked, writhing female bodies covered in white sheets – only when the sheets are removed, the bodies disappear. When Kirsty begs him to reveal the whereabouts of her father, he offers up the classic “When you’re dead, you’re fuckin’ dead!” - which could be more of a key to understanding this world than the flippancy with which its delivered allows it to reveal.

Kirsty gets a message from daddy.... or uncle Frank?


Speaking of Kirsty’s father, Larry Cotton was to figure prominently in the film. Late in the game Andrew Robinson chose not to reprise the role, which led to some hasty rewrites. I’ve been unable to find precise details of “what might have been”, although one tidbit I found didn’t lead me to believe the film would have been much better if he had featured in the story. The movie eventually falls into a mish-mash of silly chases and popcorn science fiction and in the end fails to make much sense out of a series of promising setups. But even with its problems, nobody can ever accuse it of being boring, which leads me to...



The story was absolutely wonderful. Although not the first movie with a unique depiction of Hell, it is the only one that I know of to make Hell so damn confusing. But, it was very well done. I thought that the back-story on Pinhead was cool; making him a Captain in some type of armed forces…fits him well considering he was the leader of the Cenobites. I liked how they incorporated the fact that all of the Cenobites were human once, and that they decided to show us what they used to look like. I thought that that was an excellent idea. When you start using your imagination like this, a really great movie is the outcome. Somebody has been thinking.



FiN

Jesus Wept

Hellraiser is one of THE greatest horrors movies ever made..
I've noticed that people either really like Hellraiser or they find the entire concept to be just this side of ridiculous.

It is a fantastic premise and one that pretty much discounts most spiritual and secular beliefs in lieu of creating its own explanations for the realms outside of human experience. It may be easier to view the Hellraiser concept as elaborate fantasy rather than to think of it as horror. No other series of films can prepare a viewer for Hellraiser because there isn’t another series anything like it…although I suspect writer/director Clive Barker used A Nightmare on Elm Street in his pitch.

Of the four films that played theatrically - Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, really only the first two merit serious attention.

The original remains the gold standard and in one sense it does rely on the tried and true: The most horrific concepts are often the most intimately staged. The bulk of Hellraiser takes place within the confines of an old house and revolves around four members of the Cotton family:


1. Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman, and later in the movie Oliver Smith), a hedonistic pleasure seeker with no conscience and even fewer morals.
2. Larry (Andrew Robinson, Dirty Harry’s Scorpio Killer), Frank’s square of an older brother.
3. Julia (Clare Higgins), Larry’s ice-cold wife and Frank’s ex-lover.
4. Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), the college-age daughter of Larry, niece of Frank and stepdaughter of Julia, who inadvertently gets caught up in and nearly pays for the sins of the adults – although the concept of sin in the world of Hellraiser is a dubious prospect at best.

When Frank Cotton discovers the puzzle box (or the Lament Configuration, as it later came to be known), he believes it to be the key to ultimate pleasure. Upon solving it, he discovers it’s more of a key to dimensions outside the earthly realm: Areas inhabited by beings known as Cenobites. Cenobites, in the words of their leader Pinhead (Doug Bradley), are “Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others”. They subject Frank to all manner of gruesomeness, resulting in his eventual death…or so it would seem.


Some time later, Larry and Julia move into the house he owns with brother Frank – the same house in which Frank solved the puzzle and died in. A minor accident leads to Larry spilling some blood in the attic – blood that Frank absorbs and uses to somehow bring himself back from the dead, although it’s unclear exactly how this works. Was Frank ever really dead or was he existing in a dimension between life and death? Frank’s words “I escaped them [the Cenobites]!” give little explanation. In writer/director Clive Barker’s imagination, it seems the point of the goings-on is the exploration of the unknown and answers aren’t always given. Again, in order to accept this world you must play by its frequently bizarre and inconsistent rules.

It doesn’t take long for Frank to reintroduce Julia to his sadomasochism, and in order to become fully human again (at least in appearance) he needs the blood - and eventually the skin - of more people. She begrudgingly agrees to pick up strangers on the street and lure them back to the attic with promises of sex. Needless to say the promises aren’t kept and the men end up fueling the rebirth of Frank Cotton, an act which may have fatal consequences for Larry, Kirsty and even Julia herself.

It's interesting to note that the differences between the film and Barker's novella on which it's based, The Hellbound Heart, are fairly minor. Probably the most noteworthy is that Kirsty is not Larry Cotton's daughter, but rather a female friend who's carried the torch for him for many years. The text is also able to more clearly explore the pleasure/pain angle through detailed descriptions of Frank's experiences with the Cenobites. If the film wasn't such a spot-on adaptation in other respects, it might be an ideal candidate for remaking at some point in the future.

The film is squarely rooted in the human concept of the blurred lines between pleasure and pain - something that's perhaps also symbolized through the family - but with each sequel the series got further and further away from the idea. This is noteworthy, as I don’t believe the first movie said all there was to be said on what’s Frankly - sorry…couldn’t resist - a fascinating idea.

Stay tuned for Hellbound : Hellraiser 2. Plus more of my favorite horror movies..
FiN