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
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