Hellraiser: Judgment - 2018

 I'm so close I can taste it!  Reboot tomorrow and I'm done with this series.

So for lucky number 10, well what do they do?  They had just bucked the whole "let's have another movie and jam Pinhead in there" thing with the last movie, so why not take it back to there with Judgment, a movie where for the first 20-45 minutes, I had no idea what was going on.  Did it get better, did I get what was going on?  I mean, not really...  sorta?  Kinda?

We begin with a cop opening the mystery box and some random character being interviewed by the director of the movie as a new cenobite, the Auditor.

This guy then brings in a fat man who eats paper, vomits it into a tube, and nude girls play with the vomit, and none of this is ever explained.  Does it need to be?  I mean, not really I guess.  Fuck it.

We have glancing shots of a new Pinhead who is .2% better than last movie's awful Pinhead, and in the meantime some plot unfolds.  We get an extremely basic serial killer plot, two detectives are investigating it and they're saddled with a plucky new female recruit.  They go about their business, you guess the twist, and eventually one of them shows us the mystery box and they jam Pinhead in like it ain't no big deal.

This movie was fucking stupid.  And worse than that, slow.  And poorly acted.  And no good effects, and no Pinhead, and the whole thing is just a dud.  People said the last film was the nadir of the franchise?  No, these "other movies" with Pinhead unceremoniously dumped in are WAY worse!  This shit is fucking horrible!  If it was not for the nudity and the sheer ridiculousness of the ideas here I would not give it any stars instead I will give it:

Hellraiser: Revelations - 2011

 Wikipedia:  "An ashcan comic is a form of the American comic book originally created solely to establish trademarks on potential titles and not intended for sale."  

This concept would ensure that you kept a property rather than have it lapse out of your control, basically.    And boy oh boy is Hellraiser Revelations a ashcan film.  Made for a $300,000 budget and rushed into a very quick production, this sequel was made without Doug Bradley as Pinhead and marked the beginning of the end which would eventually result in the newest reboot, which yes I will watch for this blog.

Revelations is going to be a hard film to defend but I am going to do my damndest.  

Yes, I did like this.  No, not kidding.  No bits here.  I mean, it's at least kind of easy to see why when you look at the depths of the last 3-4 movies.  They had completely left the Hellraiser concept behind in favor of awfully written detective movies.  The acting in this movie is atrocious but at least its a fucking movie about Hellraiser instead of some cop who maybe killed his wife.

Found footage is a bad start as two teens go to Mexico to fuck prostitutes, and we're off for a bang as they end up meeting some weird drifter who gives them the puzzle box.  I want to see a movie about one of these weirdos who goes around giving the box to people, whats they're fuckin story??  The guys open it and Pinhead comes.  Lets get it out of the way, Pinhead looks terrible and is horribly acted.  Then one of the guys comes back home from Mexico but something is amiss.

But yeah!  I mean the dialogue about suffering is back, the creepy skinless dudes who want blood are back, the hooks and shit, even the wierd totem pole thing from Hellraiser 2 and 3 are back.  At barely 75 minutes is slides on by, and it is not at all a good movie, but the bar has been set incredibly low by this point, I'll fucking take it brah!  I kinda liked it.  I'll give it a 3.5

Wicked City - 1987

 Now here's something I did not know, this was apparently made into a live action film in 1992?

Wicked City was one of these early seminal Japanese anime films that we knew of in the west when I got into anime and manga in the late 90s.  I remember watching Akira, segments of Evangelion, this, Jin-Roh, and then more came out like Trigun and Hellsing as the world caught on that this shit was en vogue at the moment.

Wicked City also epitomizes what made it to the west early in, in all of the examples above.  Sci Fi, action oriented, kinda strange and offbeat but extremely stylized and cool content which was also sometimes darkly sexual.  I didn't watch it around this time but the other thing that had made it over and made a splash was Urotsukidoji:  Legend of the Overfiend, which is basically just hentai with a plot.

Wicked City is related to that, they're distant cousins, cause this is about as mainstream as tentacle rape ever got, and there is oral tentacle rape in this movie, which sent me on a bizarre spiral of remembering the early days of anime collecting and the allure and the taboo this stuff used to represent.  It also goes hand in hand with the odd pedestal but also sickening head-shakiness that Japan as a country used to iliicit when I was in my teens, seriously we basically all assumed that entire country was fucked up.

This movie presents a main character, Taki (love those chips man) who is a secret agent protecting us from the dark universe creepy monsters that are trying to invade us circa the year 2000.  He is teamed up with a woman from that universe after his girlfriend turns out to be a spider monster, and with this new partner he forms an instant attraction and partnership.  They must protect some pervy old man while they are doing whatever, but all is not what it seems....

 There is cool action violence, there is sex and nudity, and there is comedy in this.  Its definitely for adults, but it also has that timeliness to it where it was clearly made for guys age 10-25 or so, back when rated R meant, eh you can likely watch it anyways.  

I used to own a Wicked City t-shirt, and it also took me down an avenue of cool shirts I used to own.  I wonder what happened to like, all of them, I have no idea.  Guess I just got rid of them as time went on.  I'll give this 4 stars.  It's really fun, moves quickly, and it stood the test of time.

Hellraiser: Hellworld - 2005

 Yes, because one of them (the last one) sat on a shelf for three years we ended up getting two Hellraiser movies in one year

I could not tell you what Hellworld here is about.  I have been watching it drunk for an hour and all I can say is Henry Cavill is in it as is Lance Henrickson, and Henry Cavill is fucking crushing it with charisma, vim and vigor, pep, etc.  He's definitely got charm yo.  There's some vague thing about an evil website where the box is opened and yeah, that's it. No plot.

First of all, fuck yeah.  Make it on a website.  Who gives a fuck.  Next movie, have it be from a Tik Tok.  Make it as contemporary as possible, please, so that it ages horribly.  This movie fuckin sucks/rules more than ever.  This is the definition of so bad its good in every way almost.

There is more Pinhead, its more of a classic Hellraiser movie, and thus we end the streak of "dumb movie plot with cenobites in it".  This is a proper Hellraiser movie and WHY DID WE DITCH THIS?  It's fucking great!  This is a great movie!  Make more like it, fill it with gore and cenobites and weird dialogue about pain and suffering and shit, I'm in forever.  HOW CAN YOU MISREAD YOUR AUDIENCE SO BADLY???!

Maybe I'm amped about the return to form or maybe its actually good, you won't know unless you watch it, and to make you feel like you should I'll give it  a 3.5

Hellraiser: Deader - 2005

 I was thinking in my head the whole time I watched this the main actress was a fake Ashley Judd.  I was going to call her that in this review.  Then it occurred to me:  Ashley Dudd.  She's not bad, but that is far too good to pass over.  Ashley Dudd.

Ashley Dudd stars in this direct to DVD follow up to the last two specific Hellraiser movies.  Last two because...AGAIN, they're doing some sort of incidental story with a cenobite or two jammed in to sell the horror freaks on it.  This one was also directed more to capitalize on the recent success of Japanese horror movies like The Ring and Pulse, and thats also apparent.

Ashley Dudd is a reported who recently did an article titled "How to be a Crack Whore" and that made me laugh.  She gets put on a new case by her pervy boss.  The new case, footage of a girl shooting herself and being brought back to life.  Dudd goes to Romania to investigate and stumbles across the puzzle box and the underground cult of weirdos who are playing with it.

Deader is a fine movie in comparison to the last two.  There are some real atmosphere parts, the acting is way better, and the movie moves quicker.  The cenobites and Pinhead still take a backseat, but at least Pinhead is in it for more than 2.5 minutes like that other dumbass movie.  

Not a good movie by any means, but hey.  I'll take what I can get.  2.5 stars.

Hellraiser: Hellseeker - 2002

 Ugh.  Another non horror movie crammed unceremoniously with Pinhead to make it interesting.

This is why people give up on this series.  This twosome is rough.  Now straight up, I will say this is better than the last movie.  Way better.  Maybe its the acting caliber, they have that guy from the Allstate commercials in this movie, and he isn't great, but he is way better than the last awful actor.  There is also a lot of sex in this movie, and tits, so that helps.  They also bring back Kirsty from the first 2 movies!

So basically, Allstate guy is some sort of office worker, and is having weird visions and problems all the time after a car crash he's in kills his wife.  He is the prime suspect in a murder case, and a few detectives are giving him the old harassment that's only reserved for white collar white men.  It is slowly revealed that Allstate was having loads of affairs, was in general a crappy guy, and there's more to the dead wife than he thought.  His wife?  Kirsty!  

The annoying dream within a dream, crazy fake reality thing is overplayed a lot in this movie, you're tossed around more than a crouton in a salad.  You don't know what's happening half the time, but it also doesn't matter cause in the end they're just killing time to get to the reveals, and a lot of the middle stuff bears no consequence on the movie.  The problem is though, it's also not particularly well done, well shot, violent, or cool, so a lot of the movie you're just waiting.

Shrug.  I couldn't tell ya.  It's not a good movie.  But it's better than the last one.  I'll give it one star higher.

Hellraiser: Inferno - 2000

 I've reached the part of these movies where most people stop, and where they get truly horrible,

I think it's poignant that on Wikipedia they specifically say "this was not adapted from a pre-existing script with a mild shoehorning to put cenobites into it".  You're denying that FACT because it is true and you really don't want people to know it!  Right?!  Surely this was not the original idea for a Hellraiser movie.

I know that horror movies change genre and experiment around...I get it, and I like Halloween 3 a lot actually, and I am up for a lot when it comes to these.  But the trick is to have that balanced with either good writing, or a decent actor, or just SOMETHING.  Also, maybe try keeping it the horror genre?  At least?

Instead, this is a detective movie, this zero charisma cop guy finds the puzzle box, opens it, begins to see hallucinations of cenobite twins occasionally, but basically this box barely affects him.  Instead, he goes about searching for "The Engineer" an unknown baddie which I guess kidnapped a child.  He goes about, the plot chugs right along, things kind of happen, and then it all wraps up in a twist ending which you'll see coming.

I mean, I just don't know why you take a dark, bloody, gothic series about torture and the fallacy of mankind, man's greed for blood and his taste for violence, and turn it into this. Once Pinhead does show up, at the very end, for a 2.5 minute scene, the reveal is dumb, and it doesn't fit with the other movies either.  They don't do this shit!  This is not their bag!  They use hooks and chains and CDs like in the last movie.  They don't just talk you to death.

This movie is boring, flat, not even remotely scary, again, pretty sure it's not supposed to be...  I don't know.  Don't watch this.  I'll give it half a star for the very end.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II - 1988

 Okay, so this particular look is closed, but I have a ton more sequels after part 4!

Memory is a weird thing.  I thought this movie had a sequence of the main girl from Hellraiser, the final girl and survivor Kirsty, on a thing fog covered cliff with the Chatterer and Pinhead coming at her from the sky...  It did have a cliff, and a guy in the sky, nut no fog and it was not Pinhead.  Who knows the last time I saw this, and I also remember severely disliking it.

From the director of Def-Con 4, Amityville 1992: It's About Time, and Ticks, this dude Tony Randel is basically a blog fave!  

We pick up right where Hellraiser left off, Kirsty has been admitted to a mental unit somewhere, and she is trying to say there's evil out there.  The psychiatrists get ahold of the puzzle box and open it, and now the cenobites are back, as well as Julia from the first movie is reincarnated, with a sex and power starved dude at his whim to provide female bodies for her.  Written by the guy that would go one to create Wishmaster.

This is one that's a bit slower, but still fun.  They don't have the cenobites around as much, and when they are, they're not necessarily doing as much.  There's a lot of Kirsty and near mute Tiffany, and there's a whole lot of reasoning with and bargaining with the cenobites.  So, in this way, there is not as much evil chaotic action violence in this movie, and I didn't have the romp of a good time I had with part 3 and 4.  

In the last 30-40 minutes, it really picks up and a lot of cool shit happens, so I will give it plenty of credit, and they also have a horrible affect of a plastic baby with its mouth sewn shut.  Great stuff, guys.

I give it 3 stars.

Past Lives - 2023

 So I'm reviewing an Academy Award nominated film in theaters now (presumably)?  Yea, its not Grindhouse, but I have artistic license here.

I go to Past Lives in a foul mood where I arrive 30 minutes early and sit in the theater, thinking about leaving and just going home several times, Then the movie starts, and at first I'm sorta wondering what this is and where it's going, the first shot is a little odd and the initial set up a tad clunky, but then the movie keeps going.  

Past Lives is an unconventional love story, and more importantly, a universal meditation on life, the unexpected things which occur, the experiences we have we form us and define us, and most importantly, things in our life that don't work.  Expectation, growth, change, maturation, and the lives we choose for oursleves, these things are talked about in the film without a single word of dialogue about them, they are screamed about and cried over and destroyed in rage without a single scene of this happening in the film.  

The plot regards a young boy and girl who are attracted to each other, and go out on a date.  They are Korean, and the girl's family is about to immigrate to Canada, so this short lived romance ends in relative heartbreak.  12 years later, they reconnect on Facebook, begin chatting, and clearly reignite a mutual interest in each other.  Then, 12 years even more since then, them both having moved on and having life changes, they reconnect one more time in a devastating and realistic way.

The realism is this film is what most attracted me to it.  We have been so thoroughly trained to watch movies in a way where we know what's going to happen, what to expect, we even know which line of dialogue is coming next.  When the characters say I love you it is as telegraphed as when they kiss.  We know the rise and fall of their love like the back of our hand; it is foreseen and the music swells and they share a look and we know what is going to happen, and it does, to no one's surprise.

What we don't see is the reality of life, what really happens, which is awkwardness, expressionless silence, a chasm of misunderstanding, unexpressed feelings, disappointment, and undefined emotion making our choices a sheer living hell sometimes and complete bliss others.  This is perhaps the most realistic, close to home movie I have ever seen in my life.

A film which has really changed me, which I am still wrestling with three days later with nary a break in my thoughts whirling about it, this is one of the strongest debuts I've ever seen, one the best films I've seen period.  This is definitely in my top 5 of all time right now.  I highly recommend it.

Teorema - 1968

 Sometimes I like to read my own reviews.  I enjoy remembering the movies, and remembering even writing about them.  I recently reread my review of The Decameron.  Maybe hindsight gives rose colored glasses, but that was a movie which I really loved, still think about, and I would give 5 stars now.

It sent me on a quest to view more Pier Paolo Pasolini, and this was at my library, so I rented it..  Cool.  Plot line says Terence Stamp seduces a family in a controversial bizarre art film.  I'm into that.

The thing about this movie, really, is that it is all shot in a vague, lyrical, and I think at times purposely obtuse sort of way.  If you want a movie which has a narrative plot structure, with conventional dialogue, with a three act structure, look elsewhere.  If you want an experimental, avant garde thing which defies convention well now you're coming to the right place.  

And yeah, that plot is accurate.  Terence Stamp arrives and everyone in this family seems to be drawn to him in an illusive, irresistible way.  The first odd thing about this movie is that we see nudity from Terence Stamp in the beginning, but then no other nudity exists in the film.  For Europe and post Hayes code, I don't know why there is no nudity in this movie.  Then, after Stamp does this, each family member which he had sex with experiences a revelation said verbally, and then a reaction physically and mentally, completely unexplained.

Roger Ebert's review talks of the underlying philosophical meaning of the film, and so does the wikipedia article.  I understand that Pasolini was a Marxist, an incredibly left wing gay man in a difficut time, and I think in a way this is an attack on conventional culture, on straight laced hetero-normative society.  Not in a clear or even realistic way, and I am saying that in a fully embrasive way; insult this society til you're blue in the face, go for it.

I think my personal enjoyment of this film was mixed.  There are a lot of completely inexplicable things happening at all times which seem to want to need explanation or follow through that you do not get.  Then there's some things which you understand and they still stay with, they grind them into the dirt and you're sitting there saying enough already.  Then there's oddly stilted acting and dialogue, which makes one wonder if that's intentional or not....  It's really like nothing else.

I think this clearly fits into the broad realm of experimental and arthouse cinema, from a time when things truly were actually experimental unlike now.  These movies are very difficult to rate in any conventional way, but I will say when I turned it off I hated it and now I kinda like it more.  So I'll give it a 2.5, I guess.

52 Pick Up - 1986

 I never told y'all about my other Roy Scheider movie!  Well, this was it.

It occurs to me that modern blogs are just podcasts.  And Yes, to answer the question, I have thought about doing this as a podcast.  I want to do something like "No One Else is Talking About This" where I review movies that have basically no presence online.  The problem, virtually everything has a blog, a podcast, a hidden hairy weirdo who is talking about it somewhere in the digital world, and I don't want to hunt that hard.

I'll just keep doing what I'm doing for now, such as watching averagely slow, nothing movies like 52 Pick Up.  Roy Scheider is a rich politician who is having an affair, and one day blackmailers show up to kidnap the mistress and demand payment.  Then they kill the mistress with his gun and dmeand now a lifetime of payments or they'll tip off the cops to her murder.  Rather than give in, he attempts instead to turn the various gangsters against each other, and that's the plot.

Also starring Ann-Margret and Vanity, this movie is a dialogue-filled kind of...uh...thriller I guess.  It's sort of not anything?  It has some elevated aspects, the violence and nudity reveals the decade from which it was born.  But ultimately, it doesn't grip me any particualr way, and it has an hour 45 of Roy boy walking around, talking to people, with a outcome you can see coming.

I liked it enough, I guess, but its a two star affair.

Hellraiser 3 - 1992

 I've sorta jut decided to watch these until they get awful.  My memory of this series is that it took a steep, steep nosedive after Hellraiser one.  So how does a rewatch work?

Well, my review of Hellraiser 4 I gave 4 stars.  So, I mean, in the pantheon of sequels, thats what, one of the best???  Mind you, part of that is the campy, stupid, I wanna watch this with a beer in one hard and my cock in the other, but still 4 stars is 4 stars.

Hellraiser 3, well, I dunno what to say.  Is this just coinciding perfectly with my mood?  I have been horribly anxious and depressed, lonely, and wanting to experience some sort of suffering.  Yes, I do want to suffer.  It's fine guys, its fine.  

Hellraiser seems to fit perfectly, with a lot of verbose talking about suffering and then these dope as shit monsters.  Also, the campy acting and the awful plot lines make it so bad its good and make the time fly by so, who knows dude, its fuckin working for me right now. (smokes blunt)

Hellraiser 3 stars Star Trek Deep Space Nine's Terry Farrell.  She does not show those gorgeous Trill titties, but she does get given the puzzle box after Pinhead, trapped in a piller from the end of Hellraiser 2 presumably, kills the guy who bought the piller.  Dax (Terry Farrell does not play Dax, rather she plays Joey, but I'm going to call her Dax) is having recurring dreams with her father, who was in the war, and through this she connects with Pinheads alter ego, a WWI soldier.  It all comes down to Dax vs Pinhead, of course, and the end is cool.

So I mean....  I loved it?  Its stupid, its badly made and poorly acted, people either playing it up or playing it straight poorly, and there are none of the trademark bloody skinless bodies the series had had so far, but somehow I still loved it.  It feels so 90s TV in a very calming nostalgic way, and the violence and nudity are just extra little candies for me to keep me going.  

They also just keep inventing new cenobites, and in this movie they have a fucking cenobite who throws CDs at people!!   Its like having a modern cenobite attack people through their fucking Insta or something, its so fucking topical and stupid and I LOVED it.  I give it 3.5 cause it is not quite as fun as Hellraiser 4.

Night Game - 1989

 I binge drank and watched a couple Roy Scheider movies last night.  This one sounded slasher adjacent, so of course I put it on.  I also drew pictures of insects.

Fuckin KICKASS poster, no joke.

Night Game follows police detective or whatever he is Roy Scheider as a serial killer is in town killing people.  We pretty early on are seeing plenty of baseball scenes too, setting it up for us the audience that these will be linked somehow.  Is this the slasher-like film with the most baseball scenes?  Probably.

So we watch as they put the pieces together and a few more kills happen.  It seems that the killer uses a hook and specifically targets young blonde women, and in the meantime in a creepy plot piece, Roy Scheider is dating a blonde who is young enough to be his daughter.  Naturally, she gets targeted and its just about the time that Roy figured out who the killer is, and wham bam, thats the movie.

Not a movie with any legacy, this isn't one to satisfy everyone.  The violence is taken down a notch, and its more of a tension murder mystery, but with all the baseball stuff, as well as the killer's face shown to us very early on, it cuts the tension to nothing.  Then with the Roy Scheider character, he's not really likable and nothing much else happens in the movie, so you're left sorta wondering...who is this for?  What is this, exactly?

I liked it enough though, it's not too long and it has plenty of kills, and it has some comedic parts (I mean you laugh at the movie, it's not like the movie is actually funny).  I'll give it 3 stars.

Hellraiser: Bloodline -1996

 "I smell the exquisite stench of what you really are" is the quote from this which Velvet Acid Christ stole for their awesome song off Calling Ov The Dead.

Adam Scott and the Polish brothers star in this last theatrical production of the Hellraiser franchise.  Do other people cite the Poish brothers?  They have no lines and they play the cenobite twins in the latter half.  Man am I getting ahead of myself.

This is as close as they would get to Hellraise goes to space.  Because in the first part of the movie, a robot reopens the mystery box and summons the demons aka the cenobites and they're in a spacship.  Cue the flashbacks which reveal how the box was made as well as a random story of trying to close the box.  Adam Scott plays a French evildoer who opens the box and feeds off the demons until they kill him, and the Hellraiser otherwise pursues Merchant, the main character, to open a larger portal from the hell dimension to let more demons through.

Is that confusing?  Well, it makes sense, and the movie isn't one that I would put into the whole category of "what the fuck is going on." In fact, I remember this series as being one that quickly fell off the bandwagon and was a fucking disaster basically, and I was pleasantly surprised at this enty.  It moves quickly, it's entertaining, definitely not scary, but really something to behold.

The movie has a definite so bad it's good feel, as well as having genuinely good effect moments. I enjoyed it overall, cause honestly it doesn't drag, and it's a fun ride. I give it 4 stars. 

Lured - 1947

 I'm including this in a working list, in my head if not alluded to in this blog of proto-slashers. 

A slasher is/was born of the mystery movie, the detective idea or even revenge story. It's simply taking a basic idea, that of a dead body and no apparent killer, and it's upping the stakes to multiple dead bodies and perhaps an elusive or otherwise unstoppable killer. As time goes on you focus more on the violence or on the killer, but you also don't have to, that is common but is not one of the universal tropes of the slasher film. 

Lured is definitely this. For the time, it also has a large body count, that of 8-9 rather than the more typical 1-3 around this time. We follow the "final girl", we follow an investigation, and we have "scares" concerning the villain. 

This all said, there is a rather large chunk in the middle about some underground labor force or something, and we really get sidetracked on that.  This movie is surprsingly long for the year, at like an hour 45.  

Holy crap, I thought I finished this review a long time ago.  So I'm cutting it short.  I give this 3 stars.