SABRINA

BLOOD SIMPLE

THE ‘HELLRAISER’ TRILOGY (1987-1992)

Hellraiser, at its start, seemed like the least likely horror film to spawn a franchise for many reasons — the first of those being the extremely odd and daring subject matter. Though Hellraiser was released in the ‘80s – the very decade that saw the first installments in what would become major horror franchises – Hellraiser wasn’t simply about a maniac with an unforgettable appearance mowing down the innocent. Halloween, though made in 1978, officially became a franchise in 1981 when its sequel was released; many would argue that, though it was not the first official slasher film ever made, it was the first that would kick-start the genre and inspire a storm of imitators, which directly led to the creation of the Friday the 13th franchise. But whether you’re talking about a legitimately classy film like Halloween, or a slice of popcorn escapism like Friday the 13th, neither film would be fairly labeled as complex. Their concepts could be broken down into one sentence.

Hellraiser's couldn’t.

Hellraiser was sicker, slimier, angrier, and more depraved. On its surface it was about a mysterious puzzle box that had the power to open the gates of hell and allow demons (to some, angels to others) to emerge. But below that it was about sexual depravity, about the limits one kind of individual wanted to reach. It was about finding that straddling line between pain and pleasure. And honestly, it introduced certain taboos into the mainstream (well, the semi-mainstream) that had never been discussed in such a public way...unless you had read director Clive Barker’s writing at that point. The mastermind behind “The Hellbound Heart,” which was later fleshed out into the screenplay for Hellraiser, had been having that discussion for years.

Following the groundbreaking original film, eight sequels (!) would eventually follow, more and more shifting Pinhead – originally just one of many demons (called Cenobites) who was never intended to be the focal point – into the limelight. And, as was usually the case, his character would appear in each subsequently diminishing entry, soon becoming DTV franchise fodder like Puppetmaster and the Corn kids. Like many other horror franchises, how they play out in their latter entries seldom resemble how they looked in their earliest days. In the first Hellraiser, Pinhead appears fleetingly – not the main antagonist, but a monster whom one must face when seeking the ultimate pleasure. By the final entry (at least the final one with Bradley), Pinhead had become a ghost haunting a website (or something) and swinging machetes into teens’ necks, cutting their heads off with a snarl. (Seriously.) He became the very thing Barker hadn’t intended, as Pinhead’s introduction into pop culture grouped his Hellraiser in with all the other horror properties…where it didn’t belong.

Made with a very low budget, Hellraiser was the horror film no one was expecting. By the time its release year of 1987 rolled around, the Friday the 13th franchise was already on its seventh entry; Halloween and A Nightmare On Elm Street, their fifth. And already their concepts were starting to wear thin. Clive Barker, after having had no success with a handful of short experimental films based on his own short stories, wrote and directed the ’87 horror cheapie about a shaky marriage with a history of familial infidelity and a desire for a new beginning, both shaken by the reappearance of a familiar face. (Well, kind of.) Not at all your typical ’80s horror (despite the hero being a plucky teen girl, played by Ashley Laurence), Hellraiser was about the limits of desire, the consequences of self-destructive behavior, and the lengths one will go for what they perceive to be love. The faces remain the same in Hellraiser, but the real faces behind them often change. Larry Cotton (Dirty Harry’s Andrew Robinson) and his wife Julia (Clare Higgins) have moved back to Larry’s old family home (never given a specific location, but one which was originally meant to be London). It’s the same house that bore witness to the former immediate scene of Larry’s brother, Frank (Sean Chapman) having opened the puzzle box and being ripped apart by the Cenobites for his troubles. It’s there, following a bit of unexplained bloody voodoo, that Frank is resurrected as a slimy skinless humanoid, whom Julia discovers living in the attic. Being that Frank and Julia had engaged in a bit of coitus prior to her wedding to Larry, she still desires him (either emotionally or sexually), so when Frank orders her to bring him blood by any means necessary in an effort to continue reforming his body, Julia agrees. But it’s when Larry’s daughter, Kirsty (Laurence) comes to visit that Julie and Frank’s scheme gets a little complicated.

It goes without saying that the first Hellraiser is the best in the series, though many fans would point to its immediate sequel, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, as the superior entry (more on that in a bit). Celebrated for its inventive practical effects in the same way as John Carpenter’s The Thing, Hellraiser plays out like a doomed romance, with Julia becoming a murderess to reform Frank in hopes that they would again be together. In spite of all the grime and grit and spilled blood, it’s actually a sad story – a Greek tragedy that unfolds with equal levels Shakespearean drama and EC Comics irony. And yes, despite the original intention for Julia to actually be seen as the main villain and the takeaway face of Hellraiser, it would be Doug Bradley as Pinhead who would inadvertently walk away with the final association with the Hellraiser brand. His impressive appearance, along with fellow Cenobites Chatterer, Butterball, and “Female Cenobite” (she got the short stick in the names department), though limited to roughly ten minutes, would be powerful and effective enough to not only spawn a franchise but inherit the mantle of the main villain going forward.

Call it the return of New World Pictures as financier, or the short amount of time between films, or the returning of much of the creative force (sans Clive Barker, who only provided a rough outline of the story), Hellbound: Hellraiser II feels like not just a natural sequel, but the second half of the overall Hellraiser story. Following Uncle Frank and Julia’s comeuppance, Kirsty, understandably, now finds herself a patient at the Channard Institute for the mentally ill as police try to piece together what exactly happened in that house. Very unfortunately for Kirsty, Dr. Channard himself (Kenneth Cranham), harbors the same blood-thirsty need for the next level of passion-meets-pain, and has been researching the puzzle box for years (and who seriously looks like Old Tom Hardy). In one of the most uncomfortable scenes to ever appear in a horror film, which sees a mentally ill patient slicing himself with a straight razor to kill the bugs he believes are crawling all over him, his torrential blood flow leaks onto the stolen mattress on which Julia had perished in the previous film, resurrecting her, and she becomes Channard’s guide directly into the pits of hell. Meanwhile, Kirsty does stuff involving a mute girl at the hospital who just so happens to really enjoy puzzles; for their troubles, they also end up in hell.

Aesthetically, Hellbound: Hellraiser II really does play out like a natural second half, but in doing so also becomes somewhat lost in its own story. Unsure of what it wants to be, it sacrifices some of its sexual daringness in favor of focusing much of its journey on its descent into hell, where Kirsty believes her father to be, and who’s in need of rescue following a dream in which he appeared to her in skinless form, scrawling bloodily on the wall, “I AM IN HELL HELP ME.” Julia (a returning Clare Higgins) is certainly sexier and more diabolical, but compared to the conflicted iteration of herself in the first film, she comes off less interesting. Once she’s reborn and her skinless ass groped by Dr. Channard, she’s given absolutely nothing to do except walk around and grin big.

By this time it had become apparent that Doug Bradley’s Pinhead was the star, and though his screen time in the makeup isn’t necessarily increased, his character is fleshed out, being ret-conned as a former British soldier during the first World War who opens the puzzle box and subsequently becomes the pointy-faced demon we all know and love. Hellbound: Hellraiser II boasts some interesting and impressive visuals from first-time director Tony Randel, taking over for Barker, but also a few asinine “twists” – such as “Satan” being a gigantic puzzle box which shoots lasers, or — my favorite  — Frank revealing himself as the one who appeared to Kirsty and wrote her the bloody note, all in an effort to lure her into hell so they could bang.

This was Frank’s big idea.

Way to go Frank.

And it’s with Hellraiser’s third film that Pinhead is made the front-and-center villain, receiving a boost in screen time and a copy of Freddy Krueger’s Official Guide to Awful Ironic Puns. Screenwriter Peter Atkins, who returns from duties on Hellbound: Hellraiser II, again scripts this entry – one that he admits isn’t very far removed from the original intention, but who is also happy to admit that the new rights holders of the Hellraiser franchise wanted different things from what came before. Basically, they wanted their own horror villain to turn into a sadistic sidesplitting bad guy to lure in a different kind of audience (the kind who thought Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare was just a total hoot). They got their wish.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth focuses on a reporter named Joey Summerskill who stumbles ass-backwards into a Pinhead-like situation after witnessing a poor guy stabbed with rusty chains being wheeled into an operating room one night at the hospital, putting her directly on the bloody path of Pinhead, recently freed from a statue (?) by a New York playboy who fancies himself worthy of sitting at the right hand of the king of Hell. (He’s basically the new Julia, only intensely punchable.) If there’s a reason that logline sounds stupid, it’s because it is. Very much so. Except for watching Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth turn a once-frightening demon into a pun-dropping pain in the ass who – no bullshit – turns people into Cenobites that have cameras in their heads or can fire CDs like saw blades – this second sequel doesn’t offer much depth, daringness, or really anything at all besides yet another example of diminishing returns. Pinhead’s sad transition into Freddy Krueger-lite was inevitably completed, aided by a more than willing Anthony Hickox (the Waxworks series) stepping into the director’s chair for Tony Randel, who wisely opted not to return.

Dimension Films would maintain their hold on the franchise, turning out one entry after another, but after the spectacular failure of Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (credited to phantom director Alan Smithee, which in movie talk means RUN), ironically, non-Hellraiser related horror scripts would be picked up by the production house, rewritten to include Pinhead and Hellraiser elements, and would then actually offer far more solid one-offs than the series’ earlier official sequels. (I’ll defend Scott Derrickson’s Hellraiser: Inferno from now until the end of time – the first sequel to go direct to video, but the best since the original.) The Hellraiser franchise continues to chug along, with a new entry—Hellraiser: Judgment—released in 2018. It’s the tenth film of the franchise and the second subsequent sequel on which Doug Bradley has passed, so that probably tells you everything you need to know. For almost ten years, Dimension Films have been trying to bring a proper remake of Hellraiser to life, and all kinds of interesting people – from Inside's Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury to Drive Angry's Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussier – have taken a crack. Currently the task rests in the hands of super hack writer David S. Goyer, but word has been quiet, so who really knows what's going on? One thing is certain: you can't keep a good bad guy down, and Pinhead will return – one way or the other.

THAT'S NOT CRANBERRY SAUCE

BLOOD RAGE (1987): A GORE-NUCOPIA OF THANKSGIVING MAYHEM!

Don’t listen to that blowhard Eli Roth. Despite his self-aggrandizing fake trailer for Thanksgiving sandwiched in between the two mini features that comprised Grindhouse, which he purported to be the first to exploit the previously unexploited turkey day, Blood Rage (aka Nightmare at Shadow Woods) had beaten him to the punch by roughly twenty-five years. And what a twenty-five years it’s been. Long considered an obscure title, available only in compromised hack jobs found on VHS and DVD releases, the true, intended, and uncut version was finally unleashed last year by Arrow Video in all its “that’s not cranberry sauce!” glory. And it is a sight to behold.

Blood Rage offers everything the hardcore slasher fan could possibly want: a gimmicky but forgivable premise, a charismatic but quirky killer, tremendous violence, a nice helping of T&A, an array of flying limbs, and not a single unwelcome minute of stagnation. Blood Rage moves at a clip, only hanging around long enough to commit bodily mayhem against its cast before zipping to its “seriously, what is this?” ending, cutting to black, and rolling credits.

In the subgenre of the slasher film, it’s easy to love many titles strictly via irony. PIECES, for example, is an absolute favorite, as well as The Mutilator, but I could never in good conscious call either of them actual good films. But Blood Rage is different. So different. On the Blood Rage scale, I give it five out of five cut-off hands holding a beer can. Because, you see, one film is not less good simply because it’s striving toward a different goal. JAWS is not less of a good film because The Godfather exists. Mad Max does not pale in the majestic shadow of Mad Max: Fury Road. Blood Rage is as good at killing teenagers as Quint is at captivating a crew with his wartime stories, or Sonny Corleone is at personifying agonizing death, or the Doof Warrior is at rocking out on a flaming fucking guitar. In fact, Blood Rage is better at what it wants to do because it exists in an entirely uncategorizeable box – an entity unto itself, and only itself. 

And I love being able to say that.

Its plot, such as it is (or ain’t), is so sinfully simple and rife with logic errors that it transcends ineptness and becomes charming. A family receives word that their so-called psychotic family member has escaped an asylum and could be heading their way, but…no one cancels Thanksgiving dinner. 

No one cares. 

No one looks alarmed. 

Not a single person says, “Gosh, maybe we should drive our functioning cars to safety.” 

In the land of Blood Rage, it’s don’t worry, be happy. There are no cars that don’t start, there are no phone lines that are cut. People just…willfully choose to stay in the place where the murderer seems to be heading, without concern. And it’s glorious, because someone’s HEAD gets hacked in half and you can see his entire BRAIN. That’s Blood Rage, people.

That’s what you’re getting, and like a slice of pumpkin pie after a big turkey dinner, it’s delightful. 

What Blood Rage gets right, effortlessly, is its willingness to be fun. The premise alone lets the audience off the hook in the sense that they’re not left wondering for the entire film just who it is behind the mask that’s cutting of everyone’s knees and faces, inevitably leading to an underwhelming conclusion bound to satisfy only a fraction of the audience. At no point is Blood Rage‘s audience left to theorize about the mysterious identity of the killer responsible for all the carnage.

It’s Terry. The one in the striped shirt. He’s…right there. 

The acting’s about the caliber you might expect from a low-budget slasher film made in the early ’80s but not released until the late ’80s. It’s doable, passable, and certainly entertaining enough. Plus Ted Raimi appears as “Condom Salesman.” He has one line: “Condoms?” (I think. Memory’s hazy on this one; I think Blood Rage broke my brain.)

Maintaining the slasher film tradition of featuring one lead actor who makes you say, “Wow, he/she’s in this?”, Blood Rage features the unexpected appearance of Louise Lasser, who began her career in many of Woody Allen’s earlier films, and who most notably appeared in Requiem for a Dream as Ada, friend to Sara Goldfarb, who eventually breaks my heart as she sobs uncontrollably on a city bench. Her role hovers somewhere between normal and Mrs. Bates, suggesting that she’s mostly grounded, but also a bit too…attached to her sons. But she plays it well, and her crazy role is just one of many crazy things that make Blood Rage so crazy good. The scene in which she sits Indian style on the kitchen floor in front of her open refrigerator and begins eating Thanksgiving leftovers with a depressed look on her face because her crazy son has escaped a lunatic asylum and may be on his way to kill her and everyone else – so what else can she do? – is the stuff of cinemafantastique. 

Blood Rage is the movie that unaware slasher fans never knew they needed. Everything about it is pure and lovable – even the detestable violence and gore that our mothers would absolutely despise contains an intangible charm that’s become ingrained with this oft forgotten era of horror. For a film about a psychotic teen cutting down his friends and family with a machete in violent ways, it’s the most harmless slice of escapism yet that hails from the golden era of hack’em-up cinema. Its intentions are as innocent as the on-screen killer is murderous, but they both want the same thing: to cover everything in blood, and to make every minute of it as enjoyable as possible. And both succeed, so hard. 

If you consider yourself a fan of old-school slashers, have never seen this, and are still on the fence, then give me a break – YOU NEED THIS. Cut from the same mold as My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler, Intruder, and the entire Friday the 13th franchise, Blood Rage demands to be part of your yearly Thanksgivings or else you’re just a big turkey ha ha. 

Blood Rage is hereby awarded:

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Reprinted from the Daily Grindhouse.]

TURKEY EVE

It's coming...

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974)

To lean on an overused expression, they really don’t make films like The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three anymore. The remake from 1998 with Vincent D’Onofrio, and the other remake from 2009 with Denzel Washington and John Travolta and directed by Tony Scott, proved that with ease. Because the uniqueness of the original is very much a product of the time in which it was made.

As has already been proven, the future has a bad memory. Over time, individuals who were once prominent actors, or filmmakers, slip into the ether. Names like Walter Matthau or Robert Shaw, celebrated during their time, may or may not survive the pop culture purge that’s currently in progress with the generation just below our own. Names like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, who died young, beautiful, and tragically, will always live on, while some of their colleagues will become trivia in board games and movie theater screens just before the ads for Hyundai. For some, those names are already forgotten, but for those who still remember, it might still come as a surprise that Walter Matthau, best remembered for his lifelong friendship and multiple on-screen couplings with Jack Lemmon, did his fair share of roles in the 1970s where he played kind of a badass. Not Schwarzenegger or Stallone levels of badass, mind you, but a different kind of badass. With his roles in The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, or Charley Varrick, or The Laughing Policeman, the lanky and limber Matthau exuded that 1970s version of a badass without the egocentricity of ridiculous musculature or an array of militaristic weapons. Matthau could be a badass only with a look, or a wry smile, or a perfectly timed cutting remark. His resistance to authority, his disdain for bureaucracy, and his insistence on always getting his man made him a less showy but just as effective “action” hero.

As for the villain (well, the lead villain), Robert Shaw’s menacing, icy, and subtly funny take on Mr. Blue (yep, Tarantino steals from all over) is a perfect foil to Matthau’s Lt. Zachary Garber. He is very much no-nonsense, at times treating the hostages in his subway car with more respect than his fellow heisters (brought to life by the likes of Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, and yes, Earl Hindman, aka Tim Taylor’s neighbor, Wilson, in nine years of Home Improvement). When one uses the term effortlessly cool for actors from this era, the names Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood come to mind, but Robert Shaw out-cooled them all. Perhaps best remembered as Quint from JAWS, followed by his villainous turns in The Sting and From Russia with Love, his untimely death at 51 is one of the worst tragedies to befall the art of cinema, as it robbed us from so many more potentially great roles from the underrated British actor.

Two strong lead actors aside, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three’s greatest strength is its screenplay, based on the novel by John Godey (Johnny Handsome) and adapted by Peter Stone (Charade; 1776). Channeling Die Hard before Die Hard existed, the majority of Matthau and Shaw’s scenes together are shared via radio between the New York City subway operations hub and the taken train car, and despite this, the men manage to show a tremendous rapport, anyway. Helping this is the cracking, sharp-witted dialogue, which comes off as both cinematic and realistic at the same time. Add to that a slice of political incorrectness (it’s true—in previous eras, it was okay to laugh at the things that made us different) and a ground-zero look at how different facets of city culture react to a terrorist event (topical!), and the end result is The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three—one of the only times domestic terrorism was fun.

Director Joseph Sargent (White Lightning; JAWS: The Revenge) matches the thrills with the laughs, presenting an old-fashioned good time with one of the best, ironic, and expertly executed endings of all time. And to forgive another overused expression, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three’s DNA lives, breathes, and bleeds New York – to the point where the city is not just another character but the main character. In fact (move over, Spike Lee), The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three just might be the most New York film ever, from the emphasis on local actors for bit parts, to bigger-than-life New York attitudes, to iconic city geography, and to how ably Sargent captures the city, warts and all. The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three takes place in several not-so-glamorous environments. Much of the film, understandably, is subterranean, spent in gritty and dank locations like malfunctioning train cars or subway tunnels and platforms, but this only adds to the film’s appeal. Having set The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three in any other city would have stripped away its identity, its wryness, and most importantly, its sense of humor.

Much of The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three is dialogue driven, but composer David Shire’s musical score complements the subtler and less bombastic moments outside of scenes of gunplay or car chases. (Shire has amusingly described his earlier attempts at scoring The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three as “bad Lalo Schifrin” and “bad flute jazz.”) Scenes set underground on the subway tunnels or platforms benefit from echo and station ambience, exuding the New Yorkness of New York, and working perfectly alongside Sargent’s intent to make this a New York story.

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three is a classic of the genre, the sub-genre, or however you want to catalog it. It exists in a simpler time, both historically and cinematically, when all you needed for something to go so wrong was a handful of homegrown men with a plan, and all you needed to right that wrong was someone on the opposite end of the radio to ensure those men never reach the last stop.