This wasn’t on Amazon Prime that I can see, had to find it on alternative streaming sites, so it was a cross between VHS and DVD in quality, which I think actually gave it more charm. Adding to that charm is something that I’ve noticed elsewhere: big stars getting roles in the 3rd or 4th part of a horror franchise, (Leonardo DiCaprio got his start in “Critters 3”!). In this case it’s Terry Farrell, who I know so well from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine! I don’t think she has any relation go Glenda Farrell, but it’s funny that last name keep popping up in my movies lately.
There’s a ton to unpack here in the third Hellraiser film, I honestly think this is the best of them so far, with all sorts of unintended humor, like when the heart monitor is flatlining at a hospital all dramatically… after a guy’s head exploded! Then right after that, Farrell’s character says “tight stories not tight skirts” then the next scene is her in a thin nearly see through shirt and skirt at the “boiler room” looking for the owner of the club.
It actually wasn’t until about 30 minutes into the film during a scene in which a street urchin is burning breakfast that I realized the reporter was played by Terry Farrell, I think that’s the first time she let her hair down and looked more like the woman I’m familiar with. If you’re a recovering smoker, this is not going to be a fun ride for you, as absolutely everyone is smoking through the film, I think there’s only a few scenes where someone isn’t lighting up a cigarette. I have nothing against smoking in movies, but it was just super obvious that absolutely no one was compensated at all to smoke all these smokes. Nope, definitely not.
I also enjoyed the ending of this one much more than the previous two. The puzzle box ends up buried under a building in it’s foundation and now the building is decorated like the cube! It’s a great way to suggest that there’s an opening for sequels and an obvious dig at corporate culture.
“Demons aren’t real, they’re parables, metaphors” … “Yeah? Then what the fuck is that?!?”
Yeah, looks like we have different tastes when it comes to the Hellraiser movies we like versus the ones we don’t like. I didn’t like this one because it went too far in the generic slasher direction. Too much of a thought process along the lines of “let’s make cool looking cenobites and try to shoehorn them into the movie somehow”. Like that Key and Peele sketch about Gremlins 2 but for Hellraiser III instead.
The ending is kind of cool as a sequel tease, it’s just too bad that Hellraiser: Bloodlines ended up being that sequel.
See now, I think of this one being the most Hellraiser-like of them all so far (I’m only like 6 movies in), I’m perfectly happy to see new and unique cenobites, they hinted at some interesting ones in the first movie, then the second one had one or two more, then in this one there were only a couple more. I was more impressed with their ability to make the box actually seem like something that would seduce people into doing some grim dark shit. like the final scene at the club with all the dead patrons.
Having said all that, I think you can tell how my next few reviews are going to go, they really took a nose dive in quality for the next three.
and Bloodlines? what the fuck was that all about, holy crap that thing was a 90s mess.
Ah, see, I like the ones more like the first movie where the personification of Hell (Pinhead for the most part) is not shown, but is implied to be manipulating things from behind the scenes in a sense. It’s what I liked about Inferno, the idea of playing with what’s real and what’s not.
I do prefer to see the bad guy in the film, at least once or twice before the half way mark, Inferno didn’t have “the engineer” show up until well after the one hour mark in a hour and a half long movie!