Several years ago I discovered that my late partner Nick had never actually seen any of the Hellraiser films, and so of course I had to sit him down and rectify that. As it was we only got through the first two films, and of the original Hellraiser and its sequel, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Nick actually preferred the latter. He felt that it had more backstory and explained things better, which he felt made for a better film. Personally, I enjoy both films for their own reasons.
After the events of the first Hellraiser film, Kirsty Cotton finds herself in the Channard Institute: a psychiatric hospital that also does a side order of neurosurgery and has a mini-Bedlam in the sub-basement. The police have been investigating what happened in Larry and Julia's house, but they obviously don't believe Kirsty's story of demons and skinless creepy uncles which is why she's ended up staying at the mental hospital (although interestingly Kirsty's boyfriend from the first film, Steve, apparently told the cops the same story and was allowed to go home...) Unfortunately for Kirsty and everyone else at the hospital, the head doctor there, Dr. Channard, has been obsessed with studying, finding and opening a Lament Configuration for some time, and Kirsty's story gives him the final information he needs. First he brings back Julia from the bloody mattress she died on, and then summons the Cenobites themselves by using an autistic patient named Tiffany who solves puzzles to open the box by proxy. This time Kirsty has to travel to the Cenobites' own hell dimension to close the box and stop them from harvesting even more victims...
When he made the first Hellraiser, Clive Barker came up with detailed backgrounds for all the Cenobites, but in the end he was unable to use them in the film due to time constraints. Instead, these backstories ended up in this sequel instead - although primarily it's Pinhead (as he became known) whose backstory we learn the most about; the remaining three Cenobites are relegated to just having who they were before they opened the box shown briefly to us. Of course, Pinhead was already fast becoming the "face" of the series, and so it makes sense that we learn the most about him here.
Clive Barker was only an executive producer this time around, handing over the directorial reins to Tony Randal. This hasn't made the film any less artistically striking, however. The modelling of the Cenobites' hell dimension after the works of Escher is the most obvious influence, of course, but there's also heavy use of chromatic themes throughout the film to aid in the narrative. The colours white - to indicate innocence and purity, whether real or supposed; red - for sexuality and danger; and black - for violence and death - are recurring themes throughout the film. The most notable example of this are the scenes of skinless Julia standing in Channard's mostly-white home, with a single bloody handprint on one wall (could it also be a possible reference to that one scene in Dario Argento's Tenebre as well?)
On the subject of Julia... Barker had originally planned for her to be the primary antagonist of the series, with the Cenobites remaining mostly in the background, but fans quickly rallied around the "Lead Cenobite" far more, even giving him the name "Pinhead" in honour of his status as (as Barker himself once said), "the Patron Saint of Piercing". This is most likely why Julia plays such a large role in the first two-thirds of the film (even referring to herself as "the evil queen" kn keeping with the dark fairy tale motif that runs through this and the first film) but suffers a rather abrupt end after that.
I'd say that the biggest problem I have with Hellbound: Hellraiser II (and I don't have very many problems with the film at all, to be honest), is the way they made Dr. Channard into a bigger threat than the original Cenobites. I assume that this was because they were still working towards the idea of Julia being the antagonist going forward and so they wanted a way to "write out" the Cenobites, but to me it feels a bit too much like a Saturday morning cartoon where the good guys and the bad guys have to team up to stop a bigger evil. There wasn't any real reason that the Cenobites would turn on Channard other than a sudden desire to protect Kirsty and Tiffany, and considering what we know of them that makes little sense, regardless of what they might have just learned about themselves. Regardless, this plot point was mostly forgotten about going forward, as Pinhead remained pretty much the only tie (apart from the box and the name) to the original film as the sequels went forward...
Comments