Hellraiser(s) : Capsule reviews.
Hellraiser : Really bad acting. At least when it comes to the speaking parts. "They're coming to get you, Margaret Barbara*" is Shakespeare by contrast. Bad acting on the part of the humans (the cenobites are fine) is more than made up for by incredibly strong-for-the-budget visuals. Gooey.
Hellbound : Hellraiser II : Just how many horror movie sequels pick up in the nuthatch, anyway? The stop-motion bits on the Channard cenobite have aged - otherwise, probably the all-around strongest in the series.
Hellraiser III : Hell on Earth : The dumping ground for all of the one-liners that didn't make it into Hellraiser II. Lots of fun cenobite bits, some good Pinhead backstory, some good lines, some good scenes - an entertaining horror flick, though not as strong as II.
Hellraiser : Bloodline : France. In SPAAAAAAAAAACE. Bonus points for combining the mandatory "horror franchise attempts to add depth with a Largely Backstory Movie That Tries To Explain Everything" (which is always bad) with the mandatory "__________ In SPAAAAAAAACE" installment (which is also always bad). Two birds, one stone. A smelly, poop-covered stone somebody kept up their ass for a few years. It's an Alan Smithee film, for good reason: there's far too much France, and not nearly enough "in space". Front Line Assembly (or one of Bill Leeb's nine jillion projects) sampled all of the good non-cenobite dialogue a few years back - aside from playing "spot the sample" and the bits with Pinhead and his pet dog, this movie blows almost as much as Hellworld. The cenobite bits are watchable; the rest is, as the IMDB review says, an "incoherent mess."
Hellraiser : Inferno : Jacob's Cenobite Ladder. Strongest of the "somebody took a script for a horror/suspense/whatever film and tried to twist it into a Hellraiser" movies, in that it's a watchable piece of psychological horror. Otherwise unrelated to I, II, III, IV and VI.
Hellraiser : Hellseeker : Second best of the "not really a Hellraiser" Hellraisers. Ashley Laurence reprises Kirsty Cotton (with a whopping six or seven lines and maybe ten minutes of screentime, tops), though the movie would work just as well with a different deus ex machina.
Hellraiser : Deader : It's well shot, fairly well acted, and well directed. Pity about the rest of it.
Hellraiser : Hellworld : I Know What Bad Internet Game You Played Last Summer. The worst thing about Hellworld is that it could have been a fairly entertaining pile of genre cliches if it had just dropped the Hellraiser license - the use of which is fucking awful. Seriously - this is just another teen/college horror thriller in the Friday The 13th / Night of the Living Dead formula, with no real bearing on (or relation to) the rest of the series.
* I suck. See comments.
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