What Curse of the Puppet Master did for the franchise, Hellraiser: Hellworld attempts to do for its own withering fable of the Cenobites and their excessive philosophies of pleasure and pain. While I appreciate the levelheadedness of Rick Bota, director of the last three entries, Hellraiser: Hellworld plays out as more of a psychological slasher/revenge tale and has about as much to do with Pinhead as Friday the 13th: A New Beginning had to do with Jason Voorhees. In this adaption of Clive Barker's characters, the Cenobites go digital as a group of "hardcore Internet gamers" rendezvous at a red-lit house party hosted by Lance Henriksen and have to fight to stay alive. Or rather, try to have sex with everyone and fall into half-assed traps.
Now for someone who has experimented with online games, the Hellworld title appears to had little or no thought put into it. A shoddy first-person door layout ala early Resident Evil titles accompanies all of the gameplay and for me, a video game enthusiast, seeing something so dreadful being taken seriously is as bad as watching two kids attempt to play FFVIII in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. The typical attractive teenage peril is employed as is with the rest of the slasher genre. Hellraiser: Hellworld isn't anything special but unlike some of the more wretched cash-ins, this one ain't too bad. Hellworld also does an exemplary job at usurping your wanted attention and wasting it on something as banal as an eighth entry in a series that should have ceased to exist after the second.
To start on my riffing, any recent film with Lance Henriksen is bound to be your typical straight-to-video 'sploitation title chock full of terrible unknown actors in hopes to revitalize forgotten sagas. Or the track record of sub par quality, perhaps these are all just quick money-makers catering to the horror completists. Either way, both crunch out a profit at the disdain of the intellectually challenged consumer. Now don't get me wrong, Hellraiser: Hellworld is a piece of under-produced shit but it still manages the simple task of guilty entertainment. I found the first 20 minutes to drag on as my hand slid down my face while I sporadically groaned but once the virtual inconsistencies ceased to pan out, I found myself a lot more capable of handling the latest Cenobite venture. Needless to say, the usual duo appears; Pinhead and Chatterer, along with several converted characters. I have always found myself so disappointed in any incarnation of Chatterer past the first two Hellraiser films. The clicking of the ghoulish creature's bicuspids ground my nerves down to chalk in the same fashion that the White Rabbit's bite in Svankmajer's Alice did.
I haven't seen most of the "unofficial" Hellraiser films but I'm making it a personal goal to wrap viewing them all up within the next month. Clive Barker emerged with a vision, as demented and hellish as it was, and it exploded with flavor. While it was a bitter and cruel experiment on film, the ideas of which he presented were entirely his own. Past the second film, plot devices and similar tortures are just retreaded. The neck wound on the Female cenobite is repeated in almost every film as I can see and the similar chain effects are thrown in for good, nostalgic measure. Only the short film No More Souls dared to provide "new flesh" to Clive Barker's masterful carving of a puzzle box and the entities that lie within. For directors to mold artistic inspiration into something as simple as psychosexual philosophical musings shouldn't be too hard but in today's day & age, this fact seems quite impossible. As I have said, Hellraiser: Hellworld is a pile of rubbish that didn't leave me with regrets, but I'm quite sure some of the other entries will. Until then, a capable time-waster.
Now for someone who has experimented with online games, the Hellworld title appears to had little or no thought put into it. A shoddy first-person door layout ala early Resident Evil titles accompanies all of the gameplay and for me, a video game enthusiast, seeing something so dreadful being taken seriously is as bad as watching two kids attempt to play FFVIII in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. The typical attractive teenage peril is employed as is with the rest of the slasher genre. Hellraiser: Hellworld isn't anything special but unlike some of the more wretched cash-ins, this one ain't too bad. Hellworld also does an exemplary job at usurping your wanted attention and wasting it on something as banal as an eighth entry in a series that should have ceased to exist after the second.
To start on my riffing, any recent film with Lance Henriksen is bound to be your typical straight-to-video 'sploitation title chock full of terrible unknown actors in hopes to revitalize forgotten sagas. Or the track record of sub par quality, perhaps these are all just quick money-makers catering to the horror completists. Either way, both crunch out a profit at the disdain of the intellectually challenged consumer. Now don't get me wrong, Hellraiser: Hellworld is a piece of under-produced shit but it still manages the simple task of guilty entertainment. I found the first 20 minutes to drag on as my hand slid down my face while I sporadically groaned but once the virtual inconsistencies ceased to pan out, I found myself a lot more capable of handling the latest Cenobite venture. Needless to say, the usual duo appears; Pinhead and Chatterer, along with several converted characters. I have always found myself so disappointed in any incarnation of Chatterer past the first two Hellraiser films. The clicking of the ghoulish creature's bicuspids ground my nerves down to chalk in the same fashion that the White Rabbit's bite in Svankmajer's Alice did.
I haven't seen most of the "unofficial" Hellraiser films but I'm making it a personal goal to wrap viewing them all up within the next month. Clive Barker emerged with a vision, as demented and hellish as it was, and it exploded with flavor. While it was a bitter and cruel experiment on film, the ideas of which he presented were entirely his own. Past the second film, plot devices and similar tortures are just retreaded. The neck wound on the Female cenobite is repeated in almost every film as I can see and the similar chain effects are thrown in for good, nostalgic measure. Only the short film No More Souls dared to provide "new flesh" to Clive Barker's masterful carving of a puzzle box and the entities that lie within. For directors to mold artistic inspiration into something as simple as psychosexual philosophical musings shouldn't be too hard but in today's day & age, this fact seems quite impossible. As I have said, Hellraiser: Hellworld is a pile of rubbish that didn't leave me with regrets, but I'm quite sure some of the other entries will. Until then, a capable time-waster.
-mAQ
When you mentioned Svankmajers "Alice" all i could think about was the astonishing "Kristyna Kohoutova" who played Alice in that incredible surrealist masterpiece, she was perhaps even more gorgeous by herself than Heather O`Rourke, Judith Barsi, and JonBenet (Patricia) ramsay put together, (i know thats an incredible statement to make but Kristyna was so incredibly astounding) if i could have been on the set of that movie in `87 (when Heather and Judith were still alive by the way) and had somehow been able to bugger Kristyna and spunk up her incredible little arse and then had been able to unload another wad of spunk down her lushious 8 year-old throat i think i would have been the happiest man who ever lived. With regards to the film all i really remember are the scenes where you can see up Kristyna`s dress its just a pity that she was wearing those accursed knickers at the time of filming otherwise we would have been able to see her incredible arse and twat (SOMEBODY PULL HER KNICKERS DOWN, PLLL...EASE), i bet Svankmajer got to bugger and sodomize her on the set the lucky bastard. I wonder if she appeared in any child porn in eastern europe at that time, i`d give a 1000 dollars to see her getting buggered and spunked all over, in fact i think i could spend the rest of my life jerking off to that one film alone (if it existed). Finally, do you remember those scenes in "Little Otik" (2000) where the old man kept trying to pull the little girls knickers down?, those scenes were such an incredible turn-on although the little girl in that film was no-where near as pretty as Kristyna.
ReplyDeleteI know you dont normally reveiw the latest films but it would be nice to see a reveiw of "Zombieland" here on sunday.
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