“It is not hands that call us. It is desire.”

Drake’s rating: Six out of ten spiky chains

Drake’s review: When we last saw Kristy Cotton, the heroine and final girl from Hellraiser, she had lost her father to her psychotic uncle and barely escaped from the clutches of the mysterious creatures known as the Cenobites. But since the first film was a surprise hit and made a considerable profit at the box office, Kristy’s travails are not over with just yet. In fact, things are going to get much worse for her before they get better.

Waking up in a psychiatric hospital not very long after the finale of Hellraiser, Kristy (a returning Ashley Laurence) is quick to fill in the attending psychiatrist, Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham, Layer Cake), on her recent encounters with a dead uncle and spiky demons. A police detective is quick to dismiss the story, but Channard is intrigued because he knows that Kristy is telling the truth. And he knows this because Channard himself has quite the collection of occult paraphernalia, and is obsessed with the puzzle box known as the Lament Configuration. So when Kristy pleads with the detective to destroy the blood-stained mattress at her father’s house to prevent dear old Uncle Frank from once again returning to the land of the living, Channard takes note.

Grabbing the mattress himself, Channard sacrifices a patient of his to unlock its secrets. This doesn’t bring back Frank, however, but rather Julia, the unfaithful and murderous wife of Kristy’s late father, and it’s Julia who convinces Channard to continue to feed her his unwary patients so that she can become her old self once again. Channard all too willingly agrees, sealing his own fate as he convinces a puzzle-obsessed young patient, Tiffany, to solve the Lament Configuration and open the portal to the Labyrinth, the hellish dimension that houses the Cenobites.

And that’s where Hellbound: Hellraiser II finally takes off and becomes its own movie. The first half of the film is fairly predictable, especially if you’ve seen Hellraiser. Well know what the Lament Configuration is and what it does, Tiffany is the obvious answer to solving the puzzle box, and Channard is shown to be the villainous sort almost immediately. So the film initially feels like the worst kind of sequel early on, the plot retread, as it retraces the steps of Hellraiser complete with flashbacks lifted from the earlier movie.

Fortunately, the pace picks up once the portal is opened and we get to spend some time in the Labyrinth. It’s the home dimension for the Cenobites, a massive twisted maze ruled over by a massive diamond-shaped entity known as Leviathan. And it’s this Leviathan who Julia truly serves. She happily sacrifices Channard to it, but it seems that the doctor’s evil impresses the inhuman ruler and he is turned into a Cenobite instead, given the power to dispatch even Pinhead and his cohorts.

It’s an interesting sequence of events and seems to clearly indicate that Hellbound: Hellraiser II was to be the end of the series. But if Jason Voorhees has taught us anything, it’s that nothing can keep a horror movie villain down, not even decapitation or being dissolved in toxic waste. And sure enough, Pinhead and company are back in action four years and a change in ownership later, ready to turn Hellraiser into a regular franchise.

As it stands, Hellbound: Hellraiser II is a good film, but not a great one. Too much recapping of the first film impedes the momentum early on, which is an odd decision since the sequel was released just a scant year later. Past that the budget limitations are evident at times, a sign of the dire financial state that New World Pictures was in. The makeup and stop-motion effects are generally good, but the interior shots of the Labyrinth are sadly limited and fairly bland. Considering the dark atmosphere of the first film, it’s a bit of a disappointment that the sequel never quite finds its own unique voice.

The Cenobites have limited screen time as well, which is unfortunate. Snippets of their background are revealed, but Channard is given the larger role as the featured villain. It’s another odd decision, given Pinhead’s unique visual appeal and his almost instantaneous status as an iconic horror villain after Hellraiser. We kind of wanted more Pinhead, not less, y’know?

There are good moments here, and some nice additions to the mythology of the Hellraiser universe. And it’s great to have Ashley Laurence back as well, with a Kristy who now knows what kind of world she’s living in and is well aware of the threat possessed by the Cenobites. It’s just too bad these elements aren’t expanded on in greater detail, and that the early part of Hellbound: Hellraiser II follows too closely to its predecessor rather than forging its own path from the start.

There’s certainly enough here to make this one a worthwhile watch, especially if you’re a fan of Hellraiser, but just be aware that it starts off with a serious case of sequel-itis. Fortunately, it’s not a fatal case and the movie flows along pretty well past the halfway point. And of course Hellbound: Hellraiser II does bring the gooiness and spiky bits of the original. It just could have used a bit more work at the script level and a little more money to give it the elements it needed to really push it over the top.

Still, at least it didn’t give us Pinhead in space. We’d have to wait a few more years for that.

Intermission!

• I think we may have a mad doctor here.
• Kristy raving on and on about a haunted mattress doesn’t sound crazy at all. She might have to settle in for a longer stay at the psychiatric hospital.
• Tiffany, is good at solving puzzles. I wonder if that will be a plot point…
• Pinhead doesn’t take Tiffany because he knows that she had no desires involved in solving the puzzle box. That’s an interesting plot point that could also have used more development.
• Kristy gets KO’d again. She’s gonna have to go into concussion protocol.
• Some nice old-school matte paintings here.
• Looks like Channard is not up to Leviathan’s employment standards.