Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) Review

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) Review

 

I’ve never watched all of the Hellraiser sequels even though I love how ingeniously scary the original is. The main reason is because of how badly everyone talks about them. Very few fans truly celebrate any of the sequels beyond the second movie. One of the other reasons I’ve only seen Hellbound, the hastily-produced follow-up to the successful original, is because it came as part of the double-feature DVD I originally bought to watch Hellraiser, but I haven’t felt inclined to seek out number three and beyond. That isn’t because Hellbound is bad, though—in fact, I think it’s a good follow-up, despite some different (and some of the same) shortcomings from the first movie. I can’t really review it without spoiling Hellraiser, so if you haven’t seen Hellraiser yet, read this review after you’ve seen it.

Remember when sequels used to recap the previous movie? Hellbound does this pretty effectively, showing us some of the good stuff from before, as well as an intriguing little flashback to the man who became Pinhead. It doesn’t unravel the horror of Pinhead as a consequence of giving us a glimpse at his origins, and while Hellbound is not as scary as Hellraiser, it’s still a worthwhile continuation, now with a more clearly established protagonist. The events of the first movie feel like an insane nightmare, so where is a logical place to go for the sequel? An insane asylum, of course. Larry Cotton’s daughter Kirsty and her boyfriend are taken to a psychiatric ward and no one believes them when they tell them what happened. Well, one guy is intrigued: Dr. Channard, who instantly gets under your skin by waxing philosophic about the human brain—oh yeah, and he secretly knows all about the Lament Configuration (the puzzle box that summons the Cenobites), and when he comes into possession of the bloody, chain-bound mattress from the Cotton’s house, he becomes the new villain of the story.

One of the most disturbing scenes is when Channard brings a mentally disturbed patient up to the mattress and hands him a straight razor, which the patient uses to slice himself up because he thinks his body is crawling in maggots and decay, and his blood brings forth the corpse trapped in the mattress to absorb his blood and flesh to regenerate. This time it’s Julia who comes back as a skinless body, and this aspect of the story feels a little repetitive from what happened before with Frank. It is different, though, once she’s fully resurrected, because she is after Kirsty now, and Kirsty is trying to figure out how to rescue her father from hell. She meets a young mute girl who is obsessed with solving puzzles, and Channard, who just so happens to possess several puzzle boxes, uses her skill to open the portal to hell. This time Pinhead and the other Cenobites don’t just come for them. He lets Kirsty and the girl explore “the Labyrinth” which is exactly what it sounds like, with a giant floating diamond at its center: the entity Leviathan, capable of turning people into Cenobites.

Hellbound was directed by Tony Randel, who worked on Hellraiser, and the story was written by Clive Barker, making this the only Hellraiser sequel to directly involve him in a significant creative capacity. It’s hard to explain, but I find Hellbound moves much more slowly than Hellraiser, even though it hits many of the same marks and has only a slightly longer runtime. It might be because we know how it all works now, and a large portion of the first half of the movie feels like waiting around for Pinhead to come, even though the stuff with Channard is grotesquely intriguing and Julia’s resurrection is as sick and strange as Frank’s from the original. Some things are not as well explained as they were in the first one, like the introduction of Leviathan or the rules surrounding the puzzle boxes and their connection to the Labyrinth (or hell, I guess, the reference differs from scene to scene), or whatever happened to Kirsty’s boyfriend, who is absent from the entire movie despite being mentioned early on. All those issues aside, what keeps this sequel held up close to where the original reached is the sadistic creativity and the returning characters, played arguably better than in the original. 

The main antagonist of Hellraiser, despite what every piece of marketing material seems to indicate, is not Pinhead. Julia sort of starts out as the main character, but then she starts killing people for Frank (who is definitely an antagonist, not hard to figure that out just by giving him one look!) and the focus shifts to Kirsty, played by Ashley Laurence, as the heroine. The Cenobites aren’t fully shown until over an hour in (the movie is only 90 minutes, keep in mind) and in Hellbound they show up around the same point, though their introduction isn’t as scary. It’s in moments like these where I really notice the difference of not having Clive Barker behind the camera. It’s not without any scares or unsettling imagery, but it definitely has a look and feel that’s a bit more generic than the first one, despite having many of the same disturbing visuals, and many new ones. Pinhead talks more, but he does have a couple new sinister lines to rival the famous “We’ll tear your soul apart!” line from the first one. He says: “We have eternity to know your flesh…” and later: “Your suffering will be legendary, even in hell!” Goddamn that’s disturbing! I can see why the sequels focused on him more, but this movie has just enough Pinhead, in my opinion.

Christopher Young returned to compose the score, and the music once again has the same effect it did in the first movie. There are definitely some shots in the labyrinth that would seem a lot lamer were it not for the epic music giving everything a grander energy. But, even a great score can’t save some decidedly dated special effects in the third act, including stop motion tentacles with blades and other various things popping out of them and some low quality optical effects. Another downgrade is how little we see the other Cenobites. Chatterer was slightly redesigned to have eyes (at the request of the actor, who wanted to be able to see while performing) which makes him look less scary, and the Female Cenobite was played by a different actress. Minor spoilers, but Channard’s eventual transformation into a Cenobite, while grotesquely cool, is also a little goofier than was probably intended, and the defeat of the Cenobites is kind of pathetic. That being said, I appreciate that Hellbound doesn’t just replicate the exact same source of terror from the first movie nor does it stray too far from what made it scary in the first place. It gives a bit of development to the Cenobites and where they come from without undoing all the mystery and intrigue established in Hellraiser.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II is not quite as good as Hellraiser, but it is still a very interesting sequel that captures enough of what made Hellraiser scary and great in the first place to be worth watching if you liked the original. Maybe one day I’ll get around to watching at least the theatrically-released sequels that followed, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth and Hellraiser IV: Bloodline. This review is already too long, so I won’t dive too deep into the 2022 Hellraiser reboot, but I will say I thought it was good, though not great. It’s well produced, well directed, and has some high quality practical effects, but is still no replacement for the original.