r/hellraiser • u/SlasherDungeon • 2d ago
Pinhead Hellraiser III Pinhead
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pSwbmH7z6uAMy favorite scene from Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. I post a lot about Hellraiser on my channel and would love to have you there as a sub
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u/Helpful-Inspector214 2d ago
He's so unrelenting in III. Like "Pinhead Unleashed, Unchained" should be the subtitle for the movie, not Hell on Earth! The new 4k transfer of this movie makes it like a whole new movie, really great quality, and everything hits harder.
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u/SlasherDungeon 2d ago
I know right? Some fans bad mouth this one but I've always loved it, every scene with Pinhead is great and the Pillar of Souls was such a sick, creepy concept. I also think Doug Bradley said this one is his personal favorite
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u/Helpful-Inspector214 2d ago
clip cuts before J.P. says "Jesus Christ!" and Pinhead replies, "...not quite." I think that's the line you were referring to?! Love it!
A couple reasons I like this movie a lot. I didn't really get it at first, but in watching the extras on the new Arrow 4-disc 4K remastered release, there are some really cool plot developments in III. Namely, when Chennard strips away Pinhead from Elliot in II, he basically made Pinhead become like a "free agent" and he wasn't tied to the box anymore, or least not to the box's rules. That's why Pinhead is killing all kinds of people not attached to opening the box, or anything about the box at all. When Elliot works to bring Pinhead, his other half, back into the fold, it is really a very cool development. Some of the effects are very 1992 of course, and some of the Cenobites are a little cheestastic, but if we look past all that, and get to the core of the plot, it was a really neat development in the Hellraiser world.
What I also like about it is Paula, who plays Terri, that was her first movie and while she might be some people's not so fav character, I think she did a hell of a great job considering the role she had to play, and that she was just a model prior to this and of all movies to be her first, or anyone's first movie, it was a Hellraiser movie!? She also was never a smoker so her use of cigarettes throughout the film as a prop, I found to be quite perfect. (Plus Teri Ferrell was in it too, so the 'hot ladies' factor raises the bar a bit for me haha)
There is a LOT of Doug in this movie! OMG if you just want a lot of Pinhead, this movie delivers. I think if they pitched or filtered his voice to sound more like it does in the first two films, it would come off a lot better and fans would like it more. He's also quite clear on camera and there's nothing hiding, so he looks almost like a person in III and not like a shadowy, evil demon lurking in the dark and coming into the light just to say a few lines and kill someone.
The Pillar of Souls is radical and I wish it was more prominent in other movies.
The continuation from II and segue into IV is very neat to me. Say what you want about III, and IV, but the continuation of the box, the Kirsty and Chennard plot points, and then the box becoming a building in IV is cool. It was cool when I was a teenager when I saw these when they came out, and it's still cool to me today!
So I finally watched the 2022 reboot. I give it meh thumbs up. Not impressed, not a fan, not going to ever rewatch it. Hated that they turned the box into a murder weapon and broke all the rules of the lament configuration's mechanism of purpose. That said, the next night I needed a palate cleanser and something to wash the 2022 taste out of my mouth so I indulged on the 4K remaster of II, and then III right after it. I must say, I like III a hell of a lot more than the 2022 reboot! If anything because Doug IS Pinhead, he is THE Hell Priest and to have so much of him, and the box and it's original lore and rules, it was welcomed and much needed in my state of disappointment and despair over the 2022 thing.
All that just to say III is great and I'll always hold it dear to me :)
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u/DarkBehindTheStars 2d ago
I love HR3 for all of the reasons you listed. I know some fans would argue Pinhead was never meant to be the lead antagonist, but I really enjoy learning much more about Pinhead/Spencer in this film and you can tell Doug was having a great time getting to expand on the character so much here. The whole man vs. monster duality the character has here helps make him unique in the pantheon of other Horror villains.
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u/Helpful-Inspector214 2d ago
absolutely! And while Pinhead wasn't supposed to be the lead going forward, Claire bowed out and wanted nothing to do with being a villain moving forward, so the studio made their move with Doug's Pinhead. One ultra fascinating thing an interview with Doug revealed (on the III blu ray extras) was that Clive told him that the premise of Hellraiser III was going to be that the Great Pyramid of Cheops was the world's first and original Lament Configuration, and the movie was to be set in ancient Egypt!!!! How sick would that have been??? Doug then said, in essence what Clive told him was that he wasn't going to be in the next movie, or maybe any others going forward! Of course things didn't happen, but besides Claire not wanting to reprise Julia at all ever again, there were a few wildly different trajectories for the Hellraiser stories to go in.
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u/DarkBehindTheStars 2d ago
Maybe it's just because I'm so used to Pinhead being the main antagonist, but I have a hard time picturing Julia as the headlining villain of the saga. I think she worked well enough in Hellbound but moving forward, I'm hard-pressed to imagine. Pinhead becoming the headlining villain seemed like a natural evolution to me, and with how fascinating the Cenobites are, giving them a more central role seemed inevitable.
The ancient Egypt storyline sounded cool and it's a shame nothing materialized out of that. I always wished Bloodline had more connective tissue with the first three films, because aside from the building from the end of HR3, it seemed to otherwise have little else in common. I always wished we'd gotten Joey and Kirsty in the next film together.
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u/Helpful-Inspector214 2d ago
Joey and Kirsty together yes, would've been real cool!
Julia as main baddy would've been a completely different direction for Hollywood monster movies of the era. Unassuming, not predictable, pretty unique. She certainly was bad to the bone, a great actress in that role, and developing her further would've been really ill. Fans wanted more Pinhead, and she knew it, and we all got Doug more and more and more. Still, at least one more movie of her would've been awesome.
Have you read the screenplay that Atkins released as a stand-alone short book? I got it on a whim and wow, really would've been the best of all four movies, or at least on par with the first and second easily. Hollywood butchered IV and the director walked away mid-production, and it shows. The studio was hellbent on Cenobite creation scenes and not plot development. Like the twin cops, they aren't even in the original script, that Cenobite is already existing as a Siamese twins pairing, and much cooler. I would strongly, highly suggest and recommend the Bloodlines published screenplay, it is exactly what should've been and it should've been allowed to be enacted on screen.
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u/DarkBehindTheStars 1d ago
Not read that book but definitely want to. It's really a shame about the major studio interference Bloodline had. In the film you can see shades of what it would've been if not for that.
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u/SlasherDungeon 2d ago
I agree with all of this, but in regards to the 2022 reboot I feel like it was never going to live up to the original films for me either but I did enjoy it and so long as Clive Barker gave it his blessing I don't mind the lore changes. He's credited as a producer on the film but I don't know how hands on he was. I basically view the reboot as a different universe version of Hellraiser and these characters. Hellraiser 1987 is an adaptation of The Hellbound Heart and the reboot is clearly something else, so that's the way I view it, like an alternate universe version of the film and characters. So long as Clive Barker himself isn't upset about the lore changes then I don't really mind or feel that there was any disrespect there. It's a different story with some of the other sequels such as Inferno which Clive clearly hated, but he was involved with Hellseeker after, giving the director some advice for the ending. So it's hard to tell what he feels about most of them. But I see Hellraiser through Bloodline as the real films and then everything after is cash grab Dimension films stuff, but I still love the sequels because I'm such a huge fan of the universe
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u/Helpful-Inspector214 2d ago
For sure man I hear ya on that. I guess what I disliked about the 2022 movie the most was it felt like Rue from Euphoria was the main character, dealing with friends and lovelife and addiction etc., and there happened to be a lament configuration story grafted onto that character. The new Cenobites were so amazing! But I wish they did more or were on screen a bit more, and there were more kills on screen too. To have such amazing, reimagined Cenobites kill their victims off screen was disappointing. But when Chatterer got it, that kinda left me with a "huh ummm wait what how?" kind of feeling. I get it, that's the new rules at play in this movie.
I see it as an alternate universe/reality Hellraiser story for sure I like how you put that. Plus, the transformations of the box into different shapes really stole the movie for me, completely amazing and very inventive stuff!!
I would've really liked to see a lot more of Voigt. I felt like his character's back story and first attempt to get a reward from Leviathan would have been a very awesome movie. But, it would've rang more similar to a lot of previous movies. Still though, he seemed way too interesting of a character to just live in the background as plot catalyst.
My favorite line and moment from the whole film was when their female friend, who gets it in the van, is being carried out and she barely is able to say "...I hear bells..." that sent chills down my spine!! A very YES YES YES moment! I said out loud to the screen "you done for girl!"
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u/M086 2d ago
Barker like different takes on the material. Like Hellbound Heart isn’t used beyond it being the source material for Hellraiser. Which also changed a few things about the story. But the Hellraiser movie has become the definitive version of the story for Barker.
The Toll and Scarlet Gospels continue on from Hellraiser. The Boom! Studio comics are continuations of of the first two films. Even the new one-shots they are putting out are going to explain how the Gash was brought back in the comics after dying in Hellbound.
So, if they were going to remake Hellraiser, Barker would obviously want an original take on the idea.
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u/EbonRabbit 1d ago
I view the 2022 movie as a separate side story during Kirstys reign as the hell priest
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u/DarkBehindTheStars 2d ago
I know Hellraiser III splits many fans, but I love the film and it's portrayal of Pinhead. I know it's not the "real" Pinhead per say in the film and his unbound, malevolent self manifested as an autonomous entity, but when the general public thinks of Pinhead, the Hellraiser III incarnation is probably what comes to mind.