Hellraiser films

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Hellraiser stars Sean Chapman as Frank Cotton, Andrew Robinson as Larry Cotton, Clare Higgins as Julia Cotton, and Ashley Laurence as Kirsty Cotton. It also introduces an unnamed character dubbed Pinhead by fans, as his entire head is marked out in a grid with large pins inserted at the intersections. Pinhead is the lead Cenobite in the film and was played by Doug Bradley. It took six hours to put Doug Bradley into the Pinhead makeup.

The basic plot of the film revolves around a puzzle box which, when properly manipulated, summons the Cenobites, who take the user of the box away into their world of endless sensuality.

Frank Cotton uses the box, and it is already too late for Frank as he realizes that the Cenobites' idea of pleasure may not be that of mortals, and that he has doomed himself to an eternity of torture, rather than pleasure as humans understand it. His soul is possessed and his body reduced to a withered heart beneath the floorboards of his house, while his soul continues to endure the Cenobites' torments in their universe of pain.

Frank's brother Larry, as well as the rest of the Cotton family, moves into the house, and a drop of blood brings Frank back to life—partially. His heart beats again, and the bone and organs of his body return, but he lacks skin and flesh. Julia, who was once Frank's lover, takes pity on him and agrees to help restore him. She seduces men in bars, brings them up to the empty attic room where Frank hides, and kills them. Frank consumes their bodies, regenerating more of his own flesh each time.

Kirsty, Julia's stepdaughter, discovers what is going on, but too late to save her father, whose skin Frank takes and wears. Eventually, Kirsty uses the puzzle box to summon the Cenobites, and delivers Frank back into their tender mercies. As hundreds of hooks pierce and stretch his skin, Frank's last words on Earth are "Jesus wept."

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Doctor Channard (Kenneth Cranham) is sent a new patient, Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurance). As she lies in a psychiatric hospital, Kirsty is haunted by the sight of the unspeakable horror that destroyed her family. The only person who believes her story is a young, kind assistant of Doctor Channard, named Kyle MacRae (William Hope).

Now the nightmare is beginning again. The obsessive Doctor Channard has been searching for the Lament Configuration, the doorway to to the world of the Cenobites, for years. He hears of the blood stained mattress that Kirsty's murderous stepmother Julia Cotton (Clare Higgins) died on, and has it secretly brought to his home. Kirsty needs to destroy the mattress in order to rid the world of Julia, but Channard brings patients to his home and conducts grisly human sacrifices on the mattress in order to resurrect her.

Together, Channard and Julia unlock the secret of the Lament Configuration puzzle box and release the unlimited horrors and ultimate pleasures of the Cenobites and their perverse Order. For the second time, Kirsty journeys beyond the limits of the mortal realm into the Stygian corridors along with a gifted young girl named Tiffany (Imogen Boorman). There she must confront the Cenobites and the darkest desires of their nightmarish world to free her father's soul from eternal torment.

A major plot element in this movie establishes that, despite the series title, the world of the Cenobites is neither Hell nor the afterlife (this is also true in the original novella), but is instead another reality obliquely referred to as "the Labyrinth." This Barkeresque premise was quickly abandoned by the next sequel (Clive Barker left the franchise after this film), and after that the series followed a more traditional horror setup that treated the Cenobites as demons and the other world as Hell.

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Hell is about to be unleashed again. After the confrontation in Hellbound, the Cenobite Pinhead is trapped, along with the puzzle box, amongst the writhing figures and distorted faces etched into the surface of an intricately carved pillar. The pillar is bought by the rich and spoiled J.P. Monroe (Kevin Bernhardt), owner of a famous club called The Boiler Room.

An ambitious young television reporter, Joey Summerskill (Terry Farrell), slowly begins to learn about Pinhead and the mysterious puzzle box. She is introduced to the pain the box can bring when she views a teenage club-goer being ripped apart by the box's chains in a hospital emergency room. She tracks the box and a young woman named Terri (Paula Marshall) to The Boiler Room, from which Terri and her boyfriend had stolen the puzzle box.

Through video tape interviews with Kirsty Cotton recovered from the Channard Institute, Joey and Terri learn about the demonic Cenobites and the power of the Lament Configuration, the only means of sending Pinhead back into the Outer Darkness. J.P., meanwhile, feeds Pinhead blood from club members so he can be freed from the pillar. Once free, Pinhead is more dangerous than ever before, since he has been separated from his human self - a World War I British Army officer named Elliot Spenser - and thus has dropped what little morality and conscience he had left. Pinhead seeks to destroy the puzzle box so he need never return to Hell again. As time runs short, Joey must think of a plan to bring Pinhead and his newly-created Cenobites back to the realm of Pinhead's human self (who sacrifices himself to reunite with Pinhead and thus save the world), or else doom the mortal world to an eternity of pain and suffering.

The film introduces a few new Cenobites and has little in common with the first two Hellraiser films, except for a cameo by Ashley Laurence. Peter Atkins plays both Rick the Barman and his Cenobite alter ego Barbie.

Three songs were recorded by Motörhead for the film's soundtrack - "Hellraiser, "Hell on Earth" and (for the end credits) "Born To Raise Hell".

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Also known as Hellraiser IV: Bloodline Story. This film tells the story of the original creator of the Lament Configuration, a toymaker named Lemarchand, commissioned by a Duc de L'Isle, a wealthy Aristocrat, master of the dark arts who wished to open a gateway to Hell in order to enslave a demon. It presents the story of the later Lemarchand/Merchant bloodline and their unconscious bond with the Lament Configuration, a plot to create a new design, the Elysium Configuration, able to close the gateway opened by the first box and banish the Cenobites. It is considered by some to be a low-quality film, because it was "Alan Smitheed" when the film was edited without director Kevin Yagher's consent by Dimension Films producers. They called in director Joe Chappelle to re-shoot large amounts of material and the eventual film made very little narrative sense. The original film was more story-based with little Pinhead airtime until half way through the film. The version released by Dimension, was filled with gore that some felt was pointless, had an illogical plot with no narrative structure, and had too many gratuitous Pinhead scenes. Some fans disagree and feel that is arguably the best of the franchise after the original two, and commend its breadth in scale, as it swings from historical fantasy to modern-day horror to science-fiction, moving between three generations of Lemarchands (all played by the same actor with a different haircut). The sci-fi element of Bloodline is sometimes compared to Aliens, Pitch Black, the first Resident Evil movie, and (especially) Event Horizon (which has several embedded Hellraiser references in it.) The short historial macrabe segements of the film are reminiscent of Nosferatu-style classic horror, with vaguely Lovecraftian themes, as well as the "Faust" story and other general "Pact with the Devil" motifs, with an admixture of modern horror components perhaps inspired by Stephen King or Anne Rice.

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Also known as Hellraiser V: Inferno. Directed by Scott Derrickson. Released on DVD Region 1 on October 10, 2000. Runtime 99 minutes.

Hellraiser: Inferno is more of a psychological thriller take on the Hellraiser series. The plot is about an intelligent cop that lets greed and corruption completely destroy his life and all of the people in it.

The movie is a morality tale of sorts, depicting the questionable actions of the police detective main character (i.e.: taking drugs, having sex with a prostitute even though he is married, gambling, falsifying evidence, stealing, etc) and their impact upon the other characters in the movie (such as his framing of his partner in order to secure the partner's silence regarding the main character's frequenting the prostitute and his neglect of his family while engaging in the above-mentioned activities, etc).

By the end of the movie, there have been several mysterious murders of the other characters, and the main character has strange and revealing confrontation with Pinhead.

An interesting characteristic of this movie is the selective use of the gore factor. Many scenes are pull away shots where the moment of violence is only suggested, and not shown. In fact, the murder of the main character's mother is not shown at all, and merely suggested by horrible screams that gurgle as something awful is done (which we are left to speculate about the details of) and a huge amount of blood flowing under a locked door.

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Directed by Rick Bota. Released on DVD Region 1 on October 15th, 2002.

Dean Winters plays Trevor, who survives a car accident that apparently kills his wife Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence), when their car plunges off of a bridge into the river below. Trevor manages to escape with his life, but, even though police divers find both car doors open, there is no sign of Kirsty.

One month later, Trevor wakes up in a hospital and realizes that his wife is missing, but because of a head injury, his memory is uncertain and he cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality. Trevor finds himself the prime suspect in a murder case, and has two homicide detectives on his tail. Many strange events befall him, until the Cenobite Pinhead shows him reality. The film brings back Ashley Laurence as Kirsty Cotton, who appeared in first three Hellraiser installments.

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A female reporter for a London newspaper is sent to Bucharest to investigate an underground suicide cult who can bring back the dead. She is quickly drawn into their dark world and soon can see no way out other than to join them...

DVD Back Cover Blurb: Once again the dreaded Pinhead leads an army of the dead who come back to life with a bloodthirsty vengeance, in a riveting tale of good versus monstrous evil. Produced by legendary Hollywood Special Effects master Stan Winston, HELLRAISER: DEADER follows an undercover reporter (Kari Wuhrer, 'Prophecy: Uprising', 'Eight Legged Freaks') who becomes entangled with a deadly underground group responsible for malevolent resurrections of the dead, and any moment could be her last. With Pinhead in all his gory glory, the thrilling villain audiences love to fear delivers another hellish nightmare that no-one will ever forget.

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Also known as Hellraiser 8, was released on DVD on September 6, 2005. Directed by Rick Bota.

DVD SUMMARY Pinhead returns in the eighth Hellraiser film to terrorize five friends who are computer hackers that have opened a virtual Lament Configuration on a website called Hellworld.

Lance Henrickson plays "the Host". His son Adam had been a fan of all things to do with Hell and le Marchand, who killed himself after thinking he would be taken by the Cenobites.

The Host, angry at Adam's friends for not preventing his suicide, organises a Hellworld Party for all fans of the macabre, knowing that the five friends will come. He learns all about le Marchand and Hell and the Cenobite cult surrouding it, so that he can seem genuine and get his revenge.

This movie did not get as much of a positive reaction with the fans as part 7, because most of the Pinhead and Cenobite scenes were not "real" within the plotline, but rather part of a drug-induced hallucination.

But Pinhead and the troupe make an appearance at the end in an amazing slice-up scene.