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| 18th century toymaker Philip LeMarchand (Bruce Ramsay) completes his masterpiece. He'll soon wish he hadn't. |
Release Date: Mar. 8, 1996. Running Time: 85 minutes. Screenplay by: Peter Atkins. Directed by: Alan Smithee (Kevin Yagher; Joe Chappelle - reshoots; Rand Ravich - reshoots). Produced by: Nancy Rae Stone.
THE PLOT:
In 1796, toymaker Philip LeMarchand (Bruce Ramsay) designs the Lament Configuration. It's a special commission for Duc de L'Isle (Mickey Cottrell), an aristocrat deeply into the Occult. LeMarchand delivers the box, only to watch as his creation is used to summon the demon Angelique (Valentina Vargas). Horrified, Philip tries to steal the box back - only to become a victim of Angelique's nonexistent mercies.
In present day New York, his descendant, John Merchant, is a celebrated architect. His newest creation is a building that uses designs from his dreams - the same designs utilized in the puzzle box. Angelique is drawn to both him and his building. She retrieves the puzzle box that had been encased in cement, and she uses it to summon Pinhead. Both demons recognize in Merchant's work the potential for a permanent gateway between their dimension and reality.
Finally, in 2127, it falls to Dr. Paul Merchant, last of the LeMarchand bloodline, to a put an end to all this. Merchant has designed the space station Minos. The station is actually a trap. Its purpose? To lure Pinhead and Angelique out, in order to destroy them once and for all!
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| Angelique (Valentina Vargas) attempts to seduce John Merchant. |
CHARACTERS:
The LeMarchands: The lead role in Bloodline is fairly demanding as low-budget horror roles go. We see three generations of LeMarchands/Merchants, requiring the actor to create three distinct people while at the same time giving a sense of a single, unified presence. Bruce Ramsay is not a bad actor, as a glance at his filmography should show, but he is not up to this challenge. There's little in the performance that distinguishes the three generations, and Ramsay's performance often verges on the robotic. The result is a void where the center of the picture should be.
Angelique: Valentina Vargas's voice was dubbed, but that doesn't diminish her physical performance. The ill-fated peasant girl of her first scene is completely different in posture, expression, and demeanor from the demon princess of the rest of the film. Angelique summons Pinhead to further hell's interests, only to find her position weakened by his presence. Deleted scenes make clear that she even keeps secrets from him, hoping to regain dominance by using John Merchant - though this thread is so pared back in the theatrical release that the few remaining John/Angelique moments don't really seem to come from anywhere or lead to anything.
Bobbi Merchant: Horror movie veteran Kim Myers plays John's wife. Bobbi is concerned about her husband's nightmares, urging him to see someone. The middle portion of the present-day strand relegates her mainly to just "worried wife and mother." Still, the last bit of her story allows her to do some demon fighting, banishing monsters with the puzzle box as she tries to protect her family.
Duc De L'Isle: The depraved aristocrat who commissions the Lament Configuration and imbues it with its demonic purpose. In just three scenes, actor Mickey Cottrell makes him the movie's most memorable figure. He's creepier than any demon as he grins and congratulates LeMarchand on his punctuality in making his delivery. "As precise as your pieces, as timely as your toys." Every aspect of him screams of depravity, from his heavily caked-on makeup to his exaggerated facial expressions to the almost sing-song intonations of his voice.
Naturally, this film relegates him to little more than a cameo... a consequence of production interference, which turned out to be this movie's biggest problem.
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| Pinhead has a bad day. And, despite Doug Bradley's best efforts, a bad film as well. |
PINHEAD: OVERUSED, AND USED BADLY:
Doug Bradley is as good as ever, but at this point the pincushioned one is getting a bit... dare I say, boring? A large part of the problem is the last two movies' shift in the character's portrayal.
In the first two films, he was a powerful presence who was little seen. He was in only eight minutes of the original Hellraiser, and he wasn't in much more of Hellbound. He also had his own set of ethics, as warped as they were: He abided by a strict set of rules, refusing to punish the innocent. "It is not hands that call us. It is desire!" He might have been the figure of horror... but it was the humans who were the true monsters.
Well, forget about that. As in the third film, Pinhead is reduced to a bloodthirsty slasher. The closest this film comes to acknowledging his prior characterization is when he tells Angelique that hell is more ordered under him. Despite that claim, there's no indication that he's following any rules here. Most of his victims haven't opened the puzzle box, nor are they guilty of any dark deeds or desires that demand demonic attention. Bloodline's Pinhead is simply a sadist who enjoys torturing people.
He still gets a few good lines. I particularly enjoyed his speech near the end, as he looks out at the Earth and ruminates: "There are more humans alive at this moment than in all (Earth)'s pitiful history." But such moments are like dying echoes of the early titles' remote-but-fascinating figure. This Pinhead is a completely different character: Freddy Krueger, with less sense of humor but a lot more eloquence.
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| Duc D'Lisle (Mickey Cottrell) and his assistant, Jacques (Adam Scott). The Duc's role was meant to be much larger. |
THE BOWDLERIZATION OF HELLRAISER BLOODLINE:
Peter Atkins' original script has since been published, revealing the movie the filmmakers actually wanted to bring to life. The present-day segment is largely recognizable, but the historical segment was gutted. The 18th century segment was much longer in general than in the finished film, with a full subplot in which Angelique seduced LeMarchand into working with her. De L'Isle, the grotesque aristocrat who commissioned the box, was written to have a substantial role.
There was one big problem, and it has a name: Bob Weinstein. He wanted to get to Pinhead sooner, and he probably decided that middle-aged French people in wigs were boring. Thus, the historical segment was chopped down to around fifteen minutes, with many key scenes never even filmed.
This was a terrible decision. Even as filmed, the 18th century storyline is easily the movie's most interesting one. It's the only part with original characters who make a strong impression, and it even has some pretty decent atmosphere.
More significantly, the removal of scenes between LeMarchand and Angelique has a knock-on effect on the rest of the movie. In the present day, Angelique tries to draw on her past connection with LeMarchand as she tempts John Merchant. The problem is... what past connection? The scenes creating a bond were cut - probably never even filmed - leaving us to wonder exactly why she believes she should have any hold on him!
Per Atkins, the budget kept being reduced and cuts kept being demanded in a cycle that sounds remarkably similar to the 1980s saga of Cannon Films and Superman IV. Atkins finally quit the production, something he discussed in an interview with the website Bloody Disgusting: "The scenes we were losing were what made the movie good, or potentially good... I can't stop the movie going up in flames, but I can certainly refuse to strike the first match."
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| Pinhead and Angelique vie for power. Another thread cut to almost nothing, but at least this scene remains a good one. |
A VERY RUSHED PAST AND PRESENT:
Despite everything, the first two Acts of Hellraiser: Bloodline almost work. Angelique is an effective villain from the start. Once Pinhead enters the story, she finds herself in a position of weakness for what may be the first time in her very long existence. Her maneuvers against Pinhead have been mostly cut, leaving the strand weakened. Even so, her attempts at self-preservation, combined with the very good performance of Valentina Vargas, lend an interesting extra level to this part of the story.
Even during the first two Acts, though, it all feels so rushed! Angelique plays the temptress to John... but since this is reduced to a mere two scenes, there's little sense of tension or desire. Also, because so many scenes were cut, you'd have to hunt down the workprint cut or read the script to get more than the vaguest sense of her goals. Never mind John's goals, by the way; he doesn't really have any, which has the effect of making the villainous Angelique feel like the real main character!
Finally, because this subplot is so reduced, it renders laughable Pinhead's complaint that he's losing patience with her. In the released film, this statement comes all of four minutes after his awakening. For someone who boasts, "I am forever," he sure seems to have a short attention span.
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| Dr. Paul Merchant's space station. Given the age and the budget, the effects are actually pretty decent. |
A JUMBLED MESS OF A FUTURE:
Though the problems, particularly the rushed pace, are apparent in the first two Acts, the story remains more or less on track... Until the future segment, when it all falls apart.
The space station is the setting for the last twenty minutes, and this final Act is a jumbled mess. The characters have no individual personalities, making their status as Demon Fodder painfully clear, and it all descends into a mind-numbing morass of "activity," in which even the gore is boring.
The workprint version (now available on the Arrow Video release) offers a better, if still flawed, version. In this cut, Paul is introduced shaving his head, ritual-like, then praying with the holographic image of a priest before putting his plan into action. I don't know why this was removed. Even with the reshuffling that made the space station "bookends," the head shaving would have made for a visually arresting opening. The workprint also includes a payoff scene between Paul, the last LeMarchand, and Angelique. Without this scene, the theatrical cut reduces the previously prominent Angelique to little more than an extra in the final Act.
That said, even in the workprint - heck, even in Atkins' script! - the problems of weak characters and no dramatic build plague the "future" segment. If you want an effective "Hellraiser in space," then Paul W. S. Anderson's Event Horizon is probably the closest you're going to get.
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| A desperate Angelique holds John's son hostage. |
OVERALL:
Hellraiser: Bloodline was theatrically released with a running time of 84 minutes, shorter than even the direct-to-video entries that followed and certainly far too short for such an ambitious story with a such a large scope. By this point, director Kevin Yagher had also quit, with new footage shot by Joe Chappelle (yes, the same Joe Chappelle who all but removed Donald Pleasance from the theatrical cut of Halloween 6). The final directing credit went to the infamous DGA pseudonym, Alan Smithee.
For all the problems, I actually don't hate this movie. Even in its mangled form, I find Bloodline more interesting than Hell on Eath. It's less successful at delivering what it attempts... but at the same time, it attempts a whole lot more. It's generally quite well shot, and it delivers several strong images. Its tone is more appropriate to a Hellraiser film, and - at least until the last twenty minutes - there's the persistent blurry outline of a really good movie trying to escape from this mess.
Is it a failure? Yes. But at least it's an interesting failure. It's just a shame it was never allowed to realize its potential.
Overall Rating: 5/10.
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