GOOD GIRLS GO TO HELL
(BAD GIRLS STAY THERE!)
"You see, they changed the
rules. I'm not just 'The Wicked Stepmother,' now I'm also 'The
Evil Queen.' So go ahead -- take your best shot, Snow
White!"
- Julia (Claire Higgins), just prior to cold-cocking Kirsty (Ashley
Laurence), HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II
(no images this week -- sorry!)
Okay, hotshot, pop quiz. What do Frankenstein's Monster, Mad Max, George Romero's zombies, and Pinhead the Cenobite have in common? (Aside from being fantasy/horror icons, I mean.) Give up? They all appeared in sequels that were the equal of -- and often, superior to -- of the original. HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II (1988) -- despite the reduced input of HELLRAISER auteur Clive Barker -- ups the first film's ante by being weirder, sicker, and more imaginative at every step of the way.
After a feverish pre-title reprise of H1's climax (evil Uncle Frank's shredding at the hands of the the Cenobites, stepmother Julia's hook-death from the Lament Configuration puzzle box, and Kirsty's edge-of-hysteria banishment of the Cenobites), we find Kirsty recovering from her ordeal in a mental hospital. The hospital's founder and resident brain-surgery whiz, Dr. Chanard (Kenneth Cranham), takes a personal interest in Kirsty's case, as does his young assistant Kyle (William Hope).
But while Kyle is merely angling to be this flick's version of "Kirsty's boyfriend," Chanard is working on a much darker agenda: he's been a longtime student of the Lament Configuration's secrets. With the help of the mattress Julia died on, a psychotic inmate convinced he's covered with maggots, and a handy straight razor, Chanard manages to bring the skinned Julia back from Hell. (I'll just add that the scene is a nasty one, and gorehounds should go out of their way to get the unrated video version of HELLBOUND for the full effect.) Meanwhile, Kirsty has a vision of her equally skinless father writing "HELP ME, I AM IN HELL" in blood on the wall of her hospital room, and sets out to rescue him. (You Nine Inch Nails fans oughtta recognize that line: it's the second instrumental track on the Broken EP, and not the first time Trent's quoted Barker in his music...)
With Julia back in full bloom, Chanard unleashes his trump card: an autistic young patient named Tiffany (Imogen Boorman) who does nothing but solve puzzles all day. Chanard correctly bets that Tiffany can crack the puzzle box that opens the gates of Hell and summons the Cenobites. Amazingly, Tiffany comes to no harm at the hands of Pinhead and Co.'s hooks and chains ("It is not hands that summon us," intones the P-man, "it is desire!"), and she, Kirsty, Chanard, and Julia, separately and together, plunge into the musty, hallucinogenic maze of the Underworld and its master -- the Lord Leviathan, a Godzilla-sized Lament Configuration. Along the way, skin is shed, suppressed traumas revealed, and we even find out how to make -- and un-make! -- a Cenobite.
Unlike H1, Ashley Laurence gets full protagonist status here, and her grim, humorless Kirsty -- fueled by an emotional cocktail of panic, righteous fury, and courage -- races through the film in a frantic attempt to rescue her father and shut down Julia and Pinhead once and for all. Doug Bradley's Pinhead, still aristocratic and dangerous, actually gets even more shadings to his character, as we see his Cenobitic conversion early in the film. And Cranham's Dr. Chanard, despite his wicked leanings, is right alongside the likes of Ian Holm or Denholm Elliot as the epitome of British civility.
For my money, HELLBOUND should have ended the series; HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH, as previously discussed, turned Pinhead into another Freddy Kruger clone and offered us Ashley Laurence fans an insultingly brief on-videotape cameo. (And while I'll eventually catch HELLRAISER: BLOODLINES, the fact that its director disavowed the final film with an "Alan Smithee" credit is not encouraging in the least!) But the first two HELLRAISER movies, back-to-back, represent one of the last truly original horror universes in recent years.
Thanks, Clive, for dreaming it up.
Thanks, Doug, for acting it out.
And thanks, Ashley, for screaming your head off at all the right points -- and keeping your head when it mattered.
"What's your pleasure, sport?" You might find it here:
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