Review

It's 2127 and I guess Colonial Marines storm the Minos space station, arresting Dr Paul Merchant the designer of the station. Seems Merchant may have gone a little crazy, got the rest of the crew off the station and is planning some sort of climax that he demands the Marines allow him to finish. An Officer interrogates Merchant and is initially sceptical of Merchant's claim that he has created the station to trap Hell and plans to send a bunch of demons called Cenobites back to the pit forever. As the body count starts to mount the Officer is less sceptical and ends up aiding Merchant in his grandiose plan to thwart Pinhead in the depths of space.

During the interrogation we learn Merchant's ancestor Philip LeMarchand, a famous toymaker in 18th Century Paris, created the infamous puzzle box on consignment for Duc De L'Isle, a noted Satanist. De L'Isle used to box to open a gateway to Hell and summon the demon Angelique. LeMarchand learned his entire bloodline was cursed if he couldn't right the wrong he had caused, unfortunately plans to steal back the box and enact a design to close the portal to hell don't work out. In 1996 New York John Merchant is a successful architect who has designed a new building around the puzzle box. Angelique learns of John Merchant and immediately heads for New York, where she summons Pinhead, a few other Cenobites, and the family doggie. Things don't work out so well for anyone, including John Merchant and his family. Dr Merchant now hopes to enact the design that will close off the gateway to Hell once and for all but needs a little time, which may be in short supply as Pinhead and his cohorts rip through the Marines.

Generally horror franchises go into space to die and it looked like this was the outcome awaiting Bloodline. It did prove to be the last movie in the franchise to receive anything like a cinematic release, was the last movie to featuring Clive Baker in the Production credits, and also pretty much spelt the end of Director Kevin Yagher's career. So in essence we have something of a poisoned chalice with the fourth movie in the Hellraiser franchise, shockingly there have been five movies since the debacle Bloodline turned into. Dimension, proving once again to be of the Hollywood mold of not knowing their elbows from the arses when it comes to actually makign movies, disagreed with Yagher's structure for the movie leading to Yagher walking out and leaving the ubiquitous Alan Smithee as the credited Director. Dimension with a problematic movie called in the C team to finish off the unfilmed scenes and called in a new Writer to put it all together, which kind of shows in the end product. Dimension clearly had no idea what they were doing, and once again a Studio killed its own golden goose by messing with ingredients they had no understanding of. There are some real dumb people in Hollywood to be honest, and folk listen to their combine opinion when the Oscars are announced!

Dimension simply destroyed any relevance the franchise might have with no understanding of what they had purchased

Guess it's no surprise that the fourth movie is the worse of the franchise thus far, sequels tend to dimension in quality the further away they are from the original movie. While I thought overall the concept was worth exploring the execution left something to be desired. The movie simply proved too ambitious for the middle level budget Dimension threw at it and without a Director, once Kevin Yagher realised it was a disaster in the making, with a clear vision things are simply thrown at the screen hoping they'll stick. Unfortunately for Dimension rather than sticking any notions of the movie being a decent enough effort slide off onto the floor leaving what amounts to a poo stain.

Paris is reduced to three minor sets with Actors, when they can be bothered, murdering French accents in pretty much one of the more hilarious Satanist setups one can imagine. Which is surprisingly superior to New York, which apparently consists of old warehouses trying their best to look like modern Office buildings, and an awards dinner where everyone looks either over enthusiastic or bored silly. That leaves the space station, which I immediately dubbed "factory in Outer Space". They weren't even trying with these scenes that owed something of a debt to Alien, which apparently didn't extend to doing anything much with the sets. We don't get someone's spare bedroom acting as a control centre, that would have been cool, but this movie does have pretensions.

Gorehounds needn't worry this is a Hellraiser movie so naturally lashings of blood and gore are ladled onto the mess that is the plot. The movie title should be a dead, no pun intended, giveaway, Bloodline. So yeah decent enough body count to have you howling at the moon, and a couple of pretty unique demises that should have the blood thirsty excited. If this had of been just your run of the mill demon raising exercise in money making the flick would have earnt a lot more respect from the gorehounds. In case you are wondering, no I don't consider this segment horror fans, they don't get what the genre is about and should stick to Rob Zombie, he's about their speed.

I'm not even going to mention the acting; everyone just goes at it with more melodrama than you could fit into a week of daytime dramas. The various Directors simply served up an exercise in point and shoot. And the special effects range from good, creature effects, to downright silly in the props department, the Marine rifles.

While the movie did fill in some of the background we have been craving up to this stage, where the puzzle boxes came from, it never really got beyond a by the numbers effort to carve an audience out of the preceding franchise supporters. Angelique, the Princess of Hell, was a welcome addition to the Cenobite collector cards but from memory the character never really reappears in the rest of the franchise, something to keep an eye on as we delve into the second batch of Hellraiser movies.

I watched Hellraiser: Bloodline a couple of times for this review, but to be honest threw my hands in the air like I just didn't care when it came down to a third viewing. There's only so much of this movie one can take before one starts craving normal transmission. While I wasn't bored by the flick I was disappointed in the drop in quality from the previous movies, Dimension was clearly in budget slashing mode. Pretty much for the Hellraiser franchise the sharks are circling the tank with the fourth movie; I'm sort of hoping a latter movie may make up some lost ground with me though. No recommendation, Dimension seemingly went out of their way to destroy a franchise and pretty much achieved their goals with Hellraiser sinking into obscurity from this movie onwards. When will Studios learn to leave movie making to people who actually know what they are doing.