Hellraiser Deader

Dead and Deaderer: #TweetWithBGH Goes Up Against Hellraiser VII

Hellraiser: Deader needs no introduction--mostly because of its inscrutable, un-summarizable storyline (involving a journalist whose investigation into a Romanian death cult leads her, via dream sequences, flashbacks, nightmares, hallucinations, and a subway car full of sadomasochists, eventually to Pinhead), but also because we here at Bloody Good Horror sincerely hope that none of you ever watch it without the supervision of a crack team of snarky live-tweeters. Among the script’s immeasurable problems, there was the weird little feature of main character AMY KLEIN’S name being used, for no discernible reason, over and over again by everyone who greeted or referenced her:

He wasn’t joking.

Let’s get down to business...

So the movie opens with our heroine--her name escapes me, it was something like Abby Clydesdale--being shown some schlocky “found” snuff footage of a woman being shot in bed:

Which leads her to the case of a young dead woman...or is she?!? (she isn’t*) *we’re not sure

The script may have begun as someone’s original idea, but it didn’t take long before intrepid heroine Anna Karenina discovered a puzzlebox, entered a sordid sex hell train, and the nonsensical plotting typical to late-franchise Hellraiser reared its ugly head

Evan spotted the token “I’ve seen you in better movies” celebrity:

As the movie approaches its final act, Agnes Klingon wakes up with a knife sticking out of her back--if our twitter feed is any indication, film historians will be debating for centuries whether it really happened, was a dream sequence, or she was already dead. Regardless, she spends seriously ten minutes running around her bathroom and screaming, trying to get it out of her back, and then trying (for reasons that still escape us) to conceal her wound from the outside world and hide all of the blood.

In the movie’s final minutes, we began our now-traditional meta discussion about WTH is going on in any of these sequels: Pinhead shows up for an absurd bloody showdown overflowing with terrible CGI, pitiful catchphrases, and backstory about the main characters nobody asked for or cares about:

While any producer would have been proud to hang their hat on a finale as illustrious as Hellraiser: Deader, there are still two more to go in this franchise--so they’re bound to be good. Why would anyone keep making sequel after sequel like this if they weren’t? Join us to see for yourselves, next Sunday, when #TweetWithBGH takes on Hellraiser: Hellworld.

Spencer

Contributor

A loophole in his parents' "anti-scary movie, pro-literacy" policy meant that Spencer had read Stephen King's entire body of work by the time he was in middle school. He soon discovered the horror and B-movie offerings on late night cable TV and was hooked for life. He currently lives, works, and writes in North Carolina.