Hellraiser: Bloodline

Episode 432, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: We’re on week three of horror. In space. In space.

Craig: Oh god.

Todd: For those of you who are just tuning in, this month we’re doing horror franchises that are not normally set in space, that decided for whatever reason to set an episode in space.

We did, um, we’ve got Jason X coming up, we did Critters 4, and had a lot of fun with Leprechaun 4, and now here we are with Hellraiser Bloodline. Which might as well be in space, because, uh, I’m not as familiar with the Hellraiser franchise as I think you are, but, uh, I feel like, even from the beginning, it’s been lots of blues and shadows and cold metal things and corridors.

Kind of. Very much so.

Craig: Yeah, dingy, kind of empty spaces, like industrial looking kind of spaces. Yeah, like the corridors of all the in space movies we’ve watched so far. Eh, kind of, yeah. I mean, like that’s, that’s what their hell layers kind of look like. They come out in the regular world too. I mean, I never thought of it as looking spacey in the previous movies, but the imagery doesn’t change all that much when you put it in space, I kind of get what you’re saying.

Todd: It kind of doesn’t know. I’m not. Like I said, I’m not as familiar with the Hellraiser franchise, and I really don’t have a good explanation for that. I think Pinhead is a super iconic character, just as much as Freddy or Michael Myers. People who haven’t seen the movie, they know who he is. They might not know all the details, but they’ve seen the face, they know he’s a horror icon.

I don’t know why. I haven’t really seen the movies, maybe it just, the appeal wasn’t really there. These movies always struck me as being very, very serious horror. They’re not jokey, they’re pretty brutal and violent. And I don’t mind that, obviously I like the brutal and violent stuff too, I like the serious stuff.

But as opposed to say, Friday the 13th or Freddy, they have their own mythos, they kind of follow their own tropes. I don’t, I mean, I guess the whole idea, now I’ve seen the first one. I’ve seen the first one, which we really enjoyed, and we did that here on this podcast, and just recently, two weeks ago, I sat down and saw the sequel because I never had and just wanted to do it.

And that movie was a special effects extravaganza. Reminded me a lot, almost like it was a bit trying to be a nightmare on Elm Street, where they were in this sort of other, this hellish world that they kept going in and out of, or these people’s personal hells or whatever. And it was very dreamlike to me.

And there’s just all this random imagery. And honestly, It was so messy that I kind of lost interest and I found that there was, the plot was just a nonsensical, it was just sort of this fever dream. So I didn’t even bother watching the third. And here we are watching the fourth one, which I understand is the last one to go to the theater.

And after this, all what? Six or so sequels? There’s a million of them. There’s a bunch, I don’t know. They all went direct to video, I think, after this. So this was the last, the last gasp before the theater, but the franchise obviously, it either has loads and loads of fans, so it continues to make money. Or this is another one of those children of the corn situations where whoever owns the rights to it has to keep making movies every few years or they lose it.

I’m not sure which that is. But yeah, we’re even getting a reboot, aren’t we? 

Craig: Already had it, yeah. Yeah, it already happened. And it was good. It was different. I don’t know. I liked it. It was a good movie standalone. I think I’ve seen them all except for there was one that I tried several times and I couldn’t get all the way through.

I think it was judgment. It was one of the later ones and it was a different style and the cinebites looked different. It was really weird imagery and I tried several times and I just couldn’t get through it. I finally gave up. I actually really liked to, I thought it was really ambitious. I also liked that they focused more on The woman villain, I don’t remember what her name was, but she was intended to be the franchise villain.

That Penn had just took off. And I thought that the ending was like crazy and ambitious. It sure was. Not that it looked incredible, but for the time it looked pretty darn good. For 

Todd: the eighties. Yeah. 80 special effects. It’s a, it’s a masterpiece really. It’s like matte paintings and there’s some computer effects in there.

There’s all kinds of crazy stuff. Yeah, 

Craig: three got a little bit more grimy. It was set in a nightclub. Pinhead was trapped in like this big column and this sleazy nightclub guy Had a bedroom in the back of his club and he had this column there and he kills somebody I think at first accidentally But the blood soaks in and then pinhead starts coming out, but it’s all like real kind of Grimy like street people and thugs and gangsters and stuff And then this one, which is a total turnaround.

And then there’s no need really to talk about any of them beyond this. They are on a spectrum of not very good to really bad. Really? Most of them were scripts that were not intended as Hellraiser scripts and they just wrote the Cenobites into them. And you can tell like, like Penhead just pops up like, okay, whatever.

Well, that is what he does. I’ve seen, I know, but it’s not even worth talking about there. I’ve seen them. Most of them. They’re, they’re not the worst things I’ve ever seen, but they’re varying levels of not that great. This one, however, I thought that I remembered not liking, and I think it’s just because.

Not just us, but people in general kind of joke about these in space entries and how like, you know, the franchise going down the toilet when they got to go to space, 

Todd: shake things up. 

Craig: Yeah. And the first couple of in space ones we’ve seen were not very good. And I remembered. Not thinking this one was very good, and I was pleasantly surprised!

Yeah! 

Todd: Honestly, it’s so weird because I watched this and I thought, oh, I’m into this. I like it. The plot is interesting. I, it’s no surprise that I went back and I read that this was intended to be kind of an anthology film where there would be these three separate stories, and there kind of really are. In a way, but they’re just a little more evenly connected than they were intended to be.

And it was also the last film, I think, to have Clive Barker’s direct involvement. And the director, Kevin Yeager, who is a special effects guy, so he was involved with a lot of special effects with some movies we’ve done in the past. He’s the creator of the Crypt Keeper, you know, from the, from the HBO series and that, so it’s interesting to see that he stepped into the director’s chair for this.

However, I had to look that up, because when the name came up on the screen that it was directed by Alan Smithy, I was like, Uh oh. Okay, there is a story behind this. That’s usually not good. Right. Alan Smithy is the Director’s Guild of America’s basically, um, pen name, their alias for anyone who doesn’t or can’t take credit for the movie they’re doing.

And so even sometimes people who are in the guild will direct a non union movie and they don’t want to get in trouble. So they put themselves down as Alan Smithy or simply no one person can take credit. So they throw that in and you know, it’s all about rules and who gets paid and things like that. But I guess Kevin Yeager just wanted to distance himself from this film because he ended up leaving.

Because he was so frustrated with the project, what, I don’t know, three quarters of the way through or something? And at least two other directors came in to shoot more scenes and kind of finish it up, and neither of them did enough work to really get credit as sole director on the film. So, it just went in as Alan Smithy.

And so, I guess the movie that we’re watching right now is not his original vision, and not what was originally planned. That happens a lot. 

Craig: Yeah, I read that, like, they added the framing device, which If they added the entire framing device, that would mean that they never went to space. So I don’t know.

Yeah, that can’t be totally true. Yeah, it seems to me like, I think that I read that it was intended to take place in chronological order. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: So you would start out, you would start out in the 1700s. You can tell this story chronologically if you want. They just decided to start it in space so that they could get Pinhead in there sooner.

Clip: Yeah. Because 

Craig: otherwise he wasn’t gonna show up until like 40 minutes into the movie. I don’t like production interference. Sometimes, they’re right. I understand the writer’s vision, and I really wish there was a director’s cut. Apparently, there’s something close to a director’s cut on YouTube. I don’t know if it’s fans cut it together or what, but they say it’s pretty close.

I haven’t watched it in enough time. I would be really interested to see that, because I would be really interested in knowing what his vision was. But at this time, I was going to see Penhead. Right. And if I had to wait 40 minutes I might be mad, so I get it, but I also understand why he would be frustrated.

Todd: And then you, it’s kind of one of those where you see him all at the end and it feels kind of cheap, like, like, like where we hardly saw the critters in that one movie or, or whatever. Yeah. So it kind of pinheads, you see him very briefly at the beginning and then his, his shadow is cast over the movie, so even though you don’t see him for a while.

Craig: That’s what the later ones are like, like he just kind of pops in and out barely, like he’s not really a big part of those movies. Is he a big part of any of the movies? I mean, even the first one. I thought he was a big part of this one. I thought this one he had 

Todd: tons of dialogue. I couldn’t believe how 

Craig: much like he monologues a lot.

Todd: Well, yeah, I guess the Hellraiser and correct me if I’m wrong, but this posits that hell is a world that is populated by. People who have jobs, right? Like, there’s a hierarchy, I guess you can get promoted. That sounds like hell to me, but, But, so Doug Bradley plays Pinhead, and then the Cenobites are like his minions, I suppose, and he’s like a priest of hell, and he’s in charge of the pleasure and pain division, I guess?

I don’t know. I, I mean, that’s just, that’s kind of my simplified idea. I don’t think it’s ever very clear, right? It’s just that there’s a puzzle box of which we get the origin story in this. And this is why I really enjoyed this one. And then when people who really, really, really feel like they’ve already experienced all the pleasures the world has had to offer and want more They can get a hold of this puzzle box, and when they solve it, it opens up a gateway to Hell, which brings Pinhead and the Cenobites in temporarily, who will then show them exactly what they want, which basically ends up in their destruction, and then they’re in Hell, and I guess can also become Cenobites themselves?

That seems to be a thing. And then somebody else has to close the door to hell using the puzzle box again to send them all back. Is that about right? I don’t know. 

Craig: I guess. It’s not even clear. I just don’t question it. Like you said before, it is it’s own thing. It is it’s own lore. Okay, I have a general concept of hell.

Alright, I get it. Terrible place. Bad people. So, you know, it turns out it’s, you know, it runs. Like, uh, society or something, or, and there, people have different jobs. I, that’s fine. I, how do I know? I hope I never find out. 

Todd: I hope you never find out too. Cause in the second one, I always just assumed pinhead, like if you’re in hell, you’re like a demon that’s always been there, but people get sort of transformed into Cenobites it’s in this movie.

And then, in the second one, I believe, one of the opening scenes is like the creation of Pinhead. So it seems like he actually used to be a human, and then he opened the puzzle box, and all that shit happened to him, and now he’s in charge of coming out when people run the puzzle box, so. Yes. Yeah. There we go.

But this is the origin story of the box itself. 

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you. Like, you know, Pinhead, they’re Cenobites. Like, that’s what they do. They come out and they shoot chains and hooks at you and they flay you 

Todd: and Hell has a lot of chains and hooks. There’s Yeah. It’s just filled with them.

Craig: That’s what they do. I don’t know why. 

Todd: Why ask why? I want to see a movie about the guy who makes all these chains. There’s got to be a lot of forgers and blacksmiths. It’s probably, they probably use them so 

Craig: much. Cause it’s probably really easy to use the same shot over and over again. That’s true. Save a little time and money.

Yeah, but this is, this is the origin, but like we said, it starts in space. It’s the space station Minos in 2027. And the first thing we see is. It’s a Terminator without the skin, just the, you know, metal part, sitting crisscross applesauce. Complete with red eyes. With. The puzzle box in front of them and then another spaceship arrives and the special effects in this movie are so by far in a Way better than the last movie that we’ve watched that I don’t even know if I can judge them objectively Oh, yeah, so much better than the crap that we’ve endured for the past two weeks 

Todd: I mean from the space scene alone, right?

I mean we saw that really shitty CGI The last, well, God, the Critters had the most horrible CGI. And then, what, Leprechaun 4 had recycled footage from some 1982 movie? That was terrible. So 

Craig: this looks great. Um. And there’s this guy on the spaceship and he uses AI gloves or like Nintendo power gloves or something to Remotely use that Terminator to open the puzzle box.

Todd: That’s smart. And 

Craig: so it’s really smart. I love it And then there’s a scene not as great CGI, but still fun of the robot hands like doing the puzzle box And it starts to open, and the soldiers who boarded the ship are approaching, and the box reconfigures, and the Terminator blows up, and Pinhead arrives.

Yeah. And you just hear the guy, whose name ends up being Philip, I think? He has several different names because he plays several different characters. Ha ha. But, uh, he’s his long wait demon for such a short game. And he says, now my curiosity is satisfied and it’s time for revenge. But, then the soldiers show up and point the gun at him and tell him to freeze or whatever.

And he’s like, no, but they’re here. 

Todd: And so they put him in a room and interrogate him. Yeah, and, and we get a little bit of the soldiers back and forth. So this is what happened. It’s so great. They just tell us straight out and that’s really helpful, right? So you’re telling me. That this guy who designed and created this ship went crazy, sent all the crew away, and now we have the most expensive ship in the galaxy, the most advanced ship in the galaxy with just this one guy at the helm.

And I guess that’s why they’re coming in. Their timing couldn’t be worse, I suppose. But we re we learned right off the bat that he, I think he tells them, right? That he built the ship. As a trap, a trap to catch hell and contain it. So, he is, uh, basically the last, the mo the latest of a long line of ancestors that were responsible for opening the gates to hell in the first place by creating this puzzle box, and he says, I’m gonna have to tell you the story.

And 

Craig: centuries ago, if anybody ever says, I’m going to have to tell you a story and they start centuries ago, I’m going to say, I’m going to stop you right there. I don’t have time for this. Right. You know, I rewrites and then with the reshoots, which really weren’t even reshoots, uh, Doug Bradley said it was all new material.

They called reshoots. I think that this backstory was one of the things that wasn’t in the original script that made its way in, but is in canon with the original book. I think this Demarchand in, you know, old y time France was the guy in the book who, uh Built the box. 

Todd: Yeah, what is it about old timey French people that make evil things?

This is uh, Isn’t Toulon the guy who made the puppets and the puppet master? Yeah, and there’s a at least I’m thinking about one or two other the doll maker was he French or was he German? I don’t remember from dolls. It seems like This is a common theme. You gotta watch out. French history is checkered.

Watch out for those French toy makers, people. They’re worse than Geppetto. I am a little 

Craig: wary of puzzle boxes, to be honest. 

Todd: You know, the best puzzle boxes in the world are made in Japan. They have a long history of making puzzle boxes and they are, they must be seen to believe. All made out of wood. Very, very complicated.

Some of them require like a hundred moves to finally get open. It’s really It’s really cool. I was into this for a while. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Nope. Just to get your watch out of it or something. I don’t know. You better store 

Craig: some valuables in there. No, I just, it doesn’t happen in this movie, but in several of these movies, a lot of time, like knives come out and like.

That’s that’s what makes yeah happens all the time in these movies, but anyway, so he tells the story about his great ancestor I don’t know 1725 who built the puzzle box and it was he was doing a job a commission for this Aristocrat or something? Delile? Did you notice? This was such a funny thing that I don’t think was really important at all But he kind of shows he’s a toy maker and so there’s toys all around and his wife’s there and she’s pregnant And he shows her the box and it like opens a little bit But then it just closes and she’s not very impressed and then they keep talking But did you notice that while they were talking the toys behind them were moving?

Yes, it freaked me out. It was a jump for me It was weird like that nothing like that ever happened again. I heard that in the original script. There were like evil clowns and So maybe that’s something that was 

Todd: left over. 

Craig: You 

Todd: get the impression. He’s a nice guy He was just commissioned to do this thing that turned out evil.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah All that other stuff was in the script. Maybe that would be like he himself was more I don’t even think the 

Craig: box is evil. I think he takes it to this guy. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: And this guy’s a weirdo, like this weird aristocrat and, you know, like pancake makeup and a powdered wig and Marquis de Sade type.

Yeah, yeah. And he’s got a little manservant, Jacques, played by Adam Scott. I totally forgot Adam Scott was in this movie! I was shocked. 

Todd: You know, honestly, I didn’t realize Adam Scott was as old as he is. And so I had to like I did a double take and I’m like, surely that’s not Adam Scott. It’s just a guy who looks like him.

And it turns out what, it’s one of his first roles. How old is he? He’s probably like our age, 

Craig: maybe a little younger. He must be. I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, he, he looks like a baby in this movie. He might be a little older than us. I don’t know. And these two guys, this, this weirdo and his manservant have this woman there.

I don’t know who she is or where she’s from. She says her name is Angelique. He sits her down at this nice dinner and it looks like maybe she’s going to be a concubine or, or something. But eventually the manservant ties her to the chair and she says something like, what’s that for? And he says, so you don’t bruise?

I, mmm. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I still don’t really know what that means. 

Todd: The, the, the manservant mentions that he’s France’s greatest magician. 

Craig: Okay, okay, the Delisle guy, right. So then she looks down at what was just a moment ago, a beautiful feast, and it’s all covered in like maggots and worms and stuff. And then, I don’t remember exactly what happens.

Todd: He, Adam, I’m just gonna call him, I think his name is Jacques, right? His manservant. Chokes the girl from behind and kills her, right? Mm hmm. And he says now we can begin. 

Craig: Yeah, here’s what I’m thinking Meanwhile, the the guy stayed behind after he delivered and like peered through the window so he saw some of this and he sees them like Flay her and then string her skin up with chains And then he sets the box down in front of her and he does this weird Incantation and the lights get all flashy and everything starts shaking And she reanimates, but here’s what I’m thinking.

I think it was that spell that he just did that made the box evil. I think he made it. So I don’t think, I don’t think, whatever his name is, Demarchant built an evil box. 

Todd: The evil wizard made it evil. But he did make it, I suppose, to the wizard’s specifications. So maybe I’m not saying that he made it evil.

Well, it was a commission, unless the wizard was just like, Make me a puzzle box. Any puzzle box. I don’t really care. That’s true. Like, there must be some requirements, right? Like, Hell needs four steps, and, you know, there must be a circle, and turn the circle, and lift the thing. I don’t know. Who knows? But yeah, you’re right.

Cause there are multiple, there is just a run, a throwaway line in this movie that mentions that later that there are multiple puzzle boxes. And that surprised me, I thought there was only one. But, apparently this woman later has, it is said that this demon woman Has had many many made in the past but none of them could like fully open the gates or something like that and that’s what She is in search of but that’s later.

That’s later. I I really liked this Bit with the reanimating of the skin because you don’t even see the whole thing at once necessarily But you see that this skin is definitely hanging over by those chains and hooks Then you get these close up shots of the skin kind of getting filled With a new body of sorts and it’s it’s a demon from hell right but it’s been contained in this body And it’s the rules of the genie, right?

You summon the demon, you get to control the demon. 

Craig: Unless, he adds, he says, unless you stand in hell’s way. Which seems like it would be pretty easy to do. 

Todd: Yeah. I mean, how do you know? You don’t know. You don’t know what hell has in mind for the particular situation. You want to go to McDonald’s, they want to go to Burger King.

You know, I mean, I don’t know. Don’t stand in hell’s 

Craig: way. All right. Philip, who saw all of this happen, this magic, he runs and talks to a doctor friend, and the doctor doesn’t believe him, but he’s like, okay, you know, should this be true? I guess you designed a box that lets demons out, so I guess you better design something that can destroy demons.

And he’s like, oh, yeah, I should do that. But then he doesn’t do that at all. Instead, 

Todd: or maybe he does, he designs a thing. Okay. Yeah. He doesn’t get to, I mean, he doesn’t get to, he has to steal the box to get it. I guess, I guess I never, I didn’t, he said he had to steal 

Craig: the box and I was like, why, like, what does he need it for?

What’s he going to do with it? I don’t know. 

Todd: Make another one or 

Craig: something. I guess, I don’t know. But anyway, he goes to steal the box and he goes in to find Delisle. Tied to a chair and tortured like bleeding seemingly dead and right behind that in an adjoining room Angeline is Banging Jacques. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: so I guess how did this work out?

I 

Todd: don’t 

Craig: know. So I did did did Jacques and Delisle both summon her so they’re Both in charge of her? I don’t really know. I had questions. Again, there were rewrites. It could be rewrites, because I do know that originally Adam Scott’s role was significantly smaller. And when they expanded Angelique’s role, they expanded his.

So, maybe it’s just a flaw in the writing. Who knows? 

Todd: Well, it seems like the idea, at least, at least the idea I got out of it, was that the older guy, the French magician had been partaking of the pleasures of hell, and I mean, and eventually it just kind of goes overboard, and that’s why he was, he had been stabbed, right, like his mouth had been cut, and he had kind of a big gruesome smile on his face, and he’s half alive, but Later, I see that she pulls a knife out of him, because as soon as she turns around and notices that the guy is there, she runs over and pulls the knife out of the magician and uses that knife, I think, to stab the Toymaker, right?

Craig: Yeah, I mean, Delile, we thought he was dead, but there was a jumpscare where he’s not. He, uh, grabs. But I guess then he dies after that, I don’t know. And Angelique at first, and I like her, I like this character, I like this actress, I really like this element of this movie, I wish I don’t remember, I don’t think she ever comes back, but I could be wrong about that.

She’s intrigued by the, the Toymaker. She’s intrigued that His hands were able to craft something like that, and she wants to play with him, but Jock is in charge of her, and he tells Lamarck, or whatever his name is, You made this thing that released hell, so your bloodline is cursed to the end of time.

And then Angelique stabs him, and he dies. His 

Todd: wife shows up. I know. It’s so stupid. What, was she tracking him? Did she also sneak into the mansion? It’s so silly. She just pokes around the corner and I guess they can’t quite see her, but he’s like in the doorway dying. My God,

Clip: she did not Stop. Gotta get you out of it. It’s too late.

Go back. Save yourself. 

Todd: Save the child. Later in the movie, it seems like Angelique is surprised that the bloodline has continued, right? So it’s a little self contradictory. Yes, 

Craig: yes. Well, did she know that he had a pregnant wife? See, that’s the thing. I guess 

Todd: she didn’t or else she wouldn’t have been surprised.

Or else, because later we come, what is it? 20. A hundred years later. Two hundred years later. Two hundred years later to 1996. Now we’re in modern day. We get the modern day story and we get the same actor playing, uh, John Merchant instead of Marshall. 

Craig: Yeah. The same actor plays this line in every timeline.

Todd: I love that. Yeah, I do too. I think it’s super fun. And it visually makes it clear what’s going on. And he’s an architect now. And so Angelique just. Happens to have a copy of like Architects Digest and when she picks it up and looks on the cover She sees this guy and that’s when she’s like, oh the bloodlines continued So she has to now have realized it for the first time.

Otherwise for the past 200 years She would have been tracking his ancestors down and right trying to get them to make more puzzle boxes 

Craig: see when you look at it too closely, the script is a mess and it has to be because of all of the changes because L’Emerchant or whatever never got The puzzle box back.

So how did it get out of her possession? And 

Todd: into the foundation of his building. Yeah. 

Craig: Oh, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. What was 

Todd: that? 

Craig: That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. Oh my God. Okay. Because he’s, you know, he’s winning an award. He’s famous. I don’t know. Like they tried to give him like imposter syndrome or something.

Who cares? He’s, he’s plagued by dreams. He’s dreaming of Angelique. Apparently she doesn’t know that. I guess because he dreams of her and then she’s surprised to find that he exists. So I guess, yeah, I guess it really is just dreams. I guess we need to explain. She asks Jock’s permission. No, she says, will you, can we go?

I want to see the Toymaker, and he’s like, no, I don’t want to. She said, okay, well then may I have your permission to go by myself? And he said, no, you can’t go. And she says, do you want to know why I want to go? And he says, no. And I knew right away what was going on. I knew I was like, the reason she wants to go is because that’s what hell wants her to do.

And she just trapped him because now he’s defied hell. And that’s exactly what happens. He’s surprised. He kind of tries to roll it back, but too late, too late. And she tortures and kills him. 

Todd: Yeah. This series, I think. I mean, again, I’ve only seen three, but especially this movie really relishes in body mutilation.

Craig: That’s a Clive Barker thing. He’s big into like 

Todd: BDSM, like big, 

Craig: or he was, I don’t know if he still is, but he, yeah. And I mean, that’s canon. Like it’s the, the book is very much like that. He’s Clive Barker is a very, very talented guy. And I don’t really know a much about what goes on in his life now. But he was very dark for a period.

I think both in his work and in his life. 

Todd: Oh yeah. I have a friend who met him. Oh yeah. Yeah. He was shooting some movie. It was like a documentary or something up in Canada. And they, he was with a production team and they went to his house and visited him. He said it was trippy. He said he had like. Oh, like a stable of manservants who were there, like, all shirtless, walking around and Oh gosh, that’s funny.

in a pool and everything like that, brought him into his room where he had these, this art. And at the time, he was, believe it or not, commissioned by Disney to help design a new Land for one of their theme parks. 

Craig: Yeah, 

Todd: and so he had these like mock ups of like he was working on some paintings and things like that 

Craig: Yeah, he’s a really talented artist Anyway, the next reveal is that at this big ceremony, which is in the lobby of the building that Merchant John Merchant has designed the entire interior of The building looks like the design of the puzzle box.

I mean, it basically just looks like a giant puzzle box with gears and symbols and 

Todd: which he’s presumably got gotten from dreams or whatever, 

Craig: I guess. I mean, like it’s a, it’s a little predictable, I guess at the same time. It looks really cool. Like I can’t imagine what building would want that. Weird 

Todd: shit in it.

Like for no reason, there’s like gears turning on the wall and this giant pattern just kind of shifting around. I mean, think about the cost of maintaining that in just a giant room, which I don’t know what that room was for, but, uh, but I mean, the impression I got at the time was this guy, because of his bloodline, because of his dreams or whatever, had.

Unknowingly created a giant puzzle box in the form of a building. Correct. And I think 

Craig: that it’s, I think that she knows that. I’m just going to call her Ange cause I can never remember her. Call her Angie. So, and she shows up, she shows up at this. at this ceremony and and he sees her and freaks out because he’s been dreaming about her and like Runs out of the party, but she apparently can sense or just inherently knows that this thing is a puzzle box so she Seduces some guy and leads him down to the basement random guy.

Yeah And she’s like, he’s like, where are we going? And she’s like, I’m just following my instinct or something like that. And she leads him down into this big basement room and tells him to close his eyes. And then she punches a hole in a column and pulls the cube out. So somehow the cube made its way.

And I know we already mentioned this, but it bears repeating the cube. Like did, did it magically travel there? Like How does this work? Is it, is it like the heart of the, because he doesn’t know about it. No, it makes no sense. Yeah. I’m, I’m willing to just suspend my disbelief. Fine. I’m still having fun. I don’t care.

Todd: Was there nothing in the original, like in the third movie that suggested that at the end of it, like the cube got like encased in. In cement, or buried, or anything like that? 

Craig: I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s, it’s possible, I suppose. Made its way to 

Todd: the foundation of this building? Yeah, it doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, this is the, by the way, This was the only part of the movie that I thought was a huge groaner. Now that we’re talking about it, we’re kind of looking a little deeper in the story. There are other holes in it, but none of them were either that obvious or that important to me, except this bit. Yeah.

This bit, I was like, Oh, come on. Where, why? Where? 

Craig: Still, but even with this, I really don’t care, because The, the movie is moving at a quick pace and interesting things are happening. Yeah. Because then as soon as she finds the box, she opens it or no, she has the guy open it, which was smart. 

Todd: I have such sights to show you, she says.

Craig: Yes. Yes. That’s wonderful. And he does open it and the chains come out and, and then there’s hell dogs and pinhead. That guy gets. Flayed and killed and he knows her and he greets her as princess and he said and she says something like It appears things have changed like she knows him too. Like she’s kind of walking around him like sizing him up 

Clip: Things seem to have changed Hell is more ordered since your time princess and much less amusing 

Todd: but that kind of makes sense because She probably doesn’t even know him because his Character was created like in the 30s or 20s or 40s or something.

Craig: It was during one of the world wars I’m not sure. Yeah, 

Todd: so like I mean she would probably instinctively know his role, right? But probably wouldn’t have met him. And so, you know, it’s like coming back to your You know, you’ve left your hometown, you haven’t been back for a while, then the, the guys come and visit you, and they’re like, Hey man, you never would believe, like, that shop is closed, and, you know, this guy died, and whatnot.

It’s been so long, it’s been 200 years since you’ve been back to hell, and that’s kind of what we have here. I’m telling you, hell is a society, just like, I mean, shit goes down, you know, they elect mayors, they get corrupt, you know, somebody comes in and cleans it up, the local donut shop closes. Well, see, you don’t 

Craig: see it in, you don’t see it in this one and you don’t see it in all the movies.

I don’t know that it’s ever really explained, but it’s a major part of the second one. And it’s a major part of the reboot. There’s also this Leviathan thing. In hell there’s this Leviathan and I kind of get the sense that it’s like in charge. 

Clip: Triangular 

Craig: thing. Floating in the air and they all like worship it or something.

I don’t know. It’s not very clear. It’s neat to look at though. But okay. So now because of the, the, the, you know, the hell door has opened or whatever. This room now is their little hell lair and it’s like all foggy and the hell dog is there and there’s other things that just kind of appear to make it scarier.

But this is, he says something weird. He’s like. This is not a room. This is a holocaust waiting to wet itself. He talks, I think, more in this movie than in any other movie. He talks a lot. 

Todd: He’s like the college professor of hell. He gives a lot of lectures. 

Craig: Yeah, apparently in 2175 or whatever this is, he’s wisened a lot and he’s less shy.

He’s more confident and he’ll just tell you what he thinks. He’s grown up in 200 years. Yeah. There are some good monologues, like long monologues at the end. She and he are kind of at odds. Like, they both want the same thing, I think, but they’re kind of at odds with each other. And they have different ways of going about things.

Her way is through temptation. She, she manipulates and gets what she wants through temptation. He thinks that’s stupid. Like, it’s just so much quicker to just torture people. Yeah. But she, he lets, he lets her try her thing. For a minute, but meanwhile, oh, well, so okay, so she’s gonna do her thing So she goes and visits John the the toy maker or whatever and she sees on his wall the design for the demon catcher that has Apparently been passed down for 200 years and he tells her he tells her that he’s working on it But with mirrors and lasers and if you can trap light then Something.

Todd: Yeah, I mean, he doesn’t really know what he’s working on, right? Like, I 

Craig: mean, that’s the funny thing, 

Todd: it’s like He doesn’t know there’s a puzzle, I mean, I don’t think so, he doesn’t know there’s a puzzle box that can open a gate to hell and this thing that he’s working on will actually close the gates of hell?

I don’t think? I don’t know, I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing. Well, it’s not a very clear design, it’s not super technical, 

Craig: it’s just, so I mean Well, yeah, it almost seems like he doesn’t even know what it is, cause she’s like, it called to you, John, we have great work to do. Okay, and so then, he has a sex dream about her, and then it cuts to Pinhead who’s just standing there and I, I, I don’t remember what he says, but it’s basically just like, I’m bored.

Let’s do some shit. Yeah. And then there’s this, this great twins scene. Oh my God. This scene is great. Like this scene alone, I think is for the price of admission and these guys, these, these identical twin actors are great. They’re 

Todd: just great. I honestly, okay, so earlier I said that the series is super self serious and there’s nothing jokey in it.

Alright, I’m sorry, this is a bit jokey. Ha 

Craig: ha ha! And in the other movies, not so much in this one, but in the other movies, Pinhead is quippy. Like, he quips like Freddy or Chucky, like little one liners. In the later ones? Well, definitely in later ones, but I thought even like in the first one, but I may be mistaken.

But anyway. 

Todd: Yeah, so then there’s these, these two twin security guards, David Schilke and Jimmy Schilke, are the actors, and I looked them up, I thought, oh, these, I mean, twins? In Hollywood? They must be in high demand? And they’re handsome? They are, they’ve only been in four movies. They were in Almost Dead before this, and they were in two movies after that, and that was about it, so that’s kind of a shame.

So, they end up getting transformed, and the two people who play their Cenobite versions are Also twins but not the same guy. Oh weird. Maybe they were just too charming to be Cenobites 

Craig: Yeah, maybe I don’t know. They’re kind of cute and bumbly, but they also have a cute relationship They’re scared because they’re like in hell lands under this building at one point They separate just for a second, but then they come back together and the one brothers like I’ll never leave you again You’ll you’ll always be by my side or something.

Mm hmm And then they walk into where pinhead and Angelique are arguing They interrupt their argument, and they’re like, Hold it right there! With their guns. Back it up against the wall! You heard him! Back it up! Don’t make us put some pain on you. 

Clip: Pain? How dare you use that word? He’s got pins in his head.

What you think of as pain, it’s only a shadow. Pain has a face. Allow me to show it to you. 

Craig: Ultimately, he walks up to them and he says, I smell your fear. It’s screaming, don’t separate me from my brother. He says something like, I would never do that. And then this contraption. Shows up on either side of them.

They’re standing next to each other and with hooks and drills It pulls their faces together and melds them into one thing and then it like twists their heads Around each it’s it’s wild. It’s weird. It’s a fun effect and it looks good. 

Todd: Yeah, it’s cool. I like it It’s you don’t get a real clear image of the whole thing at once You just get these impressions of what’s going on and I would I would have to say I think that’s even more effective And that’s what a lot of this stuff is, even in the first movie, I feel like you rarely see the whole thing from a distance being done, like the hooks and the people or the whatever.

But you see a lot of close ups of chains coming out and hooking into skin. And drill bits spinning and Yeah, it’s pretty gruesome and it really allows your mind to fill in a lot, and I think it’s pretty effective. I mean, sure, some of it probably has to do with budget and ability, but I mean, it really works as far as You know, being terrifying.

Craig: I like it. I like the visual style. Yeah, I really like the visual style. I do think it’s scary. It’s sort 

Todd: of like Saw ish type torture porn before we ever got that with Saw. 

Craig: Except not terribly graphic. I mean, there is some graphic stuff. There’s, you know, hooks and skin. There are brief moments of like people being flayed and stuff, but it doesn’t really linger.

On the gore a lot. 

Todd: Not too much, but I mean, some people, that’s worse, right? Like, you’ve got a needle thing. That’s true. Some of these close up things with the hooks in the skin are enough to make people really creep out, because it’s, it’s actually, like, something that could happen to you accidentally, or, you know, it’s, I mean, it’s just, like, a more realistic kind of gore, and instead of just, like, your head getting cut off, and things like that, so.

I think, I, I like this bit. I thought this was interesting. It’s a bit of a Just like you said, we’ll pinheads bored. We just needed to get another kill in here. So that’s what we do, but I really like the Cinematography of this movie. I like the aesthetic of this movie. I do too. The cinematography is great It’s nice to look at in this room in particular.

It’s kind of filled with mirrors. He even said says something about it. Like, she’s looking in a mirror, he’s looking in a mirror, Pinhead is, and then they come in and there are mirrors there and stuff and it’s really well planned out, it’s really well put together, it’s very dreamlike, I love it. There’s some nice side views of Pinhead as he’s talking to them, with the light kind of shining from behind him, kind of a close up on his head, we get a lot.

In the face of Pinhead in it. 

Craig: Yeah, this is one of the places where he monologues and he, cause she’s looking in the mirror and he says, I can see the true you and he talks about her true nature and then he says something about how he can smell the stench of what she really is or something. And it’s beautiful.

This is the part. Okay. So after they kill that guy, he’s like, see, he says, temptation is worthless. Suffering is the coin of the realm. In other words, I’m taking over. And he says, from what I hear, the worst kind of suffering is the loss of a child. So he’s going to go after John’s. Kid. This is the part of the movie where I felt like it got very choppy and it felt very pieced together because Things happen very quickly.

The next thing we see Angelique seducing John, but then immediately we’re back to His wife who I think was played by the the girl love interest from Nightmare on Elm Street 2. The girl kind of looks like Meryl Streep 

Todd: Yep. Yep. That’s her 

Craig: and and she’s in her home her apartment, whatever with Their son, their son, I don’t know the name of the actor, but the next year he would go on to play Danny in the 1997 Shining TV miniseries.

Oh. She goes down to do the laundry, leaves him there, hears a scream, runs up, he’s gone, she goes around the corner, looks down the stairs, he’s standing there, she says, come here. He says, I can’t, he won’t let me. Pinhead walks into frame. She says, what do you want? He says, live bait. Then the next thing you see is him holding them in the building.

And he leaves the box with them. And John And then John arrives at their house. Like, how did he even know that How did he know anything was even happening? The last time we saw him he was getting seduced by Angelique. Now he’s running into the house where they’re not even there. He’s obviously And I think that he’s calling for them, but he’s also calling for Angelique.

I There’s something missing here. Yeah, there’s definitely Probably as a result and and then like he’s there like why didn’t they just cut that entirely it doesn’t make any sense because He’s there for five seconds, and then he’s there at the building. Yeah 

Todd: That’s true, and his building is like a Corridors of chains and things it felt like a haunted house like John Halloween He’s going through by the way this guard dog That leaps out.

It’s like they took the chatterer centibite and made it a guard dog. That was creepy as f k. I thought that was really effective. I loved it. It was super good. It looked super scary and and there were some times when when that dog made me jump in this movie and 

Craig: yeah 

Todd: And 

Craig: there was one cgi effect. I don’t know how it would have looked on the big screen But on my tv screen, I actually watched this on an actual tv on my in the dark.

I treated myself. I wasn’t home There was one scene it’s later when we get back to space which we’re gonna do here real quick, but the dog is chasing One of the soldiers and it rounds a corner and it’s that classic thing where dogs don’t take corners well, and it kind of slams into the wall. I thought that looked great.

I thought it was fantastic. It act, it actually made that thing look organic and alive. Loved it. 

Todd: It’s weird. Cause I think Kevin Yeager, okay. He, well, he knows effects. He didn’t actually work on the effects of this movie. They hired out somebody else so that he could focus on directing, but, you know, you gotta have a guy, you know, who knows how this thing, how this stuff works, to know how to shoot it, and he shoots it really, really well, all this stuff.

Craig: To wrap up this part of the story, what Pinhead and Angelique both want, but I think for different reasons, this is unclear to me too, because I think she even says that, we both want the same thing, but for different reasons. Well, what? What reasons? I don’t, I don’t know either. Does he want to let people out, and she wants to go back in?

Is that what it is? Maybe? Either way, they want the door open. They want him to finish his work, finish this building. Pinhead says, the box, the original box was just a model, and because of it, we’ve just had to trickle in, sneak through the cracks like vermin, and you’re gonna open this up and we can flood this world.

So he pretends to work on it for a while, then The family just runs away. They split up! And he says, we’re all gonna split up! What the hell? He puts the kid on an elevator, tells the wife to run down the stairs, and then he goes back. This makes absolutely no sense. 

Todd: It’s really dumb. Yeah. 

Craig: The kid 

Todd: is little, like, five.

Max! He puts him on the elevator, hits the down button, says, You’re gonna be alright. No, you’re not. Absolutely. Why would you do this? Cause like the next shot we see is that elevator plummeting down at high speed, which goes to nothing, right? Like, I don’t think we saw the elevator again after 

Craig: that. No, we never see the elegate elevator again.

But the next time we see him, pinhead has him or Angelique has him one. I don’t remember. The husband goes back to confront pinhead. They have a little tete a tete. The wife gets chased by the dog, but grabs the box and says something like, Does the door work both ways? And she’s really relying on faith that it’s going to.

She points it at the hell dog and it jumps at her. We don’t really see what happens. It cuts to, I think, the dad running down to that big lobby. Are Angelique and Pinhead both there? One or both of them are there. With the kid and then I don’t know, is this just, 

Todd: is this just a showdown? It’s kind of a showdown.

Mom holds up the puzzle at this point. It’s like, what is this puzzle box anyway? Like, you know, used to have to like actually operate it to make a thing happen, but now she’s just using it like a laser gun, you know, she’s aiming at things and stuff like a ghost. Ghost trap. Yeah, ghost trap. Yeah, that’s exactly it.

Cause she tosses it out in the room and it’s pointed, I guess, in the right direction towards Angelique because then the chains shoot out of that at Angelique and drag her into the Hellgate. 

Craig: Yes. And him too, presumably. Yeah. Now, I don’t remember. I just watched it last night, but was there ever, there was a point where he tried to get the building machine going, but it failed.

I guess. Cause, like, it started to work or something, but then it failed. Anyway, then the wife showed up, saved the day, the end. Oh, well, no, not before the guy, John, gets beheaded. 

Todd: Yes! Oh, wow, that was shocking. He gets beheaded right in front of his family. 

Craig: That’s horrible. It surprised me, too. And that’s pretty much it.

So then we jump back to the space, and, and this, this, this final guy in the line is, He still doesn’t have the lady convinced, the lady that’s interrogating him. She doesn’t believe in hell, she only believes in logic. And he’s like, well, too bad, it believes in you and it’s gonna kill us all. So they, they still don’t believe him.

They put him in a cell with like laser bars and then they all get picked off. Real fast. 

Todd: This gets to be very standard horror movie where it’s like one at a time, these people who we really don’t know and we’ll never see again are wandering around the hallways and get lured into places and get killed.

Craig: Oh, it, it, it irritated me that they felt that they had to replay that whole. Scene from the beginning as though we had forgotten what happened in the beginning. Oh, right It’s a Terminator blowing up and stuff like yeah guys. We saw that. It was just an hour ago. Calm down but oh I forgot up until this point.

I think we had only seen pinhead But now when they trick one soldier they used Crying children’s voices to get a soldier to let them out of the vault that he had designed for them Yeah, and once they’re out we see that pinhead is not alone he still has his hell dog with him, but he also has the twins and As a Cenobite, and it took me a second to even realize that that was Angelique.

Angelique is a Cenobite now too. Her head has been flayed and like pulled down and pinned to her shoulders. He said he was inspired by a nun’s habit. And I wouldn’t have thought of that, but it does look like that and it looks great. 

Todd: Yeah, it looks great. She pulls a dude into a mirror, and that cuts him up, another dude’s taken out by the dog, like you said, that scene.

That was really good. And then, I think it was at this point, I mean, it should have been blatantly obvious, because he literally says it earlier, but I had kind of forgotten. I was like, Oh, his space station is a big puzzle box. So, his ancestor is completing this with the highest of tech, what John was trying to do with the big building.

So, basically, it’s just kind of a big chase, and I think they They corner another guy and the twins pull him apart, but then they get on either side of him. They pull 

Craig: themselves apart, like, they, they, they separate and they get on either side of him and I, I, I couldn’t tell if they were just like, crushing him between them or if he, like, they were melding 

Todd: with him.

I thought they were Twisting him into themselves. I don’t know. Yeah. Again, it’s very unclear, but it looks horrible. Ha ha ha. It looks like, not fun. Yeah. Rimmer is that chick who’s been interviewing him this whole time. And John tells Rimmer to go. The dog chases her. But she ends up locking it in a room. I guess that’s like a pressurization chamber or something like that.

Hits a button and it explodes. And then, I suppose what happens, cause this is quite unclear. But, Pinhead’s in a room and he’s talking to I don’t remember the name of the, of the newest incarnation of 

Craig: Merchant. 

Todd: Yeah. I don’t know. I think it’s Philip, but who cares? Philip? Yeah. He’s talking to Philip and, and he monologues about earth, 

Clip: the creatures that walk on its surface, always looking to the light, never seeing the untold oceans of darkness beyond.

There are more humans alive at this moment. And in all it’s pitiful history. The Garden of Eden. Garden 

Todd: of Flesh. But he’s just a hologram. It seems like he’s tricked. Pinhead at this point because he has he disappears and pinheads like what wait and Then the screen pops on there’s like a screen in the room because it’s you know space there’s screens everywhere And it turns out that Rimmer and Philip are in a ship I guess getting ready to escape and head back to earth, which is right 

Craig: there.

Like yeah, I didn’t realize Yeah, I actually, I didn’t even, it didn’t even occur to me that they were looking out a window at the earth. I thought they were looking at a screen that the earth was projected on. Oh, right, right. As I’m sure they were in real life. But yeah, anyway, so then he’s like, ha ha, I tricked you and you’re in the space trap and the space trap starts to fold in on itself and pinhead starts to disintegrate and it closes up into a big.

Space hell box. 

Todd: I love this idea, by the way, because it seems like tech just wasn’t there yet Until 2027 for somebody to be able to create a thing that would actually finally close off the store to hell and kill Essentially what’s supposed to be kill pinhead 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: And I think that was what this was supposed to be, right?

The last one. 

Craig: Yes, but I thought that it was brilliant because you can still keep making sequels. This is just the end. Yeah. You know, there are still hundreds of years from 1996 to 21. You can tell any kinds of stories you want to in those. Oh, yeah time periods. So I thought it was really smart. I mean ultimately that’s what they do The movies were pretty crappy, but that’s that is ultimately what they do.

I liked the final lines merchant says To pinhead welcome to oblivion and as he’s disintegrating away. He says Amen. I thought that was kind of cool. I, I’ve always kind of liked the dark irreverence of Pinhead and how he, not that I would mock Christianity, I’m a Christian, but I like that as a character, a demon from hell, he mocks.

Christianity and kind of spits in the face of it. Yeah, that’s a it’s dark and people don’t often Go there, but Clive Barker is not scared to go there. 

Todd: Yeah, he’s like ambivalent. It’s what you would imagine hell to be it’s sort of like a watered down version of the Of H. P. Lovecraft’s, uh, Cthulhu. They’re so big and they’re so powerful and they’re so incredible that, like, humans are so beneath them, it’s like an ant that they’re stepping on on the way, like, they don’t even think about them.

Craig: True, but they do, I think they do enjoy I think he enjoys toying with them. Oh, for sure. I think he’s, he, he’s looking forward to going back to Earth to Continue to torment people. So I think he gets off on it. I think they all get off on it. 

Todd: I agree with that because they were human once too, right? And this is all this pleasure and pain and like the pursuit of emotion and that’s a very human thing But ultimately it’s just very nihilistic.

Craig: Yeah, it is definitely and 

Todd: I like that. I mean, this is very unique in the In the horror movie canon, you know, 

Craig: yeah, it balances. Well, it’s it’s it’s darker than any of the other space movies that we’ve seen but There’s some humor. It’s not laugh out loud humor, but like even 

Todd: maybe dark humor 

Craig: Yeah, the the the way that the twins are killed that’s darkly humorous.

I mean their characters are Funny, and I think that they’re meant to be funny, so there’s there’s a little bit of humor injected here and there But I think it’s a good balance 

Todd: Maybe it’s because of all the weird things we pointed out where things just don’t quite make sense like people really dogged on this movie And didn’t like it when it came out I’m kind of at a loss as to why to be honest because I liked it I 

Craig: did too, and 

Todd: I thought except for those little things and every movies full of something like wait a minute Why did that happen or oh that didn’t make any sense this movie is no different, but ultimately Like, those are not important details.

That stuff’s not that important. Alright, so she finds the puzzle box. She could have found it anyway. They found a stupid way for her to find the puzzle box. Okay, fine. Right. But like, I thought the movie was coherent. It made sense from beginning to end. I knew exactly what was going on. I loved the through line.

This idea that the This guy redeems his family line because his ancestor from hundreds of years ago had unwittingly created this box, and tech finally caught up with him to be able to finally do it. I liked this whole thing. I, the characters were consistent throughout. This demon girl was cool. Their motivations were all very clear.

I didn’t have a problem with it at all. I thought it was ten times better. Then Hellraiser 2 that I saw, which I thought was a big jumbled mess. This wasn’t. I thought I liked it. I liked it too. I really did. I don’t know why people 

Craig: didn’t. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t really know why either. Because it was fun to watch and that’s the thing that I’m most invested in.

Like, if it’s fun to watch, I will forgive a lot. It was scary. I will, I’ll forgive inconsistencies. Yeah, it was, it had scary moments. It was, it, great special effects. Never boring. The acting was good. No, never boring. The acting was good. Yeah, I liked that one actor who played the same, you know, he didn’t play the same guy But he played different generations of the same family.

I thought he did a good job There was a little bit of differentiation in each of those characters. I really liked the actress who played Angelique Doug Bradley’s great I would recommend this movie. It’s by far in a way the best one we’ve seen so far I’m really excited to talk about Jason X with you. I think that you’re gonna think it’s a lot of fun But, uh, I guess time will tell.

Todd: I’m looking forward to it being a very different kind of movie. And that’s why we chose this one this week. We wanted to break things up in tone. And I think we succeeded in that. I think so too. Someday we’re going to write a book about unfairly maligned horror movies, and I think this is going to be one on the list.

Craig: Yeah, I think it should be. 

Todd: Well thank you guys so much for joining us for this month of In Space Movies. We got one more coming your way next week, Jason X, as we already said. So if you’re looking forward to that, please subscribe to us so that you don’t miss out on it. Also let your friends know what we’re doing and forward this to a horror fan.

Friend who you think would also be tickled. You can find us just by googling two guys in a chainsaw podcast. Go to chainsaw horror.com. Leave us a message, sign up for our weekly newsletter there, and, uh, think about joining our Patreon for just five bucks a month. We are releasing Mini sos. We have. book club behind the scenes.

We have unedited versions of our podcast, little mini reviews and lots of other stuff. So if that interests you at all, head over to patreon. com slash chainsaw podcast to get a little slice of that action until next time. I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.