Kelly WandHellraiser: Hellseeker
August 16th 2006 06:58
No, I tried. I sat here long and hard and sought those glorious moments in cinema history that sprung from sequel hell. Friday the Thirteenth; The Final Chapter? Some have suggested it is a far superior film to the original. Then again, that wouldn’t have been too hard, surely. Halloween H2O? Some muttered about a renaissance but they were just kidding themselves. I mean, the fact that you didn’t fall asleep before the final reel is hardly justification for any lost masterpiece tag.
And that brings us to Hellraiser: Hellseeker. It is Sunday night and, rather than subject my damaged psyche to another dreary round of Australian Idol, I might as well slam in the DVD. This is number six in the series though numbers four and five have somehow managed to miss out on any kind of Australian distribution. It is normally hard for me to praise these poorly run companies but, for once, they may have been doing us a favour.
The good news is it takes some chances with the format but the bad news is these changes are dire. It is never scary or exciting. It is never much of anything. Tedium, rather than suspense, mounts. It plods lamely along from one dream like sequence to the next, begging to put out of it’s misery. Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
Is the protagonist insane? Is he dead and in hell? Is he slipping between realities? The trouble is that I didn’t give a shit and neither will you. I was sitting there begging for the plot threads to be resolved so our old mate Pinhead could break out his hook and chain collection and be done with it.
Well, if anyone deserves a good hooking and chaining, Dean Winters is probably your man. He offers up a screen presence that holds all the charisma of a week old bowl of corn flakes. He looks like he wanted to phone in his performance but found he’d lost the studio’s number. One hopes he is on drugs because then at least rehab can save him.
Watch for this man’s name in upcoming movie releases and, unless you have run out of sleeping tablets, boycott offending flicks on general principal. He acts like a man who read the script several times and still didn’t get it. Admittedly, when faced with a script of such total ineptitude, it is hard to shower all blame. Still, he could at least have fallen back on that old actor’s standard of demanding to know what his motivation was supposed to be.
Ashley Laurence, who appeared in the first three chapters, is completely wasted in a couple of scenes that maybe took two or three days to shoot. Her character bears no relation in tone to previous episodes. It is almost like they wrote a script and were surprised to find they could get her in for little more than union scale. (Life can be hard for aging scream queens.) So they changed some new character’s name accordingly and hoped no-one would notice.
Perhaps, however, Hellseekers greatest failing is it can’t get to grips with the wilful perversity of the first two instalments. At least they were good value if you needed to entertain the sado-masochistic goth freaks in your life. Hellseekers’ director, Rick Bota, is clearly convinced that women in lingerie and spike heels mark the height of perverse sexuality. Clearly, he didn’t pay attention to the original’s flayed sex, incest and Uncle Frank’s simple joy at being torn into a million tiny pieces. Maybe he’d just discovered his grand father’s porn stash and thought this was the way to go.
Initial retail on this stinker is around the thirty nine buck mark. My advice (if you must watch this thing) is rent don’t buy. Furthermore, wait until it gets to the two dollar weekly rental phase. Hard drugs or copious amounts of alcohol may enhance your viewing experience but I wouldn’t count on it.
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Comment by jon
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Comment by Sisi
Meanwhile, great post dude!
Comment by Bob Short
It won't just be Horror Movies at Sprocketholed so feel free to skip to something that will not induce pangs of fear!
Dear Sisi,
Thanks for tuning in. I'll be posting some more items this afternnon!
Bob