Pajiba

Hellraiser 2 was hilarious: "and to think...I hesitated!"

great stuff.

No love for Inferno with Craig Sheffer, TK? I thought it was pretty good. A bit more thoughtful take on the premise. Almost felt like a reboot with Pinhead pushed far into the background like the first movie. Inferno was the last one I saw. I don't think I'm missing that much by not continuing.

I really enjoyed the sequel. I don't think it was better than the original, but it took the series in a slightly different and enjoyable direction. As far as sequels go in general, it's one of the better ones.

I still say "I reccomend... amputation!" whenever anyone complains about that one of their extremities hurts.

I think I saw the third one, which sucked. And I think I saw the one that was in space. That also sucked. I sort of lost interest after that.

I used to have this plastic replica of the Box. I wonder where that is...

I have to say, though I'm hesitant to admit it, I really enjoyed Hellraiser:Deader, the sixth installment. I know, I know, Kari Wurher sucks, but still, it had some nice imagery and the storyline was such that it kind of brought you back to the feel of the first one. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't have said anything. I feel like you're all going to judge me now.

Inferno and Hellseeker were ass on a stick. Christ, Bloodine was better than those two piles of mung! The only decent (and I use that term very loosely) one of the straight-to-video Hellraiser shit-fests was Deader, because it actually felt like a Clive Barker story...and the Cenobites actually all show up at the end and tear shit up. Sure, it's just a bland repeat of the original, but...it's easily the "best" (again, loose, very loose) of a putrid lot.

Ugh! I had actually, successfully, repressed the memories of having watched "Hellseeker" until Craig reminded me...

Hellseeker followed a lot of the same ground, but also provided closure for Kirsty Cotton's story.

No. Just. Just, no! They took Kirsty Cotton and completely fucked up her whole arc. She wasn't like that in the original story, she was the good one, the only one who really deserved to survive and she really did! Sure the whole experience of the first and second movies might mess a person up, but to turn her into that? That's just disrespectful to the character.

It's like in Critters 4 where they took Ug the Bounty Hunter and made him into an evil, psychotic prick, instead of the lovable, bumbling comic relief... Actually, probably best if you forget I said anything about that particular series of movies.

While I thought Inferno was okay in some parts - the almost Lynchian way the story progresses and ends, and the focus being brought back to the human sinners, rather than the scary boogymen Cenobites - I had a hard time with the whole "engineer" leather daddy cowboy thing. I mean, in the novella, the Engineer was my favourite Cenobite, a kind of Dominatrix whose safe word was probably something like, "kill me harder!" In the films, the thing that hangs from the walls and chases Kirsty down the corridor and tries to grab the Lament Configuration at the end, that was the engineer. When did Pinhead get that promotion... and that outfit!

I have to say I didn't mind Hellraiser 3. I saw it on the big screen with my dad and despite the whole "new cenobites" crap, I thought it was a good update for the mythos for a new generation. I really didn't like Hellraiser 4 at first, but it sort of grew on me. Plus they do use a lot of the history that was actually developed by Barker that wasn't known to a lot of people at that time. Although these two films took creative control completely away from Barker, which I think is just rude, not to mention the reason we have all the shite sequels we have now.

Nine sequels? Really? Like TK, I've seen the original and seven sequels - I watched them all in the space of a week and live-tweeted my responses - by the end of the week, I was praying for the Cenobites to take me.