The Scarlet Gospels - What Started in Hell Will End on the Bookshelf

Two more days to Halloween
Halloween
Halloween
Two more days to Halloween
Silve–wait. What’s that?

The sponsor’s check bounced?

Okay. Nevermind.

Welcome back to the Third Row, where we’re coming into the home stretch on the winding road through the labyrinth that is Hellraiser.

The series has already had quite a journey to this point. Four theatrical features and another six straight to video. During this period, the movies and their original creator veered off and went their separate ways.

Mostly, anyway.

In the aftermath of the chaotic shoot for Bloodline, Barker started turning over the idea to his own end for the character of Pinhead. Over the course of a decade and change, he worked on a novel that would serve as his final word on the character, even as Miramax kept finding increasingly more tenuous forms of torment for the Cenobite to engage in.

The finished product of his efforts is the 2015 novel The Scarlet Gospels - his final word on the Cenobites and the first prose he had written for them since The Hellbound Heart. Stories by other authors have appeared over the years, including the novella The Toll that is considered a prequel to this. I considered adding it, but figured the plate was full enough as it is. 

In an interesting turn, this also marked Barker’s send-off to another of his characters, serving as the final story for his occult detective Harry D’Amour (who most may recognize from the movie Lord of Illusions, an adaptation of the first D'Amour story, The Last Illusion.)

Barker went through a lot of changes developing this novel. How much of what he originally planned vs what made it to print, I’ve not been able to verify, so I will admit, some of my read here is purely speculative. After seeing the arc the movies took during the period that this was being written, it’s hard not to feel like Barker was venting frustrations with seeing what his creation had become in the hands of others.

From the first chapter, one can see this is specifically his response to the cinematic incarnation of his character. When first introduced in The Hellbound Heart, the Cenobite was described differently - the nails in their head were golden with jeweled heads and they spoke in a voice Barker describes as breathy and like an excited teenage girl. When the character first appears in The Scarlet Gospels (where Barker’s narrative calls him The Hell Priest), the nails are now iron and the voice described is more in line with Doug Bradley’s. In text, this is chalked up to hearsay and apocrypha that incorporates the backstory of movies II and III, implying that Cenobites are effectively occupying human hosts until they wear those bodies out. It’s never confirmed, but that is the line used to justify the shift in appearance. Further, the fan nickname of ‘Pinhead’ is treated as derisive in the setting (Barker has gone on record as saying he wasn’t fond of it), to the point where a character calling him that to his face early on proves to be a most painful mistake.

Before I go on, I should say a warning as a courtesy. Prior to this entry, I’ve kept plot details somewhat vague to avoid spoilers. For what I’m touching on in this book, I’m gonna need to go a bit more deteailed, so consider this your warning. If you don’t want this book spoiled, turn around and wait outside. There’s one more entry waiting for you at the end of the month, but you’re going to want to sit this one out.

We good?

Okay! Moving on!

If the change in physical description wasn’t enough to say Barker is commenting on the films, the story makes it more distinct - we learn early on that the Hell Priest has been breaking from the purposes of his order and researching various sorts of magic. His reasons? He has been plotting in secret to wage war on Hell itself - to tear down the entire organization and rebuild it in his image.

His plans near completion, and he lacks only one thing to complete what he sees as his triumph - someone worthy to witness (and, he hopes, chronicle) his deeds. Enter D’Amour, who reluctantly chases the Priest into Hell, not because he wants the job, but to save a friend who has been taken hostage.

While D’Amour and his team are an active part of the story - and as a pleasant surprise, this has me wanting to read the rest of the works Barker has written for this character - this is ultimately about the Hell Priest. Harry and co travel in his wake, clocking the devastation the Priest’s rebellion has wrought. Where past Barker tales of the Cenobites focused on the human darkness with Hell acting in response to this, here he reads more like what the films became as his influence eased off - acting not in service of a larger order, but for the Priest’s personal desires.

Then there’s where those ambitions lead. Prior to this point, I was half-entertaining the meta read of this. Then I got to the Priest’s end game, and it really strengthened the sense that this was Barker's response to a series that, as he was writing this, just slid further and further away from the world he crafted.

That end game? Lucifer himself.

From early on, Barker establishes Lucifer as a mystery. He is still recognized as the authority in Hell, but no one has seen him in ages. His whereabouts are unknown, but he is still highly regarded by the current order of demons that populate the realm. A feeling that doubtless smacks a bit of the feeling I’m sure many creators experience when they see a studio speak of their name in lofty tones while churning out creations that seem further and further from their original vision.

As the old order of Hell is torn down around him, the Priest keeps his last goal close to his carefully mutilated chest - he seeks what is regarded to be Lucifer’s last stronghold. What he finds on confronting that great creator of all he has laid waste to? A corpse.

Sort of.

Again, if one takes The Scarlet Gospels as meta commentary, Barker is framing himself as Lucifer - a tired being, worn out from being cast down who just wants to not be a part of the operation anymore. In text, this comes as, more than anything, the fallen angel wants to die, but is cursed not to. When the Priest finds him, he has constructed an apparatus that allows him to get as close as he conceivably can to non-existence, impaled and inert upon his throne.

Seeking to supplant his creator, the Priest rips the suicide apparatus to pieces and sets out to take Lucifer’s armor for his own, hacking and carving away at his own form to fit the new role (again, very hard not to read the commentary.) Having taken Lucifer’s armor, and armed with magic, the Priest is on the verge of becoming the new ruler of Hell. The cities are in ruins, the generals dead, and he is toppling the last resistance as the scattered armies pursue him into the stronghold.

Except for the part where Lucifer isn’t actually dead.

Not only that, he is PISSED.

The reason Lucifer is so angry? He just wanted to rest. He just wanted to not exist. He didn’t want to have to deal with the pain of his exile and this was the closest out he could manage.

And his creations couldn’t even allow him that.

The climax of the book follows a duel to the death between Lucifer and his rebellious creation, with each brutally tearing into the other in a battle that plays hard to Barker’s twin tastes of fantasy and horror. It’s also a sequence so fantastical I can almost imagine him working it thinking ‘Try and make this on the cheap’ to the rights holders.

We don’t get the specifics of how it ends (Harry and the others take the opportunity to escape), but Lucifer is the winner. Broken, beaten, and badly wounded, all the Priest has left to him is one last act of spite for D’Amour  for turning away from witnessing the final battle. That it ended in the Priest’s defeat is irrelevant, Harry was supposed to watch. In retaliation, he blinds the detective before wandering off into a Hell that an enraged Lucifer is now tearing asunder.

The last we see of the Priest, he is limping through the crumbling ruins before one last unseen force (presumably some equivalent to God) unmakes the now abandoned Hell, the Priest included.

Having escaped his kingdom, Lucifer goes to Earth. Not to conquer or do any great evil, but simply to exist for a while and see where that takes him.

I know I'm harping, but it is really, really, really hard to read this and not come away with the sense of an author frustrated by a creation that got away from him. So frustrated that his only cathartic solution is to see that character cast down and torn asunder before being finally unmade.

Knowing how much Barker reworked this, I feel a certain curiosity to know what this started as vs what it became. At one point, Barker was promising a story over a thousand pages in length (by comparison, the finished tale is a fairly modest 360.) Given how clearly the descriptions skew towards the movie version of the character, the role the Priest expects of Harry D’Amour to simply watch his conquest, and how much of the novel Barker focuses on the Priest’s act of rebellion and the consequences of his actions brought about by a tired, angry creator, I have to imagine the sequels had a hand in helping shape the tone and direction of these works.

Especially in light of this.

 

That gives him still the better part of four years to rework the novel into the cathartic last word on the character it comes across as.

With this, it seemed Barker was done with the Hell Priest, and that version of Hell itself. He had said his piece and laid him to rest, and was ready to move on.

Then something happened.

And for the first time, in a long time, Barker picked up the box again.

See you again soon, as we close the door on this chapter of Hell and a new one opens.

Till then.

Hellraiser: Bloodline - This Is the Way the Theatrical Run Ends, Not With a Bang, But a Cutting Room Slaughter

Welcome back to the Third Row, as we continue our Halloween journey into the weird, winding, and from here on out, incredibly messy Hellraiser series.

To recap - we’ve been introduced to the world of Hellraiser, we’ve gone to its version of Hell, and we’ve even brought that Hell back to the world of man. Despite the complications behind the scenes, the films still do well at the box office, with Hell on Earth becoming one of their most successful to this day.

With that momentum, Clive Barker wanted to do something new for the next entry. Collaborating with Peter Atkins (who had written the scripts for II and III), he began to envision a generation-spanning story about the origins of the puzzle box that started it all. After the fairly safe way Hell on Earth was made (safe for this series, anyway) it had to be a surprise that the studio green lit the ambitious idea without even an outline.

They set to work, developing the story of Hellraiser: Bloodline around the Le Marchand (later Merchant) family that first designed the infamous Lament Configuration, starting at its conception and following the family over the ages as it seeks to contain the dark forces it has unleashed.

A note before I continue - recently, Peter Atkins got to publish his original screenplay for th movie. It’s easy enough to find and can be gotten for a very reasonable price, so if you’re curious, it’s out there and it’s an interesting read.

Why did I bring that up here? Because as you likely guessed, what they envisioned is NOT what we got.

For as troubled as the road to Hell on Earth was, the movie’s actual production went fairly smoothly, if not perfectly. By comparison, Bloodline is the movie Doug Bradley described as ‘the shoot from Hell.’ In a sick sort of course correction from their earlier sight unseen approval, the studio suddenly had a LOT of notes once filming was underway, to the detriment of the production.

What was originally envisioned and filmed as an almost two hour movie was recut, retooled, and whittled down to under 90 minutes, with a skeleton of the original script, numerous characters completely cut and/or folded together, and set pieces either pared down to save money or just completely absent.

To add insult to injury, many of these weren’t dropped at the script level. There are behind the scenes stills you can find to this day involving characters and effects that were made for the movie and then ultimately discarded.

Probably the most famous example of this -
A group of Angelique's victims effectively serving as proto-Cenobites

The one thing the studios seemed reluctant to cut, of course, was Pinhead. While Bradley himself liked the fact this movie was focused on other characters, the studio wanted more of their big money maker. So much so that they did away with the original script’s linear, anthology style and turned its final section into a wraparound as a way to bring the character in sooner. That the movie begins with a quick flash of the iconic Cenobite even before the box summons him almost feels like a defiant jab by the editors at the studio's bidding.

While there’s a lot of changes and cuts I could point out in general, the one I really want to call out, as it relates to the threads I've been following, is with regards to how the studio wanted the role of Pinhead elevated, and how that impacted the character of Angelique.

Because this movie was focused on the history of the box, an object already established as having existed before the franchise's most famous figure, the original script keeps him absent for quite a while before bringing him back in a way that picks up the end of Hell on Earth. This meant the first arc of the movie instead is focused on the demon Angelique. In Atkins’s original vision, she is presented as a similar sort of corrupter as Julia - ostensibly bound to the Satanist who summons her, but playing on his desires to get him to do what she wishes. This gives the added element to the box’s creation that it was made to Hell's instructions, even if it needed human hands to come to pass. The finished film downplays that manipulation and leaves her a begrudging servant for the humans, implying her human master is more in control in commissioning the box - a rare time where I feel like emphasizing the human evil over demons was a misstep. By the time Pinhead arrives in the second act, the script (and the movie to a lesser extent) frames him as at odds with Angelique in terms of ideals and methods - an old guard vs new approach to Hell. It even gets to a point in the script where Atkins has a scene of Angelique actively trying to betray and destroy Pinhead, to her defeat and subjugation.

Unrelated, but one thing I will never not point out about this movie -
You have decent odds of winning a few bar bets on this film thanks
to the appearance by a young Adam Scott in the France storyline.

It’s an idea that feels like it wants to call back to what Barker and Atkins started in Hellbound, exploring the larger world of Hell (and Hellraiser) beyond a single character. Unfortunately, the studio wanted more of said character and were firm on that point. So once again, a movie that was envisioned as continuing the initial theme of focusing on the humans who dabble in Hell's power and what befalls them becomes a personal vendetta, with the family’s desire to undo what their ancestor unwittingly did focused instead on Pinhead specifically targeting them.

The more I’ve read up on this movie, the more I want to give it credit for what it was trying, even if it didn’t come to pass. The most charitable thing I think I can say to describe it is that it’s an interesting failure. Taken on its own, the film is straining to keep its cut and stapled story and budget together, but the flashes of what it once was still shine through at points. These aren't enough for me to try and argue the film is good - watchable, maybe, but that's not the same as good. Even then, it's at its best taken with its troubled production history as part of the package.

Which is my way of saying, if you really want to go this route, I will double down on my earlier recommendation - don’t just watch the film, track down that original script. Per Atkins’s own foreword, the production was so plagued with cuts and reshoots that there’s never going to be a director’s cut. Further, original director Kevin Yagher was so dissatisfied with the movie that he was able to get an Alan Smithee credit. It won’t make the movie itself better, but the perspective does at least lend a method to the madness.

One other thing I have to give the script -
The Siamese Twin cenobites pictured above are
more effectively creepy as Atkins first envisions them
without a backstory and with a description of their method of
killing that the movie's budget never had a chance to do well.

Okay, everyone. Collect your discarded popcorn bags and empty sodas, cause we’re leaving the movie theater behind from here, and heading the infernal pits of straight to video.

I’ll say this much now - for as many missteps as Bloodline takes, I feel a lot more forgiving of it knowing what lies ahead.

Till then.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (And In the Studio)

Hello and welcome back to the Third Row. Where the journey into Hellraiser continues on as we ask the awkward question - when your second movie takes you to the bowels of Hell, where do you go next?

After the better part of three years and extensive money troubles, the answer, apparently, was a nightclub.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth marks a major turning point in the series based on the aspects I’ve been focusing on. Most notably, the two men at the center of it - original creator Clive Barker and the Cenobite affectionately known as Pinhead.

As Hellbound was under production, the question of where the series would go was already being explored. Contrary to what many would expect, Barker didn’t see the future riding on Doug Bradley’s butcher’s apron clad shoulders. Rather, his plan was to keep the focus on Julia as the main antagonist. This makes sense given how she’s framed in the first half of Hellbound - after being Frank’s mildly reluctant accomplice in the first film, the second sees her elevated to an agent of Leviathan and potentially outranking the Cenobites.

There were just two problems with that - the first was that Claire Higgins had declined to stay on, resulting in her character being written out at the end of the second movie. The second being that most ominous and powerful force in cinema known as marketing. Despite his supporting role in the first two films, Pinhead was (and is) synonymous with the Hellraiser name. With Higgins not coming back, that meant the most logical decision was to bring Bradley to center stage.

Once they got past the part where Pinhead and his associates were killed at the end of the second movie, that is.

"Ah, I'll be fine. It's Hell, I've been through worse!"

Of course, a dead antagonist wasn’t the only problem the series had at this point. Despite ambitions to keep the movies going, distributor New World Pictures was in dire financial straits all around. Eventually, the studio went into bankruptcy and one of their executives started a new studio that picked up the Hellraiser rights, though part of the tradeoff now was that the new rule for the next movie was ‘cheap and nasty’.

This approach caused friction between the rights holders and Barker, who objected to the lower budget the studio wanted the next movie made on. It didn’t help that Barker was coming into this fresh from being jerked around by Fox on his movie Nightbreed, so he was less likely to want to compromise and be left holding the bag a second time. He would eventually be persuaded to come back as an executive producer, but by that time, the movie was in post-production, so the story was made without any contribution from him.

Instead, the new course was plotted by Tony Randel and new director Anthony Hickox (a choice Barker was less than thrilled with due to feeling his sensibilities weren’t right for the series.) The pitch they went with, per the studio’s interests, was smaller scale (despite its title) than the previous entry’s journey into Hell itself and made Doug Bradley’s demonic priest central to the story.

In trying to solve the question of their main villain’s death, they took a cue from the previous movie’s final scene - beginning with a demonic pillar bearing Pinhead’s likeness on it (among others.) While this movie is ultimately divorced from much of the earlier story of the ill-fated Cotton family, this still takes some inspiration from those earlier movies. Pinhead spends the first act of the movie in a position similar to Frank, if less taxing from an effects standpoint - his death rendering him without a body and a need to feed on others to restore himself. Not a bad idea on its face, but one hindered by the fact that, instead of Frank’s half-formed appearance, Pinhead is just a talking face in a pillar. Unable to do much beyond talk and use hooks on anyone who gets too close, the result feels like a mesh of Freddie Krueger and Hannibal Lecter - a talkative monster that seems like he’s trying to verbally dissect his prey to get them to do what he wants.

I have to give them some credit. It's hard to make a talking pillar menacing.

It's an idea that’s not devoid of potential, but it also requires more time and patience than this movie is willing to offer. The idea of leaning hard on temptation, and by extension corruption, could make an interesting thematic continuation of the series, but here it feels more like a means to an end than a major idea to explore. Once Pinhead is out of the pillar, the earlier idea of letting people doom themselves is forgotten and it’s time to make with the slaughter.

And oh, what slaughter do we get. This marks another area where you can tell marketing had a say - with his old team dead, Pinhead was going to need new Cenobites. In an unexplained shift from the previous movie, there is no need to send people to Hell or have them use the box themselves. In fact, this time out, Pinhead just creates new Cenobites seemingly at a whim. The result feels less horrifying than the earlier Barker designs and, at times, flat-out silly (though I suppose that IS part of why the CD Cenobite is so well remembered.)

Oh, I can't stay mad at you.

For what it’s worth, I’m not going to say this movie is a complete write-off. It’s a weird shift in themes and ideas from the earlier movies, but for what they have to work with, Randel and Hickox are making a game attempt at trying to keep some of the old flavor going. It doesn’t really land well, and it really calls attention to the absence of Barker for most of the story process, but their hearts were in the right place, even if the end result feels far more like a traditional horror sequel that marketing had a finger on the pulse for.

Besides that, the movie isn’t without its charms. It’s definitely a far cry from the dark fantasy of the first two movies, but it’s still a fairly brisk movie that has a certain silly appeal for how hard it goes for that ‘Hell on Earth’ title (on a budget, of course.)

I will also concede, by this point, I have made my way through the entire viewing block, so that may be helping my positive take on this one. In any case, what it lacks in the mystery or thematic weight of the first movies, it makes up for just in its enthusiasm to be the Hellraiser movie that the advertisers had been trying to sell since 1987.

It certainly did well enough to get them one more bite at the cinematic apple, in any event.

But that’s a tale for next time.

See you again soon as we make one last trip to the theater for the highly ambitious (and even more plagued) Hellraiser: Bloodline.

Till then.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II - The Franchise Goes to Hell (and That's a Good Thing)

Hello and welcome back to the Third Row as we continue this October’s franchise dive into the weird, winding world of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser.

At this point, I have to give a proviso - in the past, I’ve tried to do the write ups with each viewing to take them on their own terms. For the amount of material for this, I’m now into the back half of the films viewing-wise. Expect the writing to step up from here.

That wasn’t why I brought this up. The reason I brought that up here is because this month is the first time it ever really hit me just how quickly this property got up and running as a franchise.

To put this on a timeline: The Hellbound Heart was published in November of 1986. The adaptation went into production by the end of the year, being released in September of 1987. The film went on to box office success and a sequel was soon underway, seeing its way to wide release in December of 1988.

Pretty surprising how quickly a story this heavily leaning into S&M and the occult took off.

As it's another aspect I will be tracking this month, I have to note Clive Barker did not return to the director's chair for this movie, passing the reins to first time director Tony Randel. Barker is still actively involved, however, helping develop the story with Peter Atkins (who becomes another recurring influence on this series.)

That Barker still has as much of a hand in this entry as he does is reflected in how it fits the larger arc of these movies. As with the first film, the Cenobites are prominently marketed, but they aren't meant to be the movie's primary antagonists.

Once again, the driving force at the heart of this movie is more human monsters. In this case, Claire Higgins returns as Julia, though this time she is now the corrupter instead of the corrupted. Her counterpart, in turn, is the movie’s new antagonist, Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham.)

The dynamic between Julia and Channard is an interesting counterpart to the first movie, offering parallels without feeling like rote repetition. Julia isn’t an escapee from Hell - she is acting as an agent of Leviathan, leading Channard into Hell rather than away from it. Channard, meanwhile, seeks out Hell not for pleasure as Frank did, but out of a desire for knowledge. Where Frank was a jaded hedonist, Channard is more of a Faustian antagonist, spurred into the Labyrinth by his desire to learn more of life beyond death.

Look, it's not ALL skin-ripping and endless suffering.

That's a lot of it, but it's not all of it!

By comparison, the Cenobites are not the main threat of the movie. In the larger story of the film, they actually matter very little this time. They largely exist to serve as part of Kirsty’s connection to the story. For his part, Pinhead gets a backstory, and it’s nice to see Doug Bradley instill humanity into his iconic character, but it’s secondary to the larger story.

 

Where the Cenobites and humans collide is where I found myself torn on this watch. On one side, I find the ideas it presents - Leviathan upsetting the order of Hell through Channard and coming against the old guard of the Cenobites - is an interesting idea. I like that, once again, it frames the Cenobites not as heroes or villains, but more the enforcers of a darker cosmic order. At the same time, I find the idea the movie posits about the origin of Cenobites - humans who, for reasons that are never explained, are chosen to serve as Hell’s priests rather than simply be vivisected for all eternity, adds a concept that over-complicates the larger story. Especially since it’s something that is never explained in this or other entries in terms of why someone is made a Cenobite while someone else is simply tortured.

Even with that muddying of the waters, however, I still enjoy Hellbound as a sequel. It takes some interesting swings - going from the fairly low key, low stakes setting of the first and expanding it to the level of a literal descent into Hell itself - and even if it raises some questions that are never answered, it's still a satisfying ride from start to finish.

Speaking of which, the movie’s depiction of Hell is practically a character unto itself - between the expansive tableau of the Labyrinth (and some good use of matte paintings), the very stylized visions of each person’s individual damnation, and the cosmic horror aspects of Leviathan, a being represented in vague concepts - Barker and Randel make a fascinating break from the traditional fire and brimstone vision of Hell that adds a level of engagement to the movie.

 

It's only tangential, but I do want to give a shout-out to
Christopher Young for his score on the first two movies.
His music really adds to the dark, fantastical element of these
films that subsequent films never quite manage to capture again.
 Part of me would have loved to see this as the path the series would go down - continuing to explore the strange mythology of this Hell that the Cenobites represented just a small part of (and, for his part, Barker had his own vision we’ll touch on next time.)

Unfortunately, these visions didn’t come to pass. Where this movie went big, the next movie dials things back.

That said, this still doesn’t rob from the fact that this makes for a fascinating, if sometimes muddled, expansion on the original movie. As the next step on the road to a larger franchise, Hellbound is an ambitious movie that broadens the scope of the first and leaves a taste for that larger cosmology that, I’ll just say now, will go unfulfilled in later movies.

But, that is a discussion for later.

Keep an eye out as we return to the series soon, and to much lower stakes, with Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth.

Till then.

The OctOmen - Not With a Bang, But With Two Paperbacks

I don’t care how weird it sounds to say, this is the entry I was looking forward to all month.

Not because it’s the end of the month – though this has got me itching to get back to working on this site with more regularity – but because I was looking forward to finally checking these books out first hand.

For a long time, these sequels were something I had only known about in passing. In fact, for the better part of several years, there was only one thing I knew for certain about them – when faced with the question of ‘What do we do now that Damien’s dead?’, Gordon McGill’s solution was, and I say this with only the slightest shred of irony, to pull his answer out of someone’s ass.

No. Really. If you’ve heard of these books before this, chances are, it’s largely thanks to the genuinely bizarre origin story they give to their newest antagonist, Damien’s offspring known in the fourth book only as The Abomination before taking on his father’s namesake in the final installment.

For anyone who hasn’t heard this and is wondering what the Hell I’m getting at…well, let’s just rip the band-aid off: as the book sequels present matters, the scene in The Final Conflict between Damien and Kate Reynolds – I’m reluctant to call it a love scene because there is a VERY rapey vibe during it – was carried out through anal sex that then led to Kate giving birth to the Abomination via--I know, I know. Human anatomy doesn’t work that way. At all. It’s part of why these books have been on my ‘Now this I’ve gotta see’ radar.

It's not the sole reason to read this, but it DOES make for a memorable hook to get started on.

As I worked my way through the first three books getting to these, with their own weird elements worked in, I was genuinely starting to look more forward to them than I was the movies. And having completed the five-book cycle – it’s one of the high points of this month’s run.

Let’s be clear – the crazy is there. Quite a few other examples of it too, things like a priest being buried alive by dogs, The Abomination praying to Damien’s embalmed corpse, and the fourth book’s finale, which combines nuclear war with an act of betrayal that’s one part The Passion of the Christ and one-part Weekend at Bernie’s.

Amid all the craziness, the story McGill puts together, to my pleasant surprise, works as a next step for the series, both in terms of sticking to Bernhard’s ‘let the Bible be a road map’ method, as well as just presenting (relatively) logical growth of established plotlines to this point.

It also helps that McGill avoids the mistake The Awakening made – he realizes you can’t just redo the first movie. Instead, we follow the Abomination as a teenager coming into his own with his identity already all sorted out to his followers. We still have outsiders trying to piece things together, but the book also presents much of it in a way that says to the readers ‘yeah, you’ve been on this ride for the past three novels; you already know the score.’

To that end, The Abomination isn’t just a younger Damien – though he shares his father’s looks and abilities, and later his name, it’s established early on that he doesn’t share his father’s goals. Where Damien seeks to rule, using chaos to unite all of humanity under his rule, the Abomination wants destruction, seeking to use his father’s instruments of chaos to plunge humanity into one final, fatal war.

If I’m being perfectly honest, a lot of the positive points I’ve mentioned are more confined to Armageddon 2000, the fourth book in the series. This isn’t to say that the last novel, The Abomination is bad, but it is the weaker of the two. For lack of a better term for it, the problem with The Abomination as a book is, after the ambitious effort to continue the series in Armageddon 2000, The Abomination feels more like a victory lap. It has some memorable pieces to it, including two memorable crucifix-related deaths, but much of the story feels like it’s repeating the beats of the fourth book to diminished returns.

Even the finale, save for an eleventh hour return by a character that lands on the wilder side of these books’ plot points, mostly feels like a more drawn out version of the previous finale, with the betrayal lacking the same interesting rationale behind it that the prior entry offered.

It’s still not a bad read on its own, particularly if you wish to complete the series and see all the plot points wrapped up, but it feels like a step down after the weird, yet entertaining, outing that Armageddon 2000 brings to the table.

It’s a shame these weren’t the stories that got tapped to continue the brand on screen. That first reveal would be a tricky one to pull off – it’s worth noting McGill goes for a book and a half of couching the origins in vague references before finally just putting out on the table in The Abomination, albeit in tasteful wording – but in the right hands, it could have been presented in a way that still fit the feel of the earlier movies.

Or even if they just leaned in to the oddity and stepped on the gas, it would have at least been more entertaining from a sheer ‘we’re actually going there’ perspective than the lackluster reheat we did get.

But that’s, if you’ll excuse the term considering how I started this, hindsight for you.

If you feel curious about these books, either for the closure, the alternate ending compared to that fourth movie, or just for the odd elements like butt birth and corpse hauling, I’d say they’re worth trying to track down. They’re quick reads, and even if your library doesn’t have them (check them first), they’re easy to find cheap on the second-hand market.

Don't feel too discouraged if your library doesn't have much luck with these. I'm not entirely clear if The Abomination got an American release or not. But, again, you can find the British versions cheap enough. And by cheap enough, I mean shipping will likely cost more than the book itself.

And with that, I can now bring this month to a close. This was an interesting ride. A change from Phantasm last year, but not necessarily a bad one, even with my grievances along the way.

As I said before, I’m finally getting back into a feel for this again. So look here soon, there is more coming. Some horror, some otherwise.

Feels good to be back, and a Happy Halloween to you all.

Till next time.

The OctOmen - The Made-for-TV Edition - Omen IV: The Awakening

Death is but a door, time a window, and horror franchises have never stopped because their villain was killed off before, so once again, we return to the Damien-less world of The Omen.

This has been an interesting month for me. I stand by my opinion that Damien: Omen II and The Final Conflict are both movies that could have been more than they were, but it was still interesting to find the good elements in them along with the shortcomings.

Watching this movie in light of that, I have to wonder if I have a monkey’s paw on me somewhere, because this sequel feels like it decided to address the horror shortage in the worst way possible.

The OctOmen: The Junior High Years - Damien: Omen II

Because it's not a franchise without the sequels...

 Last time we left off was with the success of The Omen in 1976. As one of the top ten grossing movies of its year and with it ending with Damien still loose in the world, it was a pretty safe bet that 20th Century Fox was going to try and get a sequel off the ground.

Flash forward to 1978: despite Richard Donner and David Seltzer both bowing out, the second movie pushed forward under the momentum of the previous movie's producer, Harvey Bernhard – jumping ahead seven years to see a teenage Damien coming into his own at military school.

It's the charming story of Damien coming of age on vacation at a seaside villa--
Nah, this is just for the intro.
Would be an interesting way to play a horror movie though.

OctoBOOOOOOY: Phantasm: Ravager (2016)

And so we come to it at last - nearly forty years after the original movie's release, Don Coscarelli and co reunited, shortly before the death of Angus Scrimm, to deliver one last Phantasm movie.

True to the series, it's a finale that's shaggy, vague, and low budget but still manages to be emotionally satisfying.

OctoBOOOOOOY: Phantasm: OblIVion (1998)

Just as the turnaround between Phantasm III and Phantasm IV is the shortest in the overall series, it feels fitting to post these entries this close together.

Another reason to run these in close proximity – like part III, IV is the other entry in this series where I've found my opinion shifting with time. Unlike III, it doesn't bode quite as well here.

OctoBOOOOOOY: Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)

Like its antagonist, Phantasm has proven itself a franchise that just doesn't want to stay dead. Despite still being popular with fans, Phantasm II was not the box office smash Universal had hoped for. Though they still provided funding – albeit less than before – they also refused to give the next movie theatrical distribution. So, the series began the next leg of its journey in the wild wasteland of straight to video.

For the record - this is it: this is the best any of the sequel subtitles will get.

OctoBOOOOOOY: Phantasm II (1988)

Welcome back for another venture back into the space gate and the weird world of Don Coscarelli's Phantasm. This time, nine years and one Hell of a cliffhanger later, we venture out of the surreal world of the first movie and into that strange horror frontier of sequels.