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.
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.
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.
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