What the HELL happened to HELLRAISER VIII HELLWORLD!!!

Hellraiser Hellworld

Lets get through this quickly because the less said the better.

God if only.

This is the finale as far as whatever fans were left and everyone else was and is concerned. You could see the bright blaring signs years ago, covered over in the brightest red THIS IS THE END text, replaced with a GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign. Fans didn’t even hold a funeral they just walked away without a fuck given or shit had. And it’s deserved, and earned. Well earned. Dimension did this, and they did not hold back. Based off everything I have covered here on Hellraiser so far under their banner, Halloween when Dimension began releasing them. They knew how to navigate both theatrical and home video. They could have done so much more but purposely didn’t. They watched this thing, that they paid for suffer and die of the slowest body destroying disease. All while blowing air bubbles in the IV lines and resetting the life support daily.

I don’t know why anyone would willingly do what Dimension did to this property the way they did, but they made that choice and I have yet to find anything to convince me it wasn’t just done as the most brutal overly petty act to keep an artist separated from their art.

The worst part about this is somehow not that we have two more Hellraiser films after this. It’s the fact that this film is in a constant I shit you not, online debate on the level of Han Shot First, as to whether Hellworld or Hellraiser Judgement is the worst Hellraiser in the entire franchise.

I loathe, with a very special, very direct and personal hatred Judgement. There is nothing positive in that movie. But this film is not anywhere in league with the levels of bad that movie was.  Which as horrible as this film is? Says a hell of a lot.

Because this thing isn’t just bad. It’s insulting and was the last straw for everyone.

Everyone except Dimension.

So we already know this film was rushed right along side Deader. We also know this film had no script. It shared a portion of the budget from Deader and used the same locations redressed and the same extras. We know the studio did not give a fuck and it was utter hell for the director, the cast and the crew.

Yet there is still new levels of hell here, because of course there is. Now under normal filming. When you rush two films in the same franchise out at the same time. Sharing a production. It’s usually, normally because you are carrying over a direct sequel. You plan to extend the end of the last film and carry it over. Like Back to the Future, you expect the story to continue.

Hellworld has nothing to do with Deader. The only link is the puzzle box. I guess that works? Sure fuck it any hole is a goal. So what is the story then? Well that’s the first puzzling thing. Yes like the other films they continues shoving Pinhead into another unrelated story. That’s nothing new. What is new however. Is the things they did with this movie. Because it just makes it even more puzzling.

Consider as you read this, what the theme and story was of the past three direct to video Hellraiser films.

The new story

This film centers on a group of buddies in college mourning their dead friend. He took his own life after apparently losing himself to his obsession and the groups shared fun past time. Playing a game called Hellworld.

Hellworld is a ‘video game’ based entirely off of Pinhead and the Lament configuration.

No. This is not like Craven’s New Nightmare going meta and taking place in our reality. It is meta, just very poorly meta.

This films world is one which everyone knows about Pinhead and the cenobites, because the events of every single Hellraiser film are public knowledge. Pinhead is treated like an urban legend and someone made the game based off that legend. The game includes every line from the first two classic films. Because there is nothing quotable from the others.

The group for the most part has stuck close together and everyone of them is still obsessed with playing Hellworld, the game that drove their friend to suicide. Well as they each play the game, they all have to solve the puzzle box virtually, as each one does they all get a printable invite to a Hellworld Party!

Yes, it’s going to be that kind of film.

So the friendos jump in their college cars, ready to mingle with all the hot ladies, even if they’re dating someone already, and embracing the crazy wildness of a Hellworld party. Which takes place in a large super rich dilapidated mansion.

As with all typical slashers, the group arrives. It’s an orgy to the senses in weirdness and hellraiser props, as well as apparently a physical orgy. Because gaming on this level with a Pinhead game makes people horny and of course they’ll be showing off their tits and fucking in a decaying house.  While the setup is laid out our group of friends slowly one by one is killed off. Each one getting a glimpse at some moment of a cenobite and I do mean, glimpse. Because no one lingers for longer than half a sentence.

One such victim is the true note worthy standout. This features the future son of Krypton and son of the emperor of Mankind, Henry Cavill.

Notice I said features and not stars. It was a super early film for him and he was relegated to a horny lets do it party pal. I say this, because its what he is. The film though would have you believe he and all of these forgettable friends are tech obsessed 90’s like hacker friends. I say hacker in relation to the film Hackers and the fake culture that film tried showing us versus actual hacking and being cool. The theme of this film was to mimic unapologetically The Matrix with the meta and humor of Scream.

It is also worth nothing the host of this party. Who is noticeable older than everyone else, and is more than happy to take part in setting up deaths, is the legend of film and best southern vampire to ever exist, our friendly neighborhood artificial lifeform Lance Henriksen.

Yes they pulled out all the stops for this one and nabbed themselves a true star of the big Hollywood screen.

So everyone dies as they do in a slasher and we get down to our final girl. Battling for her life and her sanity as her friends have all been dispatched by both Pinhead and, Lance. But why Lance you say? Why? Well that’s the twist of the film, because the films all have one ever since it mildly made people shift in their seats the first time.

As it turns out? None of this was real.

Pinhead cutting Henry Cavill into three chunks of a body, a girl getting bled out in a chair. All of their bestest buddy friendos who were dispatched by faceless cenobites AND the Temu Chatterer. Never happened.

Lance Henriksen, the mysterious rich host of the party who had an entire room dedicated to every prop, puzzle box, photo and anything to do with the Hellworld game and Hellraiser mythos. He collected. Well it turns out this rich worldly man, is none other than the father of their dead friend Adam. Adam’s father was never there, as he was a wealthy world traveled man traveling the world, which is why his son became obsessed with Hellworld. As a dad replacement.

So yes. Adam’s dad tricked them all to the party. So he could capture them and do as he wished as he blamed them all for the death of his son.

Now hold on to your butts, because there’s even more twist. The matrix like sex rave party they were all getting eyes and hands full of tits? Never happened. The room with the props from Hellworld? No. The moment they all entered the house and at different times. Lance drugged them all with a heavy hallucinatory drug. Stripped them of their cellphones and buried them all in coffins underground.

Every conversation they had, dance party remix memory, right down to their deaths. Was all just in their heads in a collective hallucination. So then how did the police find them?

ANOTHER TWIST!!!

They received an anonymous call telling them to hurry to the house and dig. They discovered the coffins and began saving the kids all thanks to the mystery call. Which came from. The final girls cellphone!! Which she didn’t have! It was left inside the house!!

The twist would have you believe Adams ghost used it to call the cops and get them to save his bestest friends. This is why its important to have a healer class in your friends group in and out of the game.

BUT WAIT! There’s more!!

The film wants to deliver just One. More. Twist!

The final scene of the film is a drunk Lance Henrikson in a motel. He escaped authorities and made off with the only thing he cares about. Booze and a suitcase of his dead sons belongings. Of which he finds the actual Lament configuration. While drunk he solves it because he doesn’t believe in this bullshit, and summons the very real, not drunk hallucination Pinhead and his temu cenobites. They kill him and the movie ends with Pinhead. The man who has suffered through 8 total Hellraiser films, saying the line “How’s that for a wake up call?”. They turned him into Freddy Kreuger with the quips, and the film ends.

Again.

These two films were filmed side by side. And are completely, tonally polar opposites of each other. It’s just. Madness.

You had Deader, which at least tried to be a hellraiser film, letting the original story do most the heavy lifting. Which even then you could painfully tell the film felt like a movie already filmed with additional shots of cenobites tossed in. But at least it fit with the other films before it that Dimension forced out of its ass. But this one? They went from the familiar blurring reality and hallucination cop investigation stories, to a straight up Scooby Doo slasher. It’s even weirder when you consider for these 4 Dimension films all they’ve done is talk about wanting to make Pinhead into a slasher. They just waited until it happened by pure accidental dumb luck to do it? While also decided to make the film into a scream like meta comedy. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s also what happens when you do exactly what they did, and without a script.

But it doesn’t stop there. See they didn’t just blindly think “Hey, while in Rome” and decide to make another one without any idea what to do. They greenlit a story for this fucking thing like always and had the writers shovel in hellraiser. All they did was said okay to the stories, Deader had a script because that had actual planning. But Hellworld was an after thought and quickly greenlit to be shot at the same time, assuming they could hammer out the script and make it work. And for one brief moment? When considering the story for Hellworld? They actually had two moments of near originality.

Before Dimension even had the inspiration of their dual filming adventure in Romania? They considered what the Weinsteins usually did. Building their next film off the hype of another. Only this one would have been the worst unintended comedy, that likely today would have been forgotten but mildly funny to think actually was considered a good idea.

Since everyone was hyped about Jason vs Freddy. Dimension thought well fuck. Why don’t WE do that?! So the idea was born and immediately shopped to do the second biggest horror cross over. Pinhead vs Michael Myers.

Now. I am no studio executive, or producer. But one might think. A more logical cross over that might make sense while still being completely ridiculous. Might be pitting your own original franchise killer Ghost Face from Scream, against Michael Myers. I mean it’s silly but that could work. Both killers are grounded in reality. It also would make worlds more sense when in comparison to Michael fucking Myers slashing through literal fucking demons who summon chains from nothing and come direct from fucking hell.

But as Angelique said in Bloodline, thank god for men of reason When the Weinsteins approached Moustafa Akkad with their grand million dollar idea? He scoffed at it and told them get away from me and my son. When approached by outsiders floating the idea of this past Clive Barker, he just stared off and reminded people he has and wants nothing to do with the shit they’re pumping out. So the idea was dropped and the world was better for it.

So with that the studio decided fine, okay. Lets dig up another story we own and force Pinhead into it. That story was Dark Can’t Breath.

Dark Can’t Breath was a psychological thriller about a grieving father who kidnaps, drugs and buries alive his sons friends, blaming them for his death. The plot focused on the group being aware of their situation and having lucid visions and hallucinations of being chased down by a masked killer in an old house, all of them losing oxygen and dying one by one buried underground.

Executives read that and got excited, “PUT THAT PINHEAD IN IT AND CALL IT HELLRAISER!” They faxed the story over to their Deader director, he handed it over to the writer and the man got to work.

On an extreme time crunch and having to refine the story to now include Hellraiser. The writer came up with the idea of doing a straight up scream rip off he called Hellraiser Deadworld. Where the college friends would be teens who joke about horror movie cliches all while navigating a haunted hous Labyrinth in the….Leviathan house.

The studio liked the meta idea, because they liked their Scream movies. But wanted the movie to appeal to younger audiences. Like Halloween Ressurection and Busta Rhymes. So told them to switch out meta horror movie with video games. Because that was hot and topical with the youth. And so out story was born.  I emphasize story, and not script. Because that itself would never manifest fully. Only delivered in daily scribbled pages.

Now you might assume, as this film got the larger hunk of the budget compared to Deader, that this would be for its semi star filled cast. Mostly to pay for Lance’s time. Much like bringing Kirsty back. That would make sense, however no. The budget wasn’t raised to secure him. In fact he wasn’t even considered for the film what so ever.

What happened was the director realizing they had no one. They had no big name stars or known talent and given that they needed a villain who could stand against the eventual Doug Bradley appearance. They had to find someone who could. But Dimension wasn’t going to fly talent out there from Los Angeles. The director began hunting, or talent pouching you could say across other active productions in the area. He just happened to come across Lance during his lunch time while filming the third Mimic movie on Romania. He asked if he would care to spend his off time working on the film as the main villain in a franchse. Lance likes money and an actors gotta eat so he agreed.

Keep in mind the film still had no script. And never genuinely would.

Having no script is a challenge itself for the actors. Having no script is an unhinged challenge to everyone else trying to figure out the fucking movie. Production crews need a script to have an idea what they will be shooting and what departments would be needed. Set designers needed scripts and direction from the art department to know how to dress sets and cast. Special effects crews need scripts to know what tricks and rigs they need to come up with for the deaths in the film and who to lock in the trailer for makeup.

Every single day the writer was faxing unpolished fresh out his brain pages unfolding each scene.

With wardrobe recycling outfits between productions and still circling thrift shops. With a change from punk to cyber punk clothing, the set faced a new fun challenge. The rave and the Hellworld game.

It’s genuinely funny having to say that unlike Deader this film takes place largely in an old house. But also having to add that it also has a basement, a morgue, a study and it’s one of those Harry Potter homes that looks small on the outside but hold several buildings within it. Obviously the problem becomes how do you make these decaying mold infested broken buildings look like a mansion, and college dorm.

The answer was to film the movie like you were filming a television show. Close up and tight!

Also green screen. Lots and LOTS of green screen. Doorways, halls. Room entry ways. Covered in green screen in hopes the visual effects crew would insert a rave into their war torn crumbling warehouse. It was literally so bad that they would have to perfectly park the camera. As close as humanly possible because just a small twist to the side. Barely an inch one way or the other? And you’d see the mold. Destroyed doorways and flooring. It’s like when you try to take your Instagram food pic and don’t want your partners glass or hand in the shot. You want this to look composed so you zoom in, and zoom, then reposition. Once quick twitch and your shots fucked.

That was the entire shoot. What worked for one movie served to ruin the other.

Also having a movie based around a video game, seeing people play said video game. Well they didn’t have a game, or animation. They didn’t know what it would look like or how it was even played since. Scripts help you to visualize that and direct your actors.

It’s not uncommon on film sets to do that. Serenity famously had their pilot flying the ship without an actual steering column. But everyone was playing a different version of Hellworld throughout and the visual effects department saw nothing wrong with this. Sometimes the game is you escaping pinhead down long corridors. Sometimes you are solving puzzle boxes. All done while staring at nothing on a blank green cloth taped onto a crt monitor.

Also remember this was in the dead of winter, in a building riddled with holes, broken windows, missing walls and bare floors with no wiring no electricity. And everyone is dressed for a body heat filled rave grinding and sexing on each other.

Movies make a lot of things look sexy, like sex in the shower. Having done this, a few times. I can say safely films leave a lot out. The fact one of you will be getting the shower waters warm spray, and the other will go cold. That minutes fly by quickly and hot water turns could quickly. Kissing under water requires a lot of work if you want to actually breath as water likes to cut off airways and believe me water. Is not a lubricant.

Trying to be sexy, when your cooter is frozen and your dick wants to hibernate for an eternity is not easy for anyone. Trained or not

One of the funniest things still has to be the extras and actors. As the cast who wasn’t its core members were all locals. That meant a lot of accents and broken English to no English. If you could speak English? You had to force an American accent. Or like certain cast who lead others to their doom, you only speak VERY little and keep the fact your Romanian to yourself while shaking your head and nodding the rest of the time.

Add to this the fact no one knew their fucking lines until the very day of. Meaning people who speak very little English being given full English dialogue and being expected to deliver it within an hour or two. Yeah that created fun times.

Reaching out for British actors helps but only goes so far.

You might also have noticed that this film had a distinct style to it that was absent from most of the last film. That’s because the famed Romanian cinematographer that clashed with our director ended up leaving after Deader. He was done and did not give a fuck. So Rick Bota was finally allowed a new cinematographer that would listen to him and give that quick cut 90’s style vibe he wanted in the first place. Again even though both films are dog shit, if you never looked at the release date you’d be hard pressed to imagine the film was made at the same time as Deader. It’s just that kind of insane.

With this film being, or supposed to be a tech savvy matrix like film. It had to have a lot of high tech, servers, holograms, internet! Internet everywhere! But without increasing the budget. So the matrix phones and huge pc servers? Nowhere to be found. They’d green screen those later, and the phones were simple cheap burner phones. Which only had one use in the film explained to us. You wore a mask with a number, you texted the number of the person you want to fuck or dance with. That’s it.

As Deader was a…I don’t want to say it because it makes me laugh but, slow burn psychological thriller. It didn’t have what this film would, as Hellworld was a slasher. It needed jumpscares. When the studio reviewed dailies sent to them from Romania. They’d tell the director to toss in a cenobite. Add in a jump scare. Something. Slashers needed to be scary. Scream had these, so they needed them too.

Though the sets had plenty of jump scares. Of the natural type.

For instance as we keep bringing up the freezing cold. You may not be aware, or maybe you are. But concrete reacts oddly to cold. Especially freezing cold. Concrete sweats. Which means solid cold concrete and a slippery surface that can and will turn to ice. This was brutal on stunt people and caused constant slip warnings and zones of danger.

Since this was a slasher and required a good deal of stunt work. It also required rigs and pully systems. Much like Deader as well. Having to setup rigs to pull people, and even simple wire work. Meant bracing against the walls.

The same walls that were falling apart and barely held the place together as it was. Stunt coordinators said every time they readied for a stunt they began praying and keeping eyes on the walls. Fully waiting and expecting the walls to give way and the building to crush everyone. Of course we can’t forget the list of plague carriers who were sick being forced to work long grueling hours sweating and freezing. Eventually the cast, and crew began to rebel. The only problem was no one was listening and they knew it.

It honestly reminds me more and more of the time working in a grocery store that our new assistant manager came up to me and decided I was worth venting too. He told me that management informed him everyone on night crew is down and seems to be lacking motivation of any kind. They noticed we were over worked and no one wanted to be there. He told me he was made to work with us under the guise of “Offering some extra help”, when in reality he was there because upper management wanted him to motivate all of us.

At the time I was 23 and this guy was nearing 40. He told me with a defeated face “I’m supposed to motivate you all and bump the mood overall up. But how am I supposed to do that when even I’m feeling the same as all of you. Like…this is just. It’s bad man. It’s really bad and I don’t know what to do.” I just shrugged and told him welcome to Night Crew. No one cared about our problems or what we had to deal with. So long as freight was thrown before the store opens and all the aisles were faced.

The studio never interfered or cared. They looked at dailies and gave feedback. Everything else well. There was an answer behind this, and no one was going to like it.

When your Romanian cast of extras begin cussing you and everyone out and nothing changes. When departments beg you for money and a script and as a director you can’t give them either because your waiting for the same. People freezing and worst of all the equipment you shipped to film the movie, and rented to light it. Would constantly break down because the fuses they all ran generators off of to film anything were constantly being overloaded and blown. Well you’d have to tell the studio. They need to know, they need to step in.

Especially when your effects department is struggling to make anything work and needs more money for simple makeup work like scars and blood.

They absolutely went to the studio about this.

They’d demand heating for the sound stages, budget increases for effects, safety equipment for the cast crew and stunts. HIGH TECH GEAR FOR THE HIGH TECH FILM YOU WANTED.

They were given more than just a no. They were told, very clearly and up front, not only would these things receive a no, and should not be asked for. They were told, Technically? The films only needed to exist to fulfill a contract. Meaning quality was irrelevant at the end of the day and corporate only needed a place holder to keep the property in studio hands.

Having your boss tell you that nothing you did, or needed mattered. That you could literally record the film with your cellphone and they would not care so long as it could be sold to video stores. How do you go to your crew with that? And keep them from breaking completely and walking off.

I mean in retrospect that genuinely should have happened, and had it happened it would have likely meant either the studio being stripped finally of the abused property. Or they’d have to show some kind of genuine care for it. For a change.

Thankfully the film wrapped production and everyone was free of their hell, but forever carrying scars of this production.

No one would come back for this under any circumstance. And just like with Deader. There would be no pickup shots, reshoots of any kind, and given how many people were pulled back for ADR work, getting them to do the same back home in Los Angels would be less a challenge of distance and more a challenge of do I even care to do it.

The studio used the same editor as Deader. The same editor who exhausted themselves trying to form a narrative from a film without one and created the entire ending of the film when it had none.

That editor now had to immediately set to work on a film with zero structure and cyber graphics that looked shit by even film school and home computer standards.

Since the death scenes were largely improvised and came up with the day of by the director and effects department, the film didn’t have clear start points and end scene marks. It was just, death, next scene. Because the effects failed on set do to the cold and contributing factors. That means stunts looked fake and deaths looked like fan film deaths.

It is exactly because of this. That the editor began using one of the painful effects of the film.Artificial motion blur coupled with rapid jump cuts. Add in overly contrasted digital flashes and you had the movies frantic near seizure inducing final cut. As for the computer effects for the Hellworld video game? The tech savvy, cyber world thriller that was Hellworld. Looked comically bad and they could do nothing about it. They has what they had, and the studio made it clear it didn’t need anything and would receive nothing swiftly.

When this film and Deader were locked in the vault. They should’ve stayed there. Just like the documentary Prince commissioned Kevin Smith to make on him, and his hundreds of unreleased albums and music videos he vaulted. Like George Lucas and his 3 hour cut of Revenge of the Sith with a completely different descent to the Dark Side for Anakin. Let your mind picture it and wonder how it would have been and how much better, versus releasing it on to the world and realizing sometimes dead is better.

If Deader was released and no one cared. You would assume the same happened with this one. It did not.

When you make a film so bad that people can’t make themselves give a shit to criticize it or tell you it was bad. That’s an achievement in its own right.

But to make a movie that by some magical feat was far worse? So bad it caused those same fans. All the fans to stand together and mock you as a studio, and your film. Then to savagely attack you, and your film. That is completely next level.

Fans were insulted. Horribly. Again it was a film that wasn’t even hiding that it was never meant to be a Hellraiser film. But having that film completely destroy the character of Pinhead, reduce the series to a meta joke. The literal live action Scooby doo twist and ending of the film. No one actually dying in the movie except Lance. Turning the franchise into a cyber tech slasher that made the graphics in Hackers look like ILM quality. Not one person enjoyed this. No one thought “Well it’s a good change for the franchise.” No. No one was swallowing this and they outright loathed the film and Dimension for making it.

As I also mentioned much earlier. This was Doug Bradley’s last film as Pinhead.

He had enough. Between threats of legal action if he talked out about the movie. The forced NDA. Paying him for less than a single film across two productions. Reducing his character to a quipping slasher villain who only served to show up at the last minute, stare and say one to two lines. He was done. He did all he could, he stuck it out through 4 Dimension Hellraiser films and he was fed up. It wasn’t a power move expecting them to come crawling and pay him more. He was ‘done’.  That move alone signaled to fans and audiences. When the man who made 3 previous direct to video sequels decides enough is enough. The 4th one isn’t worth seeing.

The very moment production wrapped on both films He was done, he wasn’t going to sit on it and wait. That production was the final nail in Pinheads skull. Shattering it.

On the other side of the films release. Even Clive Barker was enraged. He wasn’t under any restraint to keep silent, the man didn’t mix words and let everything out online and in interviews. He didn’t disown the films, he condemned them and the studio for weaponizing his intellectual property purely to dodge legal deadlines, while purposely stripping the stories of every distinct feature that made it what it was. Cannibalizing other writers films to force the franchise into it and forcing production staff and crew to ‘deal with it’. He was not going to back down and he had every write to set fire to the Weinsteins for what they had done for too long.

The studio did not care. They had what they wanted. A safety net that insured the franchise would remain with them for several long years. Letting them focus on other projects. They could only ignore the hate for what they did for so long though. I mean at the end of the day, even if you spend money just to keep something? You need to make some of that back, and with other films failing at the box office, and people in general not caring for Dimension films as it was quickly becoming known for pushing out crap films. This began a ticking clock for the studio they wouldn’t be able to ignore. But it was something they did to themselves.

Once again this franchise, these last two films. What happened? Nothing. The studio didn’t kill them. The MPAA had nothing to do with direct to video. The films weren’t ever meant for quality or entertainment. You can’t kill what had no life in it, and you can’t put blame on anyone. When the only people who cared were the ones forced to make it for pennies and suffered for it.

No film deserves that, Even as bad as Friday the 13th got, it never went that hard into fucking itself over. Not even Freddy would. We got Robocop flying with a jet pack and fighting Ninjas. But he never fought Michael Myers or The Predator. Thought that would’ve actually been cool as fuck. Those productions cared about the franchises and did the best with what they had.

I mean Jesus fuck even Leprechaun managed to entertain people and it went to space and ‘da hood’ twice. Fucking twice.

We still have two more films to go. Like Boogie2988 screamed. This is hell. You don’t get to leave hell. Hell is forever.

They were going to keep going, Without Barker, and without Pinhead. Jason got away with it because Jason just had to look imposing and kill. Freddy was replaced eventually in the remake. Which made sense given he retired the character after Freddy vs Jason. But a new Pinhead in the franchise? Of course this could only go well.

We are not entering the last two films of this franchise and the last two films I struggled with the first time, and only watched one time.

Because once was more than either deserved, and more than enough for one person. But here we are. Let it end.