Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) Reviews

• What happened?

  Jawn1382001-10-08

  I'm not quite sure what happened to poor ol' Pinhead, but his character sure got an overhaul for this misfire of a film. He is transformed from his more mysterious visage into a gimmicky Freddy Krueger-type mass-murderer. Once upon a time in the series, you had to open a puzzlebox searching for the secrets of pain and pleasure to be attacked by the Cenobites. But no more. Hell, all you have to do now is go to a nightclub and you're on the victims list. Sillyness abounds as the DJ becomes a CD throwing cenobite and a cameraman launches missiles (yes, missiles) from the lens buried in his head. Stupid. Way off base when compared with the rest of the series, and not worth your time.

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• Needed More... Though, Not A Bad Film...

  stephenabell2018-03-07

  Here's part three of the Hellraiser Saga... Once again this continues from where the last film ended, though it's a looser connection. The battle between Pinhead (Bradley) and his original human self, Captain Elliott Spencer, allowed him to break free of hells shackles. Entrapped in a monolith, he is awoken by Sandy (Leigh), when an accidental cut splashes blood on his stone features. Revealing himself to JP Monroe (Bernhardt), an unscrupulous womanising club owner, Pinhead makes a deal to free himself from his confines and to help JP to achieve his dreams... This leads to lots of twists and turns in the storyline as you know you can't trust a daemon. The only thing which stands in his way is an aspiring investigative reporter, Joanne "Joey" Summerskill (Farrell), who's investigating the gory and violent murders which are appearing in the city. The first thing that becomes evident is the amount of budget available for this film. Instead of being kept within the confines of a house or a hospital, now we're out in New York City. Penthouses, apartments, clubs, restaurants, ally's and streets. The locations are so much bigger. This is good, as it gives scope for a larger story with more hellish violence and gore... and it nearly delivers. Nearly, because the scene where the Cenobites finally take to the streets is actually underwhelming. What was required were a few more Cenobites and quite a few more victims, both pedestrians and police. It's nice to have explosions... I just wanted more. The acting is okay, Bradley still stands out and is excellent as Pinhead. Farrell does a good job as the reporter. However, it's Bernhardt and Marshall, who plays Terri, who have their bouts of woodenness. The direction too is quite different from the first two, gone are the artistic and atmospheric lighting for a more natural feel. This is okay, but the film does lose a little of its mood and spirit, which added strength to the first two movies. I can understand the need for doing this. If you expand the daemons universe to include a lot more of reality then it stands to reason to get that feeling across would be to lose the more imaginative aspects of the filmmaking. That said there are still quite a few iconic shots, such as the entrance of Pinhead at the club and later in the church, and nicely thought out camera shots and angles. Though I didn't find it as good as the first films it's still as enjoyable, though for different reasons... and as Pinhead would attain, variety is the spice of life. Another good thing is that this film actually works as a stand-alone, you only need a vague idea about the previous stories; whereas, Hellbound actually made you feel as though you should have watched the first film before viewing. So for that reason, I would recommend this to all horror fans and newbies alike. This is a well written, structured, and acted film... which has its fair share of tension, fear, and suspense.

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• Hellraiser falls by the wayside

  Tophee1999-01-11

  Watching this film as part of a four movie Hellraiserthon, I was full of expectation after the brilliance of the first two films. This third venture was a total disappointment, replacing the plot and tension of the earlier films with pretty girls and lots of mindless violence. The only saving grace was the excellent performance by Doug Bradley as a very confident and menacing Pinhead. Personally, I'd watch the first two films many times again, but skip this vacation from quality.

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• Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth

  a_baron2015-12-01

  The third instalment of the "Hellraiser" franchise begins with a reporter the big story continues to elude until one night at the hospital she witnesses something supernatural and inexplicable. The mischievous cube has returned and is wreaking havoc. Then one of the creatures behind it offers a character named JP the chance to join up with it; at first JP is reluctant, he lures girls into his inner sanctum with flattery, and once he has had his way with his conquest of the night, gives her her marching orders. He may be a jerk of the first order, but murder for pleasure is not his style, even though the entity reminds him he murdered his own parents! JP agrees to go along with it but the partnership doesn't last long because after he tries to feed his next conquest to it, she punches him out with a knuckle dustered fist, and takes his place. After that it all gets a bit confusing, as if it hadn't been already, but if you like gore, special effects and pyrotechnics, you should find something in the last twenty minutes or so of interest, and if you like the type of music one usually associates with films of this nature, you might like the soundtrack too, especially the title song by Motörhead.

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• 'Hellraiser' without the suspense, tension, or intelligence

  Shattered_Wake2008-08-02

  In a city without pain, a reporter, Joey (Terry Farrell), discovers a man being attacked by seemingly alive chains. Before she can get her scoop, the man explodes into a shower of meaty chunks. Hearing the story of a mysterious box, Joey tracks it down to an embarrassingly 90s club called The Boiler Room. There, she finds out that clubgoers are being fed into a pillar by some rich prick (Kevin Bernhardt) to sustain Pinhead (Doug Bradley) in an attempt to bring him and his legion of Cenobites back to the world. It's up to Joey to defeat the Cenobites and send them back to hell where they belong. . . or bring Hell on Earth. In what's obviously the most action-packed of the first three films of the Hellraiser series, Hell on Earth seems to take a turn more for the style of the stalk-and-kill-type slashers, regardless of 1992 being a dead year for the slasher subgenre. All four of the major slasher series (Freddy, Jason, Michael, Chucky) had already reached their break by this point, so it seems that Hellraiser was either too late on becoming a 'slasher'-type film. . . or they just wanted to become a way to fill the void. Either way, while it made for a faster-paced Hellraiser, it did not make for a better one. Now, I'm not saying it's a bad film, because it's not. . . just very mediocre (which is the worst type of film to me). It's an interesting film just to see a new look at the franchise and there's a nice amount of the classic Hellraiser violence, gore, & horror. . . but the painfully good tension of the first two Hellraiser is greatly lost in exchange for all of the action. I would suggest this to fans of the franchise as there's a good amount of Cenobite action and all. . . even though some of the Cenobites are ridiculously dumb (I'm sorry, but CD-head? Gasoline-martini man? C'mon now). But, it's definitely the worst of the first three (the only ones I've seen thus far, but I have IV sitting in front of me ready to be watched & reviewed). . . but it did keep me entertained and that at least allows it to have an average rating. Final verdict: 5.5/10.

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