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HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER Helloooooooo, Doc Sarcofiguy here with another review! Recently got my greedy hands on a copy of Hellraiser: Hellseeker! I believe that's part the 6th of the Hellraiser series! But first, allow me a moment of sadness. A fanboy's preamble/rambling, if'n ya will! To see the series as simply as 'straight-to-video' releases! Well, it makes the old boy just wanna weep, sugars. "Waaahhh, RicKEY!" |
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To think, the Hellraiser films
have actually had such an impact on the look, and feel, of movies over the
years. You can see its influence on such movies as the French film, City of
Lost Children, and the American/Sci-fi fantasy Dark City. Just look at the
way the villains are dressed! All in shiny black leather uniforms.
Mutilated. Bald headed. Roving about in underground dwelling places. And how
they talk! Like menacing Shakespearean actors, they are! This is especially
evident in Dark City. Clive Barker's sinister reach can even be felt in
outer space, in the film Event Horizon! And
have ya seen Star Trek's BORG?! They're Spaaaace Cenobytes(!!!!)
traveling around in their very on Lemarchand's Box!
And now we've come to Hellraiser: Hellseeker, the second movie, released straight-tt-to-video! SNIFF. Lemme tellya, it ain't half bad! Hellseeker stars Ashley Laurence! Ah, yes! The strikingly beautiful Ashley Laurence has returned to the Hellraiser filmatic canon as Miss Kirsty Cotton! Alas, she's killed immediately during the opening sequence! WHAT?! Kirsty and her charming, charming husband, are necking while driving. The most unsafe sex act of all! They tumble over a bridge. The husband escapes. Kirsty struggles with her seat belts! She gets the seat belt off . . . but the door locks, MYSTERIOUSLY. We are left to wonder, is this the not so subtle hand of Pinhead, stickin' it to her from the great, ebon/ jet showcase from beyond?! Her charming husband is, of course, quite bereft over the lovely Kirsty's death. He's been experiencing horrible headaches. Amnesia, accompanied by strange black outs, which are accompanied by even stranger hallucinations. And girls galore! There are a bevy of comely 'Come Hithernauts' on him, trying desperately to 'console' him during his trials and travails. Worries and woes, that is! Oh, it's HI-larious! "But no!" he says. "Get thee behind me, oh wanton trollops! Get thee in front a' me! Get thee in front of the video camera! Get thine face wrapped in Reynolds Wrap, and suffocate!" OH, the hallucinations! They aren't such hallucinations, we come to find. They are actually fragmented memories coming to the fore! Revelations about his own soul. But, is he a killer, or a victim of some vile plot concocted in the labyrinthine corners of hell? Pinhead, played by the ever menacing Doug Bradley, as well as, his band of gruesomely elegant Cenobites, are here. Albeit in a diminished capacity, which was one of the strengths of the first movie. Cenobites are at their best when used as a 'subtle' application. When you see them here, it is difficult to discern whether they truly exist outside our hero's mind. Whether they are more than just symptoms, or iconographic symbolisms. Hell, I jus' love knowing big words! Even if'n I don't know what they mean all the time! Hellraiser: Hellseeker, is actually quite an entertaining psychological study. Excellently photographed, I feel. It captures moments of the shockingly disturbing artist Joel-Peter Witkin, whose surreal imagery, I read, director Rick Bota drew from as inspiration for the film's look. Hellseeker is surprisingly light in the gore department. A little pin in an exposed brain here. Pinhead skewering a throat there. Maybe one scene of the meting out of good ole fashion Cenobitean agony and redemption, agony as redemption, hook and chain action! Still in all, an interesting, puzzlingly surreal, ride. I give it 1 guillotined Czar + 2! That's right! 2 ½ Czars out of a possible 4! HAHAH! - DOC SARCOFIGUY! |
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