Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Hellbound: Hellraiser II
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Tony Randel
Screenplay by	Peter Atkins
Story by	Clive Barker
Produced by	Christopher Figg David Barron Executive: Clive Barker Christopher Webster
Starring	Clare Higgins Ashley Laurence Kenneth Cranham
Cinematography	Robin Vidgeon
Edited by	Richard Marden Uncredited: Tony Randel
Music by	Christopher Young
Production companies	Film Futures Troopstar
Distributed by	New World Pictures
Release date	December 23, 1988 (1988-12-23)
Running time	93 minutes 99 minutes (Unrated)
Countries	United Kingdom United States
Language	English
Box office	$12,090,735

Hellbound: Hellraiser II is a 1988 British-American horror film directed by Tony Randel. It draws heavily upon, and was made by much of the same cast and crew as its precursor, Hellraiser.

Plot

Sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s, British army Captain Elliot Spencer opens a puzzle box in his Nissen hut. Hooked chains emerge, ensnaring him, and the forces inside the box transform him into the Cenobite Pinhead.

In the 1980s, Kirsty Cotton wakes in the Channard Institute, a psychiatric hospital, where she is questioned about the events leading up to the destruction of her home, which involved her stepmother, Julia, and a bloody mattress. Kirsty tells the police that her uncle, Frank, opened a puzzle box to an alternate dimension populated by monsters named Cenobites who torture human quarry and then recounts the events portrayed in the first film. Kirsty's story amazes the detectives, who are incredulous and take the bloody mattress as evidence. Kirsty is then turned over to Dr. Phillip Channard and his assistant, Kyle MacRae, who instantly becomes smitten with Kirsty.

That night, Kirsty befriends another patient, Tiffany, a semi-catatonic young girl with an incredible skill for solving puzzles. Later, in her room, Kirsty finds a message written in blood stating "I AM IN HELL. HELP ME." Believing it was sent by her father, Kirsty tells her story to Kyle, who encourages her to tell Dr. Channard about the Cenobites. Unbeknownst to Kyle, Dr. Channard already knows everything that has been happening; he is obsessed with the Lament Configuration, the box that opens the portal to the Cenobite realm, and has been collecting every piece of information he can obtain on it.

Kyle goes to Dr. Channard's house to speak with him, and discovers his "obsession room" of Cenobite-related paraphernalia (including additional Lament Configuration puzzle boxes in glass cases). While Kyle hides, Dr. Channard arrives with the bloody mattress that Julia died on, and goads a psychiatric patient into mutilating himself on it; the resultant blood summons up a zombie-like Julia from the Cenobite realm, and she proceeds to consume the psychiatric patient to nourish herself. Kyle escapes and tells Kirsty, who encourages Kyle to help her break out of the institute so she can help stop the Cenobite-Julia.

At the house, Kirsty explores the obsession room, where she discovers (and takes) a photo of Eliot Spencer. Meanwhile, Kyle encounters Julia, now almost fully restored to her human form. Julia tricks Kyle into lowering his guard and begins devouring him when they kiss, thus completing her regeneration. Kirsty stumbles upon the scene, but her reunion with Julia is interrupted by the arrival of Dr. Channard with Tiffany. Dr. Channard gives Tiffany the puzzle box, which she quickly opens. The Cenobites—Pinhead and his henchmen Chatterer, Butterball, and The Female—arrive, but refrain from harming Tiffany, knowing that Dr. Channard used her to summon them. Meanwhile, Kirsty, Dr. Channard, and Julia all slip into the Cenobite realm, followed by Tiffany.

In the Cenobite realm, Kirsty seeks out her father, while Julia shows Dr. Channard the sadomasochistic pleasures that await him. Julia explains that the Cenobite realm—a gigantic labyrinth in a stormy void—is called Hell, and ruled over by Leviathan, a godlike entity that takes the form of a rotating, elongated, octahedral bipyramid floating above the maze, which sends out a beacon of nebulous darkness which calls up visions of secret fears and desires when it passes over people. Julia sacrifices an ambivalent Dr. Channard to Leviathan, causing him to be turned into a Cenobite. Leviathan fuses with his new creation by way of a massive tentacle, and Cenobite-Channard sets about looking for Kirsty.

Kirsty meanwhile finds her uncle Frank, who explains that her father is not there and that he wrote the message to lure Kirsty to come for him. After a brief fight, Julia arrives and tears out Frank's heart in revenge for her own death. Kirsty and Tiffany attempt to escape but are impeded by Julia; a struggle ensues before a blast of wind pulls at them. Julia discovers her reconstituted skin is not fully attached to her body; it splits down the back and Julia is pulled away by the wind to an unknown fate, leaving Kirsty grasping Julia's discarded flesh. She drops it in disgust and she flees with Tiffany.

Heading back to the hospital, Kirsty and Tiffany are trapped by Pinhead and his entourage, who decide to lay claim to Kirsty again. Kirsty shows them the photo of Elliot Spencer, causing the Cenobites to remember that they were once human. Touched by this revelation, they attempt to protect Kirsty when Dr. Channard arrives and lays claim to her. A fight ensues, during which Chatterer, Butterball, and the Female are all killed, reverting to their human forms. Pinhead manages to stave off Dr. Channard long enough for Kirsty and Tiffany to escape, after which he himself is finally killed.

Back in the hospital, Kirsty and Tiffany discover that the Cenobite realm has begun to cross over into the real world, as Dr. Channard has provided all of the patients with puzzle boxes of their own to open. Tiffany decides to return to Hell and close the puzzle box, in the hope that it will stop Dr. Channard. Tiffany is then attacked by Dr. Channard but relents from killing her when Julia appears and begins to kiss him. This provides enough of a distraction for Tiffany to close the puzzle box; Leviathan begins to transform into a cube, severing his connection with Dr. Channard; his head is torn off at the jaws by the retracting tentacle. Tiffany falls off the side of a ledge, but is rescued by Julia, who is revealed to be Kirsty wearing Julia's shed skin. Kirsty and Tiffany escape through the rapidly closing portal back to the hospital.

Sometime later, Kirsty and Tiffany are discharged from the hospital, Tiffany having regained her lucidity. Meanwhile, movers (the same movers from the original film) attempt to pack up Dr. Channard's obsession room; when one of them moves near the mattress he is sucked inside and killed. An intricate pillar known as the Pillar of Souls rises into the surface, containing writhing figures and distorted faces (including Pinhead and skinless Julia); as the pillar rotates, it reveals the face of the vagrant (from the original film) with the voice of the man who initially sold the puzzle box to Frank, inquiring of the surviving mover, "What is your pleasure, sir?", leading to the events of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth.

Cast

• Clare Higgins as Julia Cotton
• Ashley Laurence as Kirsty Cotton
• Kenneth Cranham as Dr. Philip Channard/Channard Cenobite
• Imogen Boorman as Tiffany
• Doug Bradley as Pinhead/Captain Elliot Spencer
• Nicholas Vince as Chatterer/Chatterer II
• Simon Bamford as Butterball
• Barbie Wilde as Female Cenobite
• Sean Chapman as Frank Cotton
• Oliver Smith as Mr. Browning/"Skinless" Frank
• William Hope as Kyle MacRae
• Deborah Joel as "Skinless" Julia/"Skinless" Julia on pillar
• Angus McInnes as Homicide Detective Ronson
• Catherine Chevalier as Tiffany's mother
• Kevin Cole {Male Cenobite}

Production

Clive Barker returned as producer for the sequel, with Tony Randel directing due to his experience of working with Barker on Hellraiser. Randel claims the dark tone of the movie reflected his own mindset on the world at the time. The picture was due to have a much larger budget but it decreased after financial issues with New World Pictures.

Nicholas Vince, who plays the Chatterer, received a hook to the jaw while filming a scene involving his character being impaled on a swinging torture rack surrounded by the many hanging chains. It has been claimed that the camera man stopped filming just at that instance. He also requested his character have eyes to help his vision, which caused some discontent with fans, who derided the new design. A scene in which the character receives his "vision" was removed from the final cut, causing some confusion at his introductory scene in Hellbound featuring him in his original "eyeless" guise.

Originally, there was going to be an extra scene during the ending when Kirsty and Tiffany are running from Channard. The scene was planned thusly; During their escape, the duo run into a doctor and nurse. The doctor demands to know what are they doing. Kirsty backs away in horror when suddenly the doctor and nurse turn into Pinhead and the Female Cenobite, before her and Tiffany continue running. The scene was set to be filmed but was ultimately dropped for two reasons. One was because the filmmakers thought that having actor Doug Bradley as a normal doctor would confuse the viewers, and another was because the special effects for the scene turned out poorly, so it was decided to discard it altogether. However, a photographer who was on set took some photos of Pinhead and the Female Cenobite dressed as surgeons which were used for promotion of the film, and were also used on some VHS/DVD covers of the movie, confusing fans and starting rumors about an "infamous deleted surgery scene". Some trailers do show a few shots from this unfinished scene, as well as parts of another deleted scene with Chatterer stopping the elevator with his hand and jumping at Kirsty and Tiffany. The lost scene was eventually rediscovered on a VHS workprint and announced as an extra for Arrow Video's blu-ray reissue of the first three films in the series.

British Shakespearean actor Kenneth Cranham, who plays Channard, claimed his involvement was due to his grandson pestering him to take up the offer, being a fan of the original.

Oliver Smith, who played Skinless Frank in the original due to his skinny frame (allowing the body makeup to be realistic), reprised his role along with two extra roles as Browning (the mental patient with delusional parasitosis) and as the skinless figure Kirsty sees in the hospital who writes "I Am In Hell Help Me" in blood on the wall.

Composer Christopher Young also returned to compose a more bombastic score larger in scope. For the horn-like sound supposedly emanating from Leviathan in the center of Hell's labyrinth, he had the morse code for the word god incorporated.

Hellbound was due to be Pinhead's final appearance in a Hellraiser film, since Randel and crew expected Julia to become the figurehead of the picture and take the franchise on. The end scene with the Pillar of souls was originally meant to be Julia, raising fully formed from the mattress, opening her mouth from which black light shoots and fills the screen. However, Claire Higgins decided she did not want to return to the character again and declined to make a further sequel. Because the film was commissioned within a week of Hellraiser's release and its strong returns, the producers did not realize the full extent of Pinhead's popularity until after Hellbound's completion. After the realization of Pinhead's popularity, it was decided he would become the main focus and recurring character of the franchise.

Alternate screenplay

An alternate script with Kirsty's father Larry exists, written before Andrew Robinson declined to reprise the role. Many reasons were given for this including disagreement over fees and a clash of schedules although nothing has ever been confirmed. Dr. Channard was originally called Dr. Malahide but this was changed by the director. It was revealed in the Documentary "Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser 2" from Andrew Robinson that he was not a fan of the script and decided to not return as his character was finished anyway. Writer Peter Atkins, said that despite liking Andrew Robinson as an actor he was relieved that he declined as it made the narrative work a lot better in the finished project.

Reception

Released December 1988 in the US, Hellbound would gross $12,090,735 (USA) and £980,503 (UK). Critical response was initially mixed, many critics citing stronger violence and an incoherent plot. Flimsy props and sets have also been criticized, as well as praised for their scope and design for such a low-budget picture. The film has a 50% "rotten" status on Rotten Tomatoes based on 20 reviews.

Critics later commended the film on strong visuals that echo and match Barker's own original. Browning's bed scene gained a lot of notoriety and was released in full on the uncut version of Hellbound on the Special Edition Lament Configuration box set and the film is widely regarded as the strongest of all the sequels and the closest in spirit of the original.

Samples

The line "what's your pleasure, sir?" was used in death metal band Killface's song "What's Your Pleasure?" The lines "The doctor is in" and "I recommend amputation" were used in death metal band Aborted's songs "Meticulous Invagination" and "Parasitic Flesh Resection", respectively.

External links

• Hellbound: Hellraiser II at IMDb