20140301: Horror Review--Hellraiser 4 1996

Hellraiser IV: Bloodline

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 1996, rated R, 84 minutes, horror.
2. IMDB: 5.0/10.0 from 11,172 audience ratings. Estimated budget: 4 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 25% on the meter; 38% liked it from 34,682 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.3/5.0 from 430,893 audience ratings.
5. Directed by Kevin Yagher, then Joe Chappelle; screenplay by Peter Atkins.
6. Starring: Bruce Ramsay as Phillip l'Merchant/John Merchant/Dr. Paul Merchant; Valentina Vargas as Angelique/Peasant Girl; Doug Bradley as Pinhead, Charlotte Chatton as Genevieve l'Merchant, Adam Scott as Jacques, Mickey Cottrelle as Duc de l'Isle.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film opens on 'Space Station Minos, 2127' which is quite a shift from HR3, made in 1992. There is a single male adult on the station before it is boarded by armed, uniformed troops. The man attempts to manipulate a puzzle cube remotely.  This does not go as expected.


2. The man is Dr. Merchant, who designed the station for a company.  The boarding party is from his company.  They are attempting to figure out what is going on, and then to restore the profitability of the station.  They imprison the doctor, then interrogate him.


3. So, we start an ongoing set of pieces of flashback to some 400 years previous.  Dr. Merchant's ancestor, Phillip le Merchant, after occult studies, constructed the first of the puzzle cubes that opened a passage to the cenobites to Earth.  In 2127, Dr. Merchant was attempting to finish the process of closing that passage.  Of course, the boarding party did not help.


4. Phillip sells the cube to the Duc de l'Isle, an evil minded magician.  The duke uses it in a number of bloody rituals conducted by him and Jacques over the murdered and dismembered body of a peasant girl.  The rituals raise a demon. The duke is stupid enough to think he can command the demon, whom he names Angelique.


5. Phillip tries to get some support for stopping the duke, but the 18th century is in the Age of Reason, so no one really believes him.  Still, one of this friends tells him to design a mechanism that will close the doors to the demons.  Phillip sets about to do this.


6. Phillip clearly failed in his own time.  Angelique meets Phillip's descendant John in the 20th century.  He is a famous architect, whom Angelique hopes to recruit.  Evidently John failed as well.  Will Dr. Merchant succeed in 2127?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: The Merchant family tries to close the doors to Pinhead and company.
2. Two stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Dark, a bit fuzzy, but mostly OK.  I could do without the almost mono-colour palettes.


2. Sound: 5/10 Music composed by Daniel Licht, the credits say.  Sound overall was not that effective.


3. Acting: 3/10 Bruce Ramsay was the lead, I suppose.  Unfortunately, his acting was beneath poor.  Doug Bradley and Mickey Cottrelle were reasonably good, but the bit players were terrible. Valentina Vargas was marginal.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 So we have artificial gravity in 2127?  Sounds great.  The jumps are many and not helpful among the 18th, 20th, and 22nd centuries.  Changing directors in mid-stream due to the interference of the producers did not help.  There might have been a coherent idea here at one time.  The final product was way too muddled with threads that go nowhere.


5. SFX: 4/10 There were lots of CGI (computer generated images), but few of them were well done.  The film had plenty of blood and ripped flesh for the gore hounds.  The worst FX was the stupid lipstick on John and Paul Merchant.