Raising Hell four more times

I liked the first Hellraiser movie (which was very faithful to the book). The second one was bizarre but fun. The third was more of a sequel to the first, although still weird. And I though the fourth capped things off nicely, although it's not as well liked. But, of course, there was money to be made with the franchise, so here's another four movies. (There look to be more, but these were the ones I could get my hands on.)

Inferno (2000): Joe is a Bad Cop(tm). Fools around on his wife, takes evidence from crime scenes, uses others to cover his tracks, etc., etc. So when he stupidly, accidentally opens the gate to the Cenobites, they make his life Hell, tearing apart everything he knew. Yeah, it's not subtle, and the only reason to keep watching is to see what horror tableau the filmmakers came up with next. The best actor by far is still Doug Bradley as Pinhead.

Hellseeker (2002): Not a great movie. Kirsty (from the first and third movie) returns, and it killed in the beginning of this movie. Her husband (who decided that the cube was a good anniversary present) starts descending into hell as all women want to be with him, and it seems that he might have had some nefarious purposes that he now can't remember and so are unraveling all around him. Given the central conceit of this movie (which I won't give away) is stupid, the rest of the movie is just a shell trying to hide that fact, and it doesn't pay out. Doug Bradley, yay, Ashley Lawrence, nay.

Deader (2005): As in 'this series has become' it seems. Amy Klein is tracking down a story, and it leads to a group that can bring the dead back to life, but it interacts with the domain of the Cenobites, and they are not happy about that. It seems there's some kind of war going on, which could be interesting, but that plot line isn't explained further in the preference of investigating Amy's backstory. Which involves a knife, which becomes highly significant as... actually, no, not really. Nothing is significant here. And this seems to be the tenth take on explaining the Cenobites and not doing it well. Another waste of time. This one involve Doug Bradley, Kari Wuhrer and Marc Warren.

Hellworld (2005): [yes, churned out, it seems, the same time as above] Um... is this movie the same franchise as the rest of them? People known about the cube, young people go to a party about it, and then... well, the (near) ending sequence is like it's from another horror series entirely. It's like this was another script entirely that had Pinhead inserted into it (which, you know, it was). This might have been a decent enough movie itself, but hooking it into the Hellraiser series, at number eight, just makes it sad. It does star Doug Bradley, Kathryn Winnick and Lance Henriksen for some reason!

(I even have one of the Hellraiser Cube replicas!)

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