Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

The acting is not great (quite bad, actually) and the actors are not very convincing, especially Kevin Bernhardt as club owner JP Monroe. Even Doug Bradley as Pinhead is not convincing. Pinhead doesn't even look scary. On the contrary, he looks quite serene and sweet, actually. Pinhead is supposed to be this great demon, but he relies on mortals for help. Really?? The plot is ridiculous. Why is Pinhead now killing everyone in sight and not only the ones who opened the box? What's the purpose of the box then? The film became a slasher for no reason. Nothing about this film makes any sense. Why have the rules changed? Why are Pinhead and Captain Elliot Spencer separated if they're the same person? Oh, and what a silly ending...

Hellraiser 3 is one of those lame attempts at continuing a horror franchise that audiences were subjected to in the 90's. Child's play, Friday the 13th, Halloween, etc. These movies just got silly and poorly produced by the early 90's.As for the movie at hand, it's almost totally lacking in the relatively sophisticated mood and creativity of Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (1988). These were movies about the dark aspects of the human condition, about authentic human beings falling prey to lust and temptation. Their misadventures opened the door to the Cenobites, those sinister BDSM icons. Besides punishing sinners, the more innocent also would end up drawn into the mess.In the 3rd film, we instead get unpleasant and shallow characters that we just don't care about. The compelling thing about the earlier movies was how seemingly ordinary and unpretentious people were seduced by their base impulses. We didn't hate or ridicule these people. The guy who brings the Cenobites back in this movie is a twenty-something L.A. club owner who looks, talks, and acts likes a total jackass. With his shaved and toned chest, he seems like some kind of G.Q. or Playgirl reject who inexplicably got cast in a series which had established a seriousness and maturity with the first two movies. The heroine of this movie is played by a fairly likable actress, but her character isn't interesting and her dialogue/character building scenes come off as flat, like the director couldn't wait to get to the "good" parts.Also, the first two movies had a kind of stately British vibe to them. Part 3, on the other hand, is very obviously a lowest common denominator L.A. B movie. It tries hard to be "hip" (e.g. now very dated) with it's locations, rock music, and young cast. Sure, some of the 80's hairstyles of the first two films haven't aged all that well, but besides that the first two movie were not about fashion, they were sincere and moody explorations of sinister things. In part 3, the excruciating club scenes are shot and edited frantically, like a music video complete with mediocre 90's hard rock. Not even scary, odd that a "horror" movie would have long stretches that are not even tense, let alone scary.Being "fashionable" is something that badly hurt 90's horror. Jamie Lee Curtis wore J.C. Penney in Halloween; Tommy Hilfiger got his logo in the credits of The Faculty (1998). Another element to this is the dialogue content and delivery in 90's horror; in 70's and 80's horror characters even when teenage were more low-key and unpretentious. By the 90's it seemed like every script writer and actor came off as trying way to hard to make characters "witty" or "clever". In practice this led to snarky and shallow characters that were hard to relate to.The movie climaxes with an orgy of mass-violence (shot and edited in an overactive way, just like almost everything else in the movie) that reinforces the notion that overuse leads to boredom. Pinhead and his new cast of Cenobites (that are more poorly designed and acted than the earlier Cenobites) murder more people at a faster rate than any other "slasher" villain ever did. I'm sure it seemed cool at the time, but it's not scary and it destroys the credibility of the villains who were more restrained in the first two movies. Also, having everything be on "Earth" (or at least a theatrically flamboyant early 90's version of Earth) means that we don't get the ambitious Hellscapes that were well-realized in the 2nd movie. The stop-motion wonders of that film's climax are gone too, as for this movie it's just Pinhead and his new boring crew giving the F/X crew opportunities to hone their make-up wound skills. After you see a neck slash or head gouge for the tenth time, who cares? So it's a three for me. It isn't as aggressively sloppy as some of the other "efforts" of it's period, so if for no other reason than that, I'll give it credit.

First of all, be sure to see the full uncut version of 96 minutes, mostly you will find the cut version of 91 minutes or TV version clocking in at 89 minutes!3 year after part 2 the franchise was back. Nothing to do with previous parts from now on every entry stood on it's own. Of course Kirsty (Ashley Lawrence) was back for a moment to lay a link to other parts but that's all. Away from the UK up to New York. An owner of a Goth club the Boiler Room bought a statue that delivers pain. A journalist witnesses the arrival of a victim at a hospital full of chains and his head explode. Off she goes with a Goth chick to see what is going on. Soon they discover the Channard archive.It takes a while before pinhead comes in. The thing they did was putting pinhead in lighting so the mystery and atmosphere of part 1 is gone, the same happened with Freddy Kruger remember. But they were clever enough to actually tell the story of Captain Elliot Spencer (Bradley) who becomes pinhead as we know. So we have the story taking place in NY and the story taking place at WW 1. To see the horrors of pinhead you have to wait an hour, but once he enters the gore do comes in. Not that bad after all this entry. If you are searching for the full uncut the thing added is more blah blah done by Captain Spencer and some gore at the trenches. Further you go deeper into conversations. It's also the first hellraiser with nudity. For me better than part 2 and pinhead at his best at the church. Motorhead was also used in the score.Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 2,5/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

Hellraiser takes an alternate turn in the series focusing on a reporter caught in an epidemic of people around town being subjected to death by chain's and must solve the mystery with the help of a club girl.It was actually quite decent from effects, music and atmosphere of doom all across the land.A few continuation errors could've been patched up like Pinhead now being the king of hell, the stone statue from part 2 appearing in The store instead of hell and his minions coming back to life without rhyme or reason.The opening scene was a nice throw back to the first showing Pinhead before he turned and how he became the soulless monster he was at present.Yet he seems more humorless like he can't contain a bad joke and loses a lot of the menace that made him scary. Instead of offering justice he punishes anyone near him or in his vicinity betraying the rules set up for him.It tried to be a true Hellraiser film that revels the first two keeping the sex appeal, but the gore is tame and doesn't ring true to the epic blood bath of the first two. Even though Tina's skinning and the club massacre come very close.I like Joey and Tina as a fuel but it feels like an unused script staring Kristy and Tiffany yet they couldn't get them back.Its watchable to any die hard Hellraiser fan, but it doesn't have the ingredients that made the first two a horror master piece.Try it out and see for yourself.