#35. "Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth" (1992, Hickcox)
By Eivind Langdal
6th January 2010

Uh, so Pinhead’s the villain now? Admittedly, he wasn’t exactly the hero of the first two films, but he wasn’t a full-fledged antagonist either. In fact, one of the better things about the two first films was the fact that it was the humans who were the real bad guys. Pinhead and his Cenobites were just bystanders. They gave tools for the chaos, but they did not initiate it. Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth sees Pinhead become a villain on line with Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and Freddy Kreuger. Sure, there is still a bit of the old Elliot Spencer (the human being who originally found the box and was turned into a demon) in him, but this time, he has become curiously similar to the bad guy in a bad slasher. What a shame.

The third film in the series is better made than its predecessor, as it replaces that film’s bad vision of hell with a more potent vision of hell on earth. Unfortunately, the plot of the film is muddled, and the decision to increase the screen time of Pinhead and decrease the screen time of Kirsty was a poor one indeed (she’s reduced to a “special appearance” in an archival interview tape). It’s not that Pinhead is a weak character (on the contrary), but why bother reintroducing new protagonists? The problem in doing that is simple: you simply cannot bring as much depth to new characters as you can with old ones, as the old ones have a character history that acts a solid foundation to build on with more depth. Starting from scratch will give you something fresh, yes, but it also means you risk repeating yourself.

The new heroine here is a TV reporter named Joey, who is frustrated because she is getting nowhere in her career. When her cameraman, Doc, films her, she simply makes mock comments about the mundane nature of the assignments she is given. However, while doing one of these assignments in a hospital, she gets the story of her life as a bloody young man is rushed in with at least a dozen chains hooked to his body. Accompanying her is a young girl named Terri (it’s strange how there are so many female characters in this film that has names that are usually used on men or at least resemble ones used by men). She is terrified, though contrary to plain logic she has no intention of staying in the hospital. But never mind that, because the movie apparently needs a scene where Joey investigates her way back to Terri, which means that Terri is free to go.

Before she gets to her inevitable struggle with Pinhead, Joey is busy struggling with a few demons of her own, though in a more figurative way than the walking acupuncture ad. Her father was a soldier in Vietnam, and through many nights she has to struggle with visions of him being left behind by a helicopter even though he is not really dead. When she makes her second acquaintance with Terri, Joey learns that her new best friend is incapable of dreaming, and is also very jealous of those who can. One who is not a stranger to dreaming and aiming high is an owner of a club named “The Boiler Room”. He is J.P. Monroe, and he spends most of his night seducing girls with roses, only to dump them after they’ve offered their services to him.

He has also bought the pillar that trapped Pinhead and his colleagues at the end of the second film, though he is obviously unaware of that. It becomes abruptly clear to Monroe one night, though, when one of his girls is devoured alive by the pillar, which in turn awakens Pinhead, who is intent to be set free so that he can do whatever bad guys want to do with the world. In the flurry of exposition dialogue, I forgot what it was specifically. Needless to say, the guy is eventually free to walk on earth, which results in a lot of corpses and many of the living turned into Cenobites. The latter is a particular bad inclusion by the filmmakers, as Pinhead was really the only of its kind that didn’t look ridiculous. Still, however strange his companions in the two first films were, they cannot compete with the one in this film who kills his enemies by throwing CDs. Yes, you read that correctly: he throws CDs. If that isn’t the most ridiculous thing ever, I don’t know what is.