Hellraiser

This movie starts out with two shady characters, doing a shady business transaction where a large amount of cash change hands. And what did the buyer buy? A weird looking puzzle box. Back in the safety of his lair, the buyer (Sean Chapman) solves the puzzle and is then promptly torn to shreds by hooks. We then see some very strange characters called the cenobites.

Back on planet Earth, Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his wife Julia (Claire Higgins) are moving into his dead mother's house. During a walkthrough they discover a mattress and a few kinky photos that show Larry's brother Frank was squatting there for awhile. While Larry is moving in Julia wanders up to the attic where she remembers Frank. As it turns out Frank was the buyer form the beginning. She also had a passionate affair with him right before she married Larry. Speaking of Larry, he chooses that moment to stumble in with a bleeding hand, ruining her fantasy.

Sometime that night we watch as the blood left on the floor (very unhygienic I might add) starts to grow and change. In no time a human skeleton starts to form in a very well done, and yet disturbing scene.  It turns out that Frank managed to escape from the dimension of pleasure and pain (ruled over by the cenobites). Unfortunately , he didn't escape whole and he is now a walking skeleton (Oliver Smith). He gets Julia to seduce men and bring them up to the attic so he can use their blood to continue forming.

As Julia is working on victim #3, Larry's daughter, Kristy (Ashley Laurence) stumbles onto their plot and manages to steal the puzzle box (personally I don't want to know where Frank was hiding that when he escaped). Anyway she makes it out and ends up at the hospital with the world's worst nurse and doctor, that lock her in her room for some reason. She ends up playing with the box and accidentally calls the cenobites. She manages to escape them and go back to the house leading the cenobites to Frank. Miraculously she manages to outwit, outlast and outplay Frank, Julia, the cenobites and a weird scorpion thing. She then does the smart thing and destroys the box. Or tries to at least. She throws it in the fire but a weird homeless guy (Frank Baker) that has been stalking her for a good part of the movie grabs it from the fire and then turns into a dragon an flies off.

I don't get that part or how the box ends up back in the hands of the shady seller form the beginning. Maybe it will be explained in the second movie.

I loved this movie. It wasn't scary, but it was creepy and bloody, which is almost just as good. Well, if done correctly, and it was. Frank's rebirth into this dimension was awesome, even by today's standards. The acting was pretty good, but the writing could've been a little better. It was tacky in places and there wasn't much of a story line. We also followed Julia for a good part of the movie, even though Kristy turned out to be the hero. I guess they were going for a descent into darkness, or  seduction by evil or whatever. It wasn't that believable, and it kind of pointless because she didn't survive the movie.

There was something lacking in this film to make it truly terrifying and awesome, but it was great for mindless gory fun.  

Grade: 8/10