Hellraiser II: Hellbound

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) – Brian McNail

Hellraiser II opens with scenes from the climax of Hellraiser. Following the opening credits the camera pans across a guy sitting on the floor of a bunker playing with a golden puzzle box. The box shocks the guy and opens up on the floor playing a music box melody. Chains and hooks grab the guy and pull him into the box revealing his transformation into Pinhead.

A flash of lightening later and our heroine from Hellraiser Kirsty wakes up inside a psychiatric hospital. She is interviewed by a homicide detective while patrolmen search her father’s home. Inside the house a patrolman discovers a few of Julia’s dead bodies as well as a mattress soaked in blood. Kirsty upon finding out about the mattress tells the doctor and his assistant it must be destroyed before Julia comes back to life like Frank did. Later that night Kirsty walks through the psyche ward finding a girl named Tiffany who spends all her time playing with puzzles.

Kristy’s doctor makes his rounds through the main ward and enters the elevator stopping on the floor marked “Maintenance” which seems to be his own personal playground of nut jobs that he seems to get a sick enjoyment out of. His assistant Kyle goes to visit Kirsty and she tells him she saw her father the previous night and he goes to get Dr. Channard. Kirsty tells Dr. Channard the story of Julia and Frank (via clips from the first movie) and about Frank solving the puzzle box which is actually a gateway to hell. She then goes on to retell the entire plot of Hellraiser 1 with clips from the first movie which makes you wonder why they started with the flashbacks if they were going to tell everything again, but I guess it wouldn’t be Hellraiser without Kirsty interrupting flashbacks even her own.

After his session with Kirsty, Dr. Channard paces his home and leaves. Kyle breaks in (why?) and see’s Channard has at least 3 cubes as well as the mattress Julia died on. A first person walkthrough of the maintenance area is done while Kyle is reading Channard’s notes and newspaper clippings there is also a photo of Pinhead (prior to his transformation). He then hears someone coming and hides in the corner to see Channard bringing in one of the patients in a straightjacket. He removes the jacket and gives the patient (who is seeing maggots crawling all over him) a straight razor. All of the blood from this one patient is enough to revive Julia almost completely (sans skin) in just one feeding.

The doc wraps Julia in ace bandages turning her into a cheap looking mummy. Kyle goes to rescue Kirsty saying it is all true and telling her what happened in Dr. Channard’s home office including the revelation that he has multiple boxes. Channard brings Julia to the house from the first movie where he has strung up patients from the psych ward and she goes on a killing rampage killing at least 15 people off screen. Dr. Channard then cuts away the bandages to show that Julia is back in her old skin.

Kirsty and Kyle arrive at and search the house and split up. Kyle meets Julia in the attic getting killed and finishes bringing Julia back to 100% (the 16 people before were not enough apparently). Kirsty hears the body hit the floor and rushes upstairs to confront Julia who tells her she is no longer the evil stepmother but instead the evil queen before knocking her out. Following this Dr. Channard brings in Tiffany with the box and watches along with Julia as she solves the puzzle. Upon completing the puzzle all hell breaks loose and the Cenobites make their first appearance with Pinhead stating that desire has called the group and everyone looks at Channard.

Kirsty wakes up in the attic and retrieves the puzzle box and proceeds to run through the corridors of hell calling for her father. Meeting up with the Cenobites who all harass her and then morph the cube she is holding into a diamond shaped prism. Kirsty escapes and meets up with Tiffany.

Channard and Julia explore the area when they see Leviathan the God of the Labyrinth. Julia explains that she was sent back to bring Leviathan souls and pushes Channard into a cube turning him into the Channard Cenobite (awesome scene involving embalming and 5 strands of piano wire). Kirsty enters a crypt with tables of wiggling bodies covered in white sheets and is confronted by Frank (in his own skin this time) who chases her with his trusty switchblade and explains that Kirsty is in his private hell now and an incestual tryst is hinted at (and everyone thinks this only happens in the south). Kirsty betrays Frank and burns the skin off him.

Julia then arrives dragging Tiffany with her who releases her so she can literally rip Frank’s heart out with her bare hands allowing Tiffany and Kirsty to escape only to be trapped by a sucking void. We see the Channard Cenobite exit his cube and Julia picking up the puzzle box that Kirsty had dropped earlier. Julia confronts Kirsty who engage in a tug of war over Tiffany. There is only one problem playing tug a war while wearing a skin suit it rips off so easily. Julia is sucked into the void (without her skin) and Tiffany and Kirsty run away making their way back into the hospital mutually embracing each other in Tiffany’s first real show of emotion. The two exit the room to see Channard has given all of the patients cubes to play with, while witnessing this Channard appears and attacks the duo.

The girls escape Channard and run into the room with Pinhead and all of his friends. Kirsty gives Pinhead his photo and reminds him that he was once human and tries to implore the cenobites to remember where they came from which they do. This moment of thoughtfulness is interrupted by Channard who beckons Tiffany to him. The other Cenobites have other plans and attack Channard. Channard easily defends himself killing The Woman, Chatterer and Butterball and restoring Pinhead to his human form before slitting his throat.

Tiffany and Kirsty escape back into the hospital with Tiffany saying she has to go back and finish the puzzle and returning to the entrance to hell. Tiffany goes to the Julia suit and picks up what the cube and running to the area that Julia and Channard saw Leviathan earlier. Tiffany then proceeds to work the diamond puzzle but is interrupted by Channard. Who backs her into the arms of Julia (back in her skin). Julia and Channard make out while Tiffany picks up the diamond and starts to turn it back into the cube. Channard has his head ripped off by Leviathan which causes Tiffany to stumble off the walkway and hang by her fingers until Julia offers to help her. Tiffany is rescued and Julia pulls her skin off revealing Kirsty was wearing the suit the entire time. Leviathan to collapse the gateway to hell and Tiffany and Kirsty make a mad dash out escaping.

Tiffany and Kirsty leave the mental institution and walk off into the sunset. In the final scene of the movie one of the movers that is emptying Dr. Channard’s house finds the mattress and is sucked into it with the cenobite’s wooden totem rising from it complete with the faces of all four cenobite’s and the person who sells the cube in the first movie.

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This is without a doubt my favorite flick of the entire series. The acting is great, the storyline flows smoothly with giving everyone time to develop their characters. Also unlike the first movie it is faster paced. This movie like Hellraiser are both 93 minutes long but this movie tackles the issues I had with the first one perfectly. As I mentioned in my previous review (http://www.thenerdemporium.com/articles.php?article_id=524) for Hellraiser everything was pretty much explained to death and every plot point had to be focused on including three identical kills that took what felt like 20 minutes of time to accomplish. This movie does have its own time wasters such as having Julia being wrapped up in ace bandages to have her in the very next scene her regain her skin was a bit redundant but with different scenes being shuffled around and cut out completely it is possible that made sense at the time of filming.

The lack of kills is my only true complaint in this movie. Most of the kills shown happen so quickly or are not shown at all. Other than the first kill Julia commits (killing maggot boy) all of the other kills are either shown off camera or cut off before the victim is really dead with the body being shown later. The movie does redeem itself by focusing more time on the Cenobites in this movie in comparison to the first movie.

Tony Randel who directed this movie did an incredible job. The movie has a visual feast of computer graphics that were barely available in 1989 much less to horror movies. This is even more incredible knowing that the production company New World Pictures started having financial issues and cut the budget in nearly half. Thankfully most of the cast and crew came back for the sequel so it is not weird seeing different people playing the same roles. Christopher Young who did the soundtrack does an incredible job of placing a low sound score throughout the movie which doesn’t over power any of the scenes which allows the scene to be the thing remembered and not the song itself.
I give Hellbound: Hellraiser II: 4.5 out of 5 stars.