David Galindo
Screenwriter
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2003
- Messages
- 1,263
[c]Hellraiser (UMD)
Region 1 • R • Subtitles: English • Available Now
[/c]
The epitome of bare-bones UMDs...hoo boy, is it ever.
Thoughts on the Movie
Sometimes a movie like this comes along and I’m at a loss to review it. Sometimes it’s just better to go through the entire movie, point by point, until you reach the ending and therefore the end of the movie review.
The movie open with a strange man (who we later find out is named Frank) buying a gold box from a dealer. He buys it and sits on the floor, with candles burning around him as he goes into a trance-like state. Then hooks appear from the box and tear his skin apart as the walls turn into blood with flesh nailed to the wall. Random tortured demon people appear and one puts together the bloody flesh on the floor to reassemble Frank’s face, which looks exactly like a Halloween mask since the eyes seem to be fused with the skin like plastic, instead of separated like eyeballs usually are.
Then we cut to a family that decides to buy the house. The Cottons consists of Larry and Julia, along with the daughter Kirsty. The movers come to move them in, and Julia goes upstairs to have flashbacks of Frank (the brother of Larry) and her having wild sex. Then Larry runs up to the attic with his hand soaking in blood, as he cut himself while moving the bed. The blood falls on the floor, but seeps into the wood. Then the attic apparently re-births Frank (yes, I’m serious) who I guess was trapped in the house and is at the moment only a skeletal frame with organs and slime. He tells Julia he needs more blood to become whole again, and as soon as he gets whole he’s gonna sex her up right good. She goes for it and starts bringing in men in the house, tempts them with sex, gets them in the attic and proceeds to hit them in the face with a hammer, after which Frank eats them and becomes a little bit more whole. Nevermind the fact that it only took six drops of blood to build Frank’s skeletal frame and organs, and three whole men to make a little bit more skin on his body.
If for any reason you care, spoilers are a comin’ for the rest of the movie review. Kirsty gets wise and sees Julia bring a man to the house and he gets eaten. Frank finds Kirsty and scares the crap out of her, causing her to steal his gold box and faint outside of the house. She wakes up in a hospital, and then plays with the gold box until the walls open and this scorpion starts chasing her. Then the three weird looking guys (one of them being on the UMD cover art) tell her that they are whisking her away to the world of pain, and she alerts them to Frank who escaped their clutches and says she can lead them to him (later in the film the three appear at the house without her summoning the box...so why couldn’t they find Frank themselves?) She goes back to her dad’s house, but not before her dad gets eaten, and then finds Frank and unleashes the three guys to take him away, and they do by injecting him with needles and hooks that tear him apart again. Before he is taken away, he smiles while covered in blood and hooks and says, “Jesus wept.” in a mocking tone that manages to be completely offensive and have nothing to do with the tone of the movie up to this point (even though the house seemed to be full of religious statues for some reason...maybe religion evokes horror to those who don’t understand it, I guess). He explodes, and soon she runs around the house, trapping the three back in the box. The boyfriend of Kirsty comes to the house and watches as she traps the scorpion demon inside the gold box, and he gives her a look as if to say, yeah, you catch demons good. Considering this is the first time the boyfriend had seen anything supernatural, you’d think he might have a couple more questions to ask her.
Then we cut to some fires Kirsty has set to burn the evidence, and as she burns some remains in the grass a hobo (who we saw crucially established earlier in the film as...a hobo) goes up to the fire, melts, turns into a winged demon monster, and flies away. We only get the POV from the monster’s perspective since it would have been too expensive to see the actual demon fly away, but you get the idea.
And that’s it. Going online, I see quotes such as “A Horror Classic.” Am I missing something here? I am willing to claim ignorance on the horror genre (I seem to be doing that a lot lately) since I’ve seen maybe only a dozen horror films. This movie is so forgettable that I had a hard time remembering what exactly happened, even though I had seen it only a few hours ago. Bah.
Video Quality
The movie is kept in it’s 1.85 ratio, and the results are a bit varied. The video is sharp, and the colors are fine, but the grain can be pretty bad at times. The movie shows its age in the video transfer, but all in all it’s not too bad. The black levels are good, but could be a little better...but I got a bit more than I was initially expecting.
3.5/5
Audio Quality
There isn’t much bang when it comes to the audio, but what is there is nice and separated, and the directional effects are spot on. It’s loud and it does a fine job, thankfully.
4/5
Extras
You know, when I saw Paramount’s OK menus and subtitles on the UMD (and that was IT) I figured it couldn’t get any worse.
Well, I was dead wrong on that one.
Hellraiser has a menu with the play option and...that’s it. There aren’t even any subtitles on the UMD disc. But hey, the movie logo zooms in and out of the PSP screen...that’s something right? Right?
Egads, this UMD feels cheap. Thankfully it’s priced at $12, but still, you expect the very basic support like subtitles to be on there, and it’s not. Man, what an empty UMD this turned out to be.
0/5
Overall…
And to think I got angry at Paramount for their UMD extras. The movie looks and sounds OK, and the price is OK...so unless you’re a huge fan of Hellraiser, I’d pass. There are better choices out there...
2/5
IGN REVIEW TABLE:
The Movie: 4/10
The Video: 7/10
The Audio: 7.5/10
The Extras: 0/10
Overall: 5/10
Region 1 • R • Subtitles: English • Available Now
[/c]The epitome of bare-bones UMDs...hoo boy, is it ever.
Thoughts on the Movie
Sometimes a movie like this comes along and I’m at a loss to review it. Sometimes it’s just better to go through the entire movie, point by point, until you reach the ending and therefore the end of the movie review.
The movie open with a strange man (who we later find out is named Frank) buying a gold box from a dealer. He buys it and sits on the floor, with candles burning around him as he goes into a trance-like state. Then hooks appear from the box and tear his skin apart as the walls turn into blood with flesh nailed to the wall. Random tortured demon people appear and one puts together the bloody flesh on the floor to reassemble Frank’s face, which looks exactly like a Halloween mask since the eyes seem to be fused with the skin like plastic, instead of separated like eyeballs usually are.
Then we cut to a family that decides to buy the house. The Cottons consists of Larry and Julia, along with the daughter Kirsty. The movers come to move them in, and Julia goes upstairs to have flashbacks of Frank (the brother of Larry) and her having wild sex. Then Larry runs up to the attic with his hand soaking in blood, as he cut himself while moving the bed. The blood falls on the floor, but seeps into the wood. Then the attic apparently re-births Frank (yes, I’m serious) who I guess was trapped in the house and is at the moment only a skeletal frame with organs and slime. He tells Julia he needs more blood to become whole again, and as soon as he gets whole he’s gonna sex her up right good. She goes for it and starts bringing in men in the house, tempts them with sex, gets them in the attic and proceeds to hit them in the face with a hammer, after which Frank eats them and becomes a little bit more whole. Nevermind the fact that it only took six drops of blood to build Frank’s skeletal frame and organs, and three whole men to make a little bit more skin on his body.
If for any reason you care, spoilers are a comin’ for the rest of the movie review. Kirsty gets wise and sees Julia bring a man to the house and he gets eaten. Frank finds Kirsty and scares the crap out of her, causing her to steal his gold box and faint outside of the house. She wakes up in a hospital, and then plays with the gold box until the walls open and this scorpion starts chasing her. Then the three weird looking guys (one of them being on the UMD cover art) tell her that they are whisking her away to the world of pain, and she alerts them to Frank who escaped their clutches and says she can lead them to him (later in the film the three appear at the house without her summoning the box...so why couldn’t they find Frank themselves?) She goes back to her dad’s house, but not before her dad gets eaten, and then finds Frank and unleashes the three guys to take him away, and they do by injecting him with needles and hooks that tear him apart again. Before he is taken away, he smiles while covered in blood and hooks and says, “Jesus wept.” in a mocking tone that manages to be completely offensive and have nothing to do with the tone of the movie up to this point (even though the house seemed to be full of religious statues for some reason...maybe religion evokes horror to those who don’t understand it, I guess). He explodes, and soon she runs around the house, trapping the three back in the box. The boyfriend of Kirsty comes to the house and watches as she traps the scorpion demon inside the gold box, and he gives her a look as if to say, yeah, you catch demons good. Considering this is the first time the boyfriend had seen anything supernatural, you’d think he might have a couple more questions to ask her.
Then we cut to some fires Kirsty has set to burn the evidence, and as she burns some remains in the grass a hobo (who we saw crucially established earlier in the film as...a hobo) goes up to the fire, melts, turns into a winged demon monster, and flies away. We only get the POV from the monster’s perspective since it would have been too expensive to see the actual demon fly away, but you get the idea.
And that’s it. Going online, I see quotes such as “A Horror Classic.” Am I missing something here? I am willing to claim ignorance on the horror genre (I seem to be doing that a lot lately) since I’ve seen maybe only a dozen horror films. This movie is so forgettable that I had a hard time remembering what exactly happened, even though I had seen it only a few hours ago. Bah.
Video Quality
The movie is kept in it’s 1.85 ratio, and the results are a bit varied. The video is sharp, and the colors are fine, but the grain can be pretty bad at times. The movie shows its age in the video transfer, but all in all it’s not too bad. The black levels are good, but could be a little better...but I got a bit more than I was initially expecting.
3.5/5
Audio Quality
There isn’t much bang when it comes to the audio, but what is there is nice and separated, and the directional effects are spot on. It’s loud and it does a fine job, thankfully.
4/5
Extras
You know, when I saw Paramount’s OK menus and subtitles on the UMD (and that was IT) I figured it couldn’t get any worse.
Well, I was dead wrong on that one.
Hellraiser has a menu with the play option and...that’s it. There aren’t even any subtitles on the UMD disc. But hey, the movie logo zooms in and out of the PSP screen...that’s something right? Right?
Egads, this UMD feels cheap. Thankfully it’s priced at $12, but still, you expect the very basic support like subtitles to be on there, and it’s not. Man, what an empty UMD this turned out to be.
0/5
Overall…
And to think I got angry at Paramount for their UMD extras. The movie looks and sounds OK, and the price is OK...so unless you’re a huge fan of Hellraiser, I’d pass. There are better choices out there...
2/5
IGN REVIEW TABLE:
The Movie: 4/10
The Video: 7/10
The Audio: 7.5/10
The Extras: 0/10
Overall: 5/10
