Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

The first two films were austere, harsh, and even kind of quiet. Low production values and a lack of proper technology led to grittier and more palpable scenery and action, better paced plotting, more mood than monster. The third film took the Hellraiser series to campy places, substituting the sobering and seductive S&M motif with fireballs, goofy get-ups, and some of the worst dialogue/acting ever committed to celluloid.

BLOODLINE properly returns the plot back to the original Hellraiser mythos, but can't resist some of the same wacky excesses that made HELL ON EARTH such a horrible movie. The film has three basic parts, each of them following a member of the Merchant family (all of them played by Bruce Ramsey). The original Merchant was a toymaker living in Paris, and he unwittingly(!) designed and created the puzzle box that opens the gates to hell. Whoopsie. It turns out that now he and his entire bloodline are cursed unless they can destroy the evil that they have unleashed.

The second story follows the 1996 version of Merchant, now an architect plagued by strange dreams. He battles with Pinhead, but not successfully enough to keep him from tangling with yet another ancestor, this one living on a space station in 2172. Or maybe it's 2271. Either way, the future.

The portrayal of three different eras was a good idea, but it's done through a series of flashbacks and history lessons provided by the Future Merchant as he is being interrogated in his space station by the beautiful but horribly named Rimmer (Christine Harnos in a sadly extraneous role). This constant switching from the future to the past makes the delivery uneven, chunks of the plot having to make way for clumsy blocks of poorly-written exposition.

But the bare bones are there, as are the meatier, bloodier elements to every Hellraiser movie. This was the first Hellraiser movie I ever saw, back when it was released theatrically in '96, and it was -- at that time -- the first movie I ever walked out on. Not that I thought it was bad; I simply couldn't handle how scared it made me (the scene that did me in: when Pinhead attacks the twin security guards). I've seen a lot more since then, so I was able to sit through it this time around, but it made me squeamish all the same. Not quite as classy as the movies that spawned it, BLOODLINE is at least as scary. Sometimes, with movies like these, that's all that matters.

According to the back of the DVD box this movie is supposed to be Widescreen.

When i tried to watch this movie on my new HD LCD tv using my Xbox 360 this movie turns out to NOT be Widescreen like it says on the back of the DVD box.