Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth is without a doubt my favorite of the Hellraiser series. The first movie was a unique gorefest, but the pacing always bothered me. The sequel didn't really hold a candle to the original, and every Hellraiser movie after part 3 was absolutely awful to the extent that the entire series has basically been ruined. I mean, really; Pinhead terrorizing computer hackers online? That series is clearly fucked. Still, I maintain that the third installment of the Hellraiser films is entertaining as... well... hell.

So this sleazy, power-hungry owner of a dance club is into dark artwork, and wouldn't ya know it; when he goes to a local art gallery he discovers a rectangular sculpture with bodies twisted all throughout it. Turns out, this is where Pinhead is trapped... and just like in the other films, a little blood goes a long way.

The club owner buys the sculpture and puts it up on display in his bedroom so that all the girls he brings up there will thing he's deep or mysterious. Yeah, I bet they all wonder just how deep he is as the ashes from his cigarette fall onto their naked bodies while he humps away at 'em. Oh yeah, he's a class act ladies.

Well, I suppose any girl stupid enough to fall for his act deserves to be put to death, and Pinhead is more than up to the task. After the girl discovers that the club owner was just using her for sex, she starts yelling at him and gets too close to the sculpture. Pinhead then shoots some of those classic Hellraiser chains at her and raises her up for a face-to-face meeting.

Hello there little lady! He spits out another chain that digs deep into her forehead while she screams her ass off. And that's when it happens...

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIP!!!

This had my friends and I in hysterics the first time we saw it happen. It's like that trick where somebody yanks the tablecloth out from under all of the dishes. Only in this case, it's Pinhead ripping off all of her flesh in one quick yank. Well, it goes without saying that the girl is pretty much kaput after this happens. I mean, even if Pinhead let her go, I doubt she'd even be able to find a club owner that would touch her skinless ass now.

Pinhead finishes the job by ingesting her until she becomes one of the lost souls trapped in the sculpture. Pinhead then asks the seedy club owner, "You enjoyed the girl?" After the guy says yes, Pinhead replies, "Good. So did I!" Personally, it's my favorite kill from the movie, but there's plenty of other great moments in Hellraiser III. What makes it so entertaining is that it was a complete departure from all the other Hellraiser flicks. They removed all the longwinded plotlines and instead went for pure horror, action and comedy. When Pinhead and his new cenobites (including one that kills people with compact discs) take to the streets, there's about as many explosions in a 5-minute span as you'd see in an entire Rambo movie. There's also more memorable one-liners in this flick than all the other Hellraiser movies combined. In another memorable scene, Pinhead kills everybody in a nightclub. It's really everything you could want out of a Hellraiser movie and you can tell they had fun making it.

What's unfortunate is that Hellraiser III was out of print for the longest time, and they FINALLY just put it out on DVD. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there's at least some version of it available now and it's still entertaining as hell, but it's the R-rated version which supposedly cuts out a lot of the gore. Maybe someday we'll get to see the unrated version released on DVD? One can only hope...

Questions? Comments?
-RoG-

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