Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker

I’ve heard from people that have had appendicitis, that when you press down on your stomach, it relieves the pain a little bit, but when you take your hand away, it hurts even worse. Like the inflamed organ is making up for lost time.

So it should have come as no surprise that after taking some time off for Thanksgiving and some other family related stuff, I come back to The Hellraiser Project just in time for Hellraiser: Hellseeker, which is the worst of the franchise. It’s a jumble of flashbacks, dream sequences, and hallucinations with a “surprise ending” as the cherry on top. It’s like Donnie Darko, except Patchouli-smelling theatre chicks won’t sleep with you if you say you liked it.

This is the tipping point. I knew this would be bad, but if I knew it would be THIS bad, I wouldn’t have signed up for it. This is my Dresden, except I’m an Internet movie-hack and I’m not Kurt Vonnegut. This will haunt me at odd hours for the rest of my natural life, as a reminder that things could get so much worse. Nobody said it was easy, the song says, but nobody said that it would be this hard. I know I have only two left in this project, but I want out, and am willing to consider alternatives. Such as”¦

-Self-dentistry.

-Wearing a suit made entirely of ham and running through Fallujah.

-Cleaning septic tanks.

-Buying Yankees season tickets.

-Being the meat in a Malkin-Coulter sandwich.

I’m impressed with the B-grades of clone actors in the Hellraiser movies. There was a Billy Zane clone in the third one and a retroactive David Boreanaz clone in the fifth one. So with this sixth installment, a Cole Hauser — COLE HAUSER! — clone plays, Trevor. He is in a car accident with his wife in the passenger seat at the beginning of the movie. The car careens off a bridge into a river and he escapes. She doesn’t. He’s under suspicion for the rest of the movie.

Mystery Science Theater 3000
Volume 12 Box Set Collection
Created by Joel Hodgson
Rhino Home Video
Available now

The irreverent and innovative comedy program Mystery Science Theater 3000 has been off the air since 1999, and still it garners fanatical devotion from the younger set and fan-sites-o’-plenty. I was twelve when I first saw and fell in love with this show. The episode was ROCKETSHIP X-M, y’know, the Lloyd Bridges movie? I also saw the actual movie they put into theaters four times and it was the only instance I ever almost literally died laughing. Seriously. I nearly choked to death on a SweeTart at the line “So this is what the world must sound like to Pete Townshend”¦”

For those of you who don’t know what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is (and if you’re any kind of Internet geek and you’re admitting that, you really should be ashamed of yourself), it’s that show where the guy and the two puppets in silhouette down at the bottom of the screen talk and joke through old B-movies. I had a good time with this show when it was on the air, I had a good time with the ensuing video releases, and I had a good time with the recently released Volume Twelve boxed set, which I got for free from Rhino, and is the only time being a critic rocked purely and wholly. I KNEW this Geeks of Doom gig would pay off! It isn’t ALL Dane Cook, Eli Roth, and leather-daddies from Hell!

Of course on the first of the four discs, Dr. Forrester (Trace Beaulieu) made a Clive Barker joke”¦ I THOUGHT I WAS SAFE!

But while Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a joy to watch, it is kind of a pain in the ass to review. I actually have to justify why this whole MST3K thing “works,” and I’ve found that what makes or breaks an episode of the show has little to do with whether Joel or Mike or any of the myriad actor/writers pulling robot duty are on the ball, but rather the quality of the actual movie they’re looking at. What they’ve done is basically make film criticism saleable and funny, and I know about as well as anyone else that some bad movies are not only bad on their own, but suck any degree of fun one might have with how bad they are. And try, try, try as you might, the movie just isn’t working with you.

So I’m giving up on Heroes. It was fun to start with, but it was a good 24-episode idea that has gone on way too long. Veronica Mars couldn’t save it, low ratings and a writer’s strike pre-empted the doom of the spin-off series Heroes: Origins before it could begin production, and even creator Tim Kring publicly apologized for his wrongdoings.

Kring and the rest of the off-camera talent stand accused of the following crimes against the audience:

Ratatouille
Directed by Brad Bird
Starring (voices) Patton Oswalt, Brad Garrett, Brian Dennehy, Ian Holm, Janeane Garofalo, Peter O’ Toole
Walt Disney Video
Rated G

To watch Ratatouille is not merely to love it. To watch it is actually almost closer to getting high off of it. It buzzes along at a fast pace on such a level of giddy invention and superior craftsmanship that it rubs off on you. Meticulous skill and an almost slavish will to entertain without pandering are not mutually exclusive, but seeing this movie you wonder why they aren’t in the same place at the same time more often. And this has left me on the underside of hyperbole, so I’ll do my best to restrain myself. I’ll just let it slip that I’d want to call Ratatouille one of the best films of the year, except that I have a little voice in the back of my head asking “Just THIS year?”

And yes, it is an animated movie that features a talking rat. Yes, it was released by Disney. And yes, in every review, some jackass will say “Adults will like this movie MORE than kids!” like it’s some kind of brand spanking new concept that an animated feature isn’t JUST for the twelve-and-under set. But I’m willing to venture that Ratatouille is made exclusively for adults. Kids will like it fine, but they’ll then move on to something more puerile and violent (and they can’t be blamed for this, because they’re kids). But adults who appreciate great skill and wonderful storytelling and near unparalleled creativity, adults who have lost the will to dream and who wonder where the quality went, and who have all but coiled into a snobbish ball thinking mainstream American cinema has nothing left to give them are not just the ideal audience for this picture. They’re the MANDATORY audience.

So much for restraining myself from hyperbole”¦

The hero of our story is a French rat named Remy, voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt in a performance that could be lightly stated as “enthusiastic.” He’s caught in a world that doesn’t understand him, for he has an acute sense of smell and refined taste in food. He is unhappy with the garbage his father (Brian Dennehy) feeds to himself and the rest of the rat colony. One thing leads to another and Remy finds himself in Paris, overlooking a restaurant where a garbage boy named Linguini (Lou Romano) tinkers with a pot of soup. Remy rushes down to try to salvage the ruined confection (making it a big hit with the food critic in the dining room), but is discovered by Linguini and the chef Skinner (Ian Holm). Skinner orders Alfredo to take the rat outside and kill it.

It is an article of resentment of my name becoming synonymous with a certain pin-headed sadomasochist from the far reaches of hell, that when good ol’ Pinhead showed up on this last week’s episode of South Park getting beheaded in Imaginationland by Jesus Christ, every atheistic impulse in my body fell by the wayside as I screamed “GET HIS ASS! FUCK “˜IM UP, LORD!”

This could be the first signs of stir craziness at this assignment, or that I have seen the first truly awful Hellraiser movie, Hellraiser: Bloodline. This movie blows not only goats, but everything in the barnyard and THEN rims the farmer. Those of you thinking I was being too good-natured about an undertaking such as this and WISHING for my old motherfucker self to pop up need wait no longer. I barely even made it through the opening credits alive, once I saw that this little flicker-show is directed by one Alan Smithee.

For those of you not in the know, here is the story of Alan Smithee: He doesn’t actually exist, but rather he is the pseudonym that the Director’s Guild of America places on movies that had creative control wrested from their directors by the studios and executives. The name has covered the work of people like Don Siegel (Dirty Harry) and Academy Award nominee Arthur Hiller (Love Story) for Death of a Gunfighter and Burn Hollywood, respectively. So if ever you see the name Alan Smithee on a movie, know that this movie was not made by a director who knows about film, but by a suit who knows only demographics.

Wait”¦ Someone didn’t want their name on Hellraiser: Bloodline? WHY ON EARTH NOT? If I ever meet Kevin Yagher or Joe Chappelle, (the original director and the guy who did the reshoots at the studio’s request) I’d stare at them like exhibits in a carnival sideshow. Because they had the gall to say””WITH AN ADULT PRESENT!””that “This film sullies the good name of the Hellraiser franchise.” HAVE THEY SEEN THESE FUCKING MOVIES?

Hellraiser: Bloodline not only jumps the shark, but pole-vaults over SeaWorld from the parking lot to the adjacent field. We see this from the first scene where we open in”¦ Space. During the course of the film, Pinhead actually gets a dog. Someone please tell me that in one of these next few movies he goes to The Hood and gets a rapping dwarf sidekick that knows Kung-Fu. OH PLEASE!