In Hellbound: Hellraiser II, we shift our focus more on Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), the daughter we saw in the first film, after she’s been committed to a mental hospital because no one believes her story that her dad and stepmother were killed by a Pinhead and three S&M demons. Happy recovery. Yeah, you wish. Because her doctor, Dr. Channard, is a corrupt sadist (wow, what a shocker) who is interested in this mysterious puzzle box Kirsty is telling about. Warden takes one of the basement patients and places him on the bloody mattress where Julia died and gives him a razor so he can slice himself and the the maggots he sees crawling over his body. As he bleeds all over the mattress, Julia’s skinless body emerges, just like we saw with Frank in the first film, and kills the patient while the doctor is watching. She’s now reborn in full villain-mode. Congratulations.
Channard gets a mute girl, Tiffany, to solve the puzzle box, because she’s obsessed with puzzles. Pinhead and company show up, but instead of taking Tiffany, they take Channard, since he only used Tiffany to open the box for his own desires. Huh. Yes, there are rules here, but who would know. And since he’s already “corrupt” like a mofo, his suffering will be legendary, as Pinhead famously puts it.
Meanwhile, Kirsty sees a vision of a skinless ghoul with the text written in blood behind him on the wall: “please help me, I’m in Hell“. She believes that this is her dad, and when she gets the opportunity, she enters Hell to look for him and save his trapped soul, where she finds herself in an endless labyrinth. From here on, it’s mostly all about the nightmarish and surreal atmosphere that slides in a more what the fuck am I watching kind of movie. Kirsty goes from the one Hell scenario to the next, where she also stumbles upon Uncle Frank who lives through his own personal hell. And no, she never meets the Goblin King, unfortunately.
Hellraiser II is filled with cool ideas and some interesting concepts, such as seeing a quick backstory of Pinhead and how Cenobites are created. And like any birth, it sure looks painful. The one who gets a rebirth is the corrupt doctor, and his monster design is, well, something else. His fingers look like snakes/tentacles with razors and is a way more interesting villain than Uncle Frank ever was. The look of the Hell labyrinth was inspired by the Day and Night woodcut by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher and gives the film a bigger scope than the cramped attic we were stuck in the first film. The gore and prosthetic effects are both first-class and imaginative with even some use of stop-motion. Movie expert Roger Ebert was, of course, not impressed and called out the effect maker (Bob Keen) as a “perverted man“ while giving the film a half-star.
This sequel is not written nor directed by Clive Barker, but instead he worked as a producer and was heavily involved with the story and further concepts that he hadn’t the time or budget to expand in the first film. After Barker got burned-out, the direction job went to Tony Randel, who worked as an editor on the first film while the script was written by Peter Atkins (who later wrote the next two Hellraiser films and Wishmaster). Hellraiser II lands relatively successfully as a direct continuation with some inventive set-pieces, a dose of Lovecraftian, more lore, and of course, more gore.
Director: Tony Randel
Writer: Peter Atkins
Country & year: UK/USA, 1988
Actors: Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Kenneth Cranham, mogen Boorman, Sean Chapman, William Hope, Doug Bradley, Barbie Wilde, Simon Bamford, Nicholas Vince
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095294/
