137 - LOCK-UP, MINOS
PAUL : It's what my family has lived for for two centuries. It's my destiny. My duty. To free the world from the monsters my bloodline unleashed.
CORINNE : By building a space station?
PAUL : By building a trap. And destroying them forever. But the satellites aren't ready. The Elysium Configuration can't be
triggered. What I built as a trap has become a nest.
Fifth draft - by Peter Atkins - May 1994
"We're laying plans at the moment... you can't keep a good monster down! Unlike many people, I don't mind sequels. There's really no reason why they have to dwindle down to be dreary echoes of the movie before. What I can guarantee is that Hellraiser IV will be completely different... actually more different from the other three than they have been from each other..."
Exclusive Interview With Clive Barker, Creator Of The Hellraiser Series
By [ ], Video Business, 23 April 1993
"Hellraiser IV will hopefully go before the cameras before the end of the year, this is a Hellraiser movie such as you've never seen before. We're actually taking the mythology places it hasn't gone. We're going to see Pinhead in some situations we haven't even remotely seen him in. We've got female cenobites, and we're determined that somewhere down the line the Black Pope of Hell himself is going to get laid."
Hellraiser
By Jay Stevenson, Imagi-Movies, Vol 1, No 2, Winter 1993/94
"Even in 'Hellraiser IV' we're trying to make some differences [from current horror movies] but there are only so many differences we can make because some place the audience is going to say, 'Where the fuck's Pinhead?' And you've got to bring him in."
Lord Of Illusions - Filming The Books Of Blood
By Michael Beeler, Cinefantastique, Vol 26 No 2, February 1995
"In Hellraiser: Bloodline, we're upping the stakes in all kinds of ways.
With the first Hellraiser we were trying to make something more
intense and offbeat than many of the genre pictures that were around at
the time. We took that first movie very seriously and were attempting
to, on a million dollars, do what we could to give people a serious
scare. Our intention is to try and get back to the very dark, perverse,
almost surreal quality that the first picture had. We've also got a
narrative that has more ambition than any of the three pictures before
in the sense that it takes place over three distinct time periods.
Peter Atkins is attempting to give us a narrative which makes us
believe in the characters and in the circumstances they find themselves
in and, hopefully, feel afraid for them.
"Pinhead is a very powerful character. One of the thoughts in this
picture is that somebody from his side is challenging his authority,
and in this case, a woman. Angelique wants all his power and authority.
I don't think that there are enough villainesses in movies.
"I want to find fresh ways to excite people. the game is never over,
is it? Good monsters never die; they just lie down and pretend to be
dead for a while."
Hellraiser: Bloodline
US Press Kit, March 1996
"It's a mythology which really should have laid down and died a long time ago, and if someone said, "Hey Clive, there aren't going to be any more Hellraiser movies", I certainly wouldn't weep. But when a filmmaker wants to make a movie based on my work, I can't say, "Well, I'm not going to become involved." Instead I keep my finger in the pie and try to create a better movie. However, as the series goes on, it becomes harder and harder to scare audiences with images that they've seen in the three previous films. I thought Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth would be the last chapter but, in reality, Hollywood is built on pure profit and, provided there's a profit, the concept will continue - even if there isn't a brand spanking new story to tell."
Lord Of Illusions - A Fable Of Death And Resurrection
By Simon Bacal, Sci-Fi Entertainment, Vol 1 No 5, February 1995
"Right now it's out of my hands, and it never was really in them. I always said they never finished shooting the movie. That schedule never really allowed Kevin to film what he had to, and it's my belief that there is much work shooting-wise that still needs to be done."
Illusions Update
By Anthony C. Ferrante, Fangoria, No 143, June 1995
"I have a very remote relationship on this one. But I can say that
it's definitely been the most troubled of the four [Hellraiser]
pictures. Vey much so.
"And I think part of the reason for that is the first estimations about
how long it would take and how much it would cost were hopelessly
optimistic. I'm talking about the very first shoot now, way back when
I was shooting Lord Of Illusions. They were in cuckoo land believing
they could achieve all that needed to be achieved within the financial
framework that they had laid down. It just was not possible. It
wasn't practical. And the consequence was, and I said this plenty to
Miramax, I said, 'You're closing down this movie with three weeks of
shooting still to be done.' "
Hellraiser IV - Bloodline
By Michael Beeler, Cinefantastique, Vol 27 No 2, November 1995
"Hellraiser 4 has been released in the States. It's not very good. I think they are making another one. Oh God!"
AOL Appearance
Transcript of on-line appearance 16 July 1996
"In terms of "servicing the franchise", Miramax wanted to focus on the
prime character, Pinhead. Now, my argument about Pinhead has always
been that less is more. But the American audiences just go crazy when
this guy comes on screen, so the studio said, 'No, more is more.' And I said, 'Well the more you put this guy on the screen, the less
scary he's going to be.' And their response to that was, 'Well then,
we'll just put more blood in.'
"I think there are some fine things in Hellraiser IV actually - at the
beginning and the end, but I don't like the middle very much. Even so,
there are some things that return almost to the tone of the first one. It's uneven, no question, but overall I prefer it to number three."
Clive Barker - Lord Of Illusions
By Nigel Lloyd, SFX, No 16, September 1996
"[Galilee] is a piece of intimate art, deeply felt by me over 14 or 15
months of my life - a very private investigation of personal
obsessions. That's the novel. Hellraiser: Bloodline is a corporate
decision made by people who want to make money and hire and fire people
at will to make that happen.
"But I still have a kind of loyalty to these creatures that I've
created. I can't turn my back on them. Also, in every case there has
been somebody involved with the pictures whom I've like and loved as
a friend. Pete Atkins wrote the sequels. Doug Bradley - whom I've
known since I was 15 - is the man behind the makeup on the four
movies. So even as each movie may be more removed from my initial
place of inspiration, they're still my mates. And so there's not just
a loyalty to the films, or to the idea of the films, there's also a
loyalty to friends.
"If Doug was to decide he never wanted to get into the makeup ever
again and Pete was to decide he never wanted to write one ever again,
I would not feel anything like the kind of connection that I do to that
material. I don't, for instance, feel it the same way to the Candyman
films."
Lord of New Illusions
By W.C.Stroby, Fangoria, No 175, August 1998
11 - CHATEAU DE REVE, GAME ROOM - NIGHT
Delvaux works as his fellows watch, quoffing drinks or taking snuff. L'Escargo is next but it's De Conduite who calls out.
DE CONDUITE : Time, sir, time! Pass it on!.
L'Escargot reaches for the Box but Delvaux snatches it away.
DELVAUX : No! I've nearly... There !!
The box moves to another setting. All eyes turn lustfully to Angelique who obligingly removes the first of her petticoats.
DE L'ISLE : Play on. Play on.
L'Escargot takes up the Box and begins.
MONTAGE - The Box moving from hand to hand, from position to position - Angelique removing successive layers of clothing - Increasingly flushed and excited faces - A secret excitement growing in De L'Isle's eyes - Jacques watching, as excited as his master - Lemarchand's face beyond the glass, fascinated and shocked.
Finally, the Box comes back to the hands of Corbusier. He looks at Angelique - now clad only in a corset and bloomers.
CORBUSIER : It occurs to me, Madame, that should there be more secrets on the table than on the floor, we will need fresh inducement for our endeavours.
ANGELIQUE : Oh, there are always more secrets, sir. Always more surprises. Now - will you talk or will you play?
Fifth draft - by Peter Atkins - May 1994
Doug Bradley: "In a way, we made three films in one: a gothic
horror film, a contemporary horror film and an almost a genre-crossover,
a science fiction horror film. It's one continuous story that just
happens to take place in three separate locations and across four
hundred years.
"This is something entirely new for Pinhead; he's
never had a demonic cohort, so to speak. He's had his other Cenobites
in the previous films, but the pecking order was always pretty clear.
Angelique is at least his equal, and certainly in Angelique's own mind
possibly his superior. Pinhead doesn't quite see things that way, so
their relationship is a little sparky."
Hellraiser: Bloodline
US Press Kit, March 1996
Doug Bradley: "This is a more mythology-driven movie than a Pinhead-driven movie. It's a more ambitious and complicated story. It opens up in 18th Century Paris with the creation of the box, we briefly touch base in the present and then we wind up 200 years from now in the last place which I would have expected to find Pinhead, which is outer space."
Hellraiser IV : Bloodline
By Anthony C. Ferrante, Fangoria, No 140, March 1995
Bruce Ramsay : "Because Lemarchand has just created the box, he's only now discovering his genius - but he wants more. In the second story, his descendant, who is a husband and a father, is more mature and understands himself better. The third character is an old and weathered man who has spent his whole life trying to secure the ultimate trap for the horror which has plagued his entire family for several hundred years."
Raising Hell
By Simon Bacal, Sci Universe, No 5, February / March 1995
Kevin Yagher: "Essentially, I wanted to make a story about the
box and be true to the fans by detailing the history of where it came
from. My whole idea was that I didn't want to do a Hellraiser IV where
Pinhead slaughters a bunch of people. It's been done before, and III
was a good example of that, turning people into CD Heads and Cameraheads.
I wanted to do something a little different. The script was wonderful
- it was a Frankenstein monster story about the maker of the box and
how his box - the monster - is killing people.
"The problem was that the money men came up with a budget thay thought
the picture could be made for, but they didn't really talk to the
filmmakers about it. They were looking into it, but nobody was putting
any more money into it. Even Clive told them we needed three more
weeks. So we just started pulling scenes out, which can be good and
bad. Sometimes when you trim the fat, it makes the movie tighter.
"When I delivered my director's cut, we knew the kills were missing and
we had to put those in, but the big concern was that Pinhead was not in
the first part of the movie - he came in about 40 minutes into it.
Pinhead is in the film, though for me, it's not about him. But they
[Dimension/Miramax] wanted to restructure it and essentially turn it
into one long story. The script was tight to begin with, and to go
back and forth between the time periods is impossible if you want to
believe this character is going through any change. Plus, the second
act wasn't long enough to make it into a full feature.
"On an artistic level, the final cut I saw did not represent my vision,
and it changed enough that I no longer wanted credit. There was a lot
of me in there, but there were a number of things in there that I
wasn't involved in. That's why I removed my name."
To Surrender Hell
By Anthony C. Ferrante, Fangoria, No 151, April 1996
Pete Atkins : "I'd written six versions of this script: six
drafts. And [Miramax] always knew that the 18th century came first and
Pinhead didn't appear until the 20th century story. So it's not that
anyone could blame Kevin for delaying Pinhead's entrance because that's
the way it was written, that's the way it was approved by Miramax.
"But, I think that when they saw the movie they suddenly felt, 'Hey,
wait a minute, where's our monster? We made a terrible mistake!' They
didn't finger point. They didn't say, 'Oh, it's Pete's fault or it's
Kevin's fault!' They just figured, 'We should have known this
originally. We should have brought Pinhead in earlier.' "
Hellraiser IV - Bloodline
By Michael Beeler, Cinefantastique, Vol 27 No 2, November 1995
Kevin Yagher : "I could understand the changes they wanted me to
make but, for someone who has slept with it, which they didn't do, it's
tough to give up what you've kind of created. I had given everything
to the one script. So, the bottom line was I had to decide to either
basically dedicate another year to the film or go on with my life and
continue with other projects. In the end, it wasn't so much the
direction that they wanted to take, as it was that I just didn't have
the time and energy.
"It was less painful for me to walk away than to
sit there and watch it day to day. Then I could just see the final
thing and say, 'Well, they did this and they did that to it.' But I
didn't have to see every step. It's like pulling butt hairs out...
Every day they pluck just one! I would rather they just yanked them
all out at once! That's my attitude."
Hellraiser IV - Bloodline
By Michael Beeler, Cinefantastique, Vol 27 No 2, November 1995
Pete Atkins : "Creatively, the most interesting thing as far as
I was concerned was that they got Clive back and involved, because he
hadn't really been part of Hellraiser III at all... His involvement
with Bloodline meant, for me, a similar situation to the one we'd had
on Hellraiser II : Hellbound, where Clive and I would knock some
ideas around, and then I would go away and turn it into a complete
story and a screenplay.
"I have to give Clive credit for the idea of a movie split across three
time zones, although his idea was that the first part of the film would
be set in Victorian London. The idea of having Hellraiser imagery
right in the middle of Jack the Ripper territory was potentially very
rich. In passing Clive suggested that what we should do was maybe
follow the fortunes of a single family. As soon as he said that, I
said, 'Well, if we're going to do a family, let's do the Lemarchand
family. Let's forget Victorian London and set it in 18th Century
France, and make it about the family of the man who created the Lament
Configuration box'. My ulterior motive was that I thought it would
nicely frame the Trilogy created by the first three movies...
"What I was trying to achieve with Hellraiser - Bloodline was to
bracket the whole mythology that we'd created in the other three films.
I wanted to tie up some loose ends. I thought that if someone was
sufficiently motivated to do it, they could re-edit the four films in
the way they created the Godfather Saga. One epic, five-hour long
saga - Hellraiser Chronicles film."
Hell's Scribe
By Anthony Tomlinson, Shivers, No 53, May 1998
Valentina Vargas : "For the first time in my career, I'm playing a villainess in a horror movie, and I'm really loving it. In the third story, Angelique is a Cenobite because she's surrendered to Pinhead, but in the first two tales, she's like a serpent because she'll trick, seduce and manipulate people. They'll think they're in Heaven until she turns around and backstabs them."
Raising Hell
By Simon Bacal, Sci Universe, No 5, February / March 1995
Gary Tunnicliffe : "I have a very strong feeling about how
Cenobites should look and we tried to come up with something horrific
and yet amusing, something that was obviously insired by the Hellraiser
mythos. The new female Cenobite that we came up with fitted the bill
superbly. I'm really, really pleased with her, she's the one that I
think has come out the best.
"I actually got the idea for her design when I was watching Sister Act,
the comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg. It's true, honestly! I was
watching these singing nuns and seeing the way their cowls fall down
and I thought it would be interesting to do something with flesh rather
than material and create a sort of nun from hell. So that's where the
idea came from. I thought we'll split her head and pull the skin out
to the sides and attach it to her shoulders. And that's what we did.
"We pushed all the bits that women have as high up as they would go and
she's very sexy. I did some original concept drawings and usually you
lose something when translating the drawings to the screen but it was
really pleasing to see that we didn't lose anything and the drawing is
virtually identical to the way she ended up."
Sex, Death And Pinhead
By David Howe, Shivers, No 21, September 1995
Peter Atkins: [Re. delayed release] "They needed to do some more
shooting. They liked a lot of what they saw but some of
it they didn't plus they wanted more. So they brought
Doug back and a few of the other cast members and did
what they call an enhancement shoot in early April this
year. Since then they've been back and reedited. Now,
they are about to do another six days of shooting to
improve Pinhead's death. The movie will finally be
released in March 1996.
[Re. further sequels] "Miramax is very interested, but
you have to look at these questions from a creative
viewpoint and a financial one. As far as I was concerned,
part three was the end creatively. It seemed to round
things off. I had taken away the remnants of the human
soul that had driven Pinhead at the end of Hellbound
when Kirsty reminded him that he was human. Part three,
what I wanted to do was tell the story of the dissipated
soul, to have the ghost of the English officer who had
become Pinhead in 1921 be a driving force in one strand
of the narrative and the thoroughly soulless Pinhead the
other force. The end I brought them back together, thus
putting Pinhead, more or less, in the position he'd been
in at the beginning of the first movie. I thought we'd
rounded everything off nicely there. But Miramax wanted
to do a fourth part and Clive's had the nice idea of a
three part which excited my interest. Then I thought, I
did the Pinhead story but now I could do the story of
the family of the box-maker. I thought that was another
interesting thing to add to the mythology. And now I say,
touching wood, creatively the series is over. I think
from this point on it would be just telling more stories
about the box and the demons. So I am not particularly
interested in pursuing it. Miramax certainly wants to
preserve the franchise. One reason why they are spending
the extra money in having this extra shoot is to keep
the franchise alive for part five and six."
From The Dog Days To Bloodlines
By [Stephen Dressler and Cheryl Bentzen], Lost Souls, Issue 3, 1996
Gary Tunnicliffe : "We really tried to get the Pinhead makeup back to the essence of what it was in the first film. I also wanted to bring the makeup application down to one-and-a-half hours, which has never, ever been done, and Doug Bradley said it would never, ever be done. Now I have a twenty dollar bill signed by Doug on my wall to commemorate the one-hour-twenty-nine-minute-fifty-seven-second application. We did it and he timed it. The only problem was that it took between three and four hours to do it every day after that."
Hellraiser: Bloodline
US Press Kit, March 1996
Doug Bradley : "The results are uneven, but the first 20 minutes - the bit I'm not in - are as strong as anything in any of the previous movies. I'm happy with it, overall. Certainly it was something of a minor miracle that we had a movie at all."
Truly, Bradley, Creepily
By David Hughes, Fangoria, No 175, August 1998
Doug Bradley : "It was the shoot from Hell, literally! If
anything could go wrong, it did. There was a whole raft of bad
employment decisions that the producers were rectifying while we were
shooting it. Two directors worked on it, Kevin Yagher and Joe Chapelle,
and we had a total of four directors of photography. How they managed
to sort out the colour grading, God alone knows.
"That's not to say that the film is without merit; some of it is
outstanding. The first sequence, in 18th Century France, is as good
as anything we shot in all four films. We had the same amount of money
as Hellraiser III, but the film was just too ambitious, technically.
Part Three was character driven, but Bloodline had a complicated script
and specified a major special effect on just about every page. The
problems were not helped when the art department and camera crew were
sacked at the end of week one. There was a fire, a flood and a strike,
and the young boy got chickenpox. Try to pick a movie out of that lot!
"The original ending involved the space station folding up into the
puzzlebox. Then a hand came through space, picked up the box and
dropped in onto a merchant's table. Back to the first film, we had
completed a time loop. When that was dropped, the final shot was going
to be the shuttle returning to Earth with a trail of pins following it.
Then they dropped the pins, so all you have now is the shuttle flying
away."
Hell To Pay
By Nick Joy, Shivers, No 57, September 1998
Pete Atkins : "The similarity [between Wishmaster and Hellraiser],
I suppose, is that Pinhead and the Djinn are both talkative bastards,
both in love with language and the sound of their own pretensions...
"I'm certainly not ashamed of my screenplay for Bloodline. In fact,
people who've seen the original called it the best screenplay of the
series. So imagine my disappointment when the movie turned out to be
the worst of the lot... the movie is an abortion. Or at least some
hybrid child born of three parents at war. It's a mess.
"What's interesting is that the movie, considering its troubled history,
didn't actually do that badly. It's certainly a testament to the
strength of the franchise that the worst flick in the series could do
so well."
Just For The Hell Of It
By Mandy Slater, SFX, No 39, June 1998
Doug Bradley : "It got a bit lost and and a bit muddled, but in the final section
of Hellraiser IV you would have seen a bit more of that [eloquent sparring] in the
confrontation between Pinhead and Merchant in the final section. Bruce Ramsay, who
played Merchant, picked up on that very strongly and it was his call to shave his head
for the final section. He also changes his vocal performance, he drops his voice. He was
deliberately doing that, he and I discussed it together, he wanted to bring Merchant
close to Pinhead and make them become close to each other to the point where they were
going to wipe each other out and end the bloodline.
"Unfortunately, the structure of the final part of the film got very heavily tampered
with and much of that got lost. It was an immensely complicated storyline for Bloodline
and by far and away the most complicated and ambitious of all four of the screenplays.
Really too much for the time and money that we were getting."
Done With Demons
By Tom Mes, Project A, [1999] (note : full text online at www.projecta.net)
Doug Bradley : "[Bloodline] was the shoot from hell - it was the
most miserable professional experience of my career.
"One of the main differences [from the original concept] for me is the
final sequence in space, it's quite clear that what Merchant is doing
is two things. He's modelling himself on Pinhead and he's saying,
'Well I'm the end of the bloodline. There will be a fight and I'm
taking myself down with you.' And they tack on this stupid silly happy
ending, where Merchant has to escape from the space station, which was
much more psychologically meaningful and interesting in the original
version.
"I mean, I did two weeks of re-shoots, which weren't really re-shoots
at all, they were [shooting] whole new material, and there were at
least two other sessions which didn't involve me. I think when I left
L.A at the end of '94 we had shot the final film. But I couldn't have
told you the story if I tried as they were dicking around with the
script so much and we probably had a sixth or a seventh of a movie, so
we rescued something from that."
Pins And Needles
By Chris Fullwood, Firelight Shocks, Issue 4, September 2002