THE BLACK SHEEP is an ongoing column featuring different takes on films that either the writer HATED, but that the majority of film fans LOVED, or that the writer LOVED, but that most others LOATH. We’re hoping this column will promote constructive and geek fueled discussion. Dig in!
HELLRAISER INFERNO (2000)
DIRECTED BY SCOTT DERRICKSON
Its pulse checking time ladies and gents! Be honest, outside of Clive Barker’s superior original, which HELLRAISER movie is your favorite of the wildly inconsistent horror franchise? Personally speaking, I’ll never be able to shake the sheer lunacy of witnessing HELLBOUND at like 3 AM on cable one morning and being unable to distinguish the film from a godforsaken nightmare. Shite f*cked me up good!
But in recent years, I’ve come to regard Scott Derrickson’s HELLRAISER 5: INFERNO (WATCH IT HERE) as not only the second-best sequel in the franchise but, in very much the same was as HALLOWEEN III, a movie that’s far more meritorious on its own accord rather than as a tethered franchise addendum. That is, INFERNO is a very solid horror movie independent of its relation to the HELLRAISER universe. And there’s a very good reason for that. We’ll get into the particulars below, but for a straight-to-video sequel directed by the dude who would go on to helm SINISTER and DR. STRANGE, and one featuring the best acting in any HELLRAISER flick to date, straight up, INFERNO is F*cking Black Sheep if there ever was one!
Following the lackluster BLOODLINE in 1996, Clive Barker expressed interest in making a fifth franchise HELLRAISER film. An expensive pitch bringing Pinhead to the bowels of London proved too much for Dimension to back, so instead, those bossy brothers hired Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman to pen a script. Dimension even gave Derrickson $10,000 to shoot a single scene as a sort of directorial audition. When he passed muster, he was officially hired to direct INFERNO. But here’s the thing. The original script Boardman and Derrickson wrote was totally unrelated to the HELLRAISER franchise. Rather than hiring new writers or paying for a page-one rewrite, Harvey Scissorhands simply took the script and lazily shoehorned the bare minimum of elements from the HELLRAISER mythology into the script. So right off the bat we have a movie that was never intended to be related to Pinhead at all. Had the umbilical cord to HELLRAISER been removed entirely and the title changed, a far more favorable view of INFERNO would have likely resulted.
What I love about INFERNO is how the plot-structure adheres to a cool, old-fashion detective film noir, replete with voiceover narration. The movie is solidly grounded in reality to begin but gradually becomes more and more nightmarishly surreal. Super sketchy Colorado copper and high-school basketball coach Joe Thorne (Craig Scheffer) and his partner Tony (Nicholas Turturro) are called in to investigate the homicide of a man named Jay Cho, who Thorne knew from high-school. Upon the grisly murder, Joe finds the Lament Configuration puzzle-box and a child’s finger inside a candle. Joe snags both, as well as $300 from Cho’s wallet, which he spends on a hooker named Daphne (Sasha Barrese) despite being married to Melanie (Noelle Evans) and having a young daughter. The next day, Daphne ends up gorily strung up to death in a shower. All signs point to Joe’s guilt, so he concocts a ploy to implicate Tony instead. Joe is an immoral heathen who karmically receives everything he deserves!
Thorne continues to move from one homicide victim to the next but is increasingly wracked by terrifyingly hallucinatory visions at every turn. He begins seeing those eyeless, long coal-tongued Cenobite beasties as if shared a Nam tour with Jacob Singer (JACOB’S LADDER). Each crime scene comes equipped with a newly lopped off child's finger, prompting Joe to locate a mysterious figure known as The Engineer. Despite a modest $2 million budget and a paltry $50,000 for special effects, Derrickson deftly directs scenes that are both far more coherent than most HELLRAISER movies, but also quite terrifying in their own right. You can see how he’s gone to bigger, better, and more expensive Hollywood blockbusters and epic Marvel movies. Seriously, if you took JACOB’S LADDER and melded with ANGEL HEART, substantially cut its budget and allowed a first-time filmmaker to helm, INFERNO isn’t far off the end result.
When Thorne visits a therapist at the behest of his precinct, he meets Dr. Paul Gregory (James Remar). The scenes between Schaffer and Remar are among the strongest of the film, and therefore the franchise, as these two actors have carried movies like THE WARRIORS, THE PROGRAM, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT and several others almost on their own. The acting in INFERNO is believable all the way through, even when the movie increases its bat-shit insanity quotient with each passing act. Scheffer imbues Thorne with the laconic stoicism of the great noir detectives of yore. Dr. Gregory seems to help Thorne at first by offering him info on The Engineer, which he learned about years earlier as a rookie shrink. As Thorne begins losing his mind to a skein of unnerving dreamscapes and gruesomely hellish nightmares, he woozily cavorts to more murder scenes adorned with chopped off fingers. Little does he know he’s trapped in his own sadistic morality play, as it’s his childhood finger that’s been preserved in the wax-candle found in the opening crime scene!
Oddly enough, other than the Lament Configuration, it’s every unnecessary HELLRAISER strand that undermines the strength of INFERNO. Doug Bradley reprises his infamous role as Pinhead almost as an afterthought, only appearing in the final 15-20 minutes of the movie. For HELLRAISER fans quick to rent this flick out of love of the franchise, you can imagine the supreme disappointment. Again, the script was originally never intended as a Pinhead picture. It’s the exact same dynamic HALLOWEEN III faced in 1982 when rabid fans expected more murderous Michael Myers but got a wildly disparate tale of an evil mask-maker instead. Despite the gross false advertisement, the movie is still quite effective as a standalone horror joint. When contextualized as a franchise entry, it loses its rep. Such is the case with INFERNO, which Dimension shamelessly tried to capitalize on the back of Pinhead and the HELLRAISER namesake just to make a buck. Strip out all of the Pinhead scenes, change the Lament Configuration to a different object and call The Engineer another name, and INFERNO would be even better than it is now and likely far less panned by critics and demoted to a video release.
Beyond Derrickson’s skillful direction and the above-average turns from Scheffer and Remar, the cinematography by Nathan Hope (MIMIC 2, THE FOG) and score by Walter Werzowa (MORTAL KOMBAT, MINORITY REPORT) add a sensorial benefit to the film. But where the film really outdoes itself and its budgetary resources are in the special effects work led by David Waine (CLOVERFIELD, IRON MAN). With just a pittance at his disposal, Waine uses the limited resources to the best of his ability in INFERNO. One standout sequence in this regard comes when Joe, trapped in one of his insane purgatorial hell-scapes, gets his stoic face pierced with the iconic S&M sharpened-hooks. His fleshy façade is stretched to the brink as his skin starts to rip and gorily peel away from his skull. Shite’s intense!
So do wise and plunge into the flames again, HELLRAISER INFERNO is far better than its reputation would suggest. For a movie that never meant to be a Pinhead film to begin with, it’s a very entertaining and well-made horror flick by a talented director in his nascent foray into filmmaking. Scott Derrickson shows his potential for greater things to come, while veteran actors Craig Scheffer and James Remar elevate the material beyond your typical direct-to-video horror sequel. Had the name HELLRAISER never been hung around its neck in the first place, INFERNO would cease to be The F*ckng Black Sheep it’s been perceived as over the past 20 years!