Only now does it occur to me... HELLRAISER VII: DEADER (2005)

Only does it occur to me... wakka wakka wakka. What do you think I'm going to say here? 

Yet another HELLRAISER sequel based off of an unrelated spec script that managed to shoehorn Pinhead into its final draft. Same director (Rick Bota) as HELLRAISER VI: HELLSEEKER, which was the worst one to that point and kinda felt like LAW AND ORDER: CENOBITE CRIMES UNIT. I'm nostalgic for the days when HELLRAISER sequels had CD-flinging DJ Cenobites, meaty roles for Adam Scott, and featured Lament Configuration-inspired spaceships.

With "DEADER," we certainly have a winner for "dumbest HELLRAISER sequel subtitle" among the eleven films (and counting). I guess the Lament Configuration used to just "kill people dead" and send them to S&M hell dimension... now it makes them "deader?" 

 (The title actually comes from the name of a cult within the film, called "The Deaders." No, that does not make it better.)

Basically, this movie half-heartedly tries to answer the question, "what if Pinhead showed up in TRAINSPOTTING?" 

 

 

It also manages to employ Kari Wuhrer, 

a poor man's Craig T. Nelson (Simon Kunz), 

and a knock-off Flea (Marc Warren). 

Wuhrer is fine, though this role clearly should've been Fairuza Balk's.

Weirdly, this thing manages to feel more like a HELLRAISER movie than the prior 2 installments, and to be fair, this thing is a hair better than HELLRAISER VI: HELLSEEKER. I mean, they shot it in Romania, and the city of Bucharest is cool. It's the only cool thing in this movie.

My favorite quote from the Wikipedia page for this movie is, "Production was difficult due to the inability of the Americans in the cast and crew to understand the Romanian set workers and actors." Yep, that tracks. Nice work, HELLRAISER VII!

Only now does it occur to me... HELLRAISER VI: HELLSEEKER (2002)

Only now does it occur to me... that half of these HELLRAISER sequels are basically JACOB'S LADDER fanfic with a Pinhead cameo. 

 

This is mostly because they began as rejected horror spec scripts which found new life while Miramax was kicking the can down the road and legally keeping the rights to HELLRAISER by crapping out a fresh installment every couple of years.

I've been working my way through the canon over the years on this blog, and as far as the JACOB'S LADDER aesthetic goes, this one makes HELLRAISER V: INFERNO look like a David Lynch film or a Hieronymous Bosch painting.

We're treated to simply the most generic Cenobites imaginable, borrowing the "fleshy, restitched pillowcase" look from JACOB'S LADDER, but forgetting that Adrian Lyne used that so effectively with only the briefest of glimpses and freaky, sped-up frame rates.

Pinhead's appearances are the very definition of Contractually Obligated. This is definitely the first HELLRAISER installment where the major creative force was a team of entertainment lawyers.

The fact that the movie dangles the return of Kirsty (Ashley Laurence, heroine of HELLRAISERS I-III) as its main selling point 

and proceeds to give us about three minutes' worth of Kirsty via a weakly-constructed frame story––

 

this is what actively antagonizes the viewer. Supposedly this was done with an actual iota of Clive Barker input, which is surprising. (Hey, take that paycheck, Clive, no shame!) 

But what HELLSEEKER actually delivers is a movie starring "budget Will Patton" (Dean Winters, now most notorious for his appearances as "Mayhem" in Allstate commercials)

who gives us none of the Tim Robbins pathos which could make this work, and instead plays it (as he was directed, I assume) with the nonspecificity of pre-prestige '90s television, as if this is LAW AND ORDER: CENOBITE CRIMES UNIT. Woof!

Only now does it occur to me... CASA DE LOS BABYS (2003)

Only now does it occur to me... that I have derived a BLADE RUNNER reference from John Sayles' sensitive and not-at-all science-fiction-related drama, CASA DE LOS BABYS. 

The story of six women (Mary Steenburgen, Lili Taylor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Marcia Gay Harden, Susan Lynch, and Daryl Hannah) caught in limbo at a Mexican resort, waiting for the paperwork to clear on prospective adoptions, CASA DE LOS BABYS is par for the course in the 'Sayles catalogue': a mosaic of characters, rendered humanistically, and possessing a quiet and universal dignity. 

Of course I'm going to zero in on a moment when Daryl Hannah's character "Skipper"––a Coloradan hippie, who, of all the women, has been waiting the longest––is running along the beach. I couldn't help but feel she was channeling her performance as "Pris," from BLADE RUNNER,

who takes great running leaps as she attacks Harrison Ford with her replicant thighs, fists, sticks her fingers up his nose, etc.

This, you should note, is a stretch. Obviously "Skipper" and "Pris" run in a similar way because they are both portrayed by Daryl Hannah. However, in the following scene, the other women of the Casa are discussing "Skipper" as they wait for her to arrive at lunch.

Soon, a STEPFORD WIVES reference gets dropped and Lili Taylor offers some real (trash) talk.

 

 "Someday, one of her microchips is gonna misfire." Alright, I've seen enough, I'm calling it: this is an implicit BLADE RUNNER reference!

The Nexus 6 microchips barely ever misfire.

It's also worth noting that Hannah has a long history of Sayles performance, from CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR (whose screenplay Sayles wrote) to SILVER CITY (where she plays another Coloradan hippie in a performance which lightly riffs with her role in CASA DE LOS BABYS). In closing, you should watch this movie for reasons unrelated to BLADE RUNNER; it's a good one.

Only now does it occur to me... Dick Maas' DOWN/THE SHAFT (2001)

Only now does it occur to me... that on this Halloween I ought to spare a few thoughts for Dick Maas' own "Hollywood" remake of his 1983 Dutch elevator-horror film, THE LIFT. Like the original, it's the classic tale of a machine with a mind of its own terrorizing the occupants of a high-rise. Probably the greatest mark it left on pop culture was to inspire the mediocre X-FILES episode, "Ghost in the Machine."

Known as both "DOWN" and "THE SHAFT," this American remake has a far larger budget and a truer commitment to gleeful misanthropy: the elevator's victims include children, the disabled, seeing-eye dogs, and pregnant women. He recreates several scenes from the original, shot-for-shot,

1983


2001



1983

2001

though this time he manages to fit in an extended sequence of schweet X-treme rollerblading


which ends with one of the rollerbladers sucked up in a parking garage by the killer elevator and launched from the observation deck onto the sidewalk below, so I have to tip my hat to that sort of shit. This one's ending is a little more low-rent DIE HARD than the original and involves a bazooka

and a makeout sesh' set to Aerosmith's "Love in an Elevator" so I guess that probably sets the scene for you.

Like the original, it's still pretty committed to the banality of elevator repair (James Marshall––TWIN PEAKS' James Hurley––plays the intrepid elevator engineer originally played by Huub Stapel).

Naomi Watts takes over Willeke van Ammelrooy's role of the elevator journalist/love interest (her last role before her breakthrough in MULHOLLAND DRIVE).

Edward Herrmann (OVERBOARD, THE LOST BOYS) plays the building manager, who for all intents and purposes is "The Mayor from JAWS" of this picture.


Ron Perlman pops up as a passionate elevator executive who doesn't like elevator journalists poking around his business, so he shouts things like "goddamit!" all the time.



Dan Hedaya sorta phones it in as a hardboiled elevator-hating cop, which reminds me that

Hedaya and Ron Perlman were really on their way to being a real Tracey/Hepburn in the late '90s, appearing together in three movies (this, ALIEN: RESURRECTION, Joe Dante's THE SECOND CIVIL WAR) within a four-year span. Why'd they have to go and break that streak?

Finally, we have Canadian Jack Nicholson and Junta Juleil Hall-O-Famer Michael Ironside

as "that German prick from elevator research" and he has this look on his face throughout like he's a little surprised to even be there

but he's still trying his best, even when explaining that an elevator he's possessed with military-grade microchip goop could somehow usher in a new Age of the Medici. It's not too big of a spoiler to say that he meets his demise via elevator after failing to kill James Hurley in hand-to-hand combat


when CGI elevator cables start whipping about like deranged snakes


and send him to the high-rise gallows. Alongside TOTAL RECALL's "See you at the party, Richter" moment, this marks at least the second time in film history that Ironside has been dispatched by an elevator.

Most of the dialogue is delivered by the cast in a stilted manner, as if English isn't their first language, even though it is in most cases. This lends it a kind of lesser-Bava or Fulci feel that almost evolves into a Lynchian one

given the cast's history––James Marshall (TWIN PEAKS, TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN), Naomi Watts (MULHOLLAND DRIVE, RABBITS, TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN), and Dan Hedaya (MULHOLLAND DRIVE). There's even a scene at a '50s diner,


though, sadly, it is not a Winkie's.

The final aspect I must mention in relation to THE SHAFT is the "9/11" one. This film debuted at Cannes in May 2001 and was released in the Netherlands on September 6, 2001. Its American release was cancelled (though it eventually made it to straight-to-video in 2003) because of the September 11th attacks.

Many films were delayed by 9/11, including Schwarzenegger's COLLATERAL DAMAGE, the Guy Pearce remake of THE TIME MACHINE, and the Gwyneth Paltrow romcom VIEW FROM THE TOP. These decisions were made for reasons ranging from, respectively, "a building in Los Angeles explodes," "New York is damaged by meteors," and "the majority of scenes involve flight attendants at work." THE SHAFT is a different animal entirely. It doesn't merely have scenes of carnage in a high-rise,

though that certainly would have been enough to delay it, given the climate. It doesn't merely have scenes of a U.S. President somberly addressing the nation about a terrorist attack in New York.


And it doesn't merely show the World Trade Center as a B-roll shot during that speech.

Nor does it merely feature jokes about how terrorism against skyscrapers sells newspapers,


depict squads of nervous NYPD swarming lower Manhattan, or highlight the danger that terrorists with hijacked airplanes could pose.

Nor does it simply point out the attacks against the World Trade Center in 1993...

...no, it actually name-drops Osama Bin Laden:

In retrospect, it's certainly spooky to watch this aspect play out––and if I know American cult film audiences, this will likely be the major reason the film will be remembered in the long run.