Review of Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) by Allan C — 13 Jul 2016

The fourth Hellraiser film and the last one to have any significant involvement from Clive Barker. This installment sought to reveal some of the origins of the mysterious puzzle box that releases the deadly Cenobites.

The story jumps from when the box was originally created to hundreds of years in the future where a descendent of the original toymaker who made the box is now working on a space station where he believes he can trap and kill the Cenobites.

There is some potential in this story trying got tell the original Lament Configuration puzzle box, but throwing in outer space seems a bit desperate and silly, along the line of "Leprechaun 4: In Space" and "Jason X," when horror franchises become long in the tooth and the only fresh idea is let's-put-them-in-space.

However, the original script for this film is supposed to have been much more grandiose and was apparently radically changed due to budget cuts. The film was a also the victim of studio tinkering that involved some reshoots with a different director, which resulted in the film's original director disowning the film and taking on the director monitor for bad movies directors don't want their name on, Alan Smithee.

You can see there are seeds of a good movie in here somewhere and this film does have it's defenders in the horror world, but I think this film is more of a swing-and-a-miss that it is a hit.