Review of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) by Zachary H — 11 Aug 2011

The real strength of this movie lies in what its story could have played out to be. It is actually quite an effective horror movie with its gore and effects. The acting really isn't great, and the movie fails overall to live up to its potential or predecessors.

However, the film does have something that is very interesting. J.P. become a servant of sorts for Pinhead is a very interesting concept and I wish that J.P. (though not as shown in the movie) would've been the protagonist.

It would have been very interesting to see someone's descent into becoming a servant and then finding the strength to defeat the evil that they gave strength to. Anyway, the protagonist we're stuck with is an uninteresting and underdeveloped character.

The character of Terri, who is a far more fleshed out and far more sympathetic character is taken out of the movie in the dumbest way possible, and the new cenobites introduced are really dumb in theory, design, and reasoning.

To become a cenobite in the mythology of the story, someone has to open the box and long for it, but this movie pretty much tears that entire mythology apart. Doug Bradley, however, is really fantastic as Pinhead in this movie (I especially like the church scene).

If you like Pinhead, his character is really villainous in this movie, so don't plan on seeing the same Pinhead. The ending is also really ambiguous and hard to understand (with bad special effects).

Overall, this movie is often insulting to the audience, but it is better than its immediate successor (pales in comparison to predecessors). If you like the less cerebral horror movies with a lot of gore and nudity, this movie will be what you are looking for in the Hellraiser series.

However, if you are a fan of the more cerebral movie before it, this movie is a sad disappointment (though better than its immediate successor).