Spoilers!
You know when a doctor is talking about achieving the “final solution,” he’s going to be the true bad guy of the story. Enter 1988’s Hellbound: Hellraiser II, which picks up where the prior film left off and uses that as a catalyst into exploring the world of the Cenobites more. Clive Barker is back to provide the story, but directing is Tony Randel, who would go on to direct the third film, and the screenplay treatment is by Peter Atkins, who similarly would also write the third film with Randel. Ashley Laurence is also back reprising her role as the “final girl,” Kirsty, along with the villainous Clare Higgins as Julia, and Doug Bradley as Pinhead. Overall, I thought it was a great follow-up to the first film, with another terrifying human alongside Julia. If I had one criticism, it’s that I didn’t need to see the Cenobites, including Pinhead, humanized. Which is to say, we learn that Pinhead was British military officer Elliot Spencer who was stationed in India. The other Cenobites he leads were also once humans. This factors into the climax with Kirsty, but I like the idea of the Cenobites being eternal entities. Unknown entities. Not grounded in their humanness with human origins, which is funny since I mentioned I had avoided Hellraiser precisely because it wasn’t grounded. But once I experienced the contours of this world with the first film, eternal entities are my preference! Alas.
Kirsty is admitted to a psychiatric hospital, with a police detective interested in interviewing her, and certainly not believing her tale of otherworldly demons. The doctor, learning of Kirsty’s story and the puzzle, which is known as the Lament Configuration, is intrigued. Apparently, he’s long sought the puzzle. This doctor, Dr. Channard (played with such frightening gravitas by Kenneth Cranham), is the one who is first introduced cutting into the human brain of a patient of his and talking about reaching the “final solution” of the brain and human experience. You know where this is going! He also learns about the bloody mattress left over from the previous film, which will be used to resurrect Julia, with Dr. Channard’s patients serving as her victims. The scene at Dr. Channard’s house where you see various patients hanging from chains, the life sucked out of them, is horrifying and haunting, perhaps the best of the film.
Naturally, Kirsty is going to investigate, and it helps that Dr. Channard’s assistant, Kyle (played by William Hope), witnessed Dr. Channard’s, uh, dalliance with Julia to validate Kirsty’s claims. However, when they both arrive at Dr. Channard’s house, not only do they separate in the classic horror movie trope, but Kirsty doesn’t seem particularly worried that Julia, her archnemesis, is surely in the house! She should be more on guard, not leisurely browsing through photos of Spencer, even though, again, that does serve her later. Kyle is dispatched by Julia quite easily, and thank god, because they were trying to shoehorn in another romance with Kirsty (despite her having a boyfriend who survived in the previous movie!). Kirsty is knocked unconscious by Julia.
From there, the film gets more and more hellacious, to use a word. Another of Dr. Channard’s patients, teenage Tiffany (played by Imogen Boorman), has been rendered mute by whatever prior trauma she experienced in her life, but she has an aptitude for puzzles. Dr. Channard and Julia want to use her to open the Lament Configuration. This is the “final solution” for Dr. Channard: the ability to explore the labyrinth-like world of the Cenobites. When Tiffany does manage to open the puzzle box, Pinhead and the Cenobites arrive, but he calls them off of attacking her, noting, “It is not hands that opened the box, but desire.” Julia then proceeds to show Dr. Channard the Leviathan, a diamond-like entity that domineers over the labyrinth. He balks! He’s at the final solution and now he’s a bit scared. To Julia, the Leviathan is god, the god of the flesh, hunger, and desire. Dr. Channard is turned into a Cenobite, screaming all the way. When he emerges, we get another great line, “To think, I hesitated.” Oof.
Meanwhile, Pinhead also gives us another great line, as he reminds Kirsty, “We have eternity to know your flesh.” Jesus. One point of order: it’s said that the Cenobites come from an otherworldly place or realm or dimension, but it seems clear going by all the evidence, and y’know, the title, that they come from Hell itself! Anyhow.
Another character from the first film reemerges in creepy-ass Frank (reprised by Sean Chapman), who had lured Kirsty in by making it seem as if her father was trapped in Hell and begging for release. Betrayal makes for strange bedfellows, at least momentarily, as Julia appears and rips Frank’s heart out, which allows Kirsty time to run away. Julia is later killed by the labyrinth she pledges fealty to, as it sucks her newly-acquired skin right off her bones.
Now a full-fledged Cenobite, Dr. Channard attacks Kirsty and Tiffany, and once more, Kirsty is able to stave off Pinhead and the Cenobites by reminding them of their humanness. It works, and Pinhead is almost “heroic” in that, returned to his human form, he distracts Dr. Channard long enough for Kirsty and Tiffany to escape. Pinhead and the rest of the Cenobites are easily dispatched by Dr. Channard.
Trapped at the edge of the labyrinth with Dr. Channard, Kirsty grotesquely wears Julia’s skin suit to trick Dr. Channard long enough for Tiffany to once more solve the Lament Configuration, effectively ripping Dr. Channard apart. The door to Hell is closed, and the two girls escape back alive. But as always, we know the Lament Configuration will continue apace, as two moving men are sucked into the bloody mattress still at Dr. Channard’s house to close the film.
As I said, aside from my gripe about humanizing the Cenobites and almost making Pinhead into a hero opposite Dr. Channard, I quite enjoyed this second installment in the Hellraiser series. We learn more about this otherworld, or Hell, and the body horror is still exquisitely macabre. Also, you gotta acknowledge at this point that Kirsty is one of the better “final girls.” She’s escaped this hellacious shit twice! That’s more impressive than surviving Michael Myers, I must admit, or even Freddy Krueger. Onward and … downward to the next film!
