hyped garbage

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Best of the many (and mostly bad) sequels to Clive Barker's original film. This was also the last of the Hellriaser films that Barker had a significant hand in the creative process, staying on to write the story as well as producing. I remember watching this film way back in the day when it first came out on VHS and the one scene that had burned itself into my memory was still as horrifying now as it was then. This sequel picks up right after the events of the first film, with Kristy being brought to a mental institution after the death of her dad and stepmom after encountering Pinhead and the Cenobites (not a boy band). Unbeknownst to Kristy, the head doctor of the hospital, an excellent Kenneth Cranham as Dr. Channard, is darkly interested in the occult and has been searching for the Lament Configuration for years. He listens to Kristy's account of what happened to her and instead of destroying the bloody mattress she's pleaded with him to destroy, he decides he wants to resurrect Kristy's evil stepmother, Julia. As with the first film, a resurrection requires massive amounts of blood for a body to reform, which brings us to the aforementioned horrific scenes that was burned into my teenage memory. In order to resurrect Julia, Dr. Channard takes one of his mentally ill patients who believes he has bugs crawling all over his body and who has to wear a straight-jacket at all times to prevent digging at himself, places the patient on the mattress, removes his straight-jacket, and hands him a straight razor to slice at his imagined bugs crawling over his skin. That scene was just as unsettling now as it was 30 years ago, which is saying something in a post Takashi Miike and "Hostel" horror film world. Beyond that one shocking scene, the story involves Channard seeking the Hellraiser puzzle box and Kristy tying to again escape Channard, Pinhead, the other Cenobites, and hell itself. Without spoiling anything, this film reveals more about the Cenobites history and origin, which is interesting and also feels canon since Barker was part of the story (more was told in the subsequent sequel, but Barker had little to no part in those films). Although his film lacks the interesting visual style Barker brought to the first film, with it's dichotomy of beauty and blood, director Tony Randal does and effective job of building suspense, horror, and a fair amount of visual style to the film. Similar to the first film, both good and bad, the gory practical special effects are top notch and wonderfully (and horrifically) executed, but the other special effects look like they were done with Magic Marker. The super imposed images of Hell are visually striking, but not even close to looking as if the characters are really in this location (it's super fakey looking). Despite those shortcomings and although "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" is not a classic horror film, it is a worthy sequel to the original Clive Barker classic. On a side note, rewatching this film mostly made me wish that Barker can somehow regain the film rights to his creating and have the opportunity to reboot the franchise, just as James Cameron is getting to do with his Terminator franchise.

Nightmare of the king of horror continues. Hellbound is direct sequel to Hellraiser and, in my opinion, it's a bit better than the original. Opinions are divided about which one is better, but it is certain that the sequel is more complex, bloodier and, thanks to the success of the original, it had a much bigger budget. While in the first movie Cenobites introduced a hint of horror to our world, this time we join them on their field. Morbidly imaginative display of Hell that will forever be carved into your memory. One of the best horrors of all time, which, in my opinion, belongs to the domain of general culture.8/10

The Disfigured Mutant Leather Demons (tm) are back! This time, they have to defeat the eeeeevil Dr. Channard. Luckily, their best friend Kirsty and her teenage sidekick Tiffany are there to help them save the world from destruction!If the first movie was a violent Bugs Bunny cartoon, this one is a sick Saturday morning cartoon. Julia returns in the same way as uncle Frank. She befriends a messed up guy called Dr. Channard, a guy who saw the first Hellraiser movie and now wants the box for himself. Near the end of the movie, Channard gets a giant penis plugged into his skull for some reason and turns into the evil cenobite Dr. Vibroskull Strangehands. Kirsty teams up with the cenobites to fight him, but every single cenobite is brutally slaughtered. Ouch...I bet a lot of kids cried when their heroes died. And McDonald's too. No more cenobite toys in future happy meals!Luckily, Kirsty remembers uncle Frank's old skin-as-a-costume trick, and dresses up as Julia. She and Tiffany manages to fool Dr. Channard, and his stupid head is ripped from his body by the giant penis. Yaaay! There's even a He-Man style moral lesson at the very end of the movie: don't get too close to dirty mattresses!I joke, but it's really nothing funny about Hellraiser 2. It's a disgusting piece of crap. I can't understand why someone would want to make a movie like this. There's nothing positive about it at all. There's no message, it's not scary...it's just garbage. Everyone involved in the making of it should be ashamed of themselves. I'm ashamed of myself for having watched it many years ago. Someone should throw the movie into hell where it belongs.

On the whole, Clive Barker's "Hellraiser" has become one of the more head-scratching film franchises in recent memory, thanks to the wild and crazed range in quality of the films themselves. What once started as perhaps the most promising and rewarding new franchises quickly took a nose-dive in quality with the bizarrely dated and amusingly cheesy third and fourth entries. And since then, starting with the admittedly very decent fifth film, all future follow-ups skipped theaters and hit the shelves as direct-to-video releases... being plagued with lowered budgets and lowered expectations with each new chapter. But before it's all too soon downfall into near-oblivion, there was one very fascinating and completely fulfilling follow-up in the series that took audiences by storm and showed just what a properly-realized sequel was capable of. And that of course was "Hellbound: Hellraiser II."Directed by Tony Randall from a screenplay by Peter Atkins and a story treatment by series creator Barker, "Hellbound" is a curiously strong horror sequel that builds on the foundation of the original, further developing previously established characters and concepts in a near-ideal fashion and fleshing out the backstory in startling new ways. Barker's original, while relatively self-contained, did plant some questions in the backs of viewer's minds regarding the rules and history of the devilish world he built, and "Hellbound" expands on these in a wonderfully organic fashion. And though it may never quite match the ferocious originality of that first film, it comes darned close and stands tall as a very good sequel to an iconic original.Set almost immediately after the heart-stopping finale of "Hellraiser", we pick up with protagonist Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) as she is admitted into a mental institution due to the trauma she experienced. Soon haunted by visions of her father's skinned and agonized remains, she deduces that he is stuck in Hell, and that she must try and find a way to save him. At the same time, Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham), the devious head of the hospital has secretly acquired the mattress upon which Kirsty's step-mother Julia (Clare Higgins) died, and brings her back through a disturbing sacrifice of blood. Obsessed with the puzzle-box and the cenobites, Channard is seduced by Julia, who manipulates him into using one of his patients- the brilliant but mute puzzle-solver Tiffany (Imogen Boorman)- to open the gateway to Hell once again. And thus, the stage is set, as all of our characters enter Hell itself for their own reasons...The film is a bold exercise in atmosphere and pure dread, with wonderfully disturbing visual direction and some strong and well- established characters. Randel's direction is remarkable, and his keen eye for composition and flow helps create and ever- rising sense of tension and fear, which perfectly compliments the tight yet larger-scoped script by Atkins. From the dreaded return of the cenobites (lead of course by the brilliant Doug Bradley as "Pinhead") to the disturbing realization of Hell itself, the film is constantly upping the ante when it comes to pure horror. It's also even occasionally surprises with moments of true emotional and a few of the twists and turns it takes come completely unexpected in the best of ways.The cast is just wonderful. Ashley Laurence grows tremendously as a performer this time around and does a very decent job as a likable protagonist. Clare Higgins is as devious and deadly as ever, and seems to be having an absolute blast chewing the scenery in her villainous role. Kenneth Cranham and Imogen Boorman round out our human cast nicely in their supporting roles, both doing great jobs with the material. And as always, the cenobites are played to perfection. Doug Bradley is an absolute joy as the pure evil that is Pinhead, and it's nice to see him given an expanded role, especially one that even offers glimpses of the man Pinhead was before he journeyed into Hell.While the film does occasionally suffer a misstep here and there due to some problems with the wonky pacing and some questionable scenes that felt like they were thrown in without much thought or deliberation, I find "Hellbound" to be a completely entertaining, engrossing and atmospherically frightening follow-up in the best of ways. It's not a perfect film, and it can be a bit uneven, but it does a great job continuing the story so deliciously crafted by Barker in the original, and it emerges as one of my personal favorite horror sequels as a result.And so, I give "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" a very good 8 out of 10 as a fan of horror.