Hellraiser 3 - Hell on Earth [IMPORT]

Starring:Peter Atkins, Kevin Bernhardt, Brent Bolthouse, Peter G. Boynton, Doug Bradley, Ken Carpenter (II), Paul Vincent Coleman, Terry Farrell, Chris Frederick, Sharon Hill, Philip Hyland, Lawrence Kuppin, George Lee, AimÃ©e Leigh, Paula Marshall, Lawrence Mortorff, Sharon Percival, Robert C. Treveiler, David Young
Studio: Pid
Product Type: DVD

Album Description

Import only NTSC / Region 1 DVD. The Hellraiser saga continues with this especially gory, bloodsoaked third outing. The brutally evil demon known as Pinhead, trapped inside a grotesque statue, seeks only to escape and wreak hellish torment on humans everywhere. A rich playboy purchases the statue and Pinhead begins to communicate with him, convincing him to deliver unwitting sacrifices. Once he reaches his blood quota, Pinhead will be free to leave the statue and begin his slaughter of the innocents. Fortunately, a female reporter has caught wind of the fishy goings on, and risks her life and soul to put a stop to the madness. Hellraiser III is slasher horror at it gory, spurting best. (Color, Region 1 DVD, R, HiFi Sound, Stereo, Closed Captioned, 91 min). This film is only available on VHS domestically.

Customer Reviews:

Turn in series gets appalling DVD release.......2003-11-27

Hellraiser III was necessary following the events of Hellbound, but I can see why this film isn't popular with a lot of fans.

Paramount took over the franchise (New World Pictures folded) and turned Hellraiser into something more akin to a slasher movie. They keep Pinhead on the screen far too long, which in a horror movie is a no-no. He suffers from Freddy Kruegerc Syndrome, where instead of finding the character creepy, you become familiar with him until he starts injecting humor into the whole thing.

This is not a good entry point to the series. The franchise comes across as plain cheesy at times in this entry. Yet, it seems like they had all of the elements in place. Clive Barker is producing, Tony Randle and Peter Atkins (who were involved with Hellbound) return to pen the story, and you've got the always-game Doug Bradley as Pinhead. Yet it is an unfortunate departure from the tone of the first two films.

Pinhead starts the movie trapped inside the Pillar of Souls, which is purchased by nightclub owner JP Monroe for his own collection. Meanwhile, the mysterious and head bursting death of a young man by way of hooks and chains in the ER one night leads intrepid reporter Joey Summerskill on the trail of the Lament Configuration.

This movie rounds out the origin of Pinhead that was touched on in Hellbound. Following the end of that film, Pinhead is free of his human half and comes to earth as a truly dark and unmerciful figure. Hell on Earth has a high body count, including the massacre of an entire club full of people. There is also the unforgivable sin of several bad one-liners following grisly deaths, namely by the Camerahead Cenobite. Speaking of Cenobites, Pinhead now seems capable of creating them at the drop of a hat for his own purposes. They cheapify the whole thing by giving us a CD-Cenobite who throws deadly discs, the aforementioned Camera Head guy with the awful lines, and a cool-looking but
equally pointless Bartender Cenobite who mixes fiery drinks. Cripes. Bring back the Chatterer!

Overall, the film just fudges with the Hellraiser mythos that made the first two films stand out from the rest of the horror movie pack of the time. Not a slasher series, Hellraiser is given a working over in Hell on Earth for some cheap thrills.

At the end of the day, I don't hate the movie as many fans do. I sat back and had some fun. I found the follow-up, Bloodline, to be an ambitious failure. I think the series returned to the spirit of Barker's original story with the later Inferno and Hellseeker, both released straight to DVD following the bad taste left by Hell on Earth and Bloodline.

The DVD is awful, one of the worst I've seen. It says Special Edition, but that's a complete joke. This looks like a VHS copy of the film. We get no widescreen, we get no extras, no sound work over, no nothing. The cheapest, barest bones DVD I've seen in a long time. This movie needs a proper release with some extras in the hope of some redemption.

Recommended for fans of the series, as you'll want to see them all. Otherwise this might satisfy genre fans on a slow night.

Decent Film, Horrendous DVD.......2003-07-12

Stay away from his cheap videocassette copy. That's right, this is a plain Video Cassette copied onto a DVD, it looks [bad] and the sound is garbage. A new, cheap ... copy is coming... It's gotta be better than this garbage.

at least no.3 is available.......2002-10-05

wish it was widescreen or letterbox .
It looked like they took it from a old video tape grainy like old low res video.
hopefully they will re-release it from the original print in widescreen and add thx to the sound or DTS along with the extra footage.
they might consider this an import just because of it being lions head a canadian company.
all the video reviews look like they are for the same version so you can't tell what version they were revewing.
The tech details don't say what company all the info comes from the reviews.
mine is a 2001 release cat.no. 14556E region one.
plot was ok but a little short.
they need to release a box set after hellseeker.

Unbelievably Bad Transfer.......2002-09-27

I am adding my voice to the others who criticized the quality of the picture. I thought my TV was broken when I first played the DVD. It is all dark and blurry, like a 4th generation VHS recording. Or a recording which was degraded by Macrovision copy protection. Now there's a thought, because I cannot believe that this DVD is authorized. It is that bad. This movie is very obscure and it might be difficult to find other versions. I am aware of a VCD version which might be worth a try. I should not post the link here (think "allvcds"). I have not viewed that VCD though. A well produced VCD is playable on most DVD players, and has picture quality comparable to a new VHS cassette. As for this DVD... the horror of the picture quality exceeds Pinhead's horror.

Hellraiser III on DVD Finally!.......2001-08-25

First, the DVD, it's not the greatest in the world, No Dolby 5.1 Surround, not letterboxed, but nice to complete the series on DVD at last. This is technically the unrated version of the film, 2 added minutes, which is mostly extended gore...Great stuff! There are NO extras either, oh well. It's available, I guess that's what counts and as originally a Paramount Pictures release I wouldn't look for a Collector's Edition any time soon. As for the movie itself, I loved it. With the introduction of new Cenobites, CD head the coolest of them all, gave us a fresh perspective of Pinhead's abilities to replace his former troup. Unfortunately they didn't give his new cohorts a lot time to explore. Pinhead does get more screen time (unlike Hellraiser Inferno) and finally Doug Bradley (not Doug Stewart as mentioned in another review) gets screen time without makeup, gives us a broader view of his backstory and how he became this monstrosity. ("Bloodline" gives us the Lament Configuration Box history). All in all a pretty good film except for some cheesy effects, the melding of Pinhead and Elliott at the end is a good example. Here's hoping for Hellraiser six, although when I met Doug Bradley he told me not to hold my breath for number 5, but I think he needs to redeem himself after "Inferno". To me Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth was Heaven on Earth.

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