Hellbound : Hellraiser 2

Hellbound : Hellraiser 2 title

Tag Line : It will tear your soul apart...again

Hellbound : Hellraiser 2 Following on directly from the first film and Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Lawrence), has been taken to a nearby psychiatric hospital for her to recover from the traumatic events of the previous film.

Unfortunately though, the head of the practice, Dr Channard (Kenneth Cranham), turns out to be another idiot with a fanatical interest in the old Chinese puzzle box and so resurrects Kirsty's evil stepmother, Julia (Clare Higgins), in order to help him open it and unleash it's power.

They manage to solve the box's combination by giving it to a patient called Tiffany (Imogen Boormen), a young mute girl with a talent for solving puzzles. Pinhead (Doug Bradley again) and his group of Cenobites appear, but fortunately they leave her alone and instead take Dr Channard. Pinhead explains "It is not hands that summon us, it is desire!" and so Channard gets dragged off to their realm and turned into one of them.

Meanwhile, Kirsty and Tiffany enter the Cenobites macabre world to see if they can find the soul of her Father Larry, in the hope that they can free him. Although they don't manage to find him, they do come across her Uncle Frank and are forced to flee, only to come face-to-face with Pinhead again and the now Cenobitised Dr Channard, who wants to take over and spread the Cenobites terror into the real world. Hard times ahead for our young heroines methinks!

Compared to the original this is a very worthy sequel and fans of the first film should not be disappointed with it. There's plenty of blood and nastiness and we even get to learn of how Pinhead came to be.

Overall Marks : 6/10

Other Information.

Alternate tag line "Time to Play".
Dr. Channard's name in the script was originally Dr. Malahide. "Channard" is derived from Christian Barnard, who performed the world's first successful heart transplant.
For its UK cinema release, the distributors used the US R rated version which was VERY heavily cut and was trimmed of over 2 1/2 minutes of gore. This replaced a flashback to part 1, showing Frank's final moments, with a close up of Pinhead saying "We'll tear your soul apart", and shortened virtually every single bloody scene in the film. In particular, the creation of Pinhead and the cenobitised Dr Channard. The resurrection of Julia, which included the "maggot slicing", was probably the most heavily hit losing a whopping 55 seconds.
From a different source, additional cuts where made to the maggot-slicing scene on the bed, in which all slicing was eliminated and all of Tiffany's hallucinations where cut somewhat. The BBFC then imposed further cuts of 7s for the video release, which removed 2s of a hand being severed in Channard's hospital visit scene.
The version released on UK DVD by Anchor Bay in 2004 was passed fully uncut by the BBFC and contained an additional "dream scene" in hell. This version had previously only been available on the US disc.
Andrew Robinson was supposed to have returned as Kirsty's father Larry, however when he refused they had to heavily re-write the script.
For the most part, the cenobitised Dr Channard was played by stuntman Bronco McLaughlin as actor Kenneth Cranham had suffered a neck injury and couldn't endure the hours in the make up chair to complete his scenes.
There was a deleted scene set in the surgery, showing Pinhead and the female cenobite dressed in hospital gowns, which has never been included in any known release. The reason for this was that the director said the finished scene looked awful, and so it will probably never see the light of day.