motion picture is available on video:
More zombies can be found among the
Evil Dead
Back to Monstervision page or Sci-fans.com
Elvis has left the building, and he took Joe Bob with him.
So what I do first is I identify the problem. I say, "Rhett, why were you carrying that pistol under your shirt."Speaking of people with a couple of buttons missing on their remote, Clive Barker is back for the third time with "Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth," and this time the kinky sex demons from hell are recruiting depraved disco owners and attacking entire dance floors full of leering singles, ripping their flesh off with steel hooks, and leaving them wailing in little clumps of black leather and ankle chains. You know, sex in the movies started getting real dangerous in 1980, when Friday the 13th came out, but THIS IS RIDICULOUS.
Pinhead, the guy with the nails in his face who's becoming more famous than Freddy Krueger, comes back to torment a TV news reporter played by the lissome and nubile Terry Farrell. (I have no idea what "lissome" or "nubile" means, but I've always wanted to use those words in a sentence.) Terry is tracking down leads to try to find out what is happening to the guys being wheeled into hospital emergency rooms, where their bodies explode after being ripped apart with grapple hooks that come down out of the sky. Pretty soon she's rooming with a little disco waif who seems to be sleeping with these guys, and before she knows it, she's walking through windows and entering other dimensions and being chased by the Clive Barker army of underworld sex creatures, and . . . well, it's not "Hellraiser 2," but it's pretty decent.
There's this one part where the demons kill everybody by flinging CD's like Frisbees into people's skulls.
I'm not kidding.
Eighty-three dead bodies.
Two breasts.
One massive motor vehicle chase.
Hooks.
Chains.
Cops burned alive.
Sweaty aardvarking.
Lasered demons.
Floods.
Explosions.
Fireballs.
Battle of the Goohead Demons.
Electrocutions.
Bloody rat attack.
Disco massacre.
Demonic TV.
Mutilated mannequins.
Exploding hospital patient.
Vietnam flashbacks.
Grapple hook Fu.
Brass knuckle Fu.
Weird sex sculpture Fu.
CD Fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Paula Marshall, as the little disco bimbo, for saying "I don't dream";
Kevin Bernhardt, as the sleazoid disco owner, for saying "Get dressed and get out of here";
Terry Farrell of Star Trek:Deep Space 9, as the TV reporter with a mission in the sex underworld, for saying "I just walked into madness for you! Talk!";
and Doug Bradley, as Pinhead the sex demon, for saying "Appetite sated, desire indulged" and
"There is only flesh" and
"I am offering you a place at my right hand--flesh, power, dominion."
Four stars.
Joe Bob says check it out
To: Editor (Aspen Times Daily):
Normally I don't pay much attention to Joe Briggs' column, redneck humor notwithstanding. I can't take a whole lot from a guy whose I.Q. is smaller than his hat size. However, his inane, insulting piece on immigration begs a response.
The insulting part is J.B.'s attitude that if you make your living with your hands and the sweat of your brow then you're an ignorant, valueless member of our society whose job is expendable. Shove that Ralphus characterization where the sun don't shine, Joe Boy!
All U.S. workers should be accorded job and wage protection from illegal foreign competition. If Denny's can't make it without exploiting illegal aliens, then we don't need Denny's either!
This sea of unskilled scab labor that floods the Rio Grande by the millions annually is undercutting U.S. workers' wages and standard of living. They are burdening school budgets with dual language instruction. They regularly take advantage of free medical services that their Anglo counterparts must pay for. And a growing segment of Joe Bob's "cream of the crop" are peddling misery by the gram with a worst-case scenario of a free trip home.
In fact, the only time illegals are deported anymore is when the DEA is involved. That might have something to do with the fact that the entire western slope of Colorado is covered by one INS agent. Funds have been so scarce that the only immigration phone line in Colorado was disconnected last week in Denver.
This makes dollars and sense to jackasses like Joe and unethical businessmen who have taken to screwing the U.S. worker as a matter of habit.
Who cares if Denny's goes bankrupt? We do not need any more wetbacks. Do you understand this now, Joe Boy?
Good.
Bruno Kirchenwitz
Basalt, Colo.
Dear Bruno:
Let me get this straight.
YOU are calling ME a redneck?
Dear Mr. Briggs,
Here are a few topics that you might consider writing about:
1. Was "Gilligan's Island" just an example of Communist propaganda shown in a very subliminal way? Tina Louise sure looks Russian to me!
2. What exactly was the point of producing "Circus Fun" cereal?
3. Did Babe Ruth really put a voodoo curse upon the Boston Red Sox?
4. Why don't they market a video game based on the Persian Gulf War?
Your cosmic fan,
W.C. Kirby
Worcester, Mass.
Dear W.C.:
Why don't they market a Persian Gulf War video game?
As soon as you flipped the coin to see who would be the Allied Forces and who would be the Iraqi forces, the game would be over.
Dear Mr. Briggs:
I showed your letter to my children. They wanted to know what a "bimbo" was. I said someone like Marla Maples. They never heard of her. Can you do a column on how our modern educational system doesn't teach our kids nothing?
Patricia Kite
Newark, Calif.
Dear Pat:
I can't believe your children aren't familiar with the famous Marla syrup trees from Vermont.
Dear Joe Bob,
Would you do a piece on the right Reverend Al Sharpton? He is my personal hero and inspiration.
Can you make that sound like a person breaking wind where you cup one hand in the opposite armpit and make your arm go up and down?
Sincerely,
Carl La Fong
Santa Clara, Calif.
Dear Carl:
No, but I can make a sound like the Reverend Al Sharpton breaking wind while he speaks.
Wait a minute. That's redundant.
Bulls-eye, Observant One!
I just finished reading your article on who invented the idea "everybody should go to college."
Thank you for trying to rattle the mental cages the masses have put themselves in. I was one. I should know. Now after all too many years I'm learning to cook--to let creativity and imagination run wild. It sure beats getting dressed up in $600 suits with $30 socks and playing in public relations (more like public bullstuff) like I used to.
I finally had to ask if I was doing what I enjoyed. I hated what I did, made great money. I lost who I was, what was meaningful to me. Things have changed.
The key: 1) Follow your heart! 2) Risk! 3) Tell yourself the truth!
Thank you again.
Rob Kipfer
San Antonio, Tex.
Dear Rob:
Someday historians will write about America in the 20th century, and they'll say, "It was this weird time where people spent the first 50 years of their lives trying to figure out what they wanted to do, and the last 20 years regretting the fact they didn't start sooner."
I think it was Mark Twain who said, “College is a place that polishes pebbles and dims diamonds.”
© 1992 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights Reserved
For more of Joe Bob's pre-TNT reviews in Grapevine, Texas, go to his Drive-In Reviews Archive over yonder at www.Joe Bob Briggs.com
The
return of the devil-sex mush-head goo-eyed cenobite people, trying to
crowbar themselves into the life of innocent little Kirsty. The sequel
picks up just a few hours after the first movie, when Kirsty wakes up in a
psycho ward trying to explain to nice Dr. Chennard just exactly how it was
that her stepmother Julia skinned her daddy alive so she could use the
skin on the evil uncle Frank so they could have monster sex together in
the attic and hit traveling salesmen over the head with a hammer so they'd
have plenty of blood for Frank to drink. Pretty soon Dr. Chennard gets
TURNED on, and he moves the bloody mattress that Julia died on into his
own house, where he chains up zombie maniac mental patients for the fun of
it and does brain research, and you can just imagine what's coming next:
Julia is INSIDE the mattress, and she needs a little liquid refreshment.
Dr. Chennard takes a little deaf-mute blonde girl and teacher her to solve
the puzzle-boxes from the first movie: when you twist em just the right
way, you get zapped into hell. There is NOTHING that compares to the scene
where the skinless Julia finally kisses Dr. Chennard right square on the
lips.
Clive
Barker journeys into new frontiers of fried flesh in this tale of a guy
who gets so far into a kinky Ayrab jungle sex-fiend hocus-pocus swingers
club that by the second scene of the movie he's getting flayed, frayed and
filleted by this tribe of mutant needle-head octopus-face monsters that
he's created out of his own imagination. We've got steel hooks, manacles,
chains, and spare body parts on parade, and Andrew Robinson--best known as
the maniac murderer in "Dirty Harry"--is the GOOD GUY. Basically Clive
took the most frightening fear of the pale-face Hush-Puppy-wearing English
weenie husband and made a whole movie about it. What would happen if your
wife is so sick of your sniveling nerdy questions and your sucking up to
her every time you want something that she starts having sex in the attic
with devilhead slime monsters that remind her of your brother Frank who
she used to have sex with before he got flayed and filleted and carried
off by the nightmare sex monsters? Sure, it's a common problem, but what's
unique is Clive's solution. One day, while they're moving into a new
house, the weenie husband slices open his hand on a nail and walks in on
his wife while she's dreaming about making the sign of the double-humped
sperm whale with Frank, and he's slopping 19 gallons of blood a second on
the floor and he thinks he's gonna faint, and so the wife gets her
stepdaughter to drive him to the hospital, only once he's gone something
under the floor starts DRINKING the blood. Frank is back from Devil Land,
with most of his skin ripped off and his blood vessels exposed. But here's
the really gross part: he wants to get ROMANTIC. Here's the really grosser
part: SHE wants to get romantic. And here's the one that makes the Vomit
Meter go off the scale: they DO get romantic. Their only problem is that
they can't go on meeting like this. Frank needs a whole bunch of blood to
stuff down into his gizzards and start the world's most ambitious
transplant surgery. Does she love him enough to go trolling her way
through singles bars, hoping for bald-headed punching bags that'll nuzzle
up beside her, ask her what sign she is, and trail her home for some
claw-hammer skull-bashing? Of course she does. So now we got part vampire
movie, part zombie movie, part tribute to "Psycho" and "Chainsaw" and all
the other documentaries based on Ed Gein, but there's one more thing this
movie needs--giant dragonhead lizard-gut glopola monsters. Best gore
flick of the eighties.
© 2000 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights
Reserved.
The "Hellraiser" movies are available on video and on DVD
Note: "Hellraiser 4: Bloodline" was so lame, not only did Joe Bob pass on reviewing it, the director had his name taken off the credits, changing it to the fictional name "Alan Smithee." Leonard Maltin says of Hellraiser 4, "Dull & plot-heavy (too much story in the way of the movie), even if you're a Clive Barker devotee. Re-caulk your bathtub instead." Leonard gave the original Hellraiser movie 2 1/2 stars, calling it "ugly fun all the way."