Joey (Terry Farrell) is a reporter who uncovers something very strange going on at a club called The Boiler Room.  She is determined to follow up what seems to be a big story, and so she gets in contact with a girl called Terry (Paula Marshall), whom she saw at the club earlier.  Terry's former boyfriend and the owner of the club, J. P. Monroe (Kevin Bernhardt) it seems, has got in his possession some old artifacts - a pillar of souls, and a puzzle box.

Joey gradually finds out the background of the puzzle box - it is actually not something to be fooled around with - it has the power to open the gates of Hell!  Unfortunately, the demon Pinhead (Doug Bradley), who has so far been trapped in the pillar of souls has exerted his powers on J. P., and has found his way into our world.  Pinhead's former self, a Vietnam war soldier, now a soul floating in some sort of limbo, must get Joey's help to bring Pinhead into his dimension, where the two of them must defeat Pinhead and send the Cenobites (creatures from Hell) back where they came from.

This movie follows Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II, but it is not necessary for you to have seen those two films to watch this one because it does not continue those two stories (although there are several references to them).  I had just two problems with this otherwise very enjoyable movie - first of all, the story got very weird in the last third of the film, things just didn't make a lot of sense to me - especially the ending.  There were also a couple of very silly elements in there (the Cenobite with the deadly video camera attached to his face looked like a Borg drone).  The second thing is that the movie isn't the least bit scary, which was a sort of a letdown for me.  Maybe I should have watched it alone at night, but I don't think that would have helped anyway.

Now coming to what I liked about the movie.  First of all, I thought it was a stylish movie, and that it looked very good.  A big plus is the imaginatively gory collection of effects in this movie (unfortunately these were trimmed down in the censored version that I saw).  To top it all off the music suits the movie well, with a rock song playing behind the closing credits.  Followed by Hellraiser: Bloodline, Hellraiser: Inferno, Hellraiser: Hellseeker to date, with Hellraiser: Deader coming out in 2004.

Anyone notice the similarity between this movie's credits and those of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction?  The opening credits end with the name of the producer, and after the entire movie gets over, the director's name comes onscreen, followed by the closing credits.

Running Time: 95 minutes | Country: US | Genre: Horror