CLIVE BARKER'S HELL ON EARTH: HELLRAISER III

Released: 1992
Released by: Dimension
Running time: 92 min
Rated: R
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Some Call him the Black Prince of Hell. Some call him the Angel of Suffering. To horror fans everywhere, he's Pinhead (Doug Bradley), the urbane, spike-faced minion of evil with a bloodlust for human souls. Now Pinhead's back in the most diabolical Hellraiser of them all -- Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth!

TV reporter Joey Summerskill (Terry Farrell) is on assignment at a local hospital when a bloodied teenaged boy is rushed into the emergency room. As Joey watches, the whithing boy is literally torn apart by chains impaling his body. Fleeing the carnage, Joey follows the victim's girlfriend to a downtown nightclub, the Boiler Room. In the apartment above the Boiler Room rests the owner's newly purchased sculpture: a pillar etched with distorted figures and faces. Among the frozen images is Pinhead. Tonight, he shall be released.

Synopsis

British horror master Clive Barker's best-known story gets another workout in HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH, a film that's more conventional than its predecessors but still delivers the goods to genre fans.

The terror begins when J.P. Monroe (Kevin Bernhardt), the owner of a decadent New York nightclub called the Boiler Room, purchases the torture pillar last seen at the end of HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II as a decorative item for the club. Soon thereafter, Joey Summerskill (Terry Farrell), a young TV newswoman frustrated in her attempts to be assigned major stories, is present at a hospital when a young man is brought in, chains seemingly operated by unseen forces pulling at his skin and eventually ripping him apart. Attempting to track down Terri (Paula Marshall), the girl who came in with the unfortunate young man, Joey learns that she is an ex-girlfriend of J.P.'s, and that the horrific death was somehow related to the pillar, which J.P. has installed in his apartment above the club. Terri also presents Joey with a puzzlebox, one that can unleash the demonic spirits known as Cenobites, which she removed from the pillar before leaving J.P.'s place.

J.P., meanwhile, has shed some of his blood on the pillar and awakened the spirit of Pinhead (Doug Bradley), the Cenobites' leader, who is trapped within it. Promising him gifts of pleasure and pain, Pinhead convinces J.P. to sacrifice a young girl named Sandy (Aimee Leigh) to him. When the insecure Terri returns to J.P., she nearly meets the same fate but manages to turn the tables, and Pinhead kills J.P. Now freed of the pillar, Pinhead seduces Terri, who has figuratively and literally lost her ability to dream, with the offer to join him in his world of ultimate physical sensation. She succumbs, and soon Pinhead has invaded the Boiler Room, his supernatural powers sending chains and other devices down to slaughter its guests.

Investigating the pillar, Joey has discovered that only the puzzlebox has the power to send its demons back to hell. She is also visited in a dream by the ghost of Elliott Spenser, the WWI army officer whom the puzzlebox transformed into Pinhead, who tells her that his demonic incarnation can only win complete freedom from hell by convincing Joey to hand over the box voluntarily. While investigating the carnage at the club, Joey is confronted by Pinhead and his Cenobite followers, who include the resuscitated J.P., Terri, Doc (Ken Carpenter), her cameraman whose camera has become part of his skull, and the club's DJ (Brent Bolthouse), who now fires lethal CDs pulled from his head. Joey attempts to flee the creatures, but even hiding in a church can't deter Pinhead's demonic advance.

Finally confronting the demons at a construction site, Joey uses the box to send them back to hell--or so she thinks. Pinhead tricks her into handing over the box by disguising himself as the ghost of Joey's father, who died in Vietnam, and then prepares to turn her into a Cenobite herself. But Spenser's spirit reappears and recombines with Pinhead, and Joey manages to banish them both to hell once and for all. She then submerges the box in a wet cement foundation--but the building erected upon it winds up having boxlike designs as decor in its lobby.

Related Images **Under Construction**

Cast
Kevin Bernhardt	- J.P. Monroe
Doug Bradley	- Pinhead/Elliott Spencer
Ken Carpenter	- Doc/Camerahead
Terry Farrell	- Joey Summerskill
Ashley Laurence	- Kristy
Paula Marshall	- Terri
Brent Bolthouse	- Club D.J.'s

Production Team
Anthony Hickox	- Director
Clive Barker	- Producer
Lawrence Mortorff	- Producer
Peter Atkins	- Screenwriter
Gerry Lively	- Cinematographer
Randy Miller	- Music
Christopher Cibelli	- Film Editor
Tim Eckel	- Art Director
Christopher Figg	- Co-Producer
Steve Hardie	- Production Designer
David Koneff	- Set Decoration
Leonard Pollack	- Costumes