Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) on Netflix
In 2127, engineer Dr. Paul Merchant seals himself aboard the Minos, the space station he designed. There he has a robot solve the Lament Configuration, the puzzle box his ancestor built.
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Trailer
Plot summary
In 1796 Paris, Duc de L'Isle, a libertine aristocrat, commissions the toymaker Phillip LeMarchand to build the Lament Configuration. LeMarchand does not know that the box's design makes it a portal to Hell, and he watches L'Isle and his assistant Jacques use it to summon the demon Angelique. He flees home and begins blueprints for a second box that would cancel the first. In 2127, his descendant, the engineer Dr. Paul Merchant, locks himself inside a room on the Minos, a space station of his own design, and has a robot solve the same box. Guards break in and take him, and he agrees to explain himself to their leader, Rimmer.
Cast
- Jody St. Michaelas The Beast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Miramax would not pay for the ambitious script, so the film was scaled back. Stuart Gordon was approached to direct and backed out over artistic disagreements, and the job went to special effects technician Kevin Yagher on the strength of his cost-saving directing on Tales from the Crypt.
- Effects man Gary J. Tunnicliffe built Angelique's look out of Morticia Addams and Sister Act, turning a nun's habit into flayed skin. He also undid a change made for Hellraiser III, going back to Doug Bradley's older Pinhead make-up, harder to put on and take off but, he thought, better looking.
- Shooting started in Los Angeles in August 1994 in two unusual buildings: the I. Magnin Building, which was rumored to be haunted, and an abandoned factory that was converted into the film's space station.
- Doug Bradley called it "the shoot from hell": Gerry Lively replaced the original cinematographer, the assistant director was called away on an emergency, people fell ill, and Bradley said the art department and camera crew were all dismissed in the first week. Even so, the film finished on time and on budget.
- Miramax reacted badly to the finished film and demanded that Pinhead turn up earlier and loom larger, which meant rewrites and a new opening narrated by the 22nd-century Paul Merchant. Kevin Yagher, worn out by the shoot, refused to direct the new scenes and left the production, citing a lack of time and energy.
- The film reached cinemas at 85 minutes, cut down from Yagher's version. When he saw it, he decided it had strayed too far from what he had set out to make and had his name taken off the credits, replaced by the Directors Guild pseudonym Alan Smithee.
- Bloodline was never screened for critics before it opened in March 1996, and it turned out to be the last Hellraiser film to get a theatrical release anywhere; in the United Kingdom it went straight to video.
