The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy (35 page)

Kirsty plays a bargaining game with the Cenobites, as we saw in chapter 2, and the demons themselves enter into games with their human subjects, “Time to play,” being one of Pinhead’s preferred sayings. In
Hellbound
, Tiffany’s obsession was bound to her playing with puzzles (coincidentally, the wooden box she slots together at the Institute bears more than a passing resemblance to Phillip’s rudimentary Lament Configuration), while in
Hell on Earth
, Pinhead encourages Joey to let the Pseudo Cenobites play: “Ah, more friends come to play with you.” Even when he slips inside her mind, he is toying with her memories of her dead father. “Couldn’t resist playing games, could you?” snaps Elliott when he comes face-to-face with his alter ego.

In
Bloodline
these correlations are much more blatant. In France, the peasant girl Angelique assumes the Duc is playing a game when Jacques binds her hands to the table; this is further compounded by his producing a handkerchief from behind her ear. In the original script, the gamblers are playing card games at the chateau when Phillip arrives, but the delivery of the box initiates a new, more deadly game. “Will you play, sir?” the demon Angelique asks Corbusier, offering him the Lament Configuration. In the film, though, it is Jacques who plays sexual games with Angelique once she is demonized, and she is condemned to do his bidding. This doesn’t prevent her from wishing that things were different, especially when Phillip arrives. “Toymaker! You have such pliant fingers,” she says seductively. “I want them to play with me.” In the previous version of the story, she does play a mating game with Phillip, but now is ordered to dispatch him quickly, then to join Jacques back in the bedroom.

In the present day there are even more games to be played. Angelique is at the forefront this time, and the first involves revenge on Jacques. “Close your eyes,” she tells him. “Don’t move.” “Why?” he asks, and in a replay of what was said during her original demise she replies, “So you won’t bruise.” Jacques’ reaction to that: “Is this a new game?” “Oh yes,” she tells him. “It might hurt ... just a little.” And when the game is over, Jacques will be dead.

In New York, Angelique recruits another volunteer to help her. Bumping into overweight, balding businessman Sharpe at the unveiling of John Merchant’s new building, she entices him to the basement—just as Julia did before her, except they are descending instead of going up into an attic. Their conversation harks back to the most famous villainess of the series. “Do we really need to know each other’s names?” she says when he asks hers. “Oh, a mystery woman, huh?” Sharpe concludes and follows her eagerly down the stairs. When they reach the basement, she asks directly, “Do you like games?” and gets him to close his eyes while she searches for the box—punching a hole in one concrete support to free it. This signifies that it is “Time to play another game.” Sharpe is the one who plays with the box now and his reward is to be dragged into Hell by a hook and devoured by the Chatter Beast, his departure signaling the grand entrance of Leviathan’s favorite son, Pinhead.

More subtle is the game Angelique plays with John, the art of seduction which we will discuss more fully later. In reference to this, Pinhead says to the architect, “Isn’t that the game you’ve been playing?” “This isn’t a game,” protests John. “Oh yes,” Pinhead assures him, “this
is
a game.” The very fact that Pinhead then affects Jack’s voice and calls out “Daddy!” should be enough to prove that this is child’s play. It also foreshadows the use of this trick on the space station—the Cenobites calling out in distressed childlike voices so Parker will free them. John’s recreation of the Elysium design on his monitor, which he shows to Angelique in his office, is tantamount to a computer game, one where only logic and skill can sustain the Configuration, working with mirrors and lasers. “Trapped light, feeding off its own reflections,” John explains. It will work only for a few moments before losing its definition, and when he puts this into practice in the basement—at the behest of Angelique—his gaming skills again prove lacking. This failure will cost him his life as Pinhead shouts, “No more games!” before slicing off his head. It is left to Bobbi, who has herself been playing a real-life version of a scrolling computer game with the Chatter Beast, to send Pinhead back to Hell with another apt phrase: “You go and play with your dog, you bastard!”

The scenes onboard Minos are even more reminiscent of a “shoot ’em up,” with winding corridors and laser guns. We’ve already heard that Pinhead had almost given up waiting for Merchant to play, and, as Paul has told Rimmer, “I’m playing an endgame here!” He warns her, “You don’t know what you’re playing with....” Only
he
is qualified to participate in this final game, which he does using a hologram. Angelique lures another man, Carducci, to his death by pulling him so far into a mirror; and Pinhead plays a game of hide-and-seek with Chamberlain, who thinks he has escaped only to find the jaws of the Chatter Beast lurking in the darkness. Rimmer takes Bobbi’s place as the dog’s prey, but destroys it completely by trapping it in a decompression chamber. “Play dead,” is her own contribution to the game.

The Chatter Beast that terrorized Bobbi. Replica figure by NECA (courtesy NECA; photograph credit: Nicolle M. Puzzo).

The most obvious toys are the three pivotal constructions of the Lemarchand/Merchant clan, which grow bigger in each time zone. And all have dual purposes. The first is the Lament Configuration that Phillip creates, a toy puzzle that is actually a gateway to Hell—replacing the cruder Pentagon that de L’Isle relies upon. The second is the office building John has designed, which earns him a place on the front cover of
AE
magazine but which also has the potential to become a much bigger pathway. It is, as Pinhead comments, “a holocaust waiting to wake itself.” During this section the movie also shows us little Jack building a Ferris wheel out of a Meccano-like toy set, showing that the need to build is in the Merchant family’s blood. When Jack survives and passes his genes on, as well as trace memories, the result is Paul’s masterpiece: the Minos Station, which hides the workings of the Elysium Configuration—and the ability to transform into a giant puzzle box in space.

On a much smaller scale we have the toy figures that Phillip makes. These are seen only briefly in the movie, as part of the box-making montage. But in the script there was much more detail. Genevieve mentions the acrobats and lover figures, and examples of the Harlequin dolls are present in Phillip’s workshop. These are what Angelique bases her killer troupe on, and the lovers are almost certainly meant to represent herself and Phillip. Later, Paul uses a much larger doll he’s built—a robot, which he manipulates using sensor gloves—to work the puzzle box. In just the same way, the toy dolls serve also to highlight the manipulation of mankind by Hell—and by the Cenobites. First, through de L’Isle, they orchestrate the conception of the Lament Configuration. Then, through Angelique (in both the script and the film) they demand more boxes be made. The Cenobites use human beings for their own entertainment and pleasure. They are latter day Greek or Roman gods, moving human beings around as if on a gigantic chessboard, an analogy the series would return to in
Hellraiser: Inferno
. Human beings are their own dolls to do with as they like. Pinhead’s speech when he sees Earth on the monitor enforces this argument: “Ah! Glorious, is it not? The creatures that walk on its surface, always looking to the light, never seeing the untold oceans of darkness beyond. There are more humans alive at this moment than in all its pitiful history. The garden of Eden ... a garden of flesh!”

Sex, Death and ... Adultery

We have touched on the complex relationships between Phillip, his descendants and Angelique, as well as Pinhead and the Princess. But this warrants further exploration, as it ties in with yet another one of
Bloodline
’s fundamental themes. In the script the attraction between Lemarchand and Angelique is much more pronounced. When he first visits the Chateau and sees her, Philip is spellbound; how much of this is magic and how much pure, animal lust, Atkins leaves to the reader’s imagination. However, he does state that Lemarchand is “Visibly struck by her beauty....” and is “the subject of her penetrating stare and ravishing smile.”
²
Seeing her true demonic features during the game with the gamblers sends Phillip fleeing from the house, but not even this can bring him to his senses when she calls at his workshop. Again, the puissant attraction draws them together during a heated scene. Phillip wouldn’t be the first or last man to be seduced by power. Their meeting ends in them almost kissing, were it not for Genevieve’s interruption. With this knowledge, the New York section of the film now makes much more sense. When Anqelique says to John Merchant, “We were good together,” it’s a statement of fact, not a panging for what might have been had she not murdered him within seconds of setting eyes on him. In the movie version, Phillip’s reaction to Angelique is one of disgust; when she demands that he play with her, he fears only for his soul; there is no lust or love in his eyes.

Had we not known about their relationship in the script, it would seem very strange that Angelique’s seduction of John would be so quick. He has been dreaming about her, but in those dreams her mouth is smeared with blood and she is holding a heart, hardly an image that would make him desire her. Additionally, it would make more sense for him to become flustered when he sees her during his speech, if this had happened before to his ancestor Phillip. “You think you don’t remember, but your blood knows. Let it remind you,” Angelique says when they eventually meet in person. “You know me from dreams, John Merchant. John Lemarchand.” But the film in its current form would suggest that those memories and dreams are merely bad ones. In any event, John is soon fixated with her and his dreams are filled with much more erotic fare: Angelique straddling him naked in bed, promising that whatever he wants can be his. So, when the double cross comes again, it is following the same pattern as the scripted France section: seduction and betrayal, ending ultimately in death.

Hence, in the screenplay’s futuristic setting, Paul is able to twist this around. Allowance is made for a final confrontation between the two, where Angelique wishes they could return to the past, perhaps to change what happened. Thankfully, it is Paul who betrays
her
this time, leaving her in the clutches of Pinhead before destroying them all by triggering the Elysium Configuration. The movie version denies the audience this final satisfying meeting between the two, thereby withholding any kind of resolution to this subplot, or any form of closure to the affair, which brings us to another aspect of this scenario.

In the script, Phillip and Angelique raise Genevieve’s suspicions because they exhibit all the signs of a couple having an extramarital relationship. Phillip leaves his house twice at night to venture to the chateau, once even leaving his bed. Then Genevieve catches them virtually kissing when Angelique comes to see Lemarchand. This is why, in order to win him around, she reveals that she is pregnant, divulging the information just as he’s about to leave her. But even this fails to stop him. Genevieve plays the spurned wife in this scenario, who cannot compete with Phillip’s stunning new admirer. Of course, in the film we have none of this tension. Phillip is happily married and knows about the child Genevieve is carrying right from the start, even before he knows of Angelique’s existence. “Stay with me. Stay with us,” says Genevieve in the very first historical scene, placing his hand on her stomach. So, when he departs to take the box to the chateau at midnight, this makes his motivation more about providing for his family than seeing his other woman.

In the New York setting this infidelity is present in both the script and the finished movie. John’s strange behavior alerts Bobbi to a possible liaison between her husband and another woman. John is distracted, is having trouble sleeping and unashamedly lies to her. The close-up of Bobbi’s face as she rolls over in bed tells the audience she doesn’t believe a word he says. This section recalls the first
Hellraiser
and Larry’s growing suspicions about Julia. But Bobbi is much more astute than Larry: if Jack hadn’t been kidnapped one suspects she would have uncovered John’s secret anyway. And, once more, the punishment for this deception—for his guilty pleasure—is to almost lose his wife and son, and to be killed at the hands of Pinhead. Could this be why there is a hint of sarcasm in his voice when Pinhead says, “Stand your ground,
family man
”? Through his behavior, John has damaged his family unit beyond repair. Bobbi no longer has a husband and Jack will now grow up without a father. The imagined future that Pinhead speaks of to John, where he watches his son grow up and loves him, is snatched away not—as John originally thought—by the death of Jack, but by the untimely demise of himself. The ultimate price of any extramarital affair is the break-up of the family unit, the estrangement of husbands and wives, fathers and children.