Released in 1996, a long four years after the third movie that left the puzzle box in the foundations of a beautifully architected building, which led me to believe that this, the following movie, would take place in that building. Instead we’re in the far future of 2127 onboard a uniquely designed space station that has several orbiting satilites where we learn that Pin Head has been called by a non-soul having robot. This obviously dispeases pinhead, but we don’t learn about the actual level of his displeasure until nearly the end of the film. Instead the next step is to go back to the start of this whole thing to around 1727 with powdered wigs and face paint, where a very much out of place Adam Scott is helping to torture a misguided woman, killing her, then cutting off her skin and using her in a demonic summoning ceremony. They use a puzzle box that was designed by a talented but witless toy maker, who witnesses the horrible events, goes home and is promptly eaten by demons. This whole thing results in the first of the hell demons to be arrive on Earth, but it’s not pinhead, it’s a princess of hell, and she’s here to have sex with Adam Scott!
We then just 200 years to the 1990s where there’s an architect designing a building. He’s the descendant of the toy maker! This movie is about the bloodline of the toy maker! There’s a ton of really silly stuff that happens in the 90s time period, then we jump back to the space station where more silly stuff happens, we find out that Pinhead can terrify people from orbit and is looking forward to getting back to hurting people.
On the whole, when they use CGI, it’s that 90s stuff that’s super noticeable, there’s a scene of a robot figuring out the puzzle box that’s absolutely atrocious, but it’s about what could be done at the time. Also notable is the demon dog that shows up and looks super creepy, but never actually does much of anything until it dies, and then it’s dead. There’s some really bad lines in this outing, one that particularly stuck in my head was when Pinhead was saying there’s more people alive now than in all history combined, which really makes me want to sit down with the guy and have a discussion about what he’s referring to exactly. What’s his time frame? more people alive in the last 100 years than all the time before that? I doubt it.
I was rather pleased with the ending of this fourth movie, I truly didn’t see the space station’s connection to the bloodline story elements until they started to move into place. I think the franchise is about to shift into TV movie level of quality so I’m going to be putting on my “it’s just cheese tv horror” glasses for the next film.
“Perhaps I was a bit hasty”
I was in high school when this came out and was super excited because it was coming to theaters. I don’t believe that 3 did. Or if it did, I missed what was probably a very limited theatrical window. The group of people I hung out with on a regular basis did not like horror movies and never let me pick the movie we all went to. So I got dragged to Toy Story and Mr. Holland’s Opus, and things like those two. They made an exception because I was so excited for Hellraiser IV. After the train wreck that was this movie I was never allowed to pick a movie again.
The robot opening the box bothered the hell (hehe) out of me. Did that robot have a soul? If not, solving the box shouldn’t have done anything because there was no intent. If it did have a soul, that should have been more important to the plot of the movie.
if I understood the scene correctly, that was just a remote operated robot, the guy had the power gloves on to control it, so maybe it was the Captain’s soul that summoned Pinhead and friends, but they were trapped in that one room for some reason?
I believe you are correct. It’s been a lot longer since I have seen this one. I may have only seen it twice and it has been at least a decade I’m sure.
You’d think the cenobites would be able to appear in the room with the person opening the box, not tethered completely to the box itself. Maybe. I dunno. I really didn’t care for this one.