Issue #8
Hello again, Fright Fans, and welcome back to Horror Fight!: Between Rounds. Your mid-fight breather where the Spooky Bois regroup, swap cinematic blows, and gear you up for the next main event. I’m MeZ, your loyal corner man in the Horror Fight arena, taping your gloves, icing your cuts and loading up your watchlist with deadly precision.
Earlier this week my MacBook just stopped working. If you recall on the last episode of the pod, I disappeared for a little bit towards the end of the show. I assumed my battery had died since I didn’t have it plugged it. When I did plug it in, the computer booted right up and I had 20% battery life. I thought that was odd but OK, no biggie. Over the next couple of days my MacBook would just cut off. I plug it, it would working perfectly. Checked my battery life, and I got one of those little error icons telling me there was an issue. I update my OS to the latest version. That didn’t do much. Kept shutting off and then it just died. Wouldn’t turn on. Switched chargers. Switched plugs. Nothing. Thankfully I had a day off from work, so I hit up the Apple Store. That was a pain in the ass. They couldn’t figure out what was going on and they then they gave me some more bad more news. They couldn’t help cause the warranty expired last month! SMH. I literally have had this MacBook for 13 months. Such a pain in the ass! My options were put $700 into replacing a logic board (there was no guarantee that this was going to solve the problem) or get a new one for $900. Easy decision for me as I type this on my new MacBook Air (must cheaper with all the same specs but with a faster M5 chip). So the crisis has adverted for now. We are going to still be recording and dropping our Folk Horror episode on Wed (April 15th). The computer issues combined with me getting a promotion at work has extended hiatus of the newsletter for longer than I hoped. But we are back! A quick one today. A quick one next week and then we will be back to our regular schedule of dropping in between episode weeks.
Quick note: We use neon borders to help differentiate which spooky boi is talking. Pink=MeZ. Green=Corey. Blue=Pat.
Here’s Corey with his helpful guide to The HELLRAISER Franchise
There are eleven HELLRAISER movies. ELEVEN. Few are great, a handful are good, some are bad but enjoyable, and some are dreadful. The variance makes sense when you think about it: pleasure mixed with pain, angels to some, demons to others. What follows is by no means a ranking, but more of a way to stave off fatigue. Mix the pleasure with the pain. Watching them in order of release in quick succession, you're going to want to tap out at some point. One needn't watch the franchise in order, because really, after the first two, they're all essentially one-offs. My suggested viewing order is as follows:
Obvious, necessary, wonderful.
Works best as a double feature, roll right in. Can't separate these two, even if we are front loading. One of the best part twos in all of horror.
Largely dull, but Kirsty comes back and closes up the narrative from the first two. Easy L&O connection with the great Ryan O'Reilly aka Mr. Mayhem as our lead. Not terrible, just dull, very little cenobite action.
Hellraiser finally gets to its SCREAM ripoff. We've got Lance Henrickson and one of the many guys who played Superman getting a BJ. It's a video game. Awful, but fun in the way that HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION is fun.
Back to business! Pinhead goes full Freddy. This one is a blast.
The nadir. I'd say skip it. Not so bad it's good, but so bad it must be seen to be believed. Think THE ROOM, or a Danzig movie.
Ok, back to normal bad. This is probably the best of the worst. We've got the great Kari Wuhrer and some weird sex cult stuff.
Nothing says quality like an Alan Smithee film. HELLRAISER goes to space! The history of the box! A fine entry in the franchise.
In which we see the influence of SAW and HOSTEL trickle down into the DTV world of the end stage Hellraiser franchise. A legitimately fresh take influenced by some of Barker's later in-universe writing; Pinhead as a pencil pusher cog in the bureaucracy of hell. SE7EN for idiots vibes with a hint of giallo.
The franchise's first non-theatrical entry is a drag. The franchise became a police procedural for a while, and you have to break those up.
Finish strong, leave a good taste in your mouth, part as friends. A fine entry that I would like to see more of.
I hope this helps. Anything worth doing is worth doing right, so fuckin watch all of them. I'll do this again when Mike lets me make Pat watch all sixteen PUPPET MASTER movies.
YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS TRANSMISSION BECAUSE YOU HAVE DEMONSTRATED A TOLERANCE FOR STRANGE CINEMA.
TRANSMISSION II
OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS
FEATURE I: THE PLUMBER 1979
FEATURE II: THE CARPENTER 1988
TRANSMISSIONS ARE OPEN FOR 72 HOURS.
DOWNLOAD THE MOVIES ASAP.
DO NOT SHARE THE LINK.
REPLY TO EMAIL IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO THE LIST.
We will be back in your earholes next week with our Folk Horror episode This should be a fun one cause boy oh boy do a lot of these movies stink!
As always if you have any questions, comments or topic ideas, please feel free to reach out. You can reply to this email directly or email us at anytime at [email protected]. Follow us on all socials at @HorrorFightPod. And you can listen to our entire episode catalog at HorrorFight.com.