Newly uncovered workprint version of the film, providing a fascinating insight into how it changed during post production

This time, we follow Terry Farrell’s Joey, a reporter who discovers the aftermath of a victim from the actions of the puzzle box. As she slowly uncovers more and more information about the box’s history and its connection to her father’s supposed death in Vietnam. On my first viewing of this film, I really disliked it and found it to be an unbearable drop in quality from those original two films, but after revisiting it all of these years later with a much greater appreciation for the horror genre, there’s some stuff to like here. And into this morass of stagnating blood and guts came Barker’s bizarre creation, itself a Frankenstein of unlimited imagination and horribly suffocating production restrictions, a film that at once showcased a first-time film maker and an author (the film is based on one of his novellas, The Hellbound Heart) whose worlds far exceeded anything in horror or dark fantasy before and arguably since. Far more than the sum of its parts, it opened up a landscape of twisted sexual fantasy intertwined with equally perverse physical torture; it parlayed a prosthetic-driven creature feature into the midst of a very suburban melodrama; and it delivered a sense of the dreamily uncanny, of the off-kilter shot through impossible environments (is it set in the UK? The US? Even our world? Who knows?) and nightmare logic with no discernible rhyme nor reason…A histrionic, hyperbolic quote it may be…but when it comes from the lips of one Stephen King (himself referencing it from a quote about, ironically, The Boss…Bruce Springsteen), it really shouldn’t be so easily dismissed as mere marketing fluff. The Hellraiserseries has a history that is unlike most long running horror franchises. Originally released in the late 1980s, when the slasher genre reigned supreme and audiences had been fed a steady diet of movies like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween, Hellraisercame along and did something completely different. A caption reads: The Following PREVIEW has been approved for ALL AUDIENCES by the Motion Picture Association of America First things first – the Leviathan documentary on the first two films that was included in the previous Scarlet Box and Trilogy set is NOT included here. Neither are the 30 min making of Hellraiser III and short films on the bonus disc of the set. However everything else is. And some… Power of Imagination - discussion about Hellraiser and the work of Clive Barker by film scholars Sorcha Ní Fhlainn (editor of Clive Barker: Dark Imaginer) and Karmel Kniprath – NEW (58 mins)

Books of Blood and Beyond: The Literary Works of Clive Barker - archival appreciation by horror author David Gatwalk of Barker's written work, from The Books of Blood to The Scarlet Gospels The film delves into hell, taking the audience and characters there, and shows us that the Cenobites were once humans themselves; a fact that would play heavily into subsequent movies. The inclusion of the Escher inspired hell-world, the unknowable god Leviathan, and the further machinations of Julia, expand the story and setting in ways that most horror sequels simply didn’t do. But it’s by no means perfect, and the over-designed nature of the Channard Cenobite and the destruction he wreaks feels like a foreshadowing of the third movie, and leads the final act of the film to be the weakest part of the movie. Hell Was What They Wanted! - brand new 80-minute appreciation of Hellbound, the Hellraiser mythos and the work of Clive Barker by horror authors George Daniel Lea (Born in Blood) and Kit Power (The Finite)The Beauty of Suffering - brand new featurette exploring the Cenobites' connection to goth, fetish cultures and Bdsm While the final product would have likely been nothing spectacular, Yagher’s original vision for a film that revolved less around Pinhead and more around the creation of the puzzle box itself, the Lament Configuration is fascinating. After leaving the project, over twenty five minutes of his original cut were trimmed down and television director Joe Chappelle was brought in for re-shoots and to make the product more “scary” with more Pinhead, a revised ending and Yagher’s original intended story. The Beauty of Suffering – brand new featurette exploring the Cenobites' connection to goth, fetish cultures and BDSM