Review - Hellraisin 2: The Raisining by Marc Richard
Preamble
Marc Richard made three of these, after the first three Hellraiser movies. Proper thing, because things start to go off the rails after number three – I couldn’t even finish the fourth one. Like most of these things, number one is the best and then the quality starts to take a nosedive.
The same cannot be said for the fantastic parodies written by Marc Richard.
A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. I have gone as low as three stars – anything less than that and I will not review a book (chances are I DNFed anyway). Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.
Take from that what you will.
Review – 5/5
This Hellraisin series is like nothing you’ve read. At least, it’s like nothing I’ve read. It’s hilarious – laugh out loud funny, smirk funny, head shake funny, ‘what the *bleep*’ funny. It’s also basically a scene by scene breakdown of the movie, making fun of all of the cheesy B-horror plot points and characters and bopping between absolutely meta and as granular as Hell(raisin – do you see what I did there?) There are plays on words, plays on taste, plays on film-making.
I’ll tell you what it reminds me of – having a buddy on the couch next to you, both of you blasted out of your minds on the reefer and unable to take the movie seriously, commenting on how ludicrous it is and laughing uproariously. Not because I’ve ever done that, mind you – I’m a good boy, operating purely on pop culture portrayals of cannabis consumption. Kind of like the scenes in Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle where they’re watching television and giggling at the D.A.R.E. commercial.
Richard’s style is absurdist par excellence – he lulls you into a sense of knowing where he is going, and then he throws you a curveball. And another. And another. If you’re at all a fan of the Hellraiser movies (which I am, being a die-hard Clive Barker guy who has yet to read his entire library), you might like this. It’s one of those humour things where you kind of think you’re in on the joke but the comedian does or says something that makes you think like you might not be totally in on it. You’re in a weird limbo where you’re laughing to kill yourself but you’ve gotta keep your guard up, because who knows if he’s making fun of you, too.
But that’s OK, because he’s a big ol’ teddy bear who’s going to take you to Hell and back. And there will be taffy-like skin (the best skin – that also happens to be an artifact of practical special effects from the 80s). There will be demons of pain and pleasure. And there, of course, will be raisins.
Lots of raisins.
Check it out on the ‘zon here.