Trivia / Hellraiser: Bloodline

• Alan Smithee: Unsurprisingly, the Executive Meddling cheesed off director Kevin Yagher. Hence Alan Smithee being the credited director.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $4 million. Box office, $9.3 million.
• Deleted Scene: The scenes that were shot, but cut from the final film include the following ones described here:
  • The original opening sequence of the film involved Duc De L'Isle and Jacques murdering and skinning the vagrant woman and using her hollowed out skin, black magic, and a pentagram to summon the demon, Angelique.
  • There was a scene set after Phillip Lemarchand delivers the Lament Configuration to Duc De L'Isle in which Angelique presents the box to a group of gamblers in De L'Isle's Chateau. Angelique and the gamblers play a game where the gamblers rearrange the Lament Configuration and Angelique gradually strips off pieces of her clothing until the box is finally opened and she is naked. As Phillip watches through the window outside, he is horrified when Angelique transforms into a demon, restrains the gamblers to their chairs, and lowers the spiked chandelier in the room to impale the gamblers as their flesh is burned off by demonic spirits. A portion of this scene with completed special effects can be seen in the trailer.
  • One scene involved Phillip attending a masked ball at De L'Isle's chateau in which Angelique lures Phillip into an ante room, tries to seduce him by kissing him, and is interrupted as she is escorted back to the ball by three masked figures. A portion of this scene can be seen in the trailer.
  • After Angelique attempts to seduce Phillip, there is a scene involving De L'Isle confronting Phillip, asking him if Angelique tasted like vanilla. De L'Isle then shows Phillip the pentagram he used to summon Angelique and attempts to murder him before being interrupted by Angelique, who throws De L'Isle through a window.
  • After Angelique attempts to seduce Phillip with wealth and power and he refuses, Angelique summons the masked figures from earlier who are revealed to be the Cenobite versions of the gamblers Angelique murdered in a previous scene. When Phillip refuses Angelique's advances, the Cenobites roll a drum toward him made of the face of his surgeon friend, Auguste. Promotional photos of the gambler Cenobites appeared in numerous magazines such as Fangoria.
  • Phillip's original death scene was different from his death scene in the theatrical release. Phillip's wife, Genevieve, searches the chateau and finds him crucified against a wall. The gambler Cenobites and Angelique appear and attempt to kill Genevieve to prevent the Lemarchand bloodline from continuing, only to be interrupted by a Not Quite Dead De L'Isle. De L'Isle pulls Angelique into the pentagram he used to summon her and says an incantation which sends himself, Phillip, Angelique, and the gambler Cenobites to hell. Genevieve flees to America afterwards.
  • Angelique is summoned back from hell by Jacques who vows never to stand in hell's way and starts using Angelique as his own personal slave.
  • After John Merchant wakes up from from a nightmare in the present day, there was an added scene of him comforting his son.
  • Jacques' death scene differed from what appears in the final film. After he refuses to allow Angelique to travel to America on her own, she murders him by using her demonic powers to make him rapidly age until he dies.
  • John Merchant's speech at the banquet where he is taken aback by Angelique's appearance was originally longer. He tries to demonstrate the Elysian configuration to the crowd. It lights up for a few seconds before it stops.
  • John has another nightmare involving a memory from his childhood of his grandmother telling him that he is "the one they have been waiting for." The actress who plays the grandmother is Ellen Albertini Dow who is best known for portraying Rosie from The Wedding Singer.
  • More scenes showed a rivalry between Pinhead and Angelique. Angelique threatens the safety of John's family and tells him that she wants to use the Elysian configuration to destroy her enemies and become a god.
  • After Pinhead tells Angelique that John's knowledge is dangerous, Angelique tells him that they must kill John's son, Jack, in order to end the Lemarchand bloodline.
  • Angelique holds Jack hostage and forces John to use the Elysian configuration to destroy Pinhead. Pinhead uses his chains to grapple up to the ceiling to avoid being killed by the light. Pinhead then summons more of his chains to drag Angelique into the light. However, the Elysian configuration overloads and fails to kill Pinhead and Angelique. John is killed by Pinhead like in the theatrical cut before John's wife, Bobbi, sends Pinhead, Angelique, and the other Cenobites back to hell using the Lament configuration.
  • A long-haired Paul Merchant wakes up from a nightmare and shaves his head. He speaks with a holographic priest and asks the priest to pray for him and his bloodline.
  • The original ending of the film was different from the theatrical cut. Paul refuses to leave the station with Rimmer and stays behind with the intention of performing an Heroic Sacrifice to end the Lemarchand bloodline forever and take Pinhead and the Cenobites with him. He confronts Pinhead and the other cenobites before turning the station into a giant Elysian configuration. Pinhead impales Paul with one of his chains and Paul grasps onto it, pulling himself toward Pinhead until they are face to face with each other. Paul utters a Pre-Mortem One-Liner to Pinhead, as they, the other cenobites, and the station are destroyed by the perpetual light.
  • The final shot of the film was going to be a Call-Back to the scene of Phillip declaring to Genevieve that he has finished the Lament Configuration.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Along with her accent, Angelique's own Cenobite-esque servants were left out of the final cut. Original scripts also had Pinhead not appearing until 40 minutes into the film. And various more graphic imagery and plot points were left out as well.
  • The film was originally meant to be presented in Chronological order as an anthology film, with the scenes set aboard the Minos Space Station making up the final third of the movie rather than a framing device. Many scenes from the original script were shot, but were cut by Joe Chappelle as per orders from Dimension Films executives after the original director, Kevin Yagher, walked away from the film. As a result of the cuts, the final theatrical cut of the film features only a portion of the scenes that were filmed during production. Many of these scenes added more exposition to the plot and characters' motivations.
  • In general, the whole concept of this one movie was meant to be a trilogy. Part 1 was to be about the making of the Lament Configuration. Part 2 would’ve been set after Hellraiser III, continuing where that film ended with the Lament Configuration being part of this building in NYC. Part 3 would be Set in space, capping off the series with the definitive death of both Pinhead and the Lament Configuration altogether. The studio greenlit the project, but also gave the creative team a limited budget which forced them to condense it all into one movie instead. Which in turn was heavily re-edited and reshot into the film that's widely available today.
  • There is a cobbled together "reconstruction workprint" available on YouTube, combined of footage of the completed film, some deleted scenes and re-enactments of unfilmed or unused scenes (via Sims-esque CGI) presumably from the original script.
• Troubled Production: Described by Doug Bradley as "the shoot from Hell", the production was so fraught with difficulties that it became the last theatrically-released film in the series for over two decades:
  • Originally intended to be an anthology film that would be set in three time periods, the script was greenlit by Miramax (who were now firmly in charge of the franchise) without needing an online. Soon after, though, the company refused to provide a budget to help realize the scope of the film, which would have included more special effects and violent encounters between new character Angelique and Pinhead. Just about the only thing that was problem-free were the makeup and character design provided by Gary J. Tunnicliffe, who worked on the previous film and began to take a larger role in the production, helping streamline Bradley's makeup for easier use and creating the design for Angelique's appearance as a Cenobite.
  • Despite shooting being completed on-time and within budget, the production was fraught with issues, including key personnel either leaving or unable to work due to personal emergencies, sets being damaged by sprinkler malfunctions, several crew members falling sick and (according to Bradley) the camera crew and art department all being replaced within the first week. Director Kevin Yagher (who had success with films like Child's Play and the Tales from the Crypt' series) was called in to direct — according to Tunnicliffe, despite his love for the outline and vision for the film, he ran afoul of executives due to his behavior and shooting style.
  • According to a documentary produced by Youtube creator Midnight's Edge, tensions boiled over after filming wrapped, with Yagher refusing to show footage from the film to Bob Weinstein, citing Director's Guild of America guidelines over a clause that allowed him to take up to 12 weeks to edit the film before showing his work to the production company. This caused no end of strife, with Weinstein reportedly planning to can him and seemingly getting into at least one physical altercation over the disagreement (which was an open secret on-set).
  • Miramax executives asked for several script changes, including Pinhead being introduced earlier in the film and a Framing Device where third-act protagonist Paul Merchant narrates his ancestors' tales. Additional reshoots were scheduled, and Yagher walked away from the production, claiming he was burned out. In his stead, Joe Chapelle (of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers fame, which is also an example of this trope) was brought in to helm reshoots. In all, what was originally intended to be a six-week shoot ballooned to twice that amount, via three additional sets of two-week shoots that occurred over the next three months. Large swaths of the past and future segments of the film (including more focus on Angelique, a greater explanation of Paul Merchant's identity and philosophy and a different ending) were excised from the final cut. Incensed over the situation, Yagher removed his name from the film and an Alan Smithee credit was used in his place.
  • Valentina Vargas, ironically the sole actual French person of the entire cast, had her entire performance redubbed by another actress with an American accent. It's not clear if the dubbing was part of Yagher's original vision or was another component of Miramax's retool.
  • The film was Not Screened for Critics and only made $9 million against a $4 million budget (not counting reshoots). The experience led to the franchise going Direct to Video for many years and started the trend of the franchise's budgets being slashed for each film.
• Franchise Killer: This was the last film in the series to get a theatrical release.
• Not Screened for Critics
• What Could Have Been: Guillermo del Toro declined the chance to direct this film.

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