Five Movies That 'Drag You To Hell'

Director Sam Raimi makes his long awaited and apparently triumphant return to the horror genre this weekend. "Drag Me to Hell," starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver and David Paymer, follows loan officer Christine Brown (Lohman) who ends up cursed after she turns down a mortgage extension for the wrong person. Her sanity crumbles as the world around her turns into a sort of living hell.

Now Raimi is far from the first filmmaker to look to the netherworld for inspiration. In the course of building this list, I found that there are surprisingly few horror movies that deal directly with Hell as a location, at least in comparison to other genres. That said, film in general is littered with references, reinterpretations and outright visitations to the realm of the damned. Heck (ha!), as the list below shows, even musicals aren’t safe from Satan’s touch.

The "Hellraiser" series

The entire "Hellraiser" franchise is built around an incredibly twisted reinterpretation of Hell as a place where pain is pleasure. The damned -- extradimensional Cenobites in the "Hellraiser" movies -- revel in their constant pain even as they take joy in torturing the souls of innocents who are stupid enough to play with a seemingly harmless Chinese puzzle box. It all started with a Clive Barker novella called "The Hellbound Heart"; the author later went on to direct the first movie, "Hellraiser." Things have gotten admittedly sillier as the series has aged, but the Cenobite character designs still make me – along with plenty of other horror fans -- squirm to this day.

"Little Nicky" (2000)

Adam Sandler stars in "Little Nicky" as the titular demon, youngest -- and slightly "off" -- son of Beelzebub (Harvey Keitel). As a demon, Nicky is an odd duck. He exudes this sweet aura of innocence; needless to say, it’s a somewhat surprising character trait for the son of Hell’s sovereign king. Nicky is forced to start growing up when his two brothers, Adrian (Rhys Ifans) and Cassius (Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister Jr.), hatch a plot to overthrow their father. To be perfectly honest though, I like Nicky for one reason and one reason only. He has good taste. So says the Nickster: "Popeye’s chicken is [effin’] awesome." Too true, Nicky. Too true.

"Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday" (1993)

"The Final Friday" eh? That’s rich. Like hockey mask-wearing serial killer/zombie Jason Voorhees will ever pass into Hollywood’s Great Unkown. "Jason Goes to Hell" is the ninth in the still-running series of classic horror flicks. There have been three subsequent "Friday" releases since then, including the latest, which was a full-on franchise reboot. "Jason Goes to Hell" notably never travels to the underworld, though the movie ends with the teasing image of Freddy Krueger’s (from the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series) knife-gloved hand emerging from the ground and pulling Jason’s dropped hockey mask down to points unknown, presumably Hell. The "Jason Goes to Hell" title is technically accurate, since that’s where he ultimately ends up, but we viewers never actually get a glimpse of it.

"Stay Tuned" (1992)

John Ritter, Eugene Levy and Jeffrey Jones (aka the principal from "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off"). What more do you need? Ritter is Roy Knable, a TV-obsessed shlubby househusband who unknowingly signs away his soul in exchange for a dream big-screen cable TV setup (this was loooong before the days of HD). Roy and his wife (Pam Dawber) end up being sucked into the cursed television, where they will lose their souls unless they can survive for 24 hours while jumping between Hell TV’s 666 channels. Highlights include a Chuck Jones-penned cartoon sequence in which Ritter and Dawber are hunted mice and a nod to Ritter’s own career, when Roy suddenly appears on the set of "Three’s Company" (eliciting a terrified scream).

"South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut" (1999)

Due to MTV Movies Blog’s wide reading audience, I can’t reveal too many specific details of Hell’s role in "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut." I’ll give you as clean a version of the story as I can though. Basically, Saddam Hussein ends up in Hell where he… ummm… befriends Satan. In the Biblical sense. Saddam’s aspirations for world domination prove to be greater even than the Lord of Darkness’s, which creates friction between the two. Oh, and all of this unfolds amidst a series of rousing musical numbers. Hilarious stuff, provided you’re old enough to enjoy the R-rated shenanigans.

Tags drag me to hell, hellraiser, jason goes to hell: the final friday, little nicky, longer & uncut, sam raimi, south park: bigger, stay tuned