There’s one director’s name that ensures that the movie you’re about to watch is going to be a real mess. From 1968 until the early 2000s, “Alan Smithee” was the official pseudonym used by Hollywood directors who did not want to take credit for their work. There are a few reasons why this might happen: studio interference, for example, or a production that was compromised in some way. And although horror has gained prestige in the past few decades, the genre’s once-disreputable nature made the Smithee name tempting for filmmakers who were embarrassed to be associated with it. But there’s one title where all of these factors came together in a most spectacular fashion: the infamous Hellraiser: Bloodline.
The fourth film in the Hellraiser series was actually directed by Kevin Yagher, a longtime special-effects artist who designed both the makeup for Freddy Krueger and the original Cryptkeeper puppet for Tales from the Crypt. Yagher got the job after Re-Animator’s Stuart Gorden exited the project over “creative differences,” a bad omen that got worse when the movie began shooting in the summer of 1994. Whole departments were fired and replaced, the script was scaled back for budgetary reasons, and executives at Miramax hated Yagher’s original cut, rewriting pivotal scenes and hiring a new director to shoot them. By the time it reached theaters, Hellraiser: Bloodline had been cut down from 110 to 85 minutes, prompting Yagher to take his name off of the film.
