Hellraiser

Now that we’ve had a little break, it’s time to continue our Halloween horror festival by looking at another horror franchise. We go from one horror icon to the next, and it’s one of the stranger ones: Hellraiser. Hellraiser was created by British horror author Clive Barker, who also wrote and directed the first film in the series. Barker, tired of seeing awful adaptations of his works, decided to cut out the middleman and do it himself. To this end he wrote a short novella with the express purpose of bringing it to the screen personally. That novella was ‘The Hellbound Heart’, a slim volume barely over a hundred pages in length that got right to the point. It’s a decent read, but it’s very simple and even feels written for the screen. What’s interesting is how Barker managed to pull it off pretty well.

Hellraiser is a unique movie, gruesome, imaginative and horrific; it definitely had a substantially different look and feel to other horror movies of the time. It had its own influence on the horror genre and even fetish fashion, spawning eight sequels and a lot of comic book adaptations. The series has always been in an odd place; it’s never been quite as successful as the other franchises. They’re also messier films than most in more ways than one, with the series as a whole being a pretty jumbled mess. The first entry at least is a mostly solid little slice of British horror.

 

Frank Cotton, a narcissistic, world-travelling hedonistic asshole, completely bored with earthly pleasures, gets his hands on a mysterious puzzle box in Morocco that is said to summon angels to transport one to a realm of unimaginable pleasure when solved. He takes the box to his abandoned childhood home in Britain and, in the attic, manages to solve the box. When he does it summons the Cenobites, demonic beings that kill him and drag his soul to hell for an eternity of torture and suffering.

Sometime later Frank’s brother Larry decides to move into the seemingly abandoned house, bringing his second wife Julia with whom his relationship has strained. While Larry is attempting renovations on the house, he accidentally cuts his hand, his blood sinking into the attic floorboards. The blood is enough for Frank’s lingering soul to begin to resurrect, reforming as a gruesome skeleton in need of more flesh and blood to pull him out of hell and fully revive. He manages to convince Julia, who he’d had an affair with, to help by luring men into the attic and killing them. Larry’s daughter Kirsty, suspicious of her stepmother Julia, begins to investigate, getting her hands on the mysterious puzzle box.

It’s a pretty simple plot all things considered, and very close to the book, but it works pretty well for what it is. It’s also a more unique sort of horror movie, as there wasn’t much like it at the time. It’s more adult orientated, since at its core it’s a story about infidelity. Also murder, but infidelity is also definitely a theme. It’s actually a pretty good adaptation of the book, keeping the story and themes and only changing a few details. For one, Kirsty wasn’t Larry’s daughter but a close friend who was secretly in love with him. The change to her being his daughter feels like an attempt to be like a lot of other horror movies – teenage protagonists in horror movies were seemingly more popular than adult ones at the time. I think the change works fine actually – the creepy stepmother thing works, and having Larry be Kirsty’s father gives a better excuse for her to start staking out the house and investigating what was going on.

There are a lot of things that couldn’t translate well to film though, like how the puzzle box compels you to open it, the exact nature of the Cenobites or how the box works at all (it just seems to do things). The origins of the box (the ‘Lament Configuration’ in the book) are never delved into. It’s also never referred to as the Lament Configuration here, it‘s just referred to simply as ‘the puzzle box’. The book went into more detail with it, but I think the movie gets the point across, though the actual mechanics are unclear (when Frank opens it he’s instantly torn to pieces by hooks, when Kirsty opens it a doorway to hell opens).

Considering it was made by a first-time filmmaker, it’s a surprisingly well put together movie. You can tell Barker wanted to put his own spin on things and give his movie a bit of class. Thus it starts with, of all things, an overture. It’s pretty good, grand and sweeping, but it’s not memorable. The ‘Hellraiser theme’ is not something that I can bring to mind. The filmmaking is decent, though there is room for improvement evident. There are a few issues with the pace and progression of the movie. The beginning is so sudden there’s no real time to think – Frank buys the puzzle box, summons the Cenobites and is torn to pieces within about two minutes and with almost no dialogue. At one point a flashback occurs so suddenly it’s almost jarring, especially as it’s cut and interspersed with footage from the present. Some cuts are a bit odd as well. It’s a decent looking movie, not amazing but well done, but it has its own feel. What it lacks in technical brilliance it makes up for with creativity and gruesome gore and special effects, which Barker throws a lot of the focus on.

It’s a different sort of horror movie than most at the time, gory violence aside. It’s got a decidedly more adult bent than most. Interdimensional torture demons and blood-hungry revenants aside, it’s a film about infidelity, with the twisted Frank/Julia relationship making up the crux of the plot. It’s essentially a movie about sex and lust (and demons and murder). It’s a boundary pushing movie as well. The early sex scene flashback between Julia and Frank is more graphic than you’d expect (you even see his dick). Compared to movies that dealt mostly with murderers killing teenagers, this is a big change of pace.

This is a gorier movie than most, full of some awesomely gruesome effects and gory kills. The effects work is good though a bit dated at times, but for the film’s budget it’s still really violent, creative stuff. The gore is all physical effects, using prop work and make-up. Julia uses a hammer to kill off the men she lures to the house, and it’s enough to crack heads and break jaws. Once Frank gets his hands on them they become emaciated husks, their mouths spewing maggots. The version of hell here is an industrial room full of hanging chains and hooks with chunks of flesh hanging off of them. Speaking of hooks and chains, Pinhead’s weapons of choice are hooks that fly out from seemingly everywhere to skewer and tear apart his victims. It’s all pretty gross stuff.

The scene of Frank’s resurrection is fantastic, even if the effects are a bit dated. It starts simply, floorboards creak and puddles of liquid appear. Then his thin, fleshy limbs pull his malformed, barely physical self out of the ground as his bones, veins, muscles and brain start to pull themselves out from nothing. The effects work is gruesome. It might not be the best effects work, but it’s still effective and cool looking. The various versions of undead frank are pretty cool as well, as he progressively gains more flesh, bone and muscle with every corpse he ingests.

The most iconic effects work is for the Cenobites. There are only four here, but they’re memorably gross and decidedly different from the usual sort of monsters and murderers seen at the time. They’re a mixture of flesh and fetish attire, their outfits made of leather, hooks and chains threaded into their flesh and muscles with exposed wounds on display. There’s the girl Cenobite with her throat pulled open, a fat Cenobite with his eyes stitched closed and, a fan favourite, the chatterer (no eyes, nose, ears or lips and he champs his teeth together). But the most iconic of them all is easily series lead villain Pinhead, notable for the metal pins sticking out of his head. His eyes are black and he has grid-like markings on his skull. Actor Doug Bradley portrays Pinhead, and learnt to do his make-up himself, something that took six hours to apply. It looks good. He’s got some great lines, taken from the book, which are pretty memorable (“No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering”).

It’s funny to note but Pinhead isn’t actually named that here (none of the Cenobites had names) he was called that fans who watched the film, and Clive Barker personally hated the name (he thought it cheapened the ‘elegance’ of the character). But the name stuck, and he’d be referred to as Pinhead in following movies and comics (the Hellraiser series has a huge run in comic books). Barker’s pseudo-follow up to Hellraiser and a bunch of other stories, ‘The Scarlet Gospels’ (a long delayed book released earlier this year) refers to him as ‘the Hell Priest’, suggesting Barker didn’t really know what to call him. The Cenobites are visually iconic and creepy, but they’re not really in the movie that much, only appearing on screen for maybe five minutes tops. The focus of the film is very much on the villainous Frank and Julia. It does give their eventual appearance more weight, as the creepy outside force appearing from hell make their appearance in the finale. They don’t last long though, as Kirsty and the puzzle box sends them back to hell fairly quickly in the finale.

Now to the characters. The movie is actually very focused on its characters. Demons and hell aside, this is a pretty small-scaled affair, mostly set in the confines of a small British household, meaning the characters are given more focus, particularly the villainous ones. Julia is a horrible bitch, but that’s kind of the point. She doesn’t seem to give a shit about Larry at all, to the point where you question why she married him in the first place. She’s also a sort of borderline evil stepmother character, and really seems to have it out for Kirsty for no discernible reason. She’s also obsessed with Frank, or at least idea of him, a roguish man who takes what he wants (even her) who is the complete opposite of her proper, ordinary husband. It explains why she’s so determined to please him that she’d willingly resort to luring men into the house and killing them just because he asks her to. It also sort of weakly explains why, at the sight of a meaty skeleton Frank she doesn’t just shriek her head off and get the fuck out of the house. One issue I have is that she’s not particularly attractive; I think the clothes and hairstyle have a lot to do with it (she’s more ‘evil stepmother’ than ‘seductive serial killer’ here), but considering the book had described her as being beautiful this version doesn’t work so well.

Frank is gross and creepy, with both human and undead Frank having a slimy, rapacious feel. You can tell that he’s a selfish, manipulative asshole, though as an undead he’s comes across as a bit cartoonish and exaggerated, but I guess considering he has no skin it’s understandable. It sort of sells how Julia would willingly fall for him, though the few flashbacks do a good job of showing how manipulative/forceful living Frank was. You feel a bit sorry for Larry, who just seems like a bit of an idiot struggling to understand why his wife doesn’t love him anymore. He’s ineffectual, and acts like an ordinary guy (he likes watching the boxing on TV, he jokes with his friends and he worries about how his wife is so distant without knowing how to remedy the situation). He’s happy to pour out his feelings to his daughter, which does make him seem like a bit of a chump.

Kirsty is ok I guess. She isn’t much of an original character (final girl who is determined and braves the horror? Though she’s a bit angrier and aggressive than most) and doesn’t really get much screen time or attention, but then again it’s not really her story. She’s there to be the heroine, and since a lot of popular horror movies had teenaged girls as the hero she’s one too. She’s can scream with the best of them (she’s very loud and certainly can shout), and can get right into the thick of things as necessary, making a deal with the Cenobites and managing to get the hell away from them at the end (though that was more the box doing its thing). She can be a bit grating with her loudness and determination. I do think that having her be Larry’s daughter is a nice compromise – while it does do the teenaged girl hero thing we’ve seen a thousand times before, it gets rid of some of the creepier aspects of the book’s version of Kirsty, who was a mess of jealousy and obsession over Julia and Larry.  

Some of the acting is a bit suspect though. Most of the main cast are fine, particularly Julia, and Kirsty is ok if a little loud. It’s the extras who are a bit off with oddly emphasised dialogue (maybe it’s a British thing?). The most noticeably weird is Pinhead, whose line delivery is strange. His deep voice is creepy and he has some great lines, but the way he actually says them is so weird, taking weird breaks in the middle of his sentences or emphasising seemingly random words. Instead of saying “Don’t do that!” he says, “Don’t…do that?”.

There are parts of the movie that are cool but make no sense, where creativity and special effects take over but sense and reason don’t apply. Early on Kirsty has a freaky nightmare that doesn’t have anything to do with anything (looks cool though). Kirsty, in hospital, accidentally solves the puzzle box, which summons a corridor to hell. She wanders down it a little until a giant, upside down demon monster thing start chasing her. It looks completely ridiculous, has no explanation, wasn’t in the book and while it appears again at the end it’s never exactly clear what it’s meant to be. Nobody talks about it or mentions what it is and it never shows up again in other movies. There’s also a vagrant who stalks Kirsty through the movie, following her, watching her from afar and, at one point, eating a bunch of crickets for some reason. At the end of the film he shows up to retrieve the puzzle box, then transforms into a giant flying skeleton dragon monster thing. It looks cool, but what the hell was it?

 

In the end, Kirsty unwittingly unlocks the puzzle box and summons the Cenobites who appear to take her to hell. She manages to convince them that Frank is alive, and they let her head back to the house for proof. Frank has already killed her father and stolen his skin and in the ensuing fight, Frank kill and absorbs Julia (and really doesn’t give a shit), before the Cenobites come and dozens of hooks tear him to pieces in one of the series’ most memorable scenes (you only see a glimpse though). Kirsty uses the puzzle box to send the Cenobites back to hell and escapes. She tries to destroy the box, but a demon retrieves it. The puzzle box ends up where it was right at the beginning of the film as the movie ends on a near identical shot as the one it began with, of the box on a table in Morocco as some poor sap buys it.

I like Hellraiser. It’s a small-scaled affair with big ideas, and while its ambition might exceed its capabilities it’s still a pretty well put together little movie and the gruesome creativity and gore effects are great. The Cenobites are awesome though we don’t see much of them, and the very different look and feel to everything is pretty fresh. It’s also a very good adaptation of the book, all things considered, especially since it was Barker’s first real foray into film. The movie ended as a pretty self-contained thing, but it made money and gained fans and thus a sequel was made where things got bigger, gorier and far less coherent.