Hellraiser (1987)

 

“Channel 4s 100 Scariest Moments” #19

 

 

Hellraiser

(1987)

 

When Clive Barker hit the horror scene with his string of short-story collections, "The Books of Blood" (first volume published in 1984) he knocked the genre out of terrible dull-drums. That slim collections could so upend a literary market that had long abandoned substantive marketing on anything except ridiculously fat novels is pretty remarkable, but less-so after you read him – His work was extreme like no one had ever seen before, but also thoughtful; the edginess of the content was matched by a sensitivity in character creation; it was exploding with originality, not only the shockingly grotesque imagery, but wholly new story conceits. Stephen King, the long-reigning master of the field, seemed to have been waiting for someone to show up that wasn’t mimicking him, and offered the best blurb anyone could’ve hoped for, "I have seen the future of the horror genre, and his name is Clive Barker."

 

Barker was educated in Literature and Philosophy, but clearly had ambitions of becoming a multi-media artist from the first; during his school years he also pursued theater and produced a couple short films even before his prose saw the light of public day. Then, almost immediately upon publication of his collections, his screenplays for feature films started getting produced. But the first two films, both directed by George Pavlou ("Underworld" (1985) and "Rawhead Rex" (1986)), were fairly awful, so Barker finally took the Director’s chair himself with this movie. By then, he was a mere lad of 32, who’d been a complete unknown only two years prior, yet he could already demand world-wide attention based on an extraordinary body of work.

 

Like his prose, this was an edgy work, and I think most of us were shocked that he was willing to be as bold on the screen as the page. Yes, this was also the era when David Cronenberg’s Body-Horror Fantasies had entered the main-stream with his remake of “The Fly” (1986) and similarly extreme gore was evident elsewhere (examples: “The Evil Dead” (1981), "The Thing" remake (1982), and "Re-Animator" (1985)), but the thing is, most of the extreme films (though not “The Fly” or “The Thing”) were deliberately campy, an obvious release-of-pressure-value on films about the intersection of physical and sexual perversion. Meanwhile Barker, like Cronenberg before him, and virtually no one after, took his Sex-and-Violence deadly seriously. I believe that part of this film’s impact in its era was that it bucked the trend of teen-oriented Slashers and Horror comedies.

 

Horror often eroticizes that which it condemns as Evil, and though that encourages huge volumes of crass trash, at its root are inescapable emotional truths -- there is pleasure in Cruelty and Violence and can be arousing. This is demonstrated in the Evil on the intimate scale, like the Rapist hiding in the bushes, and the grandiosely gruesome, like Mass-Rape used as a political weapon by conquering armies. There’s always an issue, how does one make the pleasures of cruelty a subject without sinking into the lowest form of titillation? That’s the territory of this film, though Rape, itself, is specifically is avoided. Also, though the Sex creates the film’s dense atmospherics, it’s never as explicit as the Gore. Barker seems to understand a thing or two about Eroticism vs Violence in fiction, the former is primarily achieved by creating expectation, while the latter is all about the delivery; this is a film sustained by repeatedly offering the promise of fun, but instead delivering buckets of retribution.

 

Barker chooses Sadomasochism as a literalized metaphor for Radical Evil. He imagines a class of normal appearing, but deeply diseased, fellow-travelers who know exactly who they are even at a casual meeting; they seem to be able to smell each other’s perversions. Since they are incapable of feeling pleasure except through intense pain, either inflicted or received, they conspire with each other against all of us ignorant of their tastes. They are a Cult of Sex and Death, and the very intensity of what they inflict and endure has a Supernatural component to it: if the achieve a certain level of Wicked Illumination, they are able to reach Beyond the Grave.

 

This might be a little harsh on Real-World S&M enthusiasts, but they didn’t protest outside the movie theaters shouting "Discrimination." This is probably because Real-World S&Mers are even slaves to fashion than their media counterparts, as it happens, this movie’s Monsters are not only grotesque, but really well-dressed (designs by Barker, who on top of all of his other skills, is a pretty good painter and illustrator). Outside the more romantic end of the various Vampire sub-genres, I don’t think there’s been any other Monsters ever that were such bold Fashionistas.

 

(An interesting comparison, homosexuals in huge numbers protested the nasty film “Cruising” (1980), but not the S&M-leaning-Gays, who loved the claustrophobic, violent eroticism and how good Al Pacino looked in leather, so ignored that the film condemned them, more than any other Gays, of being a civilization-wrecking Evil).

 

And the metaphor works, and this should not be surprising, as there’s a long history of Real-World examples to buttress it – S&M porn publishers and enthusiasts Ernst Roehm and Julius Streicher were members of Hitler’s circle; Hitler had the former Murdered during a pre-WWII internal power struggle, the latter was executed for Crimes Against Humanity after the war. Moreover, the idea proves potent enough that two of the film’s central actors, Sean Chapman and Clare Higgins, were able to lean on it to remain believable even though their parts were underwritten.

 

Chapman plays Frank Cotton, who, though not the film’s main character, is the center of the story. He’s the black-sleep-son of an upper-class Anglo-American family, also an extreme Nihilist and Sex Addict; he’s traveled the world in search of next sensations. He obtained a puzzle box from a street vendor in Morocco, but when he tries to pay for it, the seller refuses the money, "The box is yours...it has always been yours." So begins the film beings as a Faust variation, but very soon thereafter, the story goes in bold, new directions.

 

In a quiet, English country house, Frank unlocks the box and when it opens, he suffers a horrendous, Supernatural fate. Though his physical form is shredded, his soul does not depart, nor is his rendered body discovered, but hidden beneath the floorboards by Inhuman persons unknown. You see, opening the box was just the beginning of the puzzle.

 

Higgins plays Frank’s sister-in-law Julia, and she’s obsessed with him, this obsession will eventually lead her to be his Slave/Assassin. Hers is the film’s best performance – there’s no attempt to explore the reason why, only to demonstrate the reality of her dependency. Consistent with that, Higgins’ strongest contribution is to demonstrate that she feels she’s getting something from the sick arrangement (a something we can’t comprehend). We see her shift from a weak neurotic with her mild-mannered husband, Larry played by Andrew Robinson, to a powerful femme fatale under Frank’s sway.

 

She’s been able to disguise most her disease from Larry, but not completely, as their marriage is on the rocks (it is unclear if he knows about Frank and Julia’s long-ago affair). In attempt to rebuild their relationship, Larry moves his family into that self-same quiet, English country house. He does not know the Occult Rituals or that Frank is currently its dead-ish resident.

 

Which brings us to the film’s actual main character, Kristy, played by Ashley Laurence. She’s Frank’s daughter and Julia’s stepdaughter. Kristy’s the only person who recognizes her stepmother makes Snow White’s step-mom look like Mother Theresa. The film makes her conflicts and desires the emotional through-line, though most of the plot mechanics unfold without her. This should’ve been wise, it makes the consequences of Evil more important than the attraction to it, but this shift of emphasis makes also this a fairly narrow, domestic Horror story, distracting from the stuff that was most new and original. Worse still, Laurence gives the film’s weakest performance.

 

Though a first-time Director, Barker proves himself a master of build-up (much helped by Christopher Young’s marvelous score) as in a scene where an accidental drop of blood spilled on the floor in the wrong room. That drop is enough for Frank to start regenerating himself (his incomplete form is a great bit of gory FX). As he regains his voice, he also regains his power over Julia. He promises her obscene wonders in the realm of the Cenobites – basically ultra-perverse Sex-Demons – if she gives him what he needs to be fully restored; namely, human victims.

 

Kristy knows none of this, but she doesn’t trust Julia. When she sees Julia bringing strange men home, she’s thinks Julia’s catting around, not a Serial Murderess. When she bursts in on her step mom, she certainly gets a surprise.

 

This takes us more than halfway through the movie’s 93 minutes, and it’s solid, very impressive for a first-time Director, but it’s still not really gotten to the real meat yet. “Hellraiser” really kicks in when Kristy, traumatized in a hospital and not realizing what she’s playing with, solves the all-important puzzle box, opening the gateway to the Cenobite realm. She meets four of them, notably their leader, Pinhead, played by Doug Bradley in truly awesome make-up. Before this he had only two roles in two short films over a space of fourteen years, yet overnight became one of the world’s most beloved Horror icons.

 

Pinhead mocks Kristy’s protestations that she doesn’t actually want to be tortured to death, he doesn’t believe anyone would open the box by accident. He gets most of the film’s best lines:

 

"No tears, please, it's a waste of good suffering."

"We're demons to some, angels to others."

 

He’s so potent, he doesn’t need to even move, just to radiate total authority and smug superiority, like when he half smiles and says, "We have such sights to show you."

 

Kirsty is quick-thinking, and she cuts a deal – her freedom in exchange for bringing them to Frank, the one victim that got away. It was a good plan, it should’ve worked, but there’s still a couple more horrible surprises.

 

OK, gotta be honest here, this film stops just as it starts to get going. It hints at a magnificent new Mythos without exploring it, and I’m 100% sure that fans of this film have a sorta time-distortion syndrome, not realizing that Pinhead and the other Cenobites are onscreen for less than five minutes. After the Cenobites finally get their quarry Frank, Barker was stuck with the problem of closing the film, and the last three minutes or so are pretty weak. That doesn’t mean this film is any less a landmark.

 

Success in film guarantees a sequel, and generally franchise even if the sequel is not a success. In this case, the sequel, "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" (1988) was a triumph. It was directed by Tony Randel and written by Peter Atkins, and a rare example of a true sequel, carrying on the original story, and exploring elements undeveloped in the original. Though a bumpy outing, I prefer it to the very fine original for a number of reasons:

 

·      Its starting point is the Orpheus Myth, but that’s only a spring board for an inventive new tale. While the first film kept hinting at the realms on the other side, this film spends almost the whole of it running time in the most vividly realized vision of Hell ever put to cinema, it seemed inspired by the Hell-scape created by one of my favorite Illustrators, Wayne Barlow. I just loved the boldness.

·      Kristy, still the main character, is now also the main driver of the plot, and Laurence proves herself stronger in the role the second time around. Frank is reduced to an anecdote (a deserving fate for such a Narcissist) allowing Julia, still played by Higgins, to become the most-monstrous-mostly-human in the film. She treats the newly-introduced characters with a wicked venality that makes Frank pale in comparison.

·      The Cenobites Mythos is beautifully fleshed out, but not laboriously so. For example, we learn what we expected, that they were once human and achieved immortality and power through Evil, but there are no exhaustive back stories. Instead, we see them in an eternal power struggle with the newbies pursuing the same sick treasures they’ve accumulated. The Cenobites become sympathetic without showing glimmers of redemption, but because we see them through Kristy’s unfailingly determined and but still compassionate eyes – they’ve been cheated, immortality proves not to be as promised and not even really being forever, or as Flannery O’Connor said, “Even the wicked get worse than they deserve.

 

After that, there were eight more "Hellraisers" (including a remake), plus video games, comic books, and a prose anthology series, but don’t bother with any of that lame, eating-your-own tail nonsense.

 

It is odd that Barker handed over the reins even for the second outing, but if you look at his resume, he was pretty busy. He had a wide array of projects including novels, plays, screenplays, and directed two more films that had no franchise-connection to this one, "Nightbreed" (1990) and "Lord of Illusions" (1995). Unfortunately, those films, though both had truly fine moments, were actually pretty bad. It hard to reconcile the accomplishments he displayed as a Director here with what followed. On the other hand, his prose writings still proved the basis of impressive cinema by others, most notably "Candyman" (1992) which was Screen-Written and Directed by Bernard Rose.

 

Hellraiser trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAx34IZ8bTk