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"What's your pleasure, sir?"
I don't know how you all got into horror, but my pathway in was the video store. This makes me officially Old; talking about physical media is a confession of having lived through Flintstonian technology levels in 2023. But video stores were cool, even if you were just window-shopping for films. Horror always stood out, and not just for the awesome cover art. Horror was a genre of franchise. These stories were not one-offs, they were sagas, they were mythology, they had long complicated histories which you could follow as the sequel numbers ballooned ever higher. Friday the 13th had two different movies claiming to be the final one, how could that work?
Of all the franchises though, one always stood out as particularly scary to me. Freddy, Jason, and Michael would give you nightmares but you know what those movies were. Pinhead though, that was "not for me". I did know why he had nails in his head, I did not want to know why. He was just killing teenagers. This looked depraved and nasty in ways I was not ready for. It was forbidden knowledge even in the spooky section. I thought these movies should be put back behind the beaded curtain, beyond the further regions of experience.
As an adult now, it is depressing that Hellraiser became the "Pinhead franchise", that I could even put it in conversation with the Chucky movie. The fact you call the guy 'Pinhead' feels like a ridiculous diminishment of the mystery and power at play here. I'm not sure if he's ever called that in any of the movies. His actor, Doug Bradley does not seem to mind. He got regular work in eight movies, and he kept up the performance all through it, putting in work while productions around him turned into trash. But in those first two Hellraiser movies, there was more going for more than just "let's kill some idiots with vaguely Satanic, mildly kink overtones". The first movies are surreal, sensual, and dangerous. Nothing branded "Hellraiser", not even the terrible reboot from last year, has gotten anywhere near that again.
One of the very cool thing about the first Hellraiser is how this is everybody's first movie. Clive Barker had never directed a feature film before, so was very fortunate to be able to adapt his own novella, The Hellbound Heart. (Compare Hellraiser to a Barker adaptation he didn't work on, 1986's Rawhead Rex, a goofy monster movie, and the contrast could rip your head off from whiplash.) The cast is mostly newbies too. Ashley Laurence was given an "And Introducing" credit for playing the protagonist, Kirsty. But this was also Doug Bradley's first movie. Clare Higgins had only been in one other movie before, here playing the other major perspective character, Kirsty's withdrawn, sexually-imposing step-mother, Julia. Of the core cast, only Andrew Robinson as Kirsty's father, Larry, had much of a resume. It's a great cast too. Andrew Robinson winds up playing two roles after a Face/Off skin change, and he's great in both of them. Higgins, though, I think is a stand-out, I'll have more to say about her tomorrow.
Even as a rookie, Barker was a great director, it's a shame he's made so few movies. Hellraiser is even a nice efficient movie, 85 minutes. Impressive for how much is in it.
We previously have only dealt with a dualist reality of good versus evil. But what if
neither really existed? What if we imagined them both? Maybe our reality was
just a tiny blip in a see of infinite terror? Hellraiser is our dip into a new kind of conception of the shape of the gods and devils, how they fit into an inter-dimensional horror realm. Cosmic horror was common in pulp circles going back through the 20th century. H.P. Lovecraft was so important to this genre that his name has become an adjective defining the entire concept. The 1960s had a few dips into this world with Roger Corman films (X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes) and Hammer Horror (Quatermass and the Pit), but it is really in the Eighties that this blows up with movies like From Beyond, Lifeforce, and the Phantasm franchise, and also Stephen King is hugely into this stuff.
Barker, unlike Lovecraft, actually imagines a world with something like a rational order. It can be defined and explained, just you will probably not enjoy it. All of existence is not bent towards what morality or faith: the gods instead demand pleasure. The central villains of this franchise, the cenobites are associated with Hell, are they demons at all? They dress as a sadomasochist priests in a leather cassock. "Cenobite" is an archaic word meaning "one whose lives in a monastic community" - though it will never hold that definition ever again, this franchise has ruined it forever. The Lead Cenobite, who everybody calls Pinhead so I'll do the same (...sigh) describes his kind as "demons to some, angels to others". This is a path towards a salvation of a kind. Of course, I need to mention that Clive Barker is gay and that shapes his fiction. Particularly you can see it in his characters' search for forbidden pleasure outside a conservative normality. I'm not that the cenobites are all that evil in this first Hellraiser movie, just they are very insistent that you do not refuse their gifts.
The ones who are evil are the wicked step-mother, Julia, and her lover, Uncle Frank (Sean Chapman). Frank has escaped a realm we would only recognize as "hell", reborn as a skinless horror (body-doubled by Oliver Smith) in the attic of his brother's house. Julia is unsatisfied by Larry and craves the adventure and danger of Frank, as Frank himself craved to explore outer realities of eroticism using a haunted Puzzle Box. Frank needs blood and bodies to regenerate his flesh, Imhotep style, so Julia lures men upstairs to be meals. Young innocent, Kirsty, however, has found the Puzzle Box, and makes a deal with the Cenobites: she'll go free if they take Frank in her stead. Pinhead says "...maybe".
A few odd details about Hellraiser: it is really unclear where this is taking place. No region of America is this gray and gloomy outside of maybe Seattle. Giving one extra a Yankee baseball cap is not fooling anybody, Clive, this was clearly filmed in England. A few actors are actually dubbed over with American accents, including Kirsty's boyfriend, Steve (Robert Hines). I really like the design of the old house that is the setting for most of this movie. It seems to be 90% staircase, there are no hallways, everything is set on that one central spire with dim light floating in from the stained glass windows.
Physical locations and sets aside, I love the art design here and the special effects. Frank's reincarnation scene is one of the most amazing works of effects ever. The make-up design on the monsters are incredible. Who could not love the chattering Cenobite? He's adorable. Doug Bradley is instantly iconic, his deep voice is so imposing and commanding. "This isn't for your eyes!" I don't know why there is a bone dragon at the end of this movie, but it looked cool. I do not know why whenever the Cenobites appear the soundtrack adds awful moaning and big pillars covered in gore appear from nowhere. It's terrifying. Uncle Frank's death is one of the great kills in horror cinema.
"JESUS WEPT!", indeed he did. This is not a world where Jesus belongs. Satan does not belong here either. Whatever is happening in Hellraiser is so much more horrible and alluring than anything Christianity or Anti-Christianity can offer.
Next Time! Well, we gotta do the sequel, don't we? I have so much more to say about these movies with Hellbound: Hellraiser II.
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