WhileHellraiseris getting a highly-anticipated reimaginingthat releases this Friday on Hulu, there is something distinctly delightful in revisitingClive Barker’s original 1987 horror opus that will always ensure it stands on its own. Wicked and weird in all the best ways, the film’s practical effects can be a bit dated in parts, though it still makes up for it in its commitment to creeping cinematic chaos. Based on Barker’s novella “The Hellbound Heart,”Hellraiserserved as the horror visionary’s directorial debut and proved to be a fantastically fleshy start. Largely confined to a single house that soon gets overtaken by the forces of hell, it introduced us to the iconic Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and the beautifully brutal body horror he would wreak on the film’s characters. It is a work that still continues to excel within its limitations as it embraces the full eerie and evocative potential of its premise.
From the very opening moments, it drops us right into the gore as we see the beginning of the gloriously gruesome destruction of a hedonistic man named Frank (Sean Chapman), who has just solved a mysterious puzzle box. His reward is that he will now get torn to pieces by hooks that pull him apart and leave only tatters of himself behind. A short time later we are introduced to the man’s brother Larry (Andrew Robinson), who has decided to move into the same house where Frank was obliterated with his wife Julia (Clare Higgins). Believing he could fix it up, he is unaware of the dark forces looming within. On top of that, Larry also is oblivious to the fact that Julia was having a passionate affair with Frank. As they begin to move into the house, she makes a discovery up in the attic that changes everything.
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As luck would happen to have it, Julia is closer to Frank than she could have ever realized. Following an accident where Larry cuts his hand, his blood drips onto the attic floor bringing Frank back from the dead. The only problem is that he is looking a little worse for wear as his body is not yet fully formed. While the design of his body is somewhat uncanny and unnatural looking, this only adds to the unsettling nature of the experience. Obviously, for Frank, this is less than ideal as he can’t really go out in public looking like this without turning some heads. Thus, he convinces Julia to bring him more unsuspecting and involuntary blood donors that he can use to get back to himself again. She specifically seduces men who, rather humorously, don’t think to question why this woman is taking them up to the dingy attic. With each offering Julia brings him, Frank grows stronger and stronger. The stages of his transformation are striking and sinewy in the best way as we see his body effectively reversing decomposition.
Clive Barker’s Unsettling Vision of Hell
For those who haven’t seen it, any other details about the progression of the plot matter less than the panoply of macabre imagery Barker treats the viewer to. No kill is ever quite the same, and no Cenobite, demonic beings who come knocking when they discover Frank’s escape from their clutches, is like the other. The way it creates a sinister sadomasochism with violence galore led to more than its fair share of censorship over the years. Indeed, Barker had said that the tense eroticism that was woven throughout was actually toned down from what he had hoped to have. As he cheekily told Samhain magazine in July 1987, “They wanted to substitute one kind of undertow for another. I had a much more explicit sexual encounter between Frank and Julia, but they said no, let’s take out the sodomy and put in the flick knife.” With that being said, all that he still managed to sneak into the film is quite spectacular even when he had to occasionally cut some of it down to be shorter. One only wishes we could have gotten the full force of his vision.
What we do get, at the center of the experience, is a character who becomes the protagonist toward the end. Larry’s daughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), who doesn’t live with him but still swings by, begins piecing together what is going on when she observes Julia bringing men back to the house. She ends up forming a pact of sorts with the Cenobites to save her own skin that proves to be just what the film needed to bring the iconic characters back into the picture. What may surprise viewers who either haven’t ever seen it or haven’t in a long while is how sparingly they are used. Rather than being a detriment, there is something to be appreciated in the restraint as it ensures each moment we get with them is fearsome fun. A lesser film, of which there are many in the later sequels, would lean too heavily on the Cenobites without putting in the foundational work to create a strong story structure for them to enter into. It makes the conclusion all the more delightful when we see them on full display.
While it does take some time getting there and occasionally gets dragged down by exposition, the ending more than makes up for it. As Kirsty does battle with her uncle and stepmother, Barker’s film really pulls out all the stops. In particular, the use of lighting and a simple yet effective score instill everything with a nightmarish quality as the Cenobites emerge from the shadows. As they take hold of Frank once more, the brutal yet beautiful display he becomes before being obliterated is as opulent as it is obscene. Credit must also be given to Bradley who has such a commanding presence in not just the conclusion, but in all his scenes leading up to it. It is clear why Pinhead became the face of the franchise. He and the rest of the film end in a manner that, quite literally, brings the house down.Hellraiserremains a horror classic that is worth checking out both before and after we get brought back into the world it created all those years ago.
