I must say I felt a little ripped-off (no pun intended) after watching Hellraiser on VHS for the first time back in the ’90s. You have Pinhead on the cover, looking straight through your sorry soul while grinding his teeth, and he’s barely in the movie. Instead, we have Uncle Frank, a random slimeball who gets his flesh ripped apart with hooks and chains when he opens a mysterious puzzle box he bought at an antique shop in Marrocco — but will eventually return, with a boner, thanks to a cheating wife.
Everyone who solves the puzzle box opens a portal to Hell, of some sort, and out comes The Hell Priest himself, aka Pinhead (Doug Bradley) with his three Cenobites, Spencer, Chatter and Butterball, ready to fulfill your deepest desires. But the thing is, those who are “corrupt“ will die a gruesome, painful death (all politicians should be handed a puzzle box each, I would say). Then we have the husband/wife Larry and Julia who moves into the house Frank lived in, a shithole filled with cockroaches. But the worst thing is that Frank’s remains/corpse rots under the attic floor. After Larry cuts himself in a nasty way, his blood drips through the floor and onto the remains of Frank. He then reemerges as a skinless corpse, like a red skeleton from Castlevania.
And then it gets interesting: No, Pinhead doesn’t show up, but hear this — it appears that Julia and Frank had a wild affair (!) and was fucking like there was no tomorrow. The original cut of Hellraiser actually had so much fucking, or “erotism“ to put it in more polite English, that it got an X-rating. And Frank must really have a Master Cock from Fuck Forest and the erection like a grade A pornstar from Dimension XXX, because Julia will do everything to fix this boring loser, even if she has to walk over dead people. So if they’re ever gonna fuck again like they were teenagers, Julia has to lure men to the attic so Frank can feed on their flesh and blood. The poor individual who gets trapped in the crossfire is David’s teenage daughter Kirsty, who already has a strained relationship with her stepmother Julia. If Frank wasn’t already the villain, Julia is probably even worse, and the evil Disney stepmother-looks certainly suit her.
Trivia: Lance Henriksen was first offered to play the role of Frank, but turned it down. This was in his golden era when he still had the luxury to choose n’ pick roles. He later signed up for one of the shitty straight-to-DVD sequels, Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005). Isn’t that funny. Clare Higgings, who portrays the evil stepmother, has never seen the whole film since she hates horror movies, and already after the first ten minutes of its premiere she walked out. She still signed on to be in the sequel, which is way more gory.
Hellraiser is Clive Barker’s creation, from top to toe, his demon baby, based on his own novel The Hellbound Heart. And can you actually believe that the working title for the film was Sadomasochists from Beyond the Grave? Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. The unique look of Pinhead and the Cenobites was inspired by Punk fashion, Catholicism, African fetish sculptures, and by Barker’s visits to the S&M clubs in New York and Amsterdam (mixed by some drug-induced fewer nightmares, if I have to guess).
The limited budget really shows, especially with the animated lightening sparks, which was already dated back then. Clive Barker and some “Greek guy“ (according to Barker himself) made it by hand over a drunk weekend, and…well, that’s good to know. Then there’s the “engineer“ monster that could be something from Dead Space or the later Resident Evil games. And while it looks cool by design, they had no clue how to utilize it and clashes with the dead-serious tone.
Where the movie shines is the practical/gore-effects, and the attic resurrection scene of Frank is a classic moment by itself. The dusty isolated atmosphere in Frank’s house, where we spend most of our time, is filthy and grimy and reeks of bad vibes, cheap perfume and god knows what else. The prosthetic makeup-designs of especially the three Cenobites are flawless and they still look terrifying and intimidating which blends perfectly in with the atmosphere. The main plot itself, with the two sleazy lovebirds, is something I never cared much for. More Pinhead and Cenobites, please.
That said, Hellraiser is an entertaining ’80s gore film with a tasteful blend of horror, S&M and even some nasty torture porn that still manages to rip some new assholes. And it also made a completely unknown British actor, Doug Bradley, into a horror icon as Pinhead, for better and worse.
Writer and director: Clive Barker
Country & year: UK, 1987
Actors: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Sean Chapman, Oliver Smith, Doug Bradley, Nicholas Vince, Simon Bamford, Grace Kirby
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093177/
