Hellraiser (1986)

To my knowledge, Hellraiser, while undoubtedly a popular and fondly remembered film, has never achieved the same acclaim from horror fans as, say, The Exorcist, The Hills Have Eyes, or Halloween. In a way, this is understandable: Hellraiser, for all its startling novelty and stark sensibilities, is still a film that's rough around the edges. Yet its significance, ambition, and imagination can't be easily forgotten. 'Pinhead' (not actually named as such in this film) and the Cenobites earned a place in the panthenon of horror antagonists, while the film did go on, unfortunately, to spawn a catalogue of pointless sequels to rival even Nightmare on Elm Street, including the almost requisite "in space!" sequel and three straight-to-video sequels, two of which are coming out next year. Oh, and another reason to appreciate this movie is that Roger Ebert hated it, so you know it must be worth watching.

On its most basic level, Hellraiser is the standard haunted house story. After we meet one of the film's villains, Frank Cotton, and witness the nasty fate he recieves after solving an elaborate puzzle box, the film turns its attention to Frank's wimpy brother, Larry, and his snobby, unhappy wife, Julia, who are just moving into the London house Larry and Frank had inherited and where Frank had unsealed the box. Julia, we learn through a series of well-depicted flashbacks and subtle character moments, had a sexual tryst with the more aggressive and bestial brother Frank and still carries a torch for him as she becomes increasingly dissatisfied with her whitebread husband.

Nevertheless, said whitebread husband is about to provide the solution to Julia's woes, or so she thinks. After cutting himself on a loose nail while moving some furniture, Larry comes up to the attic where Frank had apparently died to find Julia quietly reminscing about the affair (the timing of this scene, where Larry comes to Julia like a wounded child and whines about his fear of the sight of blood, just as Julia silently mourns for his virile brother is one of the film's best moments). The blood Larry drops on the floor is enough to bring Frank back from the dimension he had been taken to and even provide him with the means to reform his body. However, he needs more blood to complete his bodily resurrection and Julia, despite her reluctance, is driven so far by her desire for Frank that she's willing to provide victims for him. Unfortunately, Julia's stepdaughter, Kirsty, accidentally encounters the duo and manages to steal the dreaded puzzle box. Ending up in a hospital, she accidently summons Frank's former captors, the Cenobites, and to save her own skin and the life of her father, she strikes up a bargain...

So the real source of the supernatural of this film is not a Amityville Horror-style residence, but these hideously deformed humanoid beings called the Cenobites (a name which refers to a fanatical religious order), who are best described in 'Pinhead's' own words: "Explorers in the further regions of experience...demons to some, angels to others." Nevertheless, the Cenobites remain almost peripheral figures in the film, contributing much to the overall plot but only really appearing on screen at the beginning, when unintentionally called upon by Kirsty Cotton at the hospital, and at the film's climax. Yet the strange and terrible fate which the Cenobites offer hangs over the head of Kirsty and Frank Cotton, if not all the central characters of the film. Barely touched on in this movie but explored in more detail, without much success, in the immediate sequel Hellbound: Hellraiser II, yet overshadowing it, is the movie's reconstruction of Heaven/Hell. As Pinhead puts it and as they themselves demonstrate with the emotionless, pragmatic way they go about their 'work,' the Cenobites are, at least by their own viewpoint, agents for neither good or evil. Whoever summons them via the puzzle box, intentionally or not, is taken to an afterlife where the depths of human experience, pain, and pleasure, are explored to the furthest limits (or so we're told with dialogue, but the film itself, and the fact that Hellraiser was originally going to be titled Sadomasochists From Beyond The Grave, just shows us the pain part) so, in other words, the world of the Cenobites is a bizarre combination of Heaven and Hell. Intriguingly, the Cenobites seem to consider that they're providing a blessing, which is revealed when, in the only piece of dialogue that betrays any real emotion on the part of his character, Pinhead earnestly promises Kirsty, "We have such sights to show you!"

But, as I mentioned before, the possibilities the Cenobites present are kept on a backburner, while the Cenobites themselves remain well underplayed. The real drive of the film lies in more human hands, namely that of Julia, who is, despite obviously being the main antagonist, the movie's center. We're certainly given a deeper understanding of her history and motives than any of the other characters, while much of the first half of the film is spent in her presence. Fortunately, Clair Higgins is more than up to the task, and though it would have been easy for Julia to deteriorate into a 'rich bitch' archtype and at times she is in danger of doing so, the character is played with so many nuances, even after she starts killing for Frank's benefit, that it's possible to go through this feeling bad for her or at least coming to a sympathetic understanding of her. The object of Julia's tragically misdirected passion, Frank, gradually and chillingly makes the jump from a sleazy hedonist to a sociopath and sexual predator (there are tantalizing hints that Kirsty was once sexually abused by Frank, but, perhaps for the best, the film never gives any definite clues) while his brother Larry remains a rather shallow character, but this actually helps to re-enforce his status as a burdensome non-entity in Frank and Julia's eyes and make Kirsty's devotion to him seem likely. As for Kirsty Cotton, the 'Final Girl,' her sudden 'takeover' of the film in the second half is a bit jarring, especially since her character remains the most poorly envisioned, despite the constant yet vague suggestions the script likes to make about her past. Despite this, Ashley Laurence does well with what she has to work with, presenting a character that is both more clever and level headed than a good number of horror film heroines (besides the scene where she manages to successfully bargain with the Cenobites despite being in mortal terror and having a pair of fingers lodged in her mouth, my favorite moment for her character is when, while using the puzzle box to banish the Cenobites, her boyfriend tries to take the box from her, presumably to serve as her 'protector,' and with a half-growl, half-scream she whacks his hand away).

As is the case with many other horror films, the best thrills are not provided by the gore. There's the scene following Julia's first meeting with the resurrected Frank where she stares as Kirsty from a stairwell and silently contemplates killing her; the slurping noises Frank makes as he claims the body of one of Julia's victims; and the imagination of what "sights" the Cenobites would have to show, if getting ripped apart by chains is just the opening salvo. But still this movie actually does do gore well, realizing that it's best served in small doses than in huge, grandiose gestures (trust me, 'little things' like seeing a live rat nailed to a wall is more stomach-churning than, say, your run-of-the-mill exploding head), although it is guilty of its own excesses which will come as no surprise to-actually, should be expected by-followers of Clive Barker's work. And yes, there's also that juxtaposition of sex with violence that Clive Barker is so well-known for (only dear Clive would have the scene where Julia remembers achieving orgasm with Frank coincide with Larry graphically cutting his hand on a nail, or show Julia and Larry having sex while skinless Frank stands behind them carving open a dead rat).

Having sung this movie's praises for longer than I intended (to be honest, this is one of those movies that I grew up with-yes, as I've written before, I was a precocious child-so criticizing it comes harder than criticizing a relative), I should finally get into some of those aforementioned 'rough edges.' While Barker's direction is quite good, especially considering that this was his first feature-length film, the script, which he adapted himself from his novella "The Hellbound Heart" and despite its success in dealing with certain aspects that go woefully ignored by many recent horror films, fails to be as tight or reliable as the direction. While any good film has an unseen backstory that still overshadows events and characters, the backstory of Hellraiser is quite a tease, indicating that Barker couldn't quite fit in as much as he might have intended. An interesting and detailed dream sequence Kirsty suffers, and which is hinted at again when she has her brush with the Cenobites, could either be a trauma from her past (the death of her mother perhaps?) or a warning about her father Larry's demise, but we never find out for sure. Then there are the aforementioned hints that Frank did something terrible to Kirsty in the past, which are given more weight by Frank's own very creepy nickname for himself, 'Daddy,' whenever he's after Kirsty (the real horror here is that Frank tries not once, but twice, to rape his own niece and worse in the course of the movie, but what I've found odd is that Julia actually seems to be willing to help Frank in this endeavor...). The fact that Frank is instantly torn apart by chains while the Cenobites don't even appear to Kirsty until well after she initially solves the puzzle box calls up the spectre of the God of Plot Convenience (although I swear I remember hearing someone explain away this inconsistency by saying that the Cenobites' 'arrival' is determined by the character of their summoner, an argument that's almost backed up by the way the puzzle box unfolds for Kirsty). Also Julia's decision to consent to-and possibly aid in-the offscreen murder of Larry Cotton seems abrupt, especially after she had once pleaded for his life to Larry. Finally, the plot itself becomes unclear, as, during the film's conclusion, we can't even tell exactly what happens-or how it happens-to Julia (this is all the more distracting since the set-up for the sequel hinges on Julia's fate).

In fact, as a whole, the climax is a bit of a cheat. After Frank's tense pursuit of Kirsty through the house, the appearance of the Cenobites and their attacks on her seem like an afterthought, especially as she's able to banish them with the puzzle box with ease. The 'climactic struggle' between Kirsty and 'the Engineer,' a bizarre but poorly concieved monster that looks like the love child of a reptile and a potato, is so terribly edited and just plain goofy that one has to wonder if Barker just got bored toward the end of production. If you thought the Engineer looked bad in his first appearance, when he pursued Kirsty at the hospital and you could almost see the crew behind him, this is even worse, so much worse that it almost completely derails the entire film. While the Engineer is significant in the novella, in the movie he just serves as an excuse to throw a monster in for good measure. No wonder he never again makes a real appearance in the sequels (at least, the ones I've seen).

But, despite the lackluster ending, Hellraiser remains a remarkable early directorial outing for Clive Barker and a sign that it's a loss he didn't pursue directing much further (since this film, he has only directed two more feature films, both based on his own work, Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions). Things are rounded out by a solid score, with a particularly haunting opening theme, by Christopher Young and a good cast, even considering the bad dubbing job the skinned Frank Cotton, played by a German actor, got. Plus, while some might sneer at the effectiveness of some of this film's special effects (well, anyone has a God-given right to sneer at the Engineer), some of the more creative effects remain a damn sight better than a lot of what has been cooked up via CGI. But whether or not it is a true classic of the genre, I'll have to leave up to you.

-Leon Davis (Julia's second victim) was the construction manager on a couple of James Bond films, including Live and Let Die and, my personal favorite, The Man With The Golden Gun.

Niall Buggy, one of Larry Cotton's dinner guests, was Arthur Frayn in Zardoz!