Despite my love of literary fantasy works, I must confess that I've yet to read any of English author Clive Barker's writings. Moreover, until little more than a month ago I'd never viewed any of the movies based upon or inspired by them either. But then came a visit to a local charity shop where I saw the UK DVD of Hellraiser on sale for a mere 50p, so I decided to give it a go, and enjoyed it sufficiently to seek out a second Barker-based movie, Nightbreed, which I again enjoyed. Now, as a dark fantasy double-bill, I am reviewing both of these phantasmagorical films here at Shuker In MovieLand. I had originally planned to review them together, in a single post, but as they are such complex, multi-faceted movies I have chosen instead to deal with them separately, with Hellraiser reviewed below, and Nightbreed reviewed here.
Just as I do with cryptids, with movies & TV programmes I've always concentrated more upon lesser-known or forgotten examples than upon the more famous, classic ones. As a result, there are some gaping holes in my movie/TV viewing, i.e. many extremely famous films and programmes that I've never got around to watching.
On 2 November 2021, however, I plugged one of those gaping holes by viewing for the very first time the major horror movie Hellraiser, based upon a novella by Clive Barker entitled The Hellbound Heart, after buying its DVD on a whim earlier that same day.
Directed by Clive Barker himself (in his feature-film directorial debut), who also wrote its screenplay, and released by Entertainment Film Distributors in 1987, Hellraiser has become such a famous fantasy-horror movie, spawning a blockbuster multi-movie franchise, that its plot hardly needs recalling. But for those few who, just like me until recently, have yet to view this film classic, here’s a summary.
After purchasing it some time earlier from a local vendor in Morocco, a man named Frank Cotton (played by Sean Chapman) is seated in a darkened unfurnished attic room, endeavouring to open a strange golden puzzle box covered in intricate carvings. Suddenly, he succeeds, but as he does so the attic is bathed in light, and from out of its walls a series of hooked chains emerge, which promptly, and very bloodily, tear Cotton apart. Nice… A dark-robed figure then appears, gazes at the chains covered in flesh and soaked in blood, and twists the puzzle box back into its original configuration, whereupon the attic is instantly returned to its normal state.
So begins Hellraiser, in which we later learn that the puzzle box is a Lemarchand box, named after its insane occult-dabbling creator. When opened correctly, this cryptic construction will enable whoever has succeeded in doing so to experience unimaginable levels of sensual, perverted pleasure and pain, but at the dire cost of losing their mortal body and finding themselves trapped in the hellish world of a merciless race of hedonistic interdimensional entities known as the Cenobites, one of whom had entered the attic room following Frank's dreadful demise and closed the box.
Years pass, and the house containing this accursed attic is eventually purchased by none other than Frank's own brother, Larry Cotton (Andrew Robinson), who duly moves in with his wife Julia (Claire Higgins). Unbeknownst to Larry, however, Julia had entered into a passionate, sadomasochistic affair with Frank just before her marriage to Larry, and still yearns for Frank's savagely cruel, wholly selfish, but utterly mesmerizing domination, so different from Larry's mild, ineffectual yet kindly demeanour. Larry also has a teenage daughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence in her film debut), who lives close by (with her boyfriend), but for whom her step-mother Julia has no love whatsoever.
During the moving of some furniture into the house and up the stairs, Larry suffers a minor wound, dripping a few drops of blood onto the attic's wooden floor, which begins to tremble faintly. That night, Julia enters the attic and beholds a terrifying sight – Larry's blood has called back into being his evil brother Frank, but not as a man – as a skinless animated cadaver instead!
However, Frank informs a petrified Julia that if she entices men into the house, kills them, and brings their corpses up to him, concealed in the attic, he will absorb their life force and gradually transform back into his original, fully-restored form, and she can then be with him once again, leaving her loveless marriage to Larry behind. Submissive as ever to Frank's overpowering will, Julia reluctantly agrees to do as he commands, and eventually he is indeed restored – after which he callously kills Julia, as she is no longer of any use to him. After killing Larry too, Frank sets his malign sights upon Kirsty, because following a chance but shocking encounter with him she discovered the Lemarchand box and has promptly fled with it.
After inadvertently opening the box, stepping into the Cenobites' realm, and finding herself pursued down a corridor by an unnamed but truly hideous scorpionesque monster (called The Engineer in Barker's novels), Kirsty is confronted back in her own world by a delegation of Cenobites, led by the formidable Pinhead (Doug Bradley), although he isn't actually named in this first film. They promise to consider freeing her and to take Frank back with them if she can somehow coerce him into freely confessing that he has indeed escaped from them.
But can they be trusted? And how is she supposed to extract a confession out of Frank? These are the daunting questions that Kirsty wrestles with as she strives to save herself not only from their terrifying clutches but also from those of Frank… And what becomes of the enigmatic Lemarchand box, the cuboid interdimensional portal that engineered the gore-fest unleashed by Frank in the first place?
Hellraiser is certainly an engrossing if somewhat macabre, sado-erotic, and decidedly splatter-soaked movie, a veritable grand guignol presentation at times, but my greatest surprise was that the Cenobites appear in it to a much lesser extent than I'd anticipated, based upon what I'd read about the movie in the past. The (very) special effects are excellent, especially for their time (mid-1980s), and actually feature some of the earliest CGI work ever included in a film (the only major movies that had previously included such effects were Young Sherlock Holmes from 1985, the Star Wars franchise that began in 1977, and, earliest of all, Westworld, way back in 1973).
Although Clare Higgins was originally intended to be Hellraiser's lead star, the popularity among film-goers of Doug Bradley's forbidding portrayal of the lead Cenobite significantly elevated his status. So much so that unlike Higgins's character Julia, Bradley's Cenobite returns to appear in seven sequels. Incidentally, its Pinhead moniker originally arose merely as a nickname given to it by the studio's make-up crew during the arduous 6 hours that it took each day to apply Bradley's prosthetic Cenobite make-up, but it swiftly stuck, becoming the character's actual name in the movie sequels. Clive Barker didn’t like this name, however, considering it to be undignified, and preferred to refer to the character as Priest, but in the credits for Hellraiser it is simply listed as Lead Cenobite.
Speaking of which: Hellraiser was initially planned to be entitled The Hellbound Heart, after Barker's novella upon which it was based, but the studio felt that this sounded too romantic, so asked Barker to offer up an alternative title – as a result of which, amusingly, it could potentially have been released as Sadomasochists From Beyond The Grave! Not surprisingly, however, the studio had other ideas about that, and eventually its less provocative, final title was selected instead.
To date, Hellraiser has spawned no fewer than nine sequels (plus a possible TV series currently in the works). So if I wish to spend further time in the carnal company of the sybaritic Cenobites, I have plenty of movies in which to do so, that's for sure!
Finally: as a longstanding fan of automatons, and especially music boxes, I was particularly interested in the Lemarchand puzzle box (which was conceived and designed for Hellraiser by Simon Sayce). This was also due in no small way to the fact that when a few days earlier I had been to a bric-a-brac market quite near to me that I often visit, what should I see on one of the regular stalls there but two beautiful replicas of the Hellraiser Lemarchand puzzle box!
Looking to be about 4 inches by 4 by 4, these ornately-carved cubic replicas were quite heavy, as they were intended as paperweights, and seemed on first sight to be made of brass. Happily, they were entirely solid, with no moving parts, so there was no danger of opening them and having any Cenobites appear unannounced! Regrettably, not having seen the movie at that time, I didn't pay much attention to these items on the stall, but after having watched it, I resolved that if they were still there on the next occasion that I visited this market, I would buy one of them (if not too expensive) to add to my paperweight and ornamental box collection.
And sure enough, when I went back to that market on 7 November and discovered that they were indeed still there, on the same stall, I duly purchased one, and for only £7 (they are listed at much higher prices on ebay etc). Measuring 8 x 8 x 8 cm, and with five of its six sides bearing the same intricately-carved patterns as those on the movie version (the sixth side is its base and is left plain in the replica, covered instead with a felt layer), it has a brass-like finish, but the box itself turns out to be made of very tough resin. At the end of this review is a selection of photographs that I've snapped of it in different lights to show off its very attractive colour and carvings.
"We have such sights to show you!", as Pinhead would say – so to discover what they are, be sure to click here to view a thrilling, chilling official trailer for Hellraiser on YouTube. Also, don't forget to click here to check out my review of another classic Clive Barker movie – Nightbreed.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment