Hellraiser (Review)
Wednesday, 15th July 2009, 15:28

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There are two distinct groups of horror icons: the Universal monsters from the 1930s and ‘40s such as Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy and those from the ‘80s like Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers.  One of the more fascinating additions to this latter category is Pinhead, the Lead Cenobite from the Hellraiser series.
 
In 1987 Clive Barker was a little-known horror writer with only the Books of Blood to his name, not the established literary and art figure that he is now with many film credits under his belt.  Based on his novel The Hellbound Heart, Barker wrote a screenplay for a film (with a brilliant working title of Sadomasochists From Beyond The Grave) he intended to direct but really had no knowledge of how to go about making a film.  Teaming up with producer Chris Figg they approached New World Cinema who agreed to finance the film and, armed with a tiny budget and an extremely dark and twisted screenplay, they set about looking for actors.  One of the first to come aboard was Doug Bradley who Barker had known since college but they needed a name so offered the lead role to Andrew Robinson, an actor who had been desperate to escape the typecasting started by his debut role as the Scorpio Killer in Dirty Harry so the chance to play an everyman – ‘a Fred MacMurray’ as he puts it – was a welcome opportunity.
 
Robinson plays Larry, a fairly newly remarried man who has a strained relationship with his teenage daughter Kirsty and is slightly put upon by his wife Julia.  When they move into his old home, they try to make the best of things but, unbeknownst to them, Larry’s brother Frank has been living there and trying to find the ultimate in pleasure.  As part of his search he bought an ancient Chinese puzzle box which, when opened, brought forth the Cenobites who tore him apart, showing him the ultimate in pain and pleasure so that he couldn’t tell the difference.  All that Larry knows is that Frank has been there, not that the Cenobites killed him in that room, that bits of Frank are still there under the floorboards and his wife is having vivid fantasies about when she and Frank had an affair.
 

 
Whilst moving a mattress up the stairs, Larry tears his hand open on a nail and seeks out Julia’s assistance, tracking her down to the top floor room where Frank had been staying.  The blood dripping on the floorboards is mysteriously absorbed and, whilst Larry and Julia are in casualty, the blood awakens Frank who is able to partly reconstruct himself.
 
When they return home, Julia returns to the small bedroom and is horrified to see a skinless creature lurking in the shadows but there is something familiar about the voice and, when she realises that it’s Frank, she allows him to convince her that he needs human flesh to reconstruct himself and lures men back to the house with the promise of sex as sacrifices to bring back her lost love.  However, the Cenobites don’t like being cheated and when they discover that Frank has returned to life, they track him down and turn their attentions to Kirsty who has found the Lament Configuration box and solved the puzzle.
 
Amongst all the slasher films that dominated the horror genre in the 1980s, Hellraiser is arguably the most inventive and original of the decade with a real darkness which the others couldn’t match.  It helps that the source material is so solid and that Clive Barker is a real gothic visionary with an extraordinary eye for the macabre.  His lack of experience as a film director (he had some in the theatre) isn’t obvious because he knows what he wants to show and is both strong-willed and open-minded enough to listen to suggestions from the veterans in the cast and crew.  Both Andrew Robinson and Clare Higgins are assured screen presences with good theatre groundings which allows for Ashley Laurence to impress in her first film role.  Sean Chapman only really appears in flashbacks and right at the beginning as most of the time Frank is a hideous creature with no skin and various amounts of muscle, nerve and bone but Chapman is a fine actor (though his voice was dubbed) and really looks the part, giving his scenes with Clare Higgins great sexual intensity.
 
 

 
Though I like most of the 1980s horror films, Hellraiser is probably my favourite as the Halloween franchise started to wear thin, Friday the 13th stopped being interesting after the third instalment and A Nightmare on Elm Street really only had its moments after the excellent first movie.  What I like about Hellraiser and, to a lesser extent, the two sequels, is the intelligence of the set up and the complexities of the relationship between the central characters and between them and the Cenobites who have far more to them than the masked and scarred killers from the other movies.  In addition, what they offer isn’t just death but something more fascinating and disturbing.
 

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