I thought I'd gone to the limits, watching 400 movies I'd never seen before. I hadn't. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits. Pain and blogging, indivisible.
1987
Clive Barker
Group I has solved the puzzle box and is ready to share their thoughts before they get sucked back into hell.
What... what is this? Who is this for? Am I supposed to be scared or horny, because I'm definitely neither.
Hellraiser makes several baffling decisions along the way that hinder what had the potential to be a titillating good time. The movie clearly takes place in England, but instead remains vague about its exact location (only insisting that it's "better than Brooklyn"), and dubs over half of the British actors, including those playing the figuratively slimy human Frank and the literally slimy un-human Frank. Hey, why was Larry's brother British to begin with? Why did Frank keep putting clothes on before he had skin? Was Larry so bad at sex that one night of missionary at knife-point with Frank led Julia to obsession and multiple murders? Why the rats? Why does this movie insist on putting so many fingers in mouths?
Putting aside the plot, characters, and excessive mouth fingers, the visual effects are at least interesting. Fun, even. The few times I was able to turn my brain off, I had a pretty good time. The first time we saw reincarnated Frank was a thrill. He's so gross! Frank wearing Larry's skin at the end of the film was simple but effective. The Cenobites are certainly striking (and before you ask: marry Pinhead, fuck chattering teeth guy, kill lady Cenobite and slug-dude), but they don't offer much outside of visual appeal. Pinhead's little spiel about their whole deal is thin, at best. If you remove the Cronenbergian grotesquerie needed to render this film watchable, what are you left with? A mid, vaguely softcore thriller.
2.5 nipple clamps
(Where does half a nipple clamp go? You really don't want to know...)
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Sam
Concepts and makeup only go so far. If a film lacks any interesting characters, it can only be so enjoyable. They don't even have to be heroes or relatable, just mildly interesting would do. As it is here, Hellraiser is at times entertaining, but mostly an exercise in cheesy '80s tropes with empty skin sacks.
The movie I compare this most with is The Fly, which is masterpiece body horror for the era. But while Cronenberg geeks out to the max with his creatures, the film stands the test of time because Jeff Goldblum's character is likable, and the Icarus plight is familiar.
Here, there's no North Star. The British stepmom leads most of the movie, but we never understand her motivations. Her stiff husband nominally is moving to the suburbs to get her back to her comfort zone, but we don't know why or what she's running from. All we learn is that she's been cucking him with his pleasure-hunting brother, Frank. Also, there's a daughter, who needs to prove she can do it on her own, who becomes the final girl. Both stepmom and daughter have empty backstories that don't go anywhere or have a payoff.
But, ok, is there a cohesive theme around pain-for-pleasure chaser Frank? He travels the globe to find an interdimensional rubik's cube to unlock the only worthy part of the movie—the Pinhead gang. Is Frank wrong for his pursuit? Like, every character in this movie is punished for having sex in some capacity. But the daughter survives? So she's good? But her dad doesn't, so he is not good?
Ultimately, the film is in service to making these demons look crazy as hell. It certainly succeeds on that part, and I can understand why there are subsequent films. This is not high art and it's mostly a chore to get through. But the chattering teeth are fun!
2.5 out of 5
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CatherineOne of my favorite parts of Film Club has been watching wildly popular movies that I probably wasn't ever going to get around to on my own, then having to reckon with all those preconceived notions I'd accumulated over the years.
Hellraiser is a big one for me. Pinhead's stare taunted me nearly every weekend of my childhood when I wandered the Blockbuster aisles trying to pick out a movie with my family. From the VHS cover alone, I'd always wondered just how disturbing and bizarre this movie really was and, once again, the real thing was completely different from what I'd imagined.
To start, Hellraiser was MUCH hornier than I thought it would be. The first 30-40 minutes are more softcore porn / soap opera than horror movie, as we flash back to the wife's brief and steamy affair with her brother-in-law. It got to a point where I legitimately thought I was watching the wrong movie and had to check twice that I didn't accidentally put on some weird sequel or spin-off. And speaking of the affair, I gotta say, I did not really buy into the Frank charm! Which is kind of important as it's the motivating factor behind the depravity this otherwise regular-seeming lady descends into for the rest of the film. In my estimation, Frank is what happens when Arthur Fonzarelli gets kicked in the head by a horse, rendering him mostly nonverbal. But this does it for Julia in such a profound way that I just had to accept and move on so as not to get too overwhelmed by my confusion.
Sidenote in Julia's defense, she is married to a complete dud. Imagine splitting your hand nearly in half and instead of running to—I don't know—the nearest towel, sink or first aid kit, you rush straight up the stairs to your wife and proclaim, "here," presenting your mangled appendage like a little kid who just found a caterpillar.
Overall, I had a hard time designating this movie as broadly "good" or "bad." For the most part, it felt like the film was begging for a Mystery Science Theater riff track, then some amazing practical effects would swoop in or a genuinely disturbing jump scare would get me and I'd have to give it to 'em. It was (mostly) visually impressive and a lot of the gore and makeup effects were masterfully done. I have no issue understanding how the Cenobites were instantly cemented as pop culture icons (though oddly they were a bit of a plot afterthought?), and it made sense why makeup artist BOB KEEN got such a dramatic credit in the beginning of the film.
I may have to mull this one over for a few more days, but bad acting and flimsy plot aside—seriously, they don't bother to even attempt to explain the mechanics of the box or how Frank is regenerating or any of the magic of these interdimensional demons AT ALL—I really enjoyed watching this movie, and at a cool one hour 34 minutes, it felt like a wiser use of my time than most things I could've gotten up to on a Tuesday night.
Favorite quote: "We belong to each other now, for better or for worse. Like love... only real." Ok Frank.
3.5 pukes out of 5~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sean G.I've loved reading horror since I read my first Stephen King short story when I was ten or eleven years old. Watching horror movies, on the other hand, is something I only started doing about five-to-ten years ago. Walking through video stores as a kid, the artwork on the horror VHS boxes both terrified me and intrigued me. I was certain I could never handle the terrors that lived inside of the box. If I kept my distance, I would be ok. But once I saw what those images could do, I feared I could never go back to the innocence that came with not knowing.
But here I am. Age 35, and I've finally seen Hellraiser. And to be honest, it left me wanting more. The level of visceral horror that I expected was a bit lacking. And I wanted more Cenobites! I wanted them to do more! Part of this expectation, aside from fearing this movie for close to 30 years, is that I've read The Hellbound Heart, Clive Barker's novella that he published the year before the release of the movie.
His writing is disturbing, and grotesque, and unquestionably visceral. It hurts my insides and makes them churn. And I love it. Staying up, scaring myself to sleep, reading horror into the wee small hours of the morning is something I've done with my favorites since I was a child. 'Salem's Lot, It, How to Sell a Haunted House, and more recently Clive Barker's stuff.
I realize this desire for more makes me somewhat similar to Frank Cotton. I should be careful what I wish for. I'd hate to go too far, so far that the only way back is to have my brother's wife kill for me. I would hate to do that to her. She just had a son and her and my brother are so happy and lovely.
Some things I really loved about Hellraiser:
- I thought the acting was great. Larry, Julia, and Frank all play their characters to the tone of the movie so well.
- I loved the tone! It felt like the British dramas from the '80s and '90s that would air on PBS during the day when we were growing up. Like a BBC production peppered with kick-ass special effects. The lighting and the outfits and cinematography in particular really gave it that look and feel.
- The special effects of Frank's tearing skin were great. Same with his re-animation process and the victims being drained of their insides. I read that Barker had to tone some of the violence down for the censors to avoid an X rating. So that's a bummer. From Wikipedia: "Close-ups of Kirsty sticking her hand into Frank's stomach, exposing his guts, a longer version of the scene where Frank is being torn into pieces, and the final shot where his head explodes were also cut." I would love to watch his original cut somehow, if it exists.
- When Kirsty realizes her "dad' is actually Frank. I saw it coming, but that was still a fun reveal. Just enough of his skin was giving the look of Hannibal Lector wearing the cop's face. Fun stuff.
- The design of the Cenobites is great too.
So, in short, I love Clive Barker. He taps into a more severe body and sexual horror that really explores his themes of sexual pleasure vs. pain so well. When you think you've experienced it all, it's not enough. You still crave more. Truly scary thoughts. I wanted the Cenobites to do more, but the effects and production design were all pretty fun. The villains are evil, driven, and literally bound by their sick desires.
This movie was a great time, even though it left me wanting more. Given the theme though, how much is enough, and how much is too much?
3.75 pukes out of 5
P.S. I 100% recommend reading The Hellbound Heart. Also, his short story "In the Hills, the Cities" is without a doubt my favorite piece of short horror that I've ever read. Avoid looking anything up about it beforehand. Here's to more horror and more fun.
Joe
I've been playing with the idea of "horror movie protagonists are stupid"
lately, and I don't know if I've come to a solid conclusion on whether this is a bad thing or an excusable thing or an unimportant thing. But it was on my mind as I watched
Hellraiser. There was a scene early in the film in which Larry is trying to convince Julia that it's a good idea to move into the run-down house that he and his long-lost brother own, and he's attempting to be chipper and cheerful to make his point. This, despite the fact that he walks into the kitchen and sees a pile of maggots and cockroaches crawling around. In response, Larry slowly backs away, and doesn't mention what he saw to anyone.
So this makes him stupid, right? There's something "not right" with the house, but he ignores it, and manages to get killed because of it. I would say that there's sufficient reason to be frustrated with the logic of this movie and other horror movies, in that the characters are required to be dumb in order for the plot machinations to click into place. If everyone on earth was able to manage stress appropriately and make smart decisions under pressure, and thus made the wise decision to run as far away from the source of danger as possible and tell as many people as possible, then there wouldn't be a movie.
A wild thought occurred to me this time around, though. I honestly think that if I was in the same position as Larry, I might have acted the same way. Like, if I'm trying to convince a loved one that everything is okay and that nothing is wrong, and then saw something that was clearly wrong, like a big pile of disgusting bugs, then I might... slowly back away, and ignore the problem for a little longer. Not worth the mental stress, honestly. I don't know what this says about Hellraiser, but I think it says something about the idea of horror movie characters being "dumb," maybe pointing to the idea that it's not as simple as that.
Another Larry-ism from early in the film was when he got a deep cut on his hand and told Julia "you know how I am with blood!" and threatened to pass out. I would say that I relate to this sentiment in a general way, in that I wouldn't pass out, but I am definitely extremely squeamish when it comes to blood and cuts/abrasions in film. Having watched Hellraiser yourself, you can imagine that I spent the entire 90 minutes with a permanent grimace on my face. Gruesome stuff. If one of the purposes of this film was to be provocative to the audience, then it no doubt succeeded.
But I still don't think that I would say that I was "scared" while watching. I was thinking about the idea of fear the other day. Have I ever written about what my "biggest fear" is? It's slugs. Like the slimy shell-less creeps that crawl in your garden at dawn. I don't know why. The house I grew up in had them in the backyard, and there was probably some incident in my early childhood that neither I nor anyone else remembers. To this day, I see a slug, and my heart starts pounding and I get all tingly with fear and I move as quickly in the opposite direction of the slug as possible.
I was thinking about how there's a fear there but I don't know why, and that there's a fear there even though I am old enough and wise enough to know that there is no tangible threat. If I'm riding my bike and I experience fear when a car blows past me almost killing me, the fear makes sense because there's an actual threat. But what to make of fear without the threat? Like with slugs? I was thinking about how it becomes up to me to acknowledge the fear and acknowledge the lack of a threat and just, ya know, accept the emotion of fear for what it is: very real and very baseless. There's a process of self-actualization involved where you have to consider your fear and play with it and understand it, which is easier said than done, but once it happens, you can say something like: the slugs can't hurt me!!!
It was interesting to watch Hellraiser and experience so many emotions that you could describe as "fear" while still acknowledging that this is a fictional movie and it cannot hurt me. I think that this is the best way of explaining something I've felt for a while now, and that is the idea that I'm missing out on something because I don't really think that horror movies are "scary." It occurred to me while watching Hellraiser that I was technically scared of the film, and all the gruesome cutting and stabbing and flesh-peeling and all that. The emotions I felt during that were identical to the emotions I feel when I see a slug. But for the longest time, it was so hard to identify those feelings as "fear," because it never crossed my mind that a fictional movie would be a "threat." And they are not, for the record. The gore is produced through the magic of movie makeup and special effects. What I'm saying now is that maybe it's time to acknowledge that inducing the emotion of "fear," however unlike actual fear of a real threat it is, means that the movie is a successful one. A successful horror movie, anyway.
So on a movie critique level, I'd compare my takeaway from
Hellraiser as similar to my takeaway from
The Evil Dead, in that the movie was less a coherent and meaningful story, and more a vehicle to frighten audiences through the magic of movies. Which is cool! I don't mind that! That actually takes a lot of skill, to be able to replicate the emotion of fear while everyone in the room knows that the Pinhead in the room is not actually real. If you're the type of person who is able to feel fear and then acknowledge that what you're feeling is a physical response and not actually based on anything real, then
Hellraiser is an easy movie to appreciate.
Like The Evil Dead, there's not much more to it than that. There's nothing interesting to say about the human condition that I could find. I suppose there might be something along the lines of, errrr, how a lie can spiral out of control and cause untold consequences and maybe try to be a little more honest about your life and your behaviors so that you don't end up stabbed by your hedonistic ex-lover brother-in-law? I could see someone more skillful at this than I am hammering (whoops) that metaphor out of this movie. Maybe I could've been the one to do it; maybe it's just simply distracting that that brother-in-law lover was, in his human form, the splitting image of Luigi Mangione.
One difference from The Evil Dead is that I at no time got worried that the plot of Hellraiser was nonsensical. The Evil Dead didn't give a shit about why these people were in the woods or why the woods were attacking them or any of the other thousands of little stupid plot logistics that made no fucking sense and didn't matter. Hellraiser was similarly uninterested in explaining anything... but there's a difference between the explanation missing and the explanation simply hidden. All the stuff about the Cenobites' existence and why Frank got mixed up with them and what the puzzle box was, all that stuff felt like a lore that simply existed to the left of the screen. I mean, it was based on a novella and was written and directed by the author of that novella and it has literally ten sequels that probably do more to flesh out (whoops) the Cenobite lore, right? I'm just saying that all the "Why?"s that I felt here were comfortable set to the side, whereas all the "Why?"s I felt during The Evil Dead had to be beaten back with a stick.
I've already written way too much, sorry about that, but man, this was an interesting flick. I don't know if it was good, but it was interesting, and it's gonna stick with me. Why in the world did Frank-as-Larry say "Jesus wept" right before the Cenobites hook-and-chained his face skin so far apart that it exploded? I have a suspicion that shit like that was included just to be memorable, and not because it meant anything. But it was memorable, and so I have no choice but to say that Hellraiser was a good movie. Even though it was literally painful to watch.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
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GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 3.05 pukes out of 5
See you in the comments for more!
(NEXT TIME: More Cenobites in the Hellraiser sequel, titled Mona Lisa Smile.)
