Stephen King. Love him, hate him, or totally indifferent to him, the man has firmly established his legacy in the annals of horror. I mean 200 short stories, 54 novels and 7 novellas, and around 80% of those have probably been adapted into TV shows, comics and movies over his 30+ year literary career. Hell, some of those movies (The Shining, Misery, Carrie, Stand By Me, etc.) have even been good, while some (The Langoliers) are shitty enough to be funny. The man is basically the Charles Schulz of alcoholics in Maine, a writer prolific enough to be a genre unto himself. There are those that came before, and there are those who are better, but Stephen King is the Starbucks of suspense fiction. He’s fucking everywhere.
In the halcyon days of the mid 1980s however, there came a new writer to stake his claim in the ‘books that your mom reads’ market. His name? Clive Barker, a young maverick that, for a time, was considered the hot new thing in horror literature. While he may not have had the name reognition of King, he made up for it with post-punk artiness. You wanted horrible murder? You go for Clive Barker. You want graphic depictions of deviant sexuality? You go for Clive Barker. You want a movie that combines horrible murder and graphic depictions of deviant sexuality with a horror fantasy twist? You go for Hellraiser.
So by this point I think everyone knows the story of Hellraiser, timeless tale that it is. Man finds glowing box which kills him, Man’s brother and frigid wife (who was apparently brainwashed by the Man’s dick, from the way she carries on) move into his house, Man partially regenerates due to spilled blood, Man compels frigid wife to murder guys to satiate his bloodlust, S&M monsters show up, there’s a bone dragon somewhere, yadda yadda yadda. Which is more than I could say about any of King’s books, far as I know, not a single bone dragon in sight. No incredibly marketable bondage demons with bizarre puzzle boxes either, though that might be for the best. We don’t really need a bondage demon arms race.
Ridiculous plot aside, where this movie truly excels, more so than any Stephen King adaptation I can think of, is in the special effects and art design. Seeing Frank’s skeleton pull itself off of the floor, as his brain and internal organs reform is perhaps one of the best effects I’ve ever see in a horror film, and his ‘incomplete’ form is exactly what I think a man without skin would look like. Pinhead and the Cenobite Gang are likewise pretty damn interesting to look at, and it’s a shame that apparently only Pinhead returns in future installments of the franchise, considering he’s the least visually interesting monster in the movie in my opinion. Of course I imagine that ‘least visually interesting’ means ‘less expensive’, which is why he gets to be on all the posters.
Hellraiser seems like a movie that makes more sense as a book, and Clive Barker doesn’t seem to have had enough film work (he had only directed two films before this, the last one being almost a decade prior) to prevent it from feeling too obtuse. However, the special effects and Barker’s distinct fetishes really manage to turn this movie from being yet another King-like thriller into an worthwhile horror film, especially if you’re an 80s gorehound like myself. If you are a fan of the ‘weird’ kind of horror movies, The Thing, From Beyond, Re-Animator for example, then you’ll find something to enjoy here, at least on a surface level. But remember, the safe word is ‘Halloween’.
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