Hellraiser (1987) Review

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Pleasure can come at a price. You don’t think so? Look at Clive Barker’s Hellraiser.


PLOT


Based on the horror novella, ‘The Hellbound Heart’, the 1987 film follows Larry Cotton move into a family home with his second wife Julia after the disappearance of his brother Frank, who she secretly had an affair with. When Larry cuts his hand when moving furniture, his blood brings back his brother in a ghoulish form. Frank reveals himself to Julia and she agrees to kill for him in order to fully restore his body. As she does so by bringing strangers to the house, he explains that he exhausted all sensory experiences and sought out a puzzle box in Morocco, meant to access him new pleasures. Instead, solving the box led to him meeting extra dimensional beings dubbed the Cenobites, who subject him to extreme sadomasochism. One night, Larry’s teen daughter from his first marriage, Kristy, notices Julia bring another man to the house and when she follows, she’d be in her shock seeing her uncle. She runs away with the box, but she runs so far that she passes out and wakes up in a hospital. When she opens it, she meets the Cenobites and a giant beats dubbed the Engineer, who intend to take her to their realm, but ultimately agree to spare her if she gives them Frank who escaped them. When Kristy returns to her dad’s home, she realizes Frank has taken his brother’s place intending to take his place. He tries to kill her to complete his rejuvenation, but accidentally and remorselessly stabs Julia instead. When he chases his niece, the Cenobites appear and as they hear him confess to what he’s done, they ensnare him with hooked chains like the first time he opened the box. Kirsty leaves the house before it collapses and throws it into a burning pyre before returning with her boyfriend Steve (Robert Hines). However, a homeless man who’d been following her takes the box before flying away, revealing himself to be a skeletal creature, and the film ends with the reveal that the box found its way back to the same merchant Frank got it from, now offering it to another customer.


THOUGHTS


With so much of body horror being explored in the 80s, picking a favorite would be a challenge to decide what’s more shocking than the rest. Even so, Barker’s directorial debut of his own novella feels quite definitive apart from what you get from a Cronenberg movie because he seemed to have this better connection how everyone has dark & deep desires whether they know it or not. The epic score by Christopher Young is arguably his best on par to Sinister due to feeling all the carnage that ensues. The effects Barker did with Bob Keen and John Cormican to give life to the world of pain is downright fascinating for its realism, from seeing Frank’s body reform little by little to seeing the giant engineer chase away. I even got to give a shoutout to Simon Sayce for all the various designs he worked on for the puzzle box alone. What many are gonna agree however is that the biggest piece of dedication went to how the Cenobites turnt out. They’re not even the stars of this movie and they have less than 10 minutes of screen time like Candyman, yet they all spoke volumes as they commanded the screen. Their leather attire does scream the allegory to S&M, but you’re all the more interested off of how they’re not straight up slasher villains until the sequels make it so. Even though they’re all creepy, they have a fairness to what they’re doing since they always give people what they want at a price. They’re not angels nor demons, they’re just dealbreakers that expect to be repaid. One by one, each Cenobite stands out for still having such loud personalities. Simon Bamford was dead on gluttonous as Butterball, Nicholas Vince was an intimidating enforcer as the Chatterer and Grace Kirby felt so articulate whenever she spoke as The Female. What many fans seem to agree is that the standout of the gash is going to be the leader that Barker calls The Hell Priest, or what the crew jokingly dubbed him as Pinhead. Doug Bradley made every second count as this character because he’s most unforgiving when it comes to expecting repayment which makes him all the more relentless that his gash follow suit. Their presence is what gets the lesson across that every action can/will have irreversible consequences when the action is based on obsession. When you turn your away from the life you worked so hard, you’re more inhumane than the past things you identify to be monstrous. This is the dilemma with Frank because he becomes so displeased with what he had that’d he’d rather inflict pain than find self healing. The transition of going from the eeriness of Sean Chapman before he touched the box, to the soullessness Oliver Smith brought as Skinless Frank was impressive acting as this was a villain who had already lost and didn’t know it until karma came his way. Karma was definitely on the horizon for Julia as well because Claire Higgins was so unsettling because this movie’s catalyst for true evil since she’s rather be an unfaithful servant of pain rather than be content with someone that wanted her to be happy, hence regretting her actions at the last minute. Andrew Robinson easily made Larry the movie’s biggest victim since he was most clueless on what was going on and likely would’ve not been saved if he had an idea. Ashley Laurence was awesome as Kirsty because she’s independently resourceful to evade the hellacious pain the Cenobites are all about. She wasn’t even living with her dad because she couldn’t get along with Julia to begin with, knowing she was trouble. Even when she didn’t know what would come from the box, she was adaptable enough to negotiate her survival and avenge her dad. Luckily, she defies the odds more than one the franchise progressed. Nevertheless, she sure got a great final girl out of his daughter. In short, Hellraiser is a peak body horror film for knowing how to be invasive and express sexuality in one way or another. If body horror is your jam, see this now.