Hellraiser (1987) Review

Hellraiser (1987) Review

 

Some of the most popular films in the horror genre during the 1980’s were slasher films, with great villains like Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Myers. But, there was a character from later in the decade who seems to sometimes be misremembered as one of the great slasher villains, when really he was much more than that in a film that dared to be so much more than a slasher movie or conventional horror tale. Maybe it was because of the endless string of sequels throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s that used his horrific face on every poster and home video cover, but to look back on the original Hellraiser is to look back on a pivotal moment in horror, when we got some of the scariest supernatural villains from one of the greatest minds of macabre fiction.

The narrator for the original Hellraiser trailer calls it “a nightmare unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed” and for once the movie actually lives up to the trailer’s promise. Frank Cotton comes into possession of a strange puzzle box which summons evil beings that rip into his body with hooks on chains controlled by their minds, then some time later his brother Larry takes over his house, unaware that Frank’s remains are under the floorboards in the attic, and all it takes is a drop of blood to regenerate Frank into an emaciated corpse seeking to be fully revived. Larry’s wife Julia had a secret affair with Frank in the past, and it quickly becomes clear Frank is not a good guy, and Julia isn’t really fulfilled by Larry. So, when she finds out about Frank upstairs, she starts luring men back to the house and killing them so Frank can absorb their blood and flesh and become a complete man again. Meanwhile, Larry’s daughter Kirsty is unaware of what her uncle Frank and step-mother are up to, or how the strange puzzle box led to his gory condition, but once she gets her hands on that box, she accidentally summons the “explorers in the further regions of experience” who mutilated Frank, and for these beings, pleasure and torture are interchangeable. They are “demons to some, angels to others.”

There’s an undeniable jankiness to Hellraiser that is simultaneously part of its dark appeal and part of what holds it back from being on the same pedestal as the ultimate 80’s horror movies. When Clive Barker saw the adaptations of his stories he had written screenplays for, Underworld (1985) and Rawhead Rex (1986), he was less than satisfied, so decided that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself—even if you don’t know what you’re doing. He knew almost nothing about making movies when he set out to write and direct Hellraiser, based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, but he had a modest budget of one million dollars from Roger Corman’s company New World Pictures and some decent actors cast in the main roles, and what he ended up with was probably better than anyone expected. A huge part of the success was the execution of the villainous cenobites lurking on the edges of the sinister story, with British actor Doug Bradley as the one leading them.

The cenobites are a sci-fi-fantasy-horror concept so dark and disturbing the very nature of them is probably too much for some viewers to comprehend. Barker was smart to not over explain them or have them talk too much. He knows how it works, the cenobites know how it works, and they bring a chilling apathy that indirectly tells the audience these humanoid-monsters have tortured and mutilated others so many times they are not even fazed by it anymore. They don’t like it or dislike it, it’s just what they do, but the one thing they seem to care about is that no one gets away from them, and that is scary. Hellraiser demands that viewers take everything in the film seriously, and that might be why a few things take me out of it, like the hallway-crawling monster called the Engineer that chases Kirsty but isn’t quite able to grab her. It’s not a terrible effect, but it’s definitely sub-par, as is the conclusion of the film, with a homeless man catching fire and turning into a skeletal creature that flies off with the puzzle box.   

Enough about what doesn’t work. What works the best is Pinhead, who earned that nickname after the film because of his physical appearance. Even though he has only a handful of lines and a small amount of screen time, Doug Bradley’s portrayal is terrifying and yet also fascinating. You are scared by his very presence and yet you want to see him more, just like the best horror villains. Even though Pinhead became the face of the franchise, I think the other cenobites are even cooler and creepier. The blind one that first grabs Kirsty by the mouth (which, I have to add, is just such a disturbing way of grabbing her) nicknamed “Chatterer” is by far the scariest one, to me, but the other two, the fat one “Butterball” and the one simply identified as “Female Cenobite” are just as disturbing, and when all four are together they form one of the scariest-looking groups of horror characters I’ve ever seen. The scariest scene in the whole movie is when they first show up—not just because of how they look or how authoritatively mean Pinhead’s voice is, but also because of the variety of disturbing visual tricks building up to their approach, accompanied by the haunting musical score.

Originally Barker wanted the electronic music group Coil to make the soundtrack, and while the music they made for it was ultimately rejected by the producers, it probably still would have been great with their music and in some alternate reality maybe that is the soundtrack for Hellraiser, but I can’t imagine the movie without Christopher Young’s more traditional score. The music isn’t mind-blowing or likely to be something you’ll be specifically scared by if you hear it out of context, but it certainly enhances the creepy atmosphere and mood, making it feel like a bigger movie, and the recurring bell sound has the same effect on me as the “Duh Duh…” from Jaws, because you know it’s previewing the arrival of certain terror. Even though we don’t see Pinhead too often, we see lots of disturbing visuals paced effectively throughout the runtime, mainly in the form of Frank at varying stages of reverse-decomposition. The practical effects are not always flawless, but are extremely well executed and viscerally alarming. Though I have seen gorier films than Hellraiser, I have seen few other films that use gore in more inventive ways than to just be disgusting.

It’s tough to even cover everything about only the first Hellraiser that makes it so scary and one of my favourite horror movies of the 80’s. I’ve barely touched on the characters/actors or the legacy left by this outstanding original film. So, tune in tomorrow when I review the only Hellraiser sequel I’ve seen, Hellbound, and continue to explore why these tales of otherworldly-sadomasochistic-horror are still so effective all these years later.