An unfaithful wife encounters the reanimated body of her dead lover, who’s being chased by demons after he escaped from their sado-masochistic Hell.
You just had to do it didn’t you, you had to play with the cube and open us up-to the world of the cenobites! Well now you have to deal with the consequences! Yes that’s right this months franchise review as voted for by you is the “Hellrasiser” series. I must admit that I was hoping for this one because I feel that the franchise is often looked down on as the films go on and I wanted to have my say about them, but first we start at the beginning.
My introduction to “Hellraiser” was a fun one, I had not long been watching Horror films but was at the stage were I had become obsessive about it and spent most of my free time watching as many as I could. My local corner shop did VHS rentals and luckily I knew the boss very well, he’d let me have cheap rentals and he never bothered about the age restrictions so I fast became his best customer, popping in every other night getting as many as I could afford. I always stayed away from “Hellraiser” because the cover freaked me out and I felt I wasn’t quite ready for it, the guy behind the counter, a Horror fan himself, noticed this and told me I should watch it and that I wouldn’t regret it. After finally watching it I knew I was right, I’d been thrown in the deep end and I wasn’t ready, the cenobites gave me nightmares for a very long time. BUT I went back for more.
With it being Clive Barkers directorial debut the film has this gritty feel to it but you can tell he’s a man out to make a point, his vision is always on the darker side and the atmosphere he sets for the film clearly reflects that. The tone throughout the entire film is never a happy one, straight from the off it’s made very clear that this is no typical 80’s Horror film that usually involves a group of friends and a slasher, with this film we get more context and it’s easy to see why Barkers career sky rocketed after this release.
It’s also the film that not only introduced us to the now infamous Cenobites, especially Pinhead (Who I’ll get to in a bit) it also introduced us to the puzzle box. Every movie killer has a weapon and not only does Pinhead have a group with him but also a device that can physically harm you and mentally torture you at the same time. In my opinion the mental torture can be scarier than the physical torment, watching a character descend into paranoid insanity always makes for great viewing (that sounds a bit wrong doesn’t it). The concept of a cube being used as a portal to hell actually has basis in the urban legend of ‘The Devil’s Toy Box’, which is a six-sided cube constructed of inward facing mirrors. Individuals who enter the structure and then close it will undergo surreal, disturbing phenomenon that will simultaneously grant them a revelatory experience and permanently warp their mind.
The effects and make up in the film are outstanding, they made Pinhead into an overnight cult figure but that was also down to Doug Bradley’s amazing performance, he seemed to revel in the character and you can tell he enjoys playing him. Now don’t get me wrong the Cenobites are amazing, they’re visually stunning and needn’t have ever said a word but I find they overshadow the character of Frank. Frank’s body evolves through-out the film and the make up is better than most a-list Hollywood blockbusters do, not only is he a hard character to look at but the detail of his evolving is incredible, for a guy you’re supposed to hate you can almost feel his pain as his body grows and grows.
“Hellraiser” is considered a Horror classic and rightly so, my only problem is I think the character of Pinhead has overshadowed the entire thing and as much as I love him I think people need to remember the other characters around him such as Frank and Kirsty (played amazingly by Ashley Laurence) and also the other Cenobites. So next time you watch this please try to focus on the characters around Pinhead and not just him.
Miscellaneous facts about the film:
It took six hours to apply the prosthetic Cenobite make-up on Doug Bradley.
Many viewers have commented about the poor quality of the FX at the end of the movie. Clive Barker has explained that, due to a very limited budget, there was no money left to have the FX done professionally after the primary filming. Instead, Barker and a “Greek guy” animated these scenes by hand over a single weekend. Barker has also commented that he thinks the FX turned out very well considering the amount of alcohol the two consumed that weekend.
The budget of this movie was $1,000,000. It earned about $20,000,000. It was the directing debut of Clive Barker, who had made only two short films before this.
The film is based on the novella “The Hellbound Heart” written by Clive Barker. . The studio decided that the title sounded too much like a romance and asked Barker to change the title. Barker offered “Sadomasochists from Beyond the Grave,” which was rejected for the overtly sexual content. Barker ultimately opened the floor to the production team to offer up their own suggestions, prompting a sixty-year-old female crewmember to offer up “What a Woman Will do for a Good Fuck.”
At the time of the movie’s release the MPAA had an agenda on “intensity of tone”. As a result of this director Clive Barker had to make several cuts to the film – consecutive hammer blows, fingers entering flesh, S&M spanking between Julia and Frank, additional “thrusts” during the sex scene – all with the intention of watering down the overall impact of the piece.
During a post production party when filming had ended Doug Bradley was dismayed to be ignored by the other members of the crew. He thought to himself that he found it a pity as he though he got on rather well with people. It wasn’t till later that he realized that none of the crew had actually ever seen him without his makeup when playing Pinhead and therefore did not recognize him.
The studio had planned on casting stunt men as the Cenobites to save on production costs. Director Clive Barker however insisted on hiring actors, reasoning that even if the characters did not speak and appeared under heavy make-up, their body language would still convey a personality.
Doug Bradley’s character was named “Priest” in the earliest drafts of the script and ultimately became simply “Lead Cenobite” in the shooting script. “Pinhead” originated as a nickname for the character that simply stuck and began being used in the sequels. Barker disliked the name, finding it undignified, and in his Hellraiser comic series produced for BOOM! in 2011 had characters refer to Pinhead as “Priest.” He also maintains that the character has a “true Cenobite name” that he intends to reveal in a forthcoming work. Similarly, the Female Cenobite was designated “Deep Throat” on set, though the overtly sexual nature of the moniker led to her simply being billed as “Female Cenobite” again in the sequel.
Industrial band Coil originally did the soundtrack for this movie. Clive Barker was a fan of the finished product, saying “Coil was the only group I’ve heard on disc whose records I’ve taken off because they made my bowels churn.” However, the studio ultimately decided to have the film re-scored by a “house band,” who would not have to be paid royalties. The score that Coil recorded, a total of nine tracks, can be found on their compilation CD titled “Unnatural History II: Smiling in the Face of Perversity” and on another album “The Unreleased Themes for Hellraiser”. Both are very rare.
For the video release, the film had one of the most unusual pieces of bonus material that has ever been offered: a Home Shopping Network show where merchandise from the movie could be purchased. The show was hosted by a giddy old lady claiming to be a hardcore fan of the movie.
Doug Bradley was originally offered a choice of roles between one of the mattress movers and the Lead Cenobite. He originally thought it important that, as a new film actor, the audience should see his face, and nearly turned down the Lead Cenobite role.
In his DVD commentary, Clive Barker explained that filming the movie in an actual house forced him to be creative in his cinematography. There was often only room for a single camera and this explains why many of the shots are from only one angle. In particular, vertical movement was often the only movement available to the camera operators, which explains many of the overhead and zoom shots. Only one room in the house, the attic, was shot on a soundstage, but only the FX shots used this attic set.
The scene where Frank is being spun around upside-down covered in blood was a camera test and the very first thing shot of the film. Afterwards, Sean Chapman (Frank) couldn’t help from vomiting.
Nintendo developed a video game based on the film. It was planned as one of the first to feature the capacity to save a player’s game and let the player return later to that point in the game. However, it was discovered that the Nintendo console could not correctly interpret the saved game codes, so production was scrapped.
Andrew Robinson convinced Clive Barker to replace the scripted line, “Fuck you,” with the line actually shot, “Jesus wept.”
Over the years, the film was released numerous times on DVD in Germany. However, all of these releases were bootlegs because the uncut version is on the youth protection index. Only in 2011 the film was released for the first time officially on DVD by Kinowelt (now StudioCanal). The uncut version was released only in Austria to circumvent sale restrictions. A cut version was released, too, available everywhere (this cut version is not the same as the previously cut VHS version, it runs 30 seconds longer).
The Chatterer and Butterball Cenobites had dialogue in the original script. However, when their make-up made coherent speech impossible, their lines were given to the Female Cenobite and especially Pinhead which helped to cement his reputation as the film’s trademark character.
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