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Directed by: Clive Barker Starring: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence and Doug Bradley "We have such sights to show you!" 1987 was a strange time for horror. The unstoppable Jason had been killed, imitated, and then resurrected to resume stalking teenagers at camp. Freddy was making a comeback among the MTV generation with a variety of gimmick kills and one-liners. While John Carpenter was heading in Lovecraftian directions, Sam Raimi added a very cartoonish and slapstick face to the genre. Among this diverse breeding ground, Hellraiser was spawned. Dark, gritty and brutally graphic for its time, it pushed the boundries of onscreen violence as well as the definition of what horror could be. At a time when monsters had become the selling point of scary movies, the cenobites didn't even have names. Pinhead, as he is known now, was just the lead cenobite. He wasn't even the main villian, actually, having only killed one person within the course of the movie. "What's your pleasure, Mr. Cotton?" "The box." "Take it, it's yours. It always was." This exploration into the realms of pleasure and pain begins with Frank Cotton, a soulless man who seeks only life's experience. His pursuit has taken him to a far away land where, at a cafe in the market, he is given a small puzzle box. Alone in a dark attic surrounded by candles he finally discovers how to open it, only to scream in terror as chains with hooks burst from within, tearing into his flesh. When we see the attic again it is filled with chains and spiky pillars hanging from the ceiling, and Frank is all over them, having been torn to shreds. A bizarre man covered with leather and an intricate pattern of scars intersecting where jewled pins have been driven into his skull searches the scraps for a peice of Frank's face, closes the box, and vanishes with the chains. Grabs your attention fairly well for an opening scene. Well, it turns out that's not really Frank's house, the squatter, as his brother Larry begins moving in with his wife, Julia, and trying to get his daughter to move in, as well, shortly after Frank has been eviscerated. While tossing out the bizarre junk that's been left throughout the house, it is revealed through a series of flashbacks that Julia had an affair with Frank, being drawn to his bad boy persona and aroused by taking control of that danger. It's while she remembers her lustful affair that Larry cuts himself on a nail while moving a mattress, spilling his blood on the attic floor where Frank died. Julia takes him to the hospital as the blood seeps under the wood and begins to grow. I'll describe this scene in explicit detail because it's grotesquely beautiful and easily the best effect of the movie. A heart begins beating beneath the floorboards, then lungs begin to form. Viscous green liquid pushes its way out of the cracks and pools there before two boney arms hatch from below, hang in the air a moment before falling to lift itself from the oooze. The skull forms from a pulpy mess and the spine thrusts into its base. The thin and gooey creature on the floor lifts its head into the air and howls an ungodly throaty noise, gorgeously backlit by the attic window. Frank is reborn. Unhappy and little more than a wet corpse, Frank reveals himself to Julia and convinces her to help him. The blood brought him back, so he decides he needs more. However, he can't do it himself, Julia is sent out to seduce men, bring them back to the attic and kill them. As Julia feeds Frank more she becomes more cold and dark, and he becomes more whole, which is good because those creatures from the box, the cenobites, will soon know he is gone and come for him again. The situation becomes more complicated when teenage Kirsty discovers Frank and escapes with the puzzle box, later opening it. "No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering." Hellraiser combines the extremes of sex and gore into the equivalent of cinematographic S&M. One minute Julia will be flirting with a young man as he caresses her and napes her neck, the next she'll have busted his jaw sideways with a hammer and the slimy remains of Frank will be wriggling across the floor on its stomach to absorb the fresh blood. The use of the house makes the fear very intimate, preying on the psychological desecration of our homes, changing them from our safety zones to a place of terror. "The box. You opened it. We came. Now you must come with us, taste our pleasures." As his directorial debute, Clive Barker is very good, setting up scenes with an eye for the darkness rather than the lighting and using very quick and simple shots to get his meanings across. In an argument between Julia and Larry about the house, the camera focuses on Julia putting her cigarette out on the floor for a quick second, showing her distain for their new home and her own passive-aggressive tendencies. The theme of infestation is also played well, as we are occassionaly assaulted by images of maggots in the kitchen or rats in the upper floors. Most impressive are the cenobite designs, coming off as tortured bondage freaks who have shaped themselves into inhuman, or rather, beyond human forms. Their wounds and disfigurement serve as decoration, one's face stretched back from the lips and constantly clicking his teeth, another with barbs of wire through her windpipe. It's "repulsive glamour," in Barker's own words. As a writer, Barker is even better. His storytelling skills in full display and many of the lines come across as bloody poetry, which leads to a lot of quoting. "Who are you?" "Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others." With the exception of Ashley Laurence, the acting is very good. Andrew Robinson makes a very convincing Larry, a bit dopey and unaware, and then makes a turn as the casually menacing Frank in the end. Clare Higgins starts out as a displeased housewife who is changed into a lethal ice bitch as the murders continue. Wickedness just seems to radiate from her in some scenes, even though she is doing nothing. Doug Bradley, the one who would be the icon of the Hellraiser series through better and worse, makes Pinhead a very cool and enigmatic character. He doesn't get his hands dirty and he is rarely active, sitting back and leading the other cenobites like a general. Like Dracula, he has the look of a man who's seen the world and is bored with it all, culminating into a seething frustration of boredom beneath his apathetic gaze. The movie never really becomes frightening, rather it intrigues and unnerves you, staying in your mind long after you leave the theater. It's a very memorable experience that I first got staying up one night watching Joe Bob Briggs's MonsterVision and I find myself enjoying it more and more. "Jeeeesuuus wept." I give Hellraiser a 5/5, as it's very well made, especially for the small budget it was given. My favorite horror movie. RATING: 5 PROS: Very stylish modern horror classic CONS: The Scream generation will dislike it (this doubles as a pro, actually) ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093177/
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May 12, 2004 20:46
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