Pinhead: "The box. You opened it. We came."
British horror film, released in 1987. It was directed and written by
Clive Barker, based on his own short novel "
The Hellbound Heart."
Robin Vidgeon was the cinematographer. The film was produced by
Mark Armstrong,
Christopher Figg,
Selwyn Roberts,
David Saunders, and
Christopher Webster.
The film's stars included:
The plot: Larry and Julia Cotton, along with their daughter Kirsty, move into a new home, and Julia soon discovers something
scary in the
attic -- Frank Cotton, Larry's half-brother (and Julia's secret ex-lover), who was killed years ago by the
demonic Cenobites. Frank has been brought back to life, sorta, by a single drop of spilled
blood. But to return fully to life, Frank needs more blood -- a lot more blood -- and he enlists Julia's aid in enticing
human sacrifices in the attic. But the Cenobites aren't happy about Frank's escape, and they want him back...
I won't lie to you -- I consider this a deeply
flawed movie. Most of the movie focuses on Frank and Julia, and no matter how
gory and
kinky Frank is, he's just not an interesting person. Julia's only purpose in the movie is to get inexplicably
horny for a bloody, skinless zombie, Kirsty is the typically
dim horror-movie starlet, and Larry is only entertaining because you recognize him as the Cardassian tailor on "
Deep Space Nine." The entire middle portion of the movie will likely bore you to tears.
So what makes "Hellraiser" worth watching? The beginning and the end, which spotlight the Cenobites and the
Lament Configuration, the best damn horror movie villains of the 1980s. The Lament Configuration is an evil
Rubik's Cube -- a golden box covered in twisting, squiggling symbols, it is a legend among those with
decadent appetites. Those who try to solve it can spend hours, days, weeks, just trying to figure out how to trigger any movement in the device. Possibly
mechanical, surely
magical, its only purpose is to
confound,
perplex,
fascinate, and eventually,
damn those who find it.
Kirsty: "Who are you?"
Pinhead: "Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others."
When someone solves the
puzzlebox, it summons the Cenobites, who promise to bring the solver of the puzzlebox the greatest ecstasies ever. But for the Cenobites,
ecstasy and
agony are the same thing.
The Cenobites themselves are absolutely brilliant creations --
exquisitely
disfigured,
leather-wearing
S&M horrors, simultaneously
grotesque and
beautiful. Butterball,
obese,
slobbering,
gluttonous. Chatterer, bizarrely
twisted, his
teeth endlessly rattling. The nameless female,
flayed open and pinned like a
dissected frog. And Pinhead, Doug Bradley's
claim to fame and the role that will
typecast him in perpetuity. The four of them are seen at the beginning, they dominate the end, and they leave you
gasping for more of them.
"Hellraiser" has been followed by a multitude of
sequels. All of them put a great deal more focus on the
sexy/
scary Cenobites, particularly Pinhead. The sequels create a multitude of new Cenobites, all
imaginative, all
surreal, all
gruesome, all kinky. And nearly all of the sequels suck.
Maybe "Hellraiser" got more right than I suspected...
Pinhead: "No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering."
Some research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)