Hellraiser(s): The Horror of the Deal
I’ve been vaguely aware that a new Hellraiser is coming for some time. It arrived on Hulu yesterday from director David Bruckner (The Night House, The Ritual), so I’ll be watching that and adding it to the Spooktacular shortly. In preparation, I wanted to start engaging with this 35 year-old franchise to see what it was all about. So far, I’ve watched three films (parts I, II, and V) out of ten (not including the remake) and read the novella on which the first film is based. Obviously, I’ve still got a lot to go, but I think I’ve, at least, gotten a solid introduction to what the series has to offer.
I actively avoided Hellraiser as a child. As I’ve hinted, I was a bit of a weenie about the genre as a whole, but dipped my toe into the the Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street films during adolescence. Never Hellraiser though — and that was deliberate. Something about the cenobites made me very uneasy. Maybe it was the whole S&M aesthetic (not my thing), or maybe it was just the grotesqueness of these hellish beings. Pinhead, or the Hell Priest, is bad enough, but add the Chatterer and Butterball into the mix and you’ve got a crew of absolute nightmares. The whole idea that they relish in the torture of their victims is another turnoff. Michael Myers can be brutal, but at least he typically dispatches with his victims with relative speed.
So, I wasn’t eager to watch some proto torture-porn horror. But once I started learning more about it, I got a sense that the series is about a lot more than that. In fact, the cenobites aren’t really even the primary antagonists of the first couple films or the novella “The Hellbound Heart” — something one Twitter user recently put more eloquently than I ever could.
Uncle Frank is the fella who opens up the story (book and film) after coming into possession of the Lament Configuration (or Lemarchard Configuration), the iconic puzzlebox that summons the cenobites. Ya see, Frank is bored by the extremes of earthly delights and is seeking a way to expand his horizons. So, he acquires the puzzle box, which, if solved, promises to reveal untold pleasures to him. It’s just unfortunate Frank didn’t consider the potential for widely varied definitions of that word across known and unknown universes. The cenobites find pleasure in pain and if you go through the trouble of finding and solving their little box, then it’s clear to them you mean business. And, as they’re likely to remark, they have such sights to show you.
“A Hellbound Heart” and Hellraiser are extremely similar. When I read the former, I was actually surprised by how beautiful the prose was. Clive Barker has always been recommended as a master of horror fiction and now I can see why. In the film adaptation, he also proves himself to be a surprisingly competent director. From what I’ve read, Barker was completely clueless about how to make a film, so he went to the library with the intention of checking out every book on filmmaking he could get his hands on — only to find a single manual.
Anyway, in both stories, Frank is fucked. He’s essentially sentenced to a hellish existence in some unearthly realm, but he’s thrown a lifeline by his brother, who takes possession of the house where Frank performed his little box ceremony. When his brother accidentally spills blood in the room where Frank met his earthly end, he is able to reach out of his dark prison and start re-building his corporeal form. Frank just needs more blood. That’s where his sister-in-law Julia comes in. Apparently, they had quite the torrid and brief affair at one point. And it must have been something magical because Julia is more-than-willing to do Frank’s bidding to bring him back from the dead. This is where the story starts to resemble another favorite of mine Little Shop of Horrors. It’s roughly the same. Julia, like Seymour, is offering up sacrifices to satisfy the bloodlust of her lover. With each kill, Frank becomes more like himself (just as Audrey II becomes more powerful). That is, until his niece (in the film) finds out what’s going on and works with the cenobites to prevent Frank from cheating his fate.
So, in the end, the cenobites really aren’t the villains. They’re horrific, sure, but they’re just enforcing the rules of their deal. You open the box, you pay the price. In the sequel, they are similarly relegated to the sidelines. Through means similar to Frank in the original, Julia has now returned to life with the help of an evil psychiatrist and is hoping to pull off some sort of scheme. I’m not really sure what that is though. As much as Hellbound: Hellraiser II has going for it, it sure is convuluted. We get to see a little of the cenobites’ homeworld and meet their god — the geometric Leviathan — who then transforms the evil psychiatrist character into some sort of super-cenobite to antagonize Pinhead and his crew. Just like the original, the film features a ton of amazing practical effects and horrifying makeup, but it didn’t really do a lot for me because I could never really grasp what in the hell was going on.
Why did I then decide to jump to the fifth installment in the series, Hellraiser: Inferno? In part III, Pinhead takes Manhatten, and in Part IV, they time travel and go to space. How could I miss that? Well, it was more out of curiosity than anything. Allegedly, Inferno was written as an entirely separate property before, eventually, being turned into a Hellraiser film. It’s also the feature film directorial debut of Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone). The film does seem pretty different from the others. It’s a story about a corrupt cop on the hunt for a sadistic serial killer, who may or may not be a cenobite. It’s pretty solid until the last 30 minutes, when it goes competely off the rails and does the exact thing I was hoping it wouldn’t. It’s a bit more psychological in its torture than physical, which is an interesting twist, but one that could have been a lot better executed.
There’s really a ton to this Hellraiser stuff. I respect the heck out of a franchise that has this kind of extensive and intricate mythology, even if it doesn’t improve upon the simplicity of the original story. In 2015, Clive Barker released a long-awaited book called “The Scarlett Gospels”. From what I’ve read, it follows the Hell Priest (aka Pinhead) as he tries to take over the world. Sounds fun. I’ll probably read it, though I have my doubts it will increase my appreciation for the originals.
Is it scary? Sure. Not as scary as I originally imagined, but the cenobites are probably grotesque enough to raise your pulse a little. Things kick into another gear in Part II with more blood, brutality, and monstosities before quieting down a little in Part V.
Streaming: Hellraiser and Hellraiser II are available on Amazon Prime. I believe the original is also available on Tubi. Hellraiser: Inferno is something I actually needed to rent, but it’s available on Cinemax (which I didn’t know was still at thing). It’s probably fine to wait for that one to hit a more accessible service though…
