This week will be a busy one – I’m seeing The Shape of Water, which I’m really looking forward to based on all the buzz surrounding it and because I love Del Toro. I’m also figuring out my Star Wars: The Last Jedi plans. Some places near me be will be showing the latter Thursday night, which I prefer to the massive presses of people in theaters on weekends.
Also, Xmas stuff, like wrapping and mailing presents, and non-Xmas stuff, working on my novel draft and some other writing projects.
Here is the International Trailer for Black Panther, which got me all het up this morning.
I feel bad for laughing at the narration at the end, but I did. My friend, who speaks a little Japanese, wrote it out as BU RA KU PANSA.
Today’s post is about the Hellraiser series and unfortunately is NSFW – mostly because it’s damn near impossible to show work-safe images from the movies. Also LOTS OF gore, S&M, torture, physical, mental, and sexual abuse…
….Man… you start listing all the disturbing things in this series and wonder what you’re doing with your time…
ANYWAY! On to the review!
October is Horror Movie month, where we let down our hair and celebrate all things macabre and scary! Not that we don’t during the rest of the year, but still… HORROR MOVIES! People who don’t like horror are encouraged to check back November 1st for less bloody and/or disturbing films. For everyone else, let’s put on our galoshes and WADE INTO THE MIRE!
Today’s post is about the Hellraiser series and unfortunately is NSFW – mostly because it’s damn near impossible to show work-safe images from the movies. Also LOTS OF gore, S&M, torture, physical, mental, and sexual abuse…
….Man… you start listing all the disturbing things in this series and wonder what you’re doing with your time…
ANYWAY! On to the review!
HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER 2
Pinhead’s Driver License Photo
I saw Hellraiser 2 first, at a girl’s slumber party when I was about 12… as one does. Suffice to say it scared the holy living balls out of me and I believe I had my eyes covered for most of the viewing. I wish I could remember whose party it was, because if it was mine GOD I AM SO SORRY OTHER LITTLE GIRLS PLEASE FORGIVE ME.
Hellbound begins with the creation of Pinhead, showing his human side fiddling with the puzzle box before being flayed by disembodied hooks. He’s a British soldier who physically survived the horrors of the Great War, but didn’t make it through mentally and he’s been searching the world for his next big thrill as a means to combat his PTSD.
“Dude, could you just… not?”
The story begins in a mental asylum where Kirsty has been dumped. Due to her somewhat far-fetched story about a magic puzzle box that summons a gang of demonic S&M enthusiasts who skinned her uncle and father, and murdered her stepmother before burning down her house (although the house still seems to be standing, maybe I was drunk and missed something), she’s having a rough time. She’s under the care of Doctor Channard, the kind of mental healthcare professional who is not above experimenting on his patients, experimenting with the occult, or experimenting with large, bloody mattresses that act as gateways to hell.
Kirsty’s dad leaves a bloody post on her wall (HA!) begging for help as he is now trapped in hell.
Also an accurate depiction of a hangover
Channard has a secret; he already knows about the puzzle box and has been trying to solve it himself, by exploiting a possibly autistic girl named Tiffany who saw her mother murdered. Once Channard has the aforementioned bloody mattress, he leaves a poor, disturbed man prone to self-harm on it and the man proceeds to butcher himself in a heart-wrenching scene that was deeply upsetting to me. The patient is hallucinating that maggots are burrowing into his skin, and when given a straight razor, ‘shaves’ the maggots off himself. The blood-soaked mattress becomes a door and a skinless Julia is resurrected, who wrestles the mental patient to the floor before messily slitting his throat. Imagine a piece of jerky with eyes coming to life, covered with strawberry syrup, and you’ve got Julia.
I needed a break from Googling Hellraiser jpgs so here is a corgi in pajamas.
Kirsty realizes what Channard’s up to with the help of a handsome doctor who lasts barely into the first 3rd of the movie, and then she and Tiffany escape into a portal to try and release Larry from hell. Instead, Kirsty finds Frank, who has gone full creepy uncle while trapped in hell and makes disturbing moves on Kirsty. He was the one who sent the original message it turns out, because he and his brother bear a striking resemblance when they aren’t wearing skin. Kirsty escapes him, and she and Tiffany encounter The Leviathan, which is the inanimate master of the hellish labyrinth, and there’ s a lot of running down decrepit stone hallways. That is as close as I can get to explaining what was going on.
File under ‘You Had To Be There ‘
Meanwhile, Channard was duped into the labyrinth by Julia and turned into a cenobite himself, apparently a more powerful one than the other cenobites, as he kills them. Fun fact: Channard is played by Kenneth Cranham, who appeared as Pompey Magnus in HBO’s wonderful Rome. He does a wonderfully understated job in this film, playing Channard as a man who is not blind to the horrors he’s witnessing, but not put off by them, either. Although he’s the mad doctor in search of truth and it’s a familiar trope, his pursuit is much more earnest than other portrayals I’ve seen. Great job, Mr. Cranham!
“Damn Caesar! Must he have everything?”
It’s at this point that I got really thrown by the rules of the world. The Leviathan of Christian Mythology is a giant sea monster that symbolizes many different things, but I always understood Barker’s interpretation of Leviathan to be a Prince of Hell. So you’d think it/he/she’d kind of be in control of things, but Channard runs wild, even going into the real world, and kills many of the cenobites. I suppose Leviathan is like a Roman Emperor, waiting to see which of his combatants will emerge victorious. Which makes me wonder, who is in control of the cenobites? The same four appear in both the first and second movies, then die, and then they come back in the third, establishing the pattern of Main Quartet + Guest Star Cenobites. It seems to be another way Barker was bucking the ‘slasher horror’ tropes in that his monsters were sometimes the antagonists and sometimes not. Or maybe there was an overbearing film executive who kept saying things like ‘Just do like in the first movie but more,’ even if it made no sense. Maybe I’m missing a huge chunk of the mythology.
Before He’s Put His Face On
Pinhead’s human side is revealed, and he sacrifices himself to save Kristy and Tiffany. Perhaps since he and the other cenobites remembered their humanity they have become weakened and the Leviathan no longer lends them its power. Or something. Channard is pulled apart by the big phallic tentacle growing out of his head and dies, and Kirsty and Tiffany escape to find the puzzle box and close the portal.
All is right with the world, until it isn’t again and the bloody mattress is opened and the whole thing starts over.
Last Thoughts:
I suspect that the less creative input Clive Barker has over the movies the less cohesive their mythologies. In the first film, Pinhead was an enthusiastic enforcer of Hell’s torments. He and the other cenobites only appear to those who summon him, and since the summoners have usually been toddling down the road to self-destruction for some time before encountering the puzzle box, they’ve got some crimes to answer for. The cenobites fulfill a role in their victims’ punishment, and nothing more. In the second film, Pinhead experiences an existential crisis and loses his powers, or seems to. This splits his character into the human and the cenobite and sets up some of the conflict in the 3rd film, Hellraiser: Hell On Earth.
And that’s Hellraiser 2! Thanks for reading and join us on Friday for a discussion of the third installment. Hellraiser: Hell On Earth!
Today’s post is about the Hellraiser series and unfortunately is NSFW – mostly because it’s damn near impossible to show work-safe images from the movies. Also S&M, torture, physical, mental, and sexual abuse…
….Man, you start listing all the disturbing things in this series and wonder what you’re doing with your time…
ANYWAY!
October is Horror Movie month, where we let down our hair and celebrate all things macabre and scary! Not that we don’t during the rest of the year, but still… HORROR MOVIES! People who don’t like horror are encouraged to check back November 1st for less bloody and/or disturbing films. For everyone else, let’s put on our galoshes and WADE INTO THE MIRE!
This week is Hell Week, where we’ll be focusing the Hellraiser series. Unfortunately these posts are NSFW – mostly because it’s damn near impossible to show work-safe images from the movies. Also LOTS OF gore, S&M, torture, physical, mental, and sexual abuse…
….Man… you start listing all the disturbing things in this series and wonder what you’re doing with your time…
ANYWAY! On to the review!
Here we go, folks!
[DISCLAIMER: I recently watched the first 3 movies, and although I think I saw the “Hellraiser in Space” one, I don’t remember anything from it. I might watch the rest of the series over the month, we will see! Also, brace yourself for bad puns.]
HELLRAISER
Fun fact: Pinhead’s real name is ‘Hell Priest’ or ‘Priest,’ and Clive Barker never liked him being called Pinhead. The crew began calling him that during the makeup process and the name stuck (HA!)
Clive Barker wrote and directed the first Hellraiser movie, which is based on his novella The Hellbound Heart. You can’t get much closer to the source material when it comes to realizing an artist’s vision, and that is probably why the first movie is one of the most respected horror films of the genre. When Barker’s good, he’s REALLY good. His characters are fleshed-out (HA!) and believable: boring, staid Larry is trying to rekindle romance with his second wife, Julia, who had an affair years ago with Larry’s hot, globetrotting scumbag brother Frank, who we saw murdered in the film’s opening after he solved a mysterious puzzle box– as one does. Larry and Julia move into Larry’s old childhood home, a BEAUTIFUL old house that Frank has been hiding out in. Thrown into the mix is Kirsty, Larry’s daughter from his first marriage, who doesn’t get along with Julia and has a place of her own. This pic below accurately summarizes Julia’s excitement about moving into the house.
Not Pictured: Thrills.
But surprise! After Larry has an accident that spills blood on the floor, Frank is reborn in possibly the most intense, gross, and visceral rebirthing scene in the history of cinema. The day that CG graphics manage to reproduce anything that stomach-churning, we’ll know it has finally arrived. Practical effects ALWAYS win when it comes to slime, blood, pus, and anything else the body can produce.
Although Frank’s back, he’s missing a few key accessories, like fat and skin, so Julia decides to help him by bringing home dudes she meets in bars and killing them. Frank absorbs their lifeforce and grows less-juicy by the day. She does this because Frank makes her feel alive in ways Larry never did, which is code for ‘he gave her orgasms.’ Fun fact: When the film was being made the name was still undecided, as The Hellbound Heart sounded like a romance. An older woman working on the crew suggested ‘What a Woman Will Do for a Good Fuck,’ which is actually pretty apt.
Aren’t you going to invite me into your house and body? I’ve got exciting, sexy places to be and none of them involve dinner parties with my dud of a brother.
There are hints during their interaction at the dinner party that Julia and Larry used to be happy, but considering she hooked up (HA!) with Frank before she even married Larry I wondered what brought them together in the first place. Larry’s just so earnest and eager-to-please… I picture Julia, early in the relationship, having that moment of ‘Well, he’s got a good job and he’s a nice guy, I guess he’s the best I could do.’ Maybe this is clearer in the novella, it’s been 20 years since I read it. Anyway, she meets Frank and is instantly fascinated.
Kirsty makes a deal with the cenobites and manages to save herself and send Frank and Julia to hell, but unfortunately can’t save her father. I’ve always appreciated Barker’s embrace of the theme that people make the best monsters; sure, Pinhead will peel your skin off and nail your eyeballs to his big revolving flesh cabinet, but you EARNED it. Frank and Julia murder Larry for no reason other than they are assholes. The Hellraiser universe (or at least the first film) understands and embraces S&M better than the 50 Shades of Gray films, and I would expand on that idea in another blog post if I weren’t so lazy. Also, I’ve never read 50 Shades of Gray.
They can come in my house, but they’re not sitting on my couch. Not without towels.
Last Thoughts: Normally I can see actor’s faces under anything, or recognize them by their eyes and voices. Doug Bradley is the ONE exception to this. I have never been able to recognize him under the Pinhead makeup. Bravo on both makeup and acting! Fun fact: during the movie’s wrap party, Doug Bradley wondered why no one was talking to him, since he thought he got on well with the crew. Turns out they didn’t recognize him without the makeup.
I STILL don’t see it! No idea why!
So that’s Hellraiser! Thanks for reading, and join us again on Wednesday when we discuss Hellbound: Hellraiser 2!
