Hellraiser [DVD] [1987]

The movie at its simplest level is a retelling of a story that goes back to Goethe's Doctor Faustus and beyond--when you sell your soul to evil forces, you will regret it. Frank Cotton is a despicable, uncaring man who has grown bored with life's most extreme pleasures. When he hears about and eventually acquires a puzzle box which can open the door to a new world of perverse pleasures, he finds out that one man's pleasure is another man's pain under the tutelage of the Cenobites. Somehow, he manages to escape the other world, and when his brother's blood is spilled in his chamber of horrors, his body begins to reform itself. More blood is required to complete the job, and his brother's wife Julia supplies it by picking up men at bars and bringing them home for Frank's nourishment. The prim and proper Julia was ravaged by Frank soon before her wedding to Frank's brother Larry, and she enjoyed the experience so much that she will do anything to get Frank restored to vaguely human-looking life. Larry's daughter Kirsty, played by Ashley Laurence in her motion picture debut, discovers what is going on and manages to get her hands on the puzzle box. When she is introduced to the Cenobites, the fun truly begins.

The Hellraiser series degraded into a sad mimicry of itself in later movies, but the original vision personally sculpted by the masterly hands of writer and director Clive Barker is a horror masterpiece. The Cenobites are one of the most unusual, fascinating "bad guys" ever dreamed up in the imagination of man. They really don't appear too often in this film, and Pinhead (played by the great Doug Bradley) is never referred to by this name even in the credits. When they do appear, with Pinhead enunciating such great statements as "No tears, please. It is just a waste of good suffering" and "We will tear your soul apart," they are truly horrifying, mysterious, and larger than life. Less is definitely more when it comes to the prominence of Pinhead and his demonic associates in the movie.

Those who dislike horror probably have sense enough to stay clear of Hellraiser. Those of us who revel in extreme horror delight in watching it. If you are an intermediate-level horror fan initiated by the Scream and Freddy/Michael/Jason movies, here is your chance to really test your horror mettle.

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However, even without Pinhead, "Hellraiser" has plenty of intensely disturbing images. We begin with the compelling little Lamont Configuration, an exotic puzzle box that opens a door to Hell, which is what poor Frank (Sean Chapman) discovers just both the Cenobites rip his body to pieces. But when Frank's brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his second wife Julia (Clare Higgins) move into a new house and Larry rips his hand open on a nail, the blood brings Frank (well, part of him, anyway) back from the Hell dimension. It seems that Frank and Julia had been lovers, and she had promised to do "anything" Frank wanted. Julia was looking for something in the area of sexual deviancy we assume, but Frank now has something else in mind as he holds Julia to her word, namely, seducing men to come back to her house and up to the attic where their life's blood can help further regenerate Frank's body. By the time poor Larry and his daughter Kristy (Ashley Laurence) have a clue what is happening upstairs, it is pretty much too late.

Writer-Director Clive Barker does not pull any punches in his first film when it comes to putting as much raw horror on the screen as he can cram into this 94 minute film. "Hellraiser" rewrites the rules in terms of how far you can go and what you can try to do to the poor viewers of your horror film. The key thing is that as gross as things get on the screen, there is an intelligence and a creativity behind the horror that can neither be ignored nor easily dismissed. You can imagine Barker saying, "What? You WANTED to see a movie that would give you nightmares, didn't you?" This is not a particularly polished film, but I really think that adds to its effectiveness. "Hellraiser" is a primal horror film, operating on a raw level that is as innovative as it is disquieting. If they had rated this film "X," I probably would have agreed with the judgment. Not for the squeamish (or their neighbors).

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The film is no stranger to most people. Based on Clive Barker's brilliant novella The Hellbound Heart, it is a simple story of selling your soul to the Devil - or in this case the Cenobites who are masters in body reconfiguration and refined pain and pleasure. But it goes deeper than those things but I'll let you watch it yourself. Visually, I'm convinced it's one of the greatest films ever made - the image of the lead Cenobite, whose head is a geometric network of squares intersected at each apex by a nicely driven pin, is just brilliant stuff. He represents pain and pleasure. No other film possesses such a unique vision. You'll really see nothing else like it, and for that reason alone you need to get it.

Unfortunately, Hellraiser fails in storyline and acting. Clive Barker is a brilliant writer - anyone who's read his books knows that - but as a scriptwriter he's lame. The dialogue is horrible in this and even more horribly delivered by actors who are unbelievably wooden (with the exception of the excellent Kirsty and Pinhead). There are some unforgettable one-liners from Pinhead but the script otherwise is annoyingly bad. It just doesn't seem to flow.

What's more, the last fifteen minutes of the film are just plain terrible. Like the house, the story just completely falls apart into mindless oblivion. When Kirsy's friend (or is it boyfriend?) comes into the house and suddenly becomes part of the fight without blinking an eyelid. I hate stuff like that. It's like they've worked hard on the first hour of the film but got incredibly lazy which is why we're ill-rewarded with a really crap ending.

That's why it only gets four stars in my books, but I can put those things aside because it's visually amazing, especially on a large screen and on DVD. Just a shame about the ending, script and acting. I nearly gave three stars cos of that but I didn't have the heart to. If you haven't seen it,then do cos you'll be missing out.

For those who want more of the Cenobites (who don't feature a great deal in this), then check out Hellbound: Hellraiser 2. But please don't watch the third one because it's a joke.

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