Hellraiser (1987)
What It's About: Hellraiser, adapted by Clive Barker from his novella "The Hellbound Heart," is a movie about a man who's worse than the monsters. Frank Cotton vanishes without a trace after purchasing an antique puzzle box that the seller promises will push him past the most extreme edges of pleasure and pain. To call Frank a sadomasochist would be putting it too lightly. Later, Frank's brother Larry (played by plain, simple Garak from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) moves into his now-vacant house with his second wife, Julia, who had been having an affair with Frank. Larry's daughter Kirsty and Julia pretty much hate each other, so she moves into her own place. Larry cuts himself on a nail as he's moving a bed into the attic, and his blood provides a conduit through which Frank is reborn, skeleton and brainstem first, as a sort of horrifying skinless version of himself. Julia finds him, and since she's also awful, she makes out with Skinless Frank. The two of them set about luring local men to the house and murdering them in the attic so he can steal their flesh and turn back into Non-Skinless Frank, all unbeknownst to poor oblivious Larry.
Ew.
It turns out Frank solved the puzzle box and was dragged off to hell, or at the very least another dimension that might as well be hell, and he's now living on borrowed time as the Cenobites -- agents of the underworld summoned by the box -- aren't all that happy about his escape. Frank wants to get his skin back so he can run off with Julia before they find him. Good thing the box ends up in Kirsty's possession....
Why You Should Watch It: Hellraiser and Phantasm are my two favorite 1980s horror franchises, and since Netflix no longer has Phantasm available for streaming, I might as well review Hellraiser. Both of those series were advertised in the same breath, and in much the same way, as other gory movies of the decade, like Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street, despite being much weirder, much smarter and a lot more interesting and imaginative.
Hellraiser isn't half as weird as Phantasm, but it is a neat study in monsters. The Cenobites, when they finally show up in all their leather-clad extreme-BDSM glory, are clearly the movie's demonic antagonists. They certainly look the part. The thing that makes them so interesting is that...they're not. Frank -- human Frank -- is the real villain, and the Cenobites are merely an interested third party, willing to make a deal with Kirsty in order to recapture her evil uncle.
We'll tear your soul...APAAAAAAAAHHT.
This is why the first two movies are really the only ones worth watching. After that, the Cenobites are basically the main bad guys, and making them the garden-variety-evil central antagonists makes them much less interesting. As their leader (listed in the first film as "Lead Cenobite," with the famous Pinhead moniker being a fan nickname that Clive Barker disliked because it made him sound like an idiot) says, they might be demons or angels, depending on your perspective. Sure, they want to rip off your skin with hooked chains and make a jigsaw puzzle out of your face...but they're pretty sure you'll enjoy it, once you've come around to their way of thinking.
Clive Barker's kind of a strange author. I'm rarely in the mood for his books or movies, but they are absolutely unique, and they have a certain undeniable imaginative quality to them, and he often juxtaposes moments of beauty and genuine emotion against the most horrifying violence and torment. In a way, this makes his work more effective. It makes you feel as if you've earned the peaceful bits of humanity because they've been so deeply submerged in grime. Watching Hellraiser, or reading Barker's novels, is like sticking your arms up to the shoulder in a tar pit and fishing out diamonds. It's also essential viewing if you really want to know what horror is all about and why it can be as fascinating and multifaceted as any of the more "respectable" film genres, or if you're looking to educate yourself in the history of horror cinema.
NO. DON'T. DO THAAAAAT.
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