Hellraiser: 20th Anniversary Edition (1987)
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
Twenty years have passed in my life on this earth with my never having seen a Hellraiser movie. The necessity never really presented itself, from what I’ve heard, clips I’ve seen and the gushy and (obviously) fan-written entry on Wikipedia. In the family of seventies and eighties horror, Carrie White is the mom, Michael Myers is the dad, and Jason and Freddy are the two brothers that fight a lot. Pinhead, on the other hand, is the distant cousin who went to art school and lives in Miami with his “friend.”
So when the 20th anniversary special edition DVD came out, I thought I’d acquaint myself with what I’ve been missing. Do know, however, that I will not be reviewing the special features. The draw with a DVD should be the movie and those who think otherwise need to straighten out their priorities…that and I just don’t care.
And what I have found is a movie that takes itself so damn seriously while being so mediocre on almost every conceivable level that I just had to laugh. It’s like seeing Shaquille O’Neal miss a free-throw and laugh at where all the money went. That this became a run-away theatrical and video hit and spawned a ridiculous number of sequels would be surprising, had I not seen everyone flip out over Transformers this summer. Now, nothing surprises me.
An attempt to hold back an ocean wave with a mop would be more fruitful than my attempt to explain the ridiculous story, which is as follows: Frank (Sean Chapman) buys a puzzle box. When it opens it takes him to “the far reaches of existence” where he is tortured and pleasured by Pinhead and his Cenobites (one of whom is a bald woman with an open tracheotomy scar and another looks a hell of a lot like George Steinbrenner with sunglasses on). Meanwhile back in the real world, Frank is turned into a weird stain that grows back into his corporeal body the more blood is spilled on it. His half-brother (Andrew Robinson) and HIS wife (Clare Higgins) move into the house. Frank and the wife had an affair a few years back and she becomes privy to the fact that she must present Frank with human sacrifices in order to become whole again in this world.
And if you think THAT’S convoluted and silly, wait until you see the homeless guy turn into a dragon.
A personal note here, Clare Higgins plays the adulterous wife that Frank has his dalliances with and with her severe expression and eighties hair, she looks JUST like my second grade math teacher. Now imagine my shock when I learn that the Higgins’ character uses knives during foreplay, which is an image I wanted in my head, oh, NEVER IN FUCKING LIFE! Seeing that scene, I didn’t get the erotic charge that writer-director-novelist Clive Barker wanted me to have and every fiber of my being screamed “Mrs. Fielder, noooooooooooo!”
But anyway, it seems Mr. Barker has made two movies here, both of them laughably bad. On the one hand you have the poorly acted and silly adultery/murder/human sacrifice stuff that is wholly implausible because the neighbors would talk and the stench would mess up the whole house. How long does it take for a guy to figure out in a house that small that someone is eating dead bodies in the attic?
On the other hand, you have the Cenobite stuff, which doesn’t take up a whole lot of screentime and comes as an afterthought. But what makes it a big ol’ puddle o’ wacky is that Barker tries to sexualize it, with a man writhing in pain as he’s being torn apart, with voice-over intoning of “pleasure and pain, indivisible from one another.” And ya know what? Fine. At least he’s honest, and some great films come out of guys trying to express their sexual desires. But I’m willing to bet anyone else’s sexual fantasies have better dialogue. At this point I must flag Barker for criminal overuse of the line “Come to daddy.”
Which brings us to Pinhead himself, and my original twenty year apprehension turns out to have been well-founded. Played as a cross between a stuffy English bureaucrat and the world’s most pissed-off genie, Doug Bradley plays the role sourly, like he’s just angry because he spent so much time in the makeup chair. I must also add that he’s not in it a whole lot and is only listed as “Lead Cenobite” in the ending credits. He’s an ancillary character that wound up on the one-sheet and got out of control. He’s the Boba Fett of horror.
But I will admit that I did have fun, as eighties excess and Clive Barker’s self-righteousness collided to form the exploding septic-tank that is Hellraiser. But it was at the film’s expense and not at its leisure. I wonder if any of the other Hellraiser films run off the rails this badly, for if so, I’m filling my Netflix with all of ‘em. One thing I am NOT wondering about is Barker’s reputation as a filmmaker. He’s a hack. Sorry. After this and the piece of wet dog-ass Lord of Illusions, it’s gonna be a cold day in Hell before I sit through Night Breed, or anything else with his name on it.
Say what you want about Stephen King, but he gave up on directing movies after just the one.
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