HELLRAISER (1987)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Larry Cotton (Andrew Robinson) and Julia Cotton (Claire Higgins) move into an old house that Larry inherited from the "old lady." The house seems frightening and ominous enough, complete with religious artifacts, statues and a kitchen full of scraps eaten away by maggots (though there are not as many exterior shots as one would like, there is a feeling of menace in the interior shots). Larry likes the house and Julia seems hesistant to move in but decides to settle for it ("I suppose it is better than Brooklyn.") It turns out that Larry's estranged brother, Frank (Sean Chapman), had been living in the house conducting himself with some mysterious magic box. Meanwhile, Frank's daughter, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), has moved into the area and loves her father yet has a troubling relationship with his new bride. Not quite a functional family but close enough until we discover Julia's secret love affair with Frank in beautifully executed flashbacks.
The magic box, known in later sequels and in the Clive Barker book as the Lament Configuration, is a gateway to Hell and a means of summoning the Cenobites who provide pain as pleasure by wielding chains and piercing several parts of one's skin. The Lead Cenobite (Doug Bradley), later nicknamed Pinhead in the countless sequels, introduces his hapless victims to the boundaries of pleasure and pain. They look like dead punk rock musicians wearing leather garb with several bloody piercings. Pinhead wears what looks like nails on his head. One other Cenobite has chattering teeth. Another one wears sunglasses and appears to be heavyset. They are essentially demons, or as the lead Cenobite says, "Demons to some. Angels to others."
"Hellraiser" has many surprises in store but its constant bloodletting may put off many audience members. This is, however, not the kind of gross-out extravaganza built on gore for the sheer pleasure of shock value (even Pinhead would agree with that). Clive Barker, who wrote and directed the film from his own book "The Hellbound Heart," has crafted a witty, disturbingly heightened sense of reality with his own look at family values in the face of unimaginable horror. It is what the human characters do that scares more than the brief appearance of the Cenobites.
One vivid characterization is Julia Cotton (exceedingly well-played by Claire Higgins), a sensual, cold, aloof, sympathetic, murderous vixen who is shown in flashbacks to be quite the innocent, virginal type. Julia mistakenly reanimates Frank Cotton, who had escaped from the Cenobites and needs human flesh to be in human form again. Julia does his bidding, he is her former lover after all, and picks up men at various restaurants and bars to be used as flesh for Frank. Julia at first resists and is frightened by what she does but then she grows accustomed to it. The naive Larry and the suspicious Kirsty are unaware of what lies in the floorboards of the attic (it makes you wonder why they do not use it for storage space but never mind). Julia remains the scariest character in the film - if she had been in a film noir story as a seductress, she would fit the bill brilliantly.
My main quibble is that "Hellraiser" never places as much emphasis on characters such as Larry and Kirsty. Julia's character remains the most full-bodied but Larry is only shown in truncated form - one of his few good scenes is where he relishes a boxing match with glee while Julia merely is transfixed by it. Kirsty appears more as the latest in the "Friday the 13th"-teenage-screamer leads but she is effective enough in her confrontations with the Cenobites and crawling monsters in hidden passageways. I would have loved more scenes between Kirsty and Julia - one scene almost suggests that Julia is ready to use Kirsty as flesh food for Frank. Seeing Kirsty running around from monsters and screaming can get on one's nerves but, as played by Ashley Laurence, she is a sympathetic, strong-willed heroine. Who can hate someone that tells the Cenobites to go to hell? I suppose a good horror movie can't have everything but obviously Clive Barker is aiming for more than an average slasher flick, which this decidely is not. But its characters are fascinating enough to have expected so much more.
The ending of the film is a bit anticlimactic but the scene where Frank, using his brother's skin as cover, is chained up by the Cenobites where he utters the film's most famous line captures the film's theme of pain and pleasure in all its glory. "Hellraiser" is not a great film but it is good enough to be rendered a classic in the horror canon. You may get more pain than pleasure from watching it but it has an undeniable sense of fright and terror.
