Behind the Scenes Awesomeness: The Hellraiser Franchise

Clive Barker (right) next to "Uncle Frank"

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

Director: Anthony Hickox

Cast: Doug Bradley, Kevin Bernhardt, Pala Marshall, Terry Farrell

In the Hellraiser universe, continuity doesn’t really matter much. They give you the illusion that there’s continuity because they’ll start with a recap of the previous film, or they’ll mention some character from the previous film, but believe me, it’s all an illusion. In the Hellraiser franchise, each film exists within the universe that Clive Barker created but each film brings its own characters in and eliminates anything established by the previous film. By way of an example, just when you think Hellbound: HellraiserII (1989) is going to give us a bit of continuity because it brought back the character of Julia Cotton, they go and kill her off, eliminating with no amount of respect, characters and situations established on the first film. It seems like the only constant in these films are The Cenobytes and the Lament Configuration. Well, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) does the same; it ignores previous films, avoiding any sort of continuity and presents us with an entirely new set of characters. How did this third outing in the franchise turn out?

This time around, the lead Cenobyte a.k.a. ‘Pinhead’ is trapped inside of a sculpture. How did Pinhead end up in a sculpture? Who put him there and why? Never mind these questions because the filmmakers never bother to answer them. You’re asked to accept the fact that Pinhead is a sculpture now and that’s that. It feels like the filmmakers simply said “You know what would look cool? Pinhead trapped in a sculpture! Let’s go with that! I like it!” They didn’t care if this concept made sense or not, or if it fit with what had happened to the character on previous films, they just went with it. Then we are presented with J.P., the owner of a New York dance club called ‘The Boiler Room’. J.P. also happens to be an art collector. One day, while visiting an art gallery, J.P. stumbles upon the sculpture in which Pinhead is trapped in and buys it. Little does J.P. know that he’s bringing ole Pinhead home with him. Similar to previous Hellraiser films, you have to feed the demon in order for it to become flesh. What happens when Pinhead is released from the sculpture?

The idea behind this film is that hell will come to earth. Sounds epic and grand don’t it? This epic premise was a giant red flag for me because if there’s one problem I’ve always had with the Hellraiser films is that they are big on ideas but small on budgets. As a result, even though their concept might be grand, what they actually get to shoot looks cheap. Take for example the premise for this film, what is ‘Hell on Earth’ reduced to in this film? Hell on Earth translates to the main character running through a deserted city street while man holes explode and fire comes out of them, a few windows explode and that’s it; kind of small scale for “Hell on Earth” wouldn’t you say? My point being there’s no grand scope to the concept even though it should’ve been grand. You’re left wanting more, disappointed. Something all Hellraiser sequels do.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) left us without our favorite Cenobytes. For some reason the filmmakers behind that film decided to eliminate everything that Clive Barker had established on the first Hellraiser film. They killed off all the memorable Cenobytes from the first film, even Pinhead himself! Yet here is Pinhead, alive and kicking on this film. Why didn’t all the other Cenobytes return as well? I guess it was just an excuse to present us with a bunch of new Cenobytes, which sadly are not better then the originals. Let’s see, we get a Cenobyte that kills with the lens of a video camera that pops out of his right eye. There’s a cd spewing Cenobyte which feels so out dated now that CD’s are disappearing. Worst part is that these new Cenobytes are on the film for only five minutes, they are sent back to hell in the blink of an eye…and again you are left wanting. It’s as if they really didn’t think of interesting situations to put these characters in. The main character (a reporter trying to get to the bottom of things) gets rid of the Cenobytes so easily, that you never feel she’s in any sort of peril. And we’re talking about 5 or six Cenobytes with deadly weapons against one human female! It seemed like lazy filmmaking to me, there was no intent to shoot something worthwhile. Cool make up effects do not make a movie my friends. You need tense situations, you need complexities.

Is there anything positive to say about Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth? Well, not really. It feels like a lame-o sequel when compared to the original first film. At least the second one entertained with the ultra gory violence, which by the way is considerably toned down for this third entry. That edge, that feeling of shock, of the forbidden is gone; it’s not on this sequel. There are a couple of cool moments in the film, like when Pinhead walks into a club and the Cenobytes start killing everyone in the club, but it feels restrained. It feels like a wasted opportunity, that whole scene could have been so much more. Okay, I did like those scenes in which Pinhead fights himself. It’s like Pinhead the evil demon vs. the human side of Pinhead, who he used to be before he became a servant of hell. That concept was cool. The film does get sacrilegious at times; there’s a scene in which Pinhead walks into a church and starts bashing down crosses and cackling away like a mad man, but sadly these scenes amount to nothing but having Pinhead pose. The only purpose this film serves is to show us exactly what a cash in is. It kind of makes sense that the director for this film is Anthony Hickox, during the 90's, he was one of the go to directors for cheap horror sequels like Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992) and Warlock: The Armageddon (1993). Hellraiser: Hell on Earth (1988) proves what I’ve been saying all along about the Hellraiser franchise, that after the first film, all Hellraiser sequels have gone from bad to worse with each consecutive film. It’s a good example of a franchise being treated like a cheap whore and being bled to death.  

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5  

Hellraiser (1987)

Hellraiser (1987)

Director: Clive Barker

Cast: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Sean Chapman, Doug Bradley

As I write this, it’s been almost thirty years since Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987) first opened the gates of hell, giving us a new horror icon to rival that of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Weird part is that Clive Barker wasn’t aiming to create a horror icon for a new generation, he was simply adapting his novella ‘The Hellbound Heart’ into film, his intent wasn’t creating a horror icon that horror fans would embrace vehemently and ultimately christen “Pinhead”. And Pinhead it has stayed, even though Clive Barker himself says this name is not dignified enough for the character that Barker called ‘Priest’ in the first versions of the script. Still, the character caught the public’s imagination, and there it has stayed. As I write this, there have been 9 films inspired on Barker’s Hellraiser universe, with a tenth one in production hell. Sadly, none of these numerous sequels have been as good as the original Clive Barker directed film which still remains the best film in the lengthy franchise.

Honestly, I don’t think anything done today will be as good, horrifying or gory as the images that Barker conjured up in his directorial debut. Very rarely do extremely gory or overly sexual films make it to theaters today, which is why I say that Hellraiser is a rare film that we should relish and thank the movie gods for. To use a tired phrase “they just don’t make them like this anymore”, but it’s not for lack of trying. Modern horror filmmakers are constantly trying to make films like these, but they always end up straight to video, where most gore fests end up nowadays. I know Barker is currently trying to get Hellraiser properly remade, but if you ask me, the way Hollywood works today, this remake will never go theatrical. Barker would have to tone down the blood and gore and if he does that, then it won’t be Hellraiser anymore. Sad but true. That’s why I see films like Hellraiser as a rare jewel from one of the goriest decades in horror, the 80’s! A decade in which films like Hellraiser could end up in theater screens and get a sequel every year! Seeing it now, it’s such a shock to the system when compared to the light horror films seen today, which speaks volumes about the soft core crap that passes for horror today. I feel special for having grown up with these twisted/cool horror movies that titillated my young mind!

Hellraiser was another one of those horror movies that as a 12 year old kid, I wasn’t supposed to see, yet found a way to see anyway. My morbid curiosity peaked with these films. The themes explored in Hellraiser were deadly serious and adult, yet there I was, sucking it all in, absorbing the darkness that the world had to offer.Like the dark delights the Cenobytes brought to those who opened the Lament Configuration, so where these movies for me. Dark, hellish delights that presented my young mind with a side of the human psyche I knew nothing about, but was eager to discover. These films were all about uncontrolled passions and the lengths to which a person can go to in order to get ultimate pleasure. How far will a man or woman go for the ultimate ‘good fuck’? Pretty damn far that’s how far! The film has a thing or two to say about the banality of a boring marriage versus the intensity of amazing forbidden sex. It also plays with the idea that pain and pleasure are close bed partners concepts maybe a bit too profound or dark for my innocent little mind, but hey, there’s a first time for everything right?  In Hellraiser, the Lament Configuration is a puzzle box that opens the doors to a dimension where pain and pleasure are indivisible and whoever is dumb enough to solve the puzzle instantly regrets having done so, hence the ‘lament’ in its name. This idea that a supernatural artifact can open the gates to hell isn’t in a new one, other films have played with this premise: The Beyond (1981), City of the Living Dead (1980), The Gate (1987) and The Ninth Gate (1999) come to mind, but only Hellraiser mixes the whole thing with these themes of lust and desire.

This was Clive Barker’s first film so he was a rookie when he made it, he’s admitted to not knowning much about the intricacies of filmmaking at the time of making this picture, still, what he did have was the view point of an artist, a necessary quality to pull off a film like this one. Plus, he wrote the story the film is based on, and while it’s not always a great idea to put writers behind the camara, in this case it worked with hellish charm, because Barker is a painter and he treats the images he captures with his cameras as if he was layering one of his paintings. He showed promise with what he did with this film, and went on to show growth as a filmmaker in films like Nightbreed (1990) and Lord of Illussions (1995), my favorite Barker film. This first Hellraiser film is more aesthetically pleasing to the eye than any of the sequels in the franchise. The special make up effects are amazing on this one. The resurrection sequence, in which the character of Frank comes back to life is one of the high points of the film. I recently screened this film for an audience and that scene still makes hearts stop. It’s a show stealer. Where the film does have a few faults is in the visual effects department and Barker admits that these were done in a hurry to meet the schedule, and it’s a damn shame because when those cheesy visual effects show up, it brings the film down a few notches for me. Still, as a whole the film is solid, if it wasn’t for those cheesy visual effects I’d give the film a perfect score. But whatever, I love the film, warts and all as they say.

The success of Hellraiser spawned a sequel that started rolling mere weeks after Hellraiser proved a success in cinemas and so we got Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), a decent sequel that sadly wasn’t directed by Barker himself. Hellbound: Hellraiser II was messy in terms of story (last minute rewrites galore) and it had flaws in the visual effects department as well, but it gives us some of the best and bloodiest moments in the entire franchise and let’s not forget it also gave us Pinheads origin. For me this franchise was good up to Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), after that one, things started to really go downhill for the franchise, with each sequel being worse than the last. If you’re really bored, then the last one that’s “watchable” is Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), the fourth film in the series. You know the franchise was on its last legs because on that one they sent Pinhead to space! If that isn’t the sign of a franchise running out of juice, I don’t know what is. After Hellraiser Bloodline, the franchise consists of extremely low budget films that were made from scripts that weren’t even Hellraiser scripts, they were horror scripts that the producers had laying around and converted into Hellraiser films. What’s one got to do to get a decent Hellraiser film nowadays? Go to hell to get one? Here’s hoping Barker successfully reboots this franchise and gives us a new dose of decent (or maybe even better?) Hellraiser films.

Rating: 4 out of 5  

    

My Demon Lover (1987)

My Demon Lover (1987)

Director:  Charlie Loventhal

Cast: Scott Valentine, Michelle Little, Robert Trebor

Back when I was around twelve years old, seeing a film like My Demon Lover was prohibitive for me because the household I grew up in was fanatically Christian and therefore any film with demons or sex was extremely off limits as far as my parents were concerned and My Demon Lover had both! But back then, I was just starting to fall in love with special effects, so I found a way to see it; I waited for just the right moment in which my parents were gone and then, alone and in the dark, I feasted my eyes on the demonic imagery. I have to admit watching My Demon Lover was all about the thrill of doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. What attracted me to the film wasn’t the sex or possible nudity because truth be told, there’s very little of both on this movie, no, what I wanted to see were those crafty makeup effects! You see, back in the 80’s, horror movies where pushing the boundaries of what could be done through make up effects. Back then, every horror movie was about gooey, slimy monsters. The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise spear headed this gruesome movement in cinema, but many smaller budget movies emulated this idea of turning a film into a special make up effects showcase, My Demon Lover was one of them.

I’d been meaning to re-watch this movie for the longest time, to re-live this forbidden fruit of my youth one more time, but for some strange reason, this movie disappeared from the planet. This is something that happens to a lot of low budget horror films. Suddenly, poof! They vanish from the face of the earth! But I never forgot about My Demon Lover, it was this little horror movie that thrilled me when I was a kid and had fond memories of enjoying it, I needed to give it the old re-watch! For nostalgia's sake! So anyways, one day I go into Amazon and there it is.  Warner Bros. had released it under their ‘Warner Bros. Archive Collection’ banner. Under this banner, Warner Bros. has re-released a lot of these “forgotten” sci-fi/horror/action movies like Freejack (1992), If Looks Could Kill (1991) and The Green Slime (1968). So anyways, I quickly snatched a copy and re-watched My Demon Lover, a film I had not seen since I was twelve! And of course, it’s silly as hell. As silly as any other 80’s movie you’ve seen and of course, that’s exactly what I loved about it. It took me back to simpler days in cinema, when a film could be about two silly kids falling in love in New York City; where a movie could be about a couple of crazy kids with no bigger priorities in their lives save for falling in love and having fun. The film runs on that idealistic idea that the world might be messed up, but we can survive it with a little love in our lives. Weird that the filmmakers decided to mix demons with love, but such is the nature of the cinema of the 80’s.

In retrospect, My Demon Lover is less a sex comedy and more a date movie. It’s about accepting each other with our flaws, finding ways to “make it work” and finding someone you want to care for. On this film everybody is trying to date somebody, it takes place within the bachelor world, where girls and boys are constantly worried about finding “the one”. In this way it reminded me of films like About Last Night (1986), where the two sexes are constantly analyzing each other. So you get the typical “men are like this, women are like that” conversations. ‘Denny’, the main character in the film is a working girl who falls for the worst guys; losers who dump her by stealing everything in her apartment. Then we have ‘Kaz’, a bum from the streets who plays the saxophone on the train and oogles and harasses the ladies he sees on the streets. Oh, he’s also cursed to turning into a demon whenever he tries to have sex! There’s an allegory there, about how guys can turn into wild animals whenever they want to get it on with the ladies, but you shouldn’t really read too much into that. This isn’t exactly what you’d call a ‘deep film’. Its themes are simple yet valid ones: if you truly care for someone then you have to do something truly noble for that person; you have to show some real love and go beyond just sexual attraction. 

  

The entertaining part of the film comes of course whenever ‘Kaz’ gets horny and turns into a demon. What’s cool about the concept is that he turns into a different looking demon every time he turns, so we get a variety of monsters throughout the film. Kaz goes from turning into a werewolf demon, to turning into a fat bald guy who can’t stop laughing, to growing demon wings among many other amusing transformations. The makeup effects are not anything I’d call amazing or award worthy, but they sure are entertaining… and gooey. There’s a lot of slimy, squishy stuff going on. My Demon Lover was produced by New Line Cinema’s head honcho Robert Shaye, the guy responsible for producing so many of the Nightmare on Elm Street films before New Line Cinema became a major film studio. This explains the films emphasis on makeup effects work; it was just the thing to do during the 80’s when latex monsters ruled the screens. If you wanted a movie to make money, you put a lot of special make up effects in it. New Line Cinema was after all known as “The House that Freddy Built”. This make up effects frenzy ran its course and ended in the mid 90’s when horror switched back to ‘slasher mode’ with the success of films like Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). It’s interesting to note how it was horror maestro Wes Craven’s creations that decided the direction horror films would take throughout the 80’s and 90’s, he certainly had a pulse on the genre.  

    

So what we got here is a silly, simple yet entertaining little horror movie from the late 80’s. It reminded me of another film you might want to check out if you end up enjoying My Demon Lover, it’s a film called Date with an Angel (1987). It shares a similar premise (that of falling in love with a supernatural being) but instead of dating a demon, the main character falls for an angel. But if you ask me, all of these movies in which regular people fall in love with a monster, or a creature are influenced by Ron Howard's Splash (1984), that's the one where Tom Hanks falls for a mermaid played by Darryl Hannah. Seeing My Demon Lover made me think about how modern movies aren’t populated with regular people anymore. I miss that about movies, where the protagonists don’t have to be perfect, politically correct, unrealistic tight asses, in fact, a lot of films from the 80’s were about the working class, those of us surviving to make it in the world, this is something we don’t see that much anymore. In movies from the 80’s, characters weren’t afraid to be silly and ridiculous, they were imperfect, they were more like us, the regular everyday people. In this way, characters in films from the 80’s feel more real to me, even though they are extremely silly because let’s face it; all pretensions aside, most of us are still a bunch of grown up kids pretending to be adults. Deep down inside, we’re all little kids who want the thrill of watching horror movies in the dark, without our parents’ permission.

Rating: 3 out of 5 

Silver Bullet (1985)

Silver Bullet (1985)

Director: Daniel Attias

Cast: Corey Haim, Gary Busey, Everett McGill

Silver Bullet is a werewolf film that was released a few years after the success of two far superior werewolf films, An American Werewolf in London (1981) and The Howling (1981), the two films that all other werewolf films must look up to. And while Joe Dante’s The Howling is a nifty werewolf flick with great effects by the always amazing Rob Bottin, I have to say that as far as I’m concerned, no werewolf movie out there has been able to surpass what John Landis and crew achieved in An American Werewolf in London; the challenge to beat An American Werewolf in London in terms of makeup effects work is still up and running. The film is a great amalgamation of comedy, great effects, horrifying moments and a great story; it’s simply too good of a movie. It’s incredible that with the advancement of technology in the world of special effects, no computer generated images have been able to top the genius that make up effects guru Rick Baker achieved in An American Werewolf in London; which is why the werewolves in Silver Bullet pale so brightly when compared to Baker’s creations.  Still, a werewolf movie does not run on special effects alone, so how was Silver Bullet as a whole, especially when we take in consideration that it’s a Stephen King adaptation?

The world of cinematic Stephen King adaptations is an uneven one. Some are amazing like The Shining (1980) and Pet Sematary (1989), while others are mediocre, like Maximum Overdrive (1986) and The Lawnmower Man (1992), to name just a few examples. Is Silver Bullet one of the good ones? Well, it’s a strange sort of film in the sense that it seems to been aimed at kids, but it’s a hard ‘R’ filled with lots of gore. It feels like it’s aimed at kids because number one, it has a kid in the starring role in the form of a pre-teen Corey Haim, who plays Marty Coslaw, a kid bound to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Marty knows there’s a werewolf prowling about killing his neighbors in grizzly ways, but of course, same as in every single horror film of the 80’s, nobody believes the kid. The film even feels like it’s a family film, because at its core it’s about a kid’s relationship with his crazy, yet lovable, drunkard uncle. The whole film is tinged with that gee-whiz 12 year old mentality that so many of Stephen King’s novels are known for. King loves to center his horror stories around children. He did it in Silver Bullet (1985), It (1990) and again in Dreamcatcher (2003). King connects horror with childhood, which makes sense. It’s at that age that we are most susceptible to being scared; we know so little of the world. The problem with mixing children and horror on films is that your target audience becomes children, but then if you’re making a horror movie for kids it can’t be too scary or you risk getting an ‘R’ rating and losing your target audience…and then the film becomes a marketing nightmare. Who do you sell the movie to, kids or adults? This is probably the reason why Silver Bullet died a quick death at the box office.

I haven’t read The Cycle of the Werewolf, the novel on which Silver Bullet is based on, but I have seen the illustrations that accompany the novel, namely, Bernie Wrightson’s amazing art work. The sad part is that the werewolves in the film pale in comparison even when compared to Wrightson’s illustrations! Who’s to blame for the underwhelming werewolves on this film? Well, none other than Carlo Rambaldi, the Italian special effect guru best known for creating E.T. for Spielberg’s E.T. The  Extraterrestrial (1982). He also created the creatures seen in David Lynch’s Dune (1984). Rambaldi’s creature work has always been a bit uneven, on some films it can be amazing, like for example the Alien in Alien (1979), while on others not so great, like for example, his work on King Kong Lives (1986) is actually laugh inducing! For some reason, this is one of the films where his work was lackluster, the werewolf’s head looks as big as a refrigerator. If the filmmakers had employed the likes of Stan Winston, Rick Baker or Rob Bottin, this film might have turned out a bit better in terms of the werewolf effects.

Above Bernie Wrightson's illustrations for King's Cycle of the Werewolf, below, Carlo Rambaldi's werewolf for Silver Bullet (1985)

Werewolf effects aside, it’s not the worst werewolf movie I’ve ever seen; that would be Wes Craven’s Cursed (2005). No, Silver Bullet is actually watchable. Corey Haim and Gary Busey play likable characters who live in their own little world. Busey’s Uncle Red is always saying one liners and silly jokes to keep Marty’s spirits up and Marty, even though he is disabled, hasn’t given up on life and is actually very gung-ho about living it. The whole film, like many of King’s stories takes place in small town U.S.A., with a whole slew of townsfolk archetypes like the town asshole, the nice Sheriff who is lenient with the people he’s known his whole life, the violent macho man, the old lady, the unfaithful wife, the natural leader, all these archetypes that tend to inhabit Kings stories. So you definitely feel like you are watching a Stephen King movie. In terms of themes, well, the film does have a thing or two to say about catholic priests who like to chase little boys. Ultimately, I think what hurts this movie the most is the lack of direction. It has that television show feel to it, there’s nothing spectacular or eye catching about the way it was filmed, the direction is actually very banal. This was director Daniel Attias first and only cinematic effort, the rest of his career has been spent directing television, so I guess that explains a lot. Not one of King’s worst adaptations, it certainly deserves a watch if you’re a werewolf or Stephen King fan.

Rating: 3 out of 5