I often start my classic horror movie posts on here telling you about how much it meant to me as a horror and particularly slasher-obsessed kid who spent most of his time in video stores looking at horror VHS covers. However, for some reason I had just never watched a Hellraiser film despite being well acquainted with Pinhead from pictures, probably if my mom had seen it she knew that even she should probably draw the line at such a film which would contain stuff I would not understand for a number of years during the first years of my slasher binging. I loved the covers and had always wanted to see one, but for some reason it wasn’t until I was in my early 20s when I did. I still lived with my mom, and her boyfriend at the time, and the boyfriend had a big smart TV and Netflix account in the early 10s and at the time they had pretty much the entire run of Hellraiser movies including the straight-to-movie sequels and I was drinking A LOT at that time cause they were really bad times in my life, so just regularly got drunk late at night when I could have the TV to myself and would binge them like 2 at a time. I was instantly a fan, and found them a distraction and comfort.
As you likely know if you regularly read my reviews, I love to collect DVD and BluRay box sets, usually of franchises, and I had well over a year ago picked up Hellraiser and Hellraiser II as a double feature on DVD in a thrift mall, and I recently picked up a 6-film collection that starts with III and runs through Hellworld in 2005, so I figured I gotta justify the purchase of this many straight-to-video movies by starting my first rewatch of the original series since those initial drunken nights.
There are not a
great deal of flaws in
this film, remarkable for a first-time feature
film director. Clare Higgins does not really do a great job as Julia,
it isn’t a subtle performance by any means, and Sean Chapman’s
attempt at an American accent is often stilted and not particularly
convincing (especially in the flashback sequences). There’s a
number of pretty bad line dubbings, from when they decided to change
the film’s location to the United States rather than the UK as it
originally was, that really are not a shining example of editing
magic. Finally, the oft-sexy flashbacks are done with like a soft
focus that make them just straight up look like the really cheesy
brand of softcore movie you’d see on Cinemax late at night back in
the day. That’s about it.
Scorpio himself, Andrew Robinson, is so clearly more comfortable on camera than anybody else just playing a genuinely nice everyman dope that you don’t even question why Frank suddenly takes on his brother’s voice when he wears his skin because it is a welcome change to see Robinson go full psycho bad guy mode as he’s obviously a lot better of an actor than Chapman. Ashley Laurence might be one of the all time best scream queens of her era, which is truly saying a lot, because she is totally believable as just a normal young adult trying to navigate independence and she sells every scream and cry with true trauma, she genuinely reacts as if the world is just fall apart around her but never loses her cleverness or badassitude that surpasses that of most Final Girls. Doug Bradley is just absolutely perfect as Pinhead, he gives off such a weirdly calm, measured sense of otherworldly terror that it makes perfect sense that he would become what the entire franchise revolved around for a long, long time. I also really like Grace Kirby as the female Cenobite, she almost gives off as much authority as Bradley and nearly as much menace though she has less lines.
This film is wonderfully directed and shot, hard to believe that Clive Barker only had some short films and a long theatrical directing run in his career before making this. While having Robin Vidgeon as cinematographer certainly helped matters, a protege of legendary Indiana Jones cinematographer Douglas Slocombe who had worked under Slocombe as an assistant cameraman on most of his films of the 70s and 80s, few first-time directors have such a natural eye as Barker. Framing, lighting, fluid movements, action blocking, the film is just extremely good looking aside from the earlier criticism for something made on less than million dollar budget and by somebody with such little experience in film. Speaking of budget, I have to believe a big percentage of it went straight into effects and makeup, which are some of the most detailed, gory, horrifying, thrilling of its era that has aged wonderfully well into the digital age. Every stage of Frank’s death and rebirth is just awesome, from chunks of flesh suspended by chains to really solid puppetry to various levels of rebuilding a muscle structure in pure gory fashion, just shocking for an era where most slashers were moving more and more away from gore. Each Cenobite is grotesque and incredible, each one became instant horror icons from their first moments on screen, mysterious and dangerous and implicitly much more queer than you typically got in the Reagan era. The surrealistic set design would go even further in the next film (spoiler for a future review coming soon), but it is perfect for what this film needs when the two worlds are bridged.
Finally, it is just a well written film too, the plot is pretty simple but it is told with such efficiency of delivering necessary information in a natural yet artistic way that it is an obvious advantage being made by a man who had spent much of his career writing short horror fiction. Niche sexuality and the conflation of sexuality with danger and death are sewn deeply into the core of the film in a way that was totally exciting and fresh in the conservative media of the 80s, and the logical extension S&M leather culture into pain worshiping demons is about the queerest things you were getting in mainstream film at that point in time.
I’m really glad that I eventually found Hellraiser no matter how I came to it, because the whole franchise has meant a lot to me as an adult and this first film is one of those I watch every year or two to just bask in how genuinely great it is. I give a lot positive reviews to films that objectively might not considered good but have their charm, this is a rare B-movie that is full of A-movie skill behind it, and there is nothing qualified about my recommendation.
Comments
Post a Comment