Shudders of Pleasure: The story of Hellraiser | Little White Lies

Long Read

Shud­ders of Plea­sure: The sto­ry of Hellraiser

11 Oct 2017

Words by Nick Pinkerton

Colourful abstract portrait with geometric patterns and lines, bright orange and blue tones.
Colourful abstract portrait with geometric patterns and lines, bright orange and blue tones.
We pay homage to direc­tor Clive Barker’s majes­tic sub­ur­ban gore aria from 1987.

A pro­mo­tion­al pho­to from around the time of Hellraiser’s release – its been over 30 years now since its ear­ly screen­ings at Cannes – shows direc­tor Clive Bark­er pos­ing with his Panav­i­sion cam­era. He is a youth­ful thir­tysome­thing, dim­ple chinned, sober of expres­sion, and on the top of his right arm, which is draped over the camera’s focus ring, there is a gigan­tic snail. It’s a sil­ly bit of spooky’ busi­ness to dis­tin­guish the hor­ror author du jour, but not alto­geth­er inap­pro­pri­ate – the movie that Bark­er was mak­ing would leave quite a slime trail behind it. Hell­rais­er has a par­tic­u­lar tex­ture; it’s grot­ty and soiled and a lit­tle abra­sive, like syn­thet­ic stuc­co or pebbledash.

It’s one of those movies that you can instant­ly recog­nise from a sin­gle frame. Years back I caught a flash of some non­de­script scene on a tele­vi­sion at a heavy met­al bar and I knew what it was right away, despite then not hav­ing seen the movie since ado­les­cence – part of this, I think, has to do with that tex­ture, part of it with the fact that Hell­rais­er is prob­a­bly the movie you’re most like­ly to encounter play­ing on a TV in a heavy met­al bar.

It is dif­fi­cult to describe to any­one under the age of 25 the lev­el of celebri­ty achieved by a small cache of hor­ror writ­ers in the 1980s. Bark­er was a house­hold name, as was, for the grade school crowd, RL Stine, and of course both of them lived in the shad­ow of Stephen King, who nev­er real­ly went away. Before Bark­er signed on for Hell­rais­er, King had shown the way to expand­ing a fran­chise to mul­ti­plat­inum deliv­ery, not only licens­ing his nov­els for film adap­ta­tion faster than he could write them, but some­times par­tic­i­pat­ing in the films them­selves. King gives a grotesque, mug­ging per­for­mance as a gorm­less back­woods­man in 1982’s Creepshow, and han­dled direct­ing duties him­self, after a fash­ion, on 1986’s Max­i­mum Overdrive.

Around the same time Bark­er was also mak­ing his way into fea­tures – he wrote the screen­plays to 1985’s Under­world and 1986’s Raw­head Rex, both direct­ed by George Pavlou. But his ambi­tions as a cineaste went back fur­ther than King’s. Born in Liv­er­pool and raised near Pen­ny Lane, Bark­er stayed in the city for uni­ver­si­ty. He was by then pur­su­ing an inter­est in the­atre, par­tic­u­lar­ly that of the trans­gres­sive vari­ety, which would pick up the lega­cy of Paris’ Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol.

He would become a cen­tral play­er in a group of cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tors which includ­ed his pal from Quar­ry Bank High School, Doug Bradley, who would even­tu­al­ly star as Hellraiser’s dead-eyed break­out crea­ture star, billed as Lead Ceno­bite” in the cred­its but lat­er affec­tion­ate­ly nick­named Pin­head. Barker’s troupe went through sev­er­al incar­na­tions, always with him at the core: The Hydra The­atre Com­pa­ny became the The­atre of the Imag­i­na­tion which in turn became the Mute Pan­tomime The­atre (Bradley recalls a pro­duc­tion called A Clowns’ Sodom’), and then final­ly, after Bark­er and Bradley had moved down to Lon­don, The Dog Company.

A masked, black-clad figure stands in a dark, rainy environment, holding a weapon.

Con­cur­rent with his work in fringe” the­atre, Bark­er was also try­ing his hand as a film­mak­er, pro­duc­ing two non-synch sound shorts, Salome and The For­bid­den, the lat­ter of which intro­duced the image of a bed of nails pound­ed into a grid­work pat­tern. Nei­ther Barker’s film exper­i­ments nor his the­atre efforts nor his piece­meal work as an illus­tra­tor – he con­tributed one of the vari­a­tions on John Entwistle’s mug to the cov­er of The Who’s Face Dances’ – made him much of a liv­ing. But when the first of his Books of Blood’ short sto­ry col­lec­tions was a pub­lish­ing phe­nom­e­non, he soon turned his hand to crank­ing out novels.

His sec­ond effort in that line, The Hell­bound Heart’, pub­lished at a slim 186 pages by Dark Har­vest in 1986, con­cerns an amoral sybarite torn to shreds by inter­di­men­sion­al Ceno­bite demons after using a mys­ti­cal puz­zle box to access a plane of what is pur­port­ed to be over­whelm­ing sen­so­ry grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The Hell­bound Heart’ would form the basis of Hell­rais­er – though per­haps basis” isn’t quite the word, as the time­line sug­gests that the book was very much writ­ten with the idea of a movie in mind.

Part of Barker’s stat­ed motive for going back into movies was to pre­vent low-qual­i­ty adap­ta­tions of his writ­ing being made – he was vocal­ly crit­i­cal, for exam­ple, of Raw­head Rex. By 1986, Barker’s name was enough to com­mand him a bud­get of just under $1 mil­lion from a post-Roger Cor­man New World Pic­tures as a first-time fea­ture direc­tor shoot­ing a movie absent of real stars. The near­est thing to one is Andrew Robin­son, a Don Siegel favourite who appeared in Char­lie Var­rick and as the ser­i­al killer Scor­pio” in Dirty Harry.

Here he switch­es from nas­ties to play the ulti­mate fall guy cuck­old, Lar­ry, the clue­less broth­er of the above­men­tioned plea­sure-seek­er, Frank (Sean Chap­man). The cir­cum­stances of Frank’s dis­ap­pear­ance are unknown to all but the view­er – we’ve seen him being juli­enned by the Ceno­bites in the film’s pro­logue. Lar­ry moves back into the fam­i­ly abode in the com­pa­ny of his wife, Julia (Claire Hig­gins), a haughty ice queen whose pre­ferred pas­time is remem­ber­ing the time that she allowed Frank to rav­age her. As such, she’s over­joyed (and under­stand­ably a lit­tle tak­en aback) when a few drops of blood from a mov­ing day acci­dent bring Frank back to life – of a sort.

The res­ur­rect­ed Frank, far from the sex­u­al ath­lete of mem­o­ry, is a pus- smeared hunk of mas­ti­cat­ed gris­tle, sequestered in the house’s dingy attic. He will, he explains, need real blood sac­ri­fices in order to ful­ly recon­sti­tute him­self. Julia mulls over this moral quandary for all of a minute, but her burn­ing loins car­ry the day, and soon she’s an old pro at lur­ing podgy busi­ness­men home from yup­pie boîtes and lead­ing them upstairs to smash their skulls in with a claw ham­mer. Accord­ing to Bark­er, one of the ladies on the set sug­gest­ed the lm should be titled, What a Woman Will do for a Good Fuck.”

If there is a metaphor in all of this for, say, Britain under Thatch­er, I fail to track it. In point of fact it’s nev­er actu­al­ly clear as to where Hell­rais­er is tak­ing place – Lar­ry makes ref­er­ence to bring­ing his wife back to her home turf and Cot­ton speaks with an Eng­lish accent, but scarce­ly any­one else in the movie does, and the Lon­don-born Chap­man was dubbed in post pro­duc­tion at the behest of the film’s back­ers. (In fact the exte­ri­ors for the house where most of the movie takes place were shot at 187 Dol­lis Hill Lane in north­west Lon­don; the inte­ri­ors were done in Cricklewood.)

The dimen­sion of social com­men­tary, which eulo­gies to the late George A Romero are cur­rent­ly prais­ing his movies for while entire­ly ignor­ing what real­ly dis­tin­guished him as a film­mak­er, is here almost entire­ly lack­ing, and the plot is at a min­i­mum. Sus­pense is nom­i­nal­ly sup­plied by Larry’s imper­il­ment, and then by the threat posed to Larry’s daugh­ter from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage, Kirsty (Ash­ley Lau­rence), who absconds with the puz­zle box from Frank and tries to bar­gain with the Ceno­bites, promis­ing to o er up her cor­rupt­ed uncle, who has escaped their wrath, in exchange for her life.

The Cenobites are a quartet of ghastlies in shiny black leatherette who skip from dimension to dimension practising fatal S&M.

In absence of these qual­i­ties, Hell­rais­er focus­es on devis­ing images designed to induce a com­bi­na­tion of won­der­ment and sheer, vis­cer­al dis­gust, from the var­i­ous flayed Franks to the sim­ple but effec­tive scene of the meat of a human hand being ripped open by a rusty nail. Bark­er is an out­spo­ken admir­er of the Ital­ian gore direc­tor Lucio Ful­ci, and in such moments, it shows. Hor­ror is, like sci­ence fic­tion, a genre where the make-up effects per­son can be a mat­inée star, and Hell­rais­er ele­vat­ed Bob Keen to some­thing close to Tom Savi­ni-lev­el celebri­ty among the Fan­go­ria’ set.

It was Keen who helped cre­ate the dif­fer­ent skinned Franks – played by actor Oliv­er Smith, cho­sen because he was enough of a weedy ecto­morph to still appear stripped down beneath built-up lay­ers of heavy make­up. The raw, gore-damp Frank recalls cer­tain Flo­ren­tine med­ical illus­tra­tions or Hon­oré Fragonard’s 18th cen­tu­ry écorchés’, pre­pared cadav­ers stripped of skin still on dis­play at the muse­um that bears his name in Paris. The image of the skinned man is one that Bark­er had vis­it­ed before in both The For­bid­den and his 1981 play Franken­stein in Love’, billed, as Hell­rais­er might have been, A Grand Guig­nol Romance.”

Frank’s rebirth from beneath the attic oor­boards is a sick­en­ing, state­ly set-piece, quite on a par with any­thing in David Cronenberg’s The Fly or John Carpenter’s The Thing, movies which pushed ana­log visu­al effects to the lim­its of their vis­cous pos­si­bil­i­ties. Bark­er and Keen’s oth­er indeli­ble cre­ations were, of course, the Ceno­bites them­selves, a quar­tet of ghastlies in shiny black leatherette who skip from dimen­sion to dimen­sion prac­tis­ing fatal S&M. They are led by Bradley, who had first played a some­what sim­i­lar judge, jury and exe­cu­tion­er char­ac­ter called The Dutch­man in Barker’s 1973 play Hunters in the Snow.

A middle-aged woman with wild hair and a shocked expression stands in a dark, grungy room, with a sinister-looking figure in the background.

Some of Barker’s ideas didn’t come to fruition. He toned down Julia’s thirsty flash­back, which plays slight­ly camp as is, from a freaki­er orig­i­nal, doing due dili­gence for the cen­sors, who appar­ent­ly saw noth­ing over­ly alarm­ing about the film’s cat­a­logue of meth­ods for shred­ding and pul­veris­ing the human form. He’d want­ed an orig­i­nal sound­track from Coil, the elec­tron­ic duo com­prised of John Bal­ance and for­mer Throb­bing Gris­tle mem­ber Peter Christo­pher­son, a far from radio-friend­ly cou­ple who’d released an album called Scat­ol­ogy’ and traf­ficked in imagery rich with sex­u­al deviance and body hor­ror. (Hellraiser’s dis­course with the visu­als com­ing out of con­tem­po­rary indus­tri­al music can­not be overstated.)

Instead he got Christo­pher Young, whose cred­its includ­ed Tobe Hooper’s Invaders from Mars and A Night­mare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge – and in fact Young more than acquit­ted him­self with his more tra­di­tion­al orches­tral score, includ­ing the dark­ly roil­ing theme.

Despite these imposed com­pro­mis­es, includ­ing the dis­ori­ent­ing non-spe­cif­ic city of the film’s set­ting – who could pos­si­bly think it was a lia­bil­i­ty to set a haunt­ed house movie in Eng­land? – Hell­rais­er was a mas­sive hit, mak­ing the stuff of hard­core kink sub­cul­ture into a sub­ur­ban Hal­loween cos­tume. Bark­er, dis­cussing his orig­i­nal con­cep­tion of Pin­head, has men­tioned the influ­ence of Catholi­cism – Pinhead’s get-up sug­gests a com­bi­na­tion of butcher’s smock and cas­sock; the nails dri­ven into his face at even inter­vals, some strange rit­u­al of pen­i­tence; and his bear­ing is that of an undead Torquemada.

Also influ­en­tial was Barker’s predilec­tion for BDSM – as a young man he con­tributed an illus­tra­tion to the peri­od­i­cal S&M’, the pub­li­ca­tion of which led to charges of obscen­i­ty against the mag­a­zine, and the author, who is open­ly gay, has been known to drop ref­er­ences to leather and mus­cle bars like Los Ange­les’ Fault­line into inter­views. (Remem­ber­ing the leather club scene in fel­low Liv­er­pudlian Ter­ence Davies’ 1980 Madon­na and Child, one won­ders if the two ever crossed paths…)

Sado­masochis­tic sub­text in hor­ror cin­e­ma is noth­ing new – you can trace a lin­eage through Edgar G Ulmer’s The Black Cat, Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body and Hitchcock’s Fren­zy, right up to the present day. It’s this con­nec­tion which caused the per­spi­ca­cious Park­er Tyler, in his 1947 vol­ume The Mag­ic and Myth of the Movies’, to write, dis­cussing the crit­i­cal prej­u­dice against hor­ror films: It may be con­ven­tion­al to have con­tempt for those adults child­ish enough to shud­der with plea­sure at the sight of a love­ly, semi­nude woman help­less in the arms of an irre­spon­si­ble and repul­sive syn­thet­ic man. But the obscure process­es of sadism are cer­tain­ly not con­tem­po­rary news.” It was unusu­al, still, for a hor­ror film to draw so heav­i­ly on the actu­al appur­te­nances of kink cul­ture, as Hell­rais­er does: the sub­text has become text.

To hear Bark­er tell it, the pop­u­lar suc­cess of Hell­rais­er wasn’t so much a great leap for­ward but a con­tin­u­a­tion and con­fir­ma­tion of the work he’d been up to in the obscure trench­es of short films and the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions. Doing a low-bud­get movie in a house in Crick­le­wood is the equiv­a­lent of the eight-quid play,” he told inter­view­er Peter Atkins. I’d go fur­ther; low-bud­get moviemak­ing is fringe the­atre, except that you can actu­al­ly get the audi­ence num­bers I always want­ed us to get. It’s what fringe the­atre claims to be and so often isn’t – non-elit­ist, populist.”

And Hell­rais­er does put on quite a show for the pun­ters – while thin on plot, what it offers, like Barker’s Lord of Illu­sions in its bet­ter moments, is the solemn majesty of cer­e­mo­ny, a sense of awe at the awful pos­si­bil­i­ties of the body in restora­tion and unjoin­ing. Despite its moments of neo­phyte clunk­i­ness, Barker’s film con­veys a keen under­stand­ing of mag­ic and myth, and its shud­ders of plea­sure are undiminished.

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