“we have such sights to show you.”
the hellbound heart (novella 1986)
by clive barker
“don’t try to fight. it’s quite beyond your control. you have to accompany me.”
i saw hellraiser long before i read this novella it was based on, so the main thing that jumped out at me was just how surprisingly close this was to the movie. like, if i didn’t know better i would’ve believed the hellbound heart was a novelization (novellaization?) of hellraiser rather than hellraiser being a film adaptation of the hellbound heart.
adding to that impression is that i actually really would’ve appreciated a bit more detail about the various tortures the cenobites subjected their victims to rather than it being quite so left to the reader’s imagination? i actually find myself almost wondering if barker didn’t write this with a film adaptation already in mind? though, tbf, the movie is also a bit lean on characterization for the cenobites.
idk i’m probably wrong but i just feel like it left a lot on the table. and i can’t say it was really the most riveting read all that aside? idk there might just be something that’s not clicking for me, i’ve wanted to read more clive barker for a while knowing how well regarded he is in the realm of erotic horror, but i just didn’t get nearly as much out of this as i was expecting to. c-rank
hellraiser (movie 1987)
“demons to some. angels to others.”
yeah i think this is the third time i’ve seen this? maybe the second? something like that. my impression hasn’t changed all that much from my first viewing.
it’s just kind of… fine? like, i like the second one way better, and finding that i’m still lukewarm on the original didn’t dampen my enthusiasm to check out the famously-bad sequels, but the first one is just kinda… there?
like, don’t get me wrong. it’s a perfectly adequate horror movie, just. y’know… i had been looking forward to it for years given that everyone says it’s the sado-masochistic horror film. frankly my standards for something that’s going to be called that include someone as subby & slutty as me getting a whole lot more hot & bothered.
of course my scene usually involves way fewer flesh hooks and less viscera so ymmv i guess?
the biggest reason i remained enthusisatic for the franchise as a whole despite having my lukewarm opinion of the first film validated by this rewatch is because the one thing i really, truly like about the first movie is the cenobites. i especially love the overall look and forceful personality of pinhead. the other cenobites were pretty creative & gross, i especially loved the one that just shoved his giant fingers in kirsty’s mouth and then casually started choking her. but it’s easy to understand why pinhead is the mutilated face of this franchise. he’s just iconic.
as far as actual plot-related stuff, i think the only part that really did anything for me was the awkwardness of julia bringing home a procession of lonely, pathetic guys to murder so her boyfriend could grow his skin back. i experienced so much secondhand embarrassment i found myself thinking, “oh my gods, just murder him already.”
i also enjoyed a lot of what happened in between the actual plot of the movie. like andrew “motherfucking elim garak” robinson’s ridiculously over-the-top 80s businessman personality. and yeah, okay, the scene where the cenobites confront kirsty in her hospital room was pretty incredible. pretty easily the best scene in the movie, unsurprisingly.
the movie rather famously didn’t change a lot from the novella, but the things it did actually change were rather interesting. in the movie kirsten is larry’s daughter (and julia’s stepdaughter) rather than rory’s (oh yeah larry was named rory in the novella) lovestruck friend who’s jealous of julia. it requires a lot less setup than a love triangle, and the basic shape of the character dynamic (closeness with larry/rory, distance with julia) and how it operates in the plot doesn’t change all that much. like, it’s weird, but i guess it kind of makes sense?
the other biggest change i noticed was that instead of frank searching all over the world for the puzzle box and eventually buying it in germany, he instead buys it from a racist “convenient mysterious asian salesman” stock character. not really sure why we decided to do that, but obviously i’m gonna put that one in the loss column.
like with the novella, i would’ve loved a bit more development for the cenobites. or at least more screentime and more of them getting to like… do stuff? i get that the movie wanted them to be a sort of mysterious demonic force, but they’re the best thing about the movie and they’re barely in it. get used to me whining about this, btw. it’s going to be a recurring problem for the franchise.
still, i didn’t hate this and i understand why a lot of people like it a lot better than i do. and, again, it didn’t dampen my enthusiasm to keep going down this horror cinema rabbit hole. c-rank
hellbound: hellraiser ii (movie 1988)
“so eager to play, so reluctant to admit it.”
look the first half or so of this movie before the cenobites show up is kind of super bad but holy shit is this way more eventful than the first movie, and the cenobites’ hell is just so damn creative i really loved it.
kirsty went from being alright to being just one of the absolute best godsdamned horror heroines ever by just straight up wearing her murdered stepmom’s skin to trick a hell-demon and then bursting out absolutely covered in her blood. just damn, girl.
said stepmother also went from a secondary antagonist who went out like a bitch to just being a towering villain who holds the fates of men in the palm of her hand and i’m here for it.
be aware there’s some pretty damn genuinely disturbing stuff in this and no i’m not talking about the obvious body horror i’m talking about like institutional abuse and attempted rape and that kind of shit. but like, don’t get me wrong the body horror is a lot… “better”? (and also therefore “worse” in the sense that it’s more genuinely disturbing) than it was in the first one.
idk though i was able to be pretty detached from all the uncomfy stuff and just enjoy this much less restrained (though speaking of restraint i do hope these movies get bondagier), much bigger adventure into the cenobites’ hell. also i loved that one of the victims was clearly into being bound & threatened until she realized she was actually gonna be murdered, and how that asshole doctor villain guy actually ended up being into all the shit that got inflicted on him, and just idk this movie is so much kinkier than the first one.
like, it could go further and i would have liked it to have, but still basically every aspect of this movie is an improvement over its predecessor. this isn’t perfect for a ton of reasons but it is way more what i want out of this kind of movie. b-rank
clive barker’s hellraiser (comic 1989-92)
writers & artists: various
“all pain is possible.”
i’m gonna level with you guys, after the first few stories i started skimming these unless a story looked good while i was skimming it and then i’d go back & read more carefully. there were only a few stories i had to do this with, and those were excellent, but the vast majority of these just aren’t that great. so basically i’d skim them and stop when i got to some hot bondage/torture stuff happening and then go back to skimming once that was over.
and like. there is some very hot bondage/torture stuff in this, like wow. some of it is exactly what i was looking for in the first two movies and just never quite got. it’s a whole lot more upfront bdsmy. i really hope the later movies are more like that.
also be warned, there are some fucked up politics in these comics. like that’s not the most surprising thing ever, but it still feels worth mentioning.
but yeah, like i said, hot/extremely fucked up bondage stuff. you know, just the thing i’ve been looking for out of this franchise all along. so. that’s nice. c-rank
clive barker’s book of the damned: a hellraiser companion (comic 1991-93)
writers: lana wachowski & various
artists: various
“many arrive in hell to find, as i did in my tenure, that they only qualify as fodder for leviathan’s pleasure.”
yeah so these are four books by lana fucking wachowski (and others, but she’s credited on three of the four and has the sole writing credit on two of them) so yeah shockingly i was pretty into them?
i was a bit caught off guard by the format of these because i had seen them listed as comics, which i guess makes sense since they were published by epic comics, but yeah they’re not really comics? they’re more like… illustrated epistolary narratives? like, they’re all designed to look like journals or other framing documents with attached art/photos/documents/book excerpts/etc.
on the whole i liked this weird 4-issue mixed media project a lot better than the 20 issues of epic’s mainline comic. the first issue of this is probably the best of the four, and i liked the first two a lot better than the second two, but they were all well-written and expanded the world in fulfilling ways while also delivering on a lot of what drew me to the franchise in the first place better than the two movies that predated this project.
i guess the lesson here is that you should hire closeted trans women to write your kinky body horror stuff or something idk. b-rank
hellraiser iii: hell on earth (movie 1992)
“i will enjoy making you bleed. and i will enjoy making you enjoy it.”
okay now this one fucking rules.
like, on the one hand i kind of don’t love the big picture “pinhead is causing bloody mayhem on earth” setup as much as the previous movie actually taking us into the cenobites’ realm, that just seems more inherently interesting to me. on the other hand, he kicks all of the ass in the process and this is pretty easily the best movie of the franchise’s theatrical run.
also, [gordon ramsay meme] delicious. finally some good fucking bondage. like, i’m sorry, i know i’m pretty fixated on this, but this is meant to be THE sadomasochistic horror franchise! it stands to reason that there ought to be some fucking bondage in it, right? am i wrong? i don’t think i am!
anyway, the kickass bondage comes both in terms of humans just having some casual kinky sex and also in pinhead restraining an unwilling victim in some non-bloody bondage. finally! it was worth the wait, too! the protagonist’s hands are bound above her head with chains, leather straps are slapped around her body, and a rather restrictive (and very aesthetically appealing) leather harness gag completes the ensemble. and pinhead taunts his former human self, “you’ll like her better this way. trust me,” and, “why resist? you love this as much as i. [...] there is a world out there waiting to yield to us. so much flesh. so many different pleasures.” just. gods fucking dammit! thank you for finally making one of these damn things actually kinky!
ahem. but yeah, i was thinking this was trending towards being my favorite hellraiser movie even before it got to the aggressively pandering bondage scene. i love kirsty (especially in the second movie), but terry farrell is one of my favorite actors of all time and i really like her character in this. also i know i’m supposed to hate him and that he’s a rich scumbag, but i had a kind of embarrassing crush on j.p. i wish he had turned out to a sexier cenobite later on in the movie, but oh well.
also also the scene of pinhead defiling the church by forcing a sacrilegious mockery of the rite of eucharist on the priest had me cackling with glee. just call me already, pinhead. i want you to absolutely wreck me & make me like it. a-rank
clive barker’s pinhead (comic 1993-94)
writer: d.g. chichester
artist: dario corrasco
“your flesh is so warm and ripe, girl… you tempt my loins. but you’ve been promised to my teeth!”
yeah, this comic is pretty bad, but at least it’s riddled with transphobia & racism & contempt for sex workers! … oh, wait, those are also bad, actually. huh.
okay in all seriousness the one redeeming feature here is that parts of this are super horny. like, again, that’s an aspect that’s surprisingly lacking in some iterations of this franchise, so it’s always nice when it shows up pretty unambiguously.
also, like, the overall concept of pinhead traveling backwards through time and experiencing himself in different contexts is pretty cool, though i don’t think it was necessarily executed great here? but yeah, this wasn’t the worst hellraiser comic i’ve read. c-rank
hellraiser iv: bloodline (movie 1996)
“do i look like someone who cares what god thinks?”
at the beginning of this movie i asked out loud, “... is this going to be hellraiser in space?” and i was here for it, but that turned out to be a framing narrative for a few meandering historical flashbacks. sad!
what’s funny is apparently the movie was actually originally gonna be all the historical flashbacks and the “hellraiser in space!” framing narrative was hastily added on? and the original director objected so thoroughly that he ended up alan smitheeing it & a new director was brought in to finish the project.
and, like. it’s stupid, but i do love the space bullshit. i unironically love the twist that the entire space station is a puzzle box. i literally cackled with glee at that. but i just found myself bored to tears (a waste of good suffering!) with the flashbacks.
like, literally the only redeeming quality in the historical flashbacks is that they actually had some honest to goodness bdsm shit going on? so that was nice, at least. also some of the interactions & (especially) clashes between pinhead & angelique were pretty rad. but yeah, idk. on the whole this was really not great, and it’s not surprising that it was the death knell for the franchise’s theatrical release days. c-rank
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