Hellraiser

Starring: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Sean Chapman, Oliver Smith
Directed by: Clive Barker
Rating: R
Genre: Horror
1987

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: An unfaithful wife (Clare Higgins) helps her undead lover (Sean Chapman) after he escapes from a torturous hell.

Review:

Tim: I want to start out by saying that I hated Hellraiser. I hated it not because it's a bad movie, but because it is one of the most vile, disgusting, hauntingly chilling movies I have ever seen. I felt sick the entire time I watched this movie. In all the movies I've watched, I have seen some nasty things. I would put the events of this film right up there. Watching this movie made me feel like my soul got dirty, and I'm not sure I will ever be able to get it clean. Some of the images I saw will likely stay with me forever.

And, this is why I struggle so much with this film. Clive Barker created something dark beyond belief, a film that truly terrorizes the viewers. This is an achievement, and I have to give Barker a lot of credit for shaking me so badly with the awfulness in this film. I admit he's created something impressively gross here. However, I hated watching this movie almost from the very beginning. It just wasn't fun for me. It made me cringe, and it made me feel slightly sick. That's impressive, but it made this a movie I never, ever want to watch again. That's not exactly great.

I can't even begin to describe the shockingly terrible events depicted in this film. Clive Barker is a sick, sick man. Let's start with the Cenobites. This is just bizarre to me, and I can't say I fully understand it. The Cenobites are these demon/angel things that run a sado-masochistic hell where people are tortured forever? Is that right? And people can access it through this weird little cube device. That is frightening by itself- the Cenobites are just grotesque, nightmarish creatures. Pinhead emerges as the leader of this group and is likely the most memorable Cenobite (although the others are awful and unforgettable, too). This part of the film is just so bizarre and hard to fathom.

What blew my mind is that in this film, the Cenobites are almost secondary, which is not what I expected. The main storyline is incredibly gruesome by itself. One of the inhabitants of this weird hell-thing manages to escape (why, I still don't fully understand). He comes back, but is basically this blood and bones thing. The effects here are astonishing, because it's just so disgusting- he looks like this bone, blood, pus creature that just turns my stomach. In order to regenerate, he needs blood. The majority of the film features his lover luring men into this dirty attic, killing them, and having this thing suck up all the blood. I wasn't expecting this to be the main focus of the story.

So, I've been talking about how hard this movie is to watch. It truly is, and I did not enjoy that aspect. However, that's not enough to make me decrease a film's score just because I was disgusted by it. Unfortunately, this film suffers from a huge amount of flaws. The biggest is that the people we spend the most time with are completely unlikable, awful human beings. We follow this dysfunctional little family. There's the father, who is completely clueless. We don't exactly like him. His second wife is a ruthless, awful human being, who I hated more than any character I've seen in a long, long time. She is trying to bring back her lover, who I hated as well. The father has a daughter from a previous marriage, and she's boring beyond belief. There is just no one in this entire film that we actually care about. That's a huge problem.

Even worse, people say and do incredibly stupid things. This is a hallmark of 80's horror films, but it was particularly noticeable in Hellraiser. There were several moments when I cringed and audibly groaned, because what I was witnessing was so unbelievably idiotic. I just hate when characters in a film act in a completely illogical manner. It just gets on my nerves. Here's just one example- towards the end, the daughter has a chance to escape from her uncle, to run down the stairs and outside. And instead, she just stands at the top of the stairs, doing nothing until the uncle shows up. You can claim she was in shock, but it just doesn't fly. She stupidly stood there, waiting to be captured. No one would do that.

I have to admit that Hellraiser is just not my kind of film. It disgusted me, and it was really difficult for me to sit through. I have give the film credit for not going the typical horror movie route. The whole idea of Cenobites and where they come from, what they do- that's insanely different from most slasher horror films of the 80s. I appreciate how different this film was. I also give the movie great credit for making me squirm so much in my seat. It takes a lot to gross me out, but this film accomplished that in spades. The actual story and especially the characters, however, were incredibly weak. For that reason, I have to admit this is a decent film, but it's not particularly strong. I'd rate the viewing experience as significantly lower, but that's only because I never want to see this movie again (because it's nasty, not because it's terrible). If you can handle it, it's worth seeing.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 6.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Hellbound: Hellraiser II