(Originally posted at Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat by Sean T. Collins.)
The 13 Days of Halloween: Day 6
8. Hellraiser, dir. Clive Barker
Like Eyes Wide Shut, Hellraiser is a movie about the horrors of desire. Unlike Eyes Wide Shut, it is also a movie about the desire for horror.
Clive Barker, who adapted and directed the film from his novella The Hellbound Heart, made these dovetailing preoccupations explicit throughout the script. The titular hellraiser, an amoral, hedonistic wanderer known as Frank Cotton, talks of his search for "Heaven or Hell--I didn't care which." The creatures he finds at the end of that search, the Cenobites, offered him not some new level of orgiastic gratification, but endless, excruciating torture. In Frank's words, they gave him "an experience beyond limits--pleasure and pain, indivisible." The erudite leader of the Cenobites, the memorably mutilated demon known to his fans as Pinhead, describes himself and his order as "Explorers in the further regions of experience; demons to some, angels to others." If for some you are still not convinced of Barker's intentions, remember that the truth comes out in jest: Barker has often jokingly described this parade of murder, monstrousness, and dimemberment as "the story of what a woman will do for a good lay."
That woman is Julia Cotton, played to icy black-widow perfection by Clare Higgins. Married to a kind but ineffectual doof named Larry, Julia moves with her husband into the house he grew up in, abandoned since the death of his mother. There they find evidence of Larry's ne'er-do-well brother Frank, who appears to have disappeared abruptly, (they assume) one step ahead of the law. In reality, the house is the site where Frank solved the puzzle of The Box, the means by which particularly devoted and tireless hedonists may summon the Cenobites. It was in the house that Hell claimed Frank's life; and when a chance spilling of blood enables Frank to re-enter our world, it's in this house that more blood must be spilled to help him escape the clutches of his tormentors forever. His assistant in this endeavor is Julia, who the night before her wedding had a torrid bout of lovemaking with Frank and essentially promised to do anything he wanted if he'd stay with her. He, of course, split, but now that he's back, she intends to keep that promise. And that means killing.
Article comments
1 - Kels-O
Mr. Barker is a busy man, so much to do, in such a short time is life. needless to say, i have never been disappointed with any of Mr. Barker's peices. The man is my bloody hero, speaking in magnified tones what only flesh can whisper, true evils of the mind unleashed. Most people wouldnt write about such things, they couldnt. they cannot bare to admit, they feel exactly the same way as Frank. The lusts, it is in every human's soul, is it not? Mr. Barker clearly expresses the forbidden temptations of the flesh, truth. I owe him much. If it were not for the marvelous works of his Hellraiser films, i would never have met the love of my life. Who when we first met, Clive Barker was our only common ground, the only thing we knew each other favored. Together, my love and i have quite an impressive collection. Flesh is a trap...and magic will set us free. A shout out to Mr. Clive Barker; thank you for everything you didnt even know you had done for me. Locked in my head was my insanity, and desire for flesh to rip that was not my own. My hunger has been quenched, and lusts satisfied. For that, i have nothing to give, except for my thanks. Blessed be.