Hellraiser (1987) - Barker's legendary horror debut

♥♥♥♥

 

Amazingly designed and colorized, the nightmarish poster for Clive Barker's Hellraiser

Julia discovers that her recently deceased brother-in-law, who she secretly had an affair with, is actually not wholly dead but caught in a the grip of a sadomasochistic cult from hell, a predicament Julia can improve by killing.

 

Hellraiser is written and directed by debuting Clive Barker (Salome (1973, short)), adapting his own 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart.

It is a classic in the modern gore horror genre and in 1980s horror in particular. As an epic, supernatural gore fest that mixes hell, demons and sex it is a rare breed, and Hellraiser is genuinely scary. The special effects and Cenobite monsters are innovative; the story is simple and thrilling, and some of the actors are skillful: Andrew Robinson (Child's Play 3 (1991)) and Clare Higgins (Being Human (2009, TV-series)) as the randy mother Julia are worth high-lighting.

 

Watch a brief TV promo for the film here

Cost: 1 mil. $

Box office: In excess of 15.5 mil. $

= Mega-hit (returned more than 15.5 times its cost)

[Hellraiser premiered 13 May (Cannes Film Festival, out of competition) and runs 93 minutes. Shooting took place in London, England from September 1986 - ?. The location was changed from England to North America in post production, with overdubbing created to sell this. Several cuts were made to obtain an R rating, as the MPAA were first inclined towards an X rating. The film opened #3, behind fellow new releases Fatal Attraction and The Pick-up Artist, to a 4.4 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another weekend in the top 5 (#3) and grossed 14.5 mil. $. It made 763k £ in the UK, approximately 1 mil. $. Regrettably its box office in the rest of the world is unreported online. Roger Ebert gave the film a 0.5/4 star review, translating to 4 notches under this one; (Ebert simply did not understand the horror genre.) The film spun a franchise that spans 9 sequels so far, beginning with Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), all without Barker as director. Barker returned with Nightbreed (1990). Robinson returned in The Twilight Zone (1987, TV-series) and theatrically in The Verne Miller Story (1987); Higgins returned in The Fruit Machine (1988). Hellraiser is fresh at 73 % with a 6.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Hellraiser?