Long before Hellraiser director Clive Barker picked up a camera, he established himself as a writer of surrealistic and erotic horror. The Brit’s short story series Books of Blood, published in six volumes between 1984 and 1985, earned him admiration among fans and peers alike. Even Stephen King gave Barker the highest praises, writing in his blurb for Books of Blood, “I have seen the future of horror, and his name is Clive Barker.” The success of his anthology turned Barker into a rising star. He quickly followed suit with The Damnation Game and The Hellbound Heart (the source material for Hellraiser) while producing his first screenplays.
Barker’s expressionistic and evocative early prose style seemed made for movies, but his ideas landed in the wrong hands. The first two films Barker penned screenplays for, based on his original story ideas, bombed. 1985’s Underworld centers around bioengineered mutant humanoids who live beneath London, while 1986’s Rawhead Rex follows a pagan god’s rampage across rural Ireland. George Pavlou, who Barker met at a dinner party in London, directed both films. Critics were not impressed by the low production values, but no one was as disappointed as Barker – who found Pavlou’s visual effects lacking and one-dimensional.
When Barker decided he wanted to make a movie based on The Hellbound Heart, about a mystical puzzle box with connections to an extradimensional realm, he was wary about letting another director tamper with his gory, transgressive vision. This gave Barker an idea: why not write the screenplay and direct the film himself? With what he described to The Guardian as “two cinematic abominations” under his belt, Barker thought, “How much worse could I be?” Barker’s decision to see what would become Hellraiser through to the end of its production resulted in one of the most influential horror films of the 1980s.
Clive Barker did what anyone in search of knowledge does: he went to a library to check out books about directing movies, but the only title available was on loan to someone else. Still, he forged ahead, landing a deal with cult director Roger Corman’s production company New World to make the film for $900,000. Barker wrote and directed a short film called Salome in 1973, but he had no experience helming feature-length films. Barker told The Guardian that producer Christopher Figgs provided him with the secret formula to make a scary movie on a small budget: “You just need a house, some monsters, and pretty much unknown actors.”
Barker secured all three, casting his college friend and former theatre pal Doug Bradley as Pinhead, the film’s most iconic Cenobite. Cenobites are interdimensional beings summoned by humans who want to explore the prurient, carnal underworld occupied by the creatures; humans establish contact with this world via the Lament Configuration puzzle box. With the help of special effects guru Bob Keen, Barker developed a unique filmmaking style for Hellraiser – a style that relies on visual shocks, intense body horror sequences, and sadomasochistic desire. The Cenobites don black leather bodysuits, chrome chains, and possess varying levels of body modification caused by ritualistic torture. Former humans themselves, the Cenobites are tasked with making their latest subject’s darkest fantasies come true.
New World insisted upon changing the movie’s location from England to America, but Barker was able to preserve the film’s most important theme: forbidden desire. Hellraiser‘s fantastical, dreamlike effects are gruesome genre feats considering Barker’s limited funds. Censors didn’t know what to make of the movie and gave it an X rating. Barker cut back on some of the violence and took “some spanking out of the flashback scenes” in order to get the R he needed for wider distribution. Released on September 18, 1987, in the United States, Hellraiser divided critics but earned over $14 million in theatres.
Now, Hellraiser is considered a genre classic whose macabre philosophical implications, graphic imagery, and focus on sexual taboos make it the center of much discussion among cinephiles. Also considered an important LGBTQ+ horror film, Hellraiser does away with many genre conventions. While most horror films maintain a dichotomy between good and evil with their clear villains and heroes, Hellraiser‘s humans and Cenobites exist outside this formula. The Cenobites are portrayed as “angels to some, demons to others,” figures who remain morally ambiguous about what transpires around them. Their job is to guide those who call upon them through a nether region where there is no distinction between pain and pleasure. Barker drew inspiration from his experiences as a gay man and sex worker in the 1970s as he conceived of this singular world.
These nuanced Cenobite characterizations remain a central tenet of 1988’s Hellbound: Hellraiser II, whose screenplay was co-written by Barker. Unfortunately, the rest of the Hellraiser franchise lacks Barker’s input, and the subsequent eight films recast the Cenobites as purely evil entities. This choice strips the overarching story of its queer, subversive themes. Barker went on to direct 1990’s Nightbreed and 1995’s Lord of Illusion, but neither film managed to achieve Hellraiser‘s celebrated status. The same is true for the Hellraiser sequels after Hellbound: none of them manage to come close to Barker’s initial concept.
Clive Barker is currently set to executive produce the forthcoming Hellraiser revival for HBO.
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