Hellraiser
by Clive Barker
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DVD details
Actor: Andrew Robinson, Ashley Laurence, Clare Higgins, Oliver Smith, Sean ChapmanDirector: Clive Barker
Brand: HIGGINS/LAURENCE
Cinematographer: Robin Vidgeon
Writer: Clive Barker
Producer: Christopher Figg
Producer: Christopher Webster
Producer: David Saunders
Producer: Mark Armstrong
Producer: Selwyn Roberts
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, THX, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-09-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
DVD Reviews of Hellraiser
DVD Review: Clive Barker's Hellbound Heart adeptation is fairly good
Summary: 3 Stars
After reading Clive Barker's novel The Hellbound Heart(Hellraiser's inspiring story)before watching Hellraiser I've noticed many discrepancies between the two, and id say the novel is better. However if you haven't read the book I believe you'll enjoy this movie(despite some weak acting). I don't want to summarize the movie but I will say it is twisted and disturbing even up to today's standards. The DVD set is fairly solid and the visuals have been improved. It contains one disc with the widescreen movie(93 minutes), 5 interviews(ea. about 15 mins), theatrical and TV trailers, Commentary, a slide show, and first and final screenplays. Overall its worth buying, but READ THE NOVEL AFTER WATCHING HELLRAISER.DVD Review: A Very Satisfying Horror Film
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the first film by Clive Barker, whom Stephen King called "the future of horror fiction." Hellraiser spawned a couple sequels, a couple more direct-to-video sequels, and a Freddy/Jason-like horror icon in the form of Pinhead. What we have here is not just a landmark horror film, but a pretty good one too.
A man buys a puzzle box and is seen messing with it in a basement (attic? Who cares). Moments later, he is ripped to shreds. Enter Larry and Julia who are moving into a house that has recently been vacated by Larry's brother Frank. What Larry doesn't know is that Julia had an affair with Frank and harbors a fanatical obsession with him. When Larry cuts his hand open and the blood drips through the floorboards, Frank is reawakened. Problem is, he looks like a rotting corpse...So; he enlists Julia to assist him in bringing victims to the house so he can eventually fully regenerate and escape before the mysterious cenobites get ahold of him.
Of course this synopsis plays down the role of both Larry's daughter Kirsty and the cenobites, but I don't want to give too much away.
Hellraiser was made in the 80s and like almost all 80s horror movies; some parts haven't aged very well. Furthermore, some of the acting is less-than-spectacular, particularly the two Franks. Frank, before he's ripped apart, is played by Sean Chapman. This guy's line delivery is hilarious (although, apparently dubbed). Frank in monster form is played by Oliver Smith. Smith looks 100% frightening, but once again...Some of his delivery is just a bit off. On the other hand however...There are several examples of poor dialogue throughout this movie.
The make-up effects however are exceptionally good, give or take a few scenes (i.e., Frank being ripped apart in the beginning). An example of some of the good makeup effects is a rather grotesque scene in which Frank is being reanimated by Larry's blood. There is something gag-inducing for you.
Then, there are the sadomasochistic cenobites. The cenobites are some of the creepier, unique creations of horror cinema. Doug Bradley as the Lead Cenobite (that's right ladies and gentlemen, he's not actually called Pinhead in this film) gives the best performance in the film. Yes, he is given the best dialogue but he's actually really quite good. The Pinhead make-up and latex look very real and Bradley makes the character genuinely menacing and creepy. Pinhead is a horror icon for a very good reason.
Hellraiser is not a great film by any stretch of the imagination (few horror films are), but it is a very satisfying horror movie. Even the sub-par acting isn't bad enough to take away from that. If you like your horror films bloody, depraved, grotesque, and unique...This is your horror film.
GRADE: B
DVD Review: You Opened The Box, So We Have Come...
Summary: 3 Stars
Why?
Well... Because the box has been opened.
So?
We have come to rip apart your soul.
Super....
Yes.
(long silence)
So what's the deal with the pins in your head?
I have never seen this film before and only finally decided to check it out because I have been annoyed by a friend constantly going on at me to watch it. I didn't really enjoy it and although there was a lot of good to say about this film, there's also a few negative things I have to say about it which I'll touch upon later. The film itself is a typical 80s slasher film with a lot of blood and a holy hell of a lot of guts. Based upon the Clive Barker novel "The Hell bound Earth" this film may have missed a lot of detail out of the film that was in the book, making it all the more confusing to me.
The thing is primarily based around the plight of 3 main characters. Julia & Larry move into an old family home of his and are looking to settle in when Julia finds a zombie version of Larry's half brother, Frank who she once had an intimate moment with and has not forgotten about him since their encounter. At the start of the movie we see Frank with a mysterious puzzle box in his hands and as he's managed to activate it which opens a door to hell, releasing the fury torturous wrath of the Sadomasochistic Cenobites. Hooks shoot from the box and pull Frank apart and we see "Pinhead", one of the Cenobites, sorting the mess and closing the box. In order for Frank to fully regain his humanity and spend his life with Julia, she must offer human sacrifices to him so he can gain the needed parts of the sacrifice in order for him to reconstruct himself.
I think I got the basics of the plot correct so I will now touch upon what I think worked and what I think did not. The overall tone of the film was extremely creepy, there's no denying that, and in fact I felt like this film should have featured the Cenobites as the main protagonists rather than it feel like Julia as the main focus. That is in fact one of the worst things about the film. Clare Higgins, the actress playing Julia just appeared wooden and it was actually a bit of work to believe her character. The scene at which she first encounters Zombie Frank is one that should have played out with strong emotion and genuine fear. However, I felt myself just finding the whole scene drab and pointless. It was because of the lack of acting ability I couldn't become engaged in the terror that should have been that first moment.
Apart from that, there is sincerely a lot of good about the film. The tone of the entire film is very dark and really puts across the idea that the events taking place are because of the direct association with Hell. The initial rebirth of Frank is something that will go down in movie history as one of the most haunting and amazingly orchestrated zombie births ever. Before the days of CGI, everything had to be done for real with the use of clever animation techniques as the creature rises from under the floorboards and out of the ooze.
I would recommend it, but only for those who really like the gore fests. It's not a film with a huge amount of depth and in fact finishes with a lot unexplained and I still don't really get the whole Pinhead posse thing, especially the Cenobite cameos by Jabba the Hutt's younger, slimmer brother and the monster from Resident Evil. Their particular appearances seemed to go unexplained and just came across as freaky looking for the sake of it. Pinhead was pretty cool and I can fully understand why so many people remember him as a figurehead of the 80s horror movie.
DVD Review: Hail to Clive Barker
Summary: 5 Stars
To bad that the magnificent Clive Barker doesn`t direct any movies any more, because only he could have made such a beautiful and disturbing insight into married life and the dysfunctional family and create as a side effect one of the most praised horror villains in history - the Cenobites. Sorry Clive, that you have vanished from the director`s chair and never to return, because you left us alone in our own hell - horror movies that are made only for profit, without any single creative or original idea in it.DVD Review: Hedonistic pleasure, lust, betrayal, and so on
Summary: 5 Stars
First, let me say, I don't even care for these kind of films much anymore; I have seen many horror films in my time, and just reached my saturation point. So many are simply bad, and in the day of everything being a retread of an old movie, I really don't bother much. And psychologically, I can't get into watching suffering, even if it's only protrayal. (just where I am these days)
That being said, something good is good, no matter what it is. "Hellraiser" is such a case, a story about hedonism; pursuing pleasure, regardless of the consequences. It has been said, here and elsewhere, that when taken to its utmost degree, pleasure and pain are intermingled, and the opening sequence of this film, once the box is bought and put into use, depicts a scene of such horrific events, one can't imagine experiencing it. It's quick, but intense, and very graphic.
The man in the first scene appears throughout, mostly in flashbacks, as his sister-in-law's lover, in a torrid sexual relationship, where she says she would do "anything" for him, and anything she does. Upon his reappearance, in a very degraded state, he convinces her to bring people back to the house and bludgeon them to death, where Frank takes a little something from the victim each time, slowly becoming whole again. The sex, blood, and violence in this story are relevant to the plot, as so many movies just have sex, blood, and violence for the sake of sex, blood, and violence. Each victim claimed by Julia, further restores Frank a little more, and he spends a large part of the story looking like what you'd find in a hospital's burn unit. It looks painful.
Frank's brother, Larry, is the good guy, and doesn't know what his new wife is doing, but his daughter, Kirstie finds out, and goes the distance to stop it. She's a nice girl, and has never liked Julia, a typical step-mother/step-daughter relationship. But this is a vile human being, this Julia; she and Frank deserve one another.
In the events of the story, Kirsty meets four demonic beings whose job it is to take people to the darkness, to pay the price for their selfish pleasure. They were once human, and bear the scars of their transformation, and part of their fright, is their total indifference to the plight of the victims. They simply don't care; it's all in a day's work. The leading one, allows Kirstie to barter with them, as she points out Frank has escaped them. She didn't pursue hedonistic pleasure/pain, and she summoned them purely by accident. It is her job, to now lead them to Frank, and to avoid being claimed herself.
In 1987, even with budget restrictions, this was a state-of-the-art film, although it looks like a movie made that long ago. I can't stand pepople lambasting a film with words like "dated." Well, Duh! It came out a long time ago, it isn't going to look like it was released last week! And lack of resources make a film a more commendable project, as today proves, bigger budgets often take the place of ingenuity. The majority of scenes here were done in one or two takes, as time and money were an issue. Yes, it's nice to have more at your disposal, but it often takes the drive to excel away.
The disc is a vast improvement over the tape, sharper picture, clearer sound and so forth, and here you have the usual video disc features, theatrical trailers, interviews and such, but focusing on the movie itself, it does what every good movie does - it sets an impossible standard for countless inferior sequels, and in this case, only one is worthwhile - the first sequel.
Description of Hellraiser
In a place between pleasure and pain there is sensual experience beyond limits. And in a world between paradise and purgatory there is a horror that feeds the souls of evil. Studio: Starz/sphe Release Date: 06/25/2002 Starring: Andrew Robinson Ashley Laurence Run time: 93 minutes Rating: R Director: Clive BarkerHaving made his reputation as one of the most prolific and gifted horror writers of his generation (prompting Stephen King to call him "the future of horror"), Clive Barker made a natural transition to movies with this audacious directorial debut from 1987. Not only did Barker serve up a chilling tale of devilish originality, he also introduced new icons of horror that since have become as popular among genre connoisseurs as Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman. Foremost among these frightful visions is the sadomasochistic demon affectionately named Pinhead (so named because his pale, bald head is a geometric pincushion and a symbol of eternal pain). Pinhead is the leader of the Cenobites, agents of evil who appear only when someone successfully "solves" the exotic puzzle box called the Lamont Configuration--a mysterious device that opens the door to Hell. The puzzle's latest victim is Frank (Sean Chapman), who now lives in a gelatinous skeletal state in an upstairs room of the British home just purchased by his newlywed half-brother (Andrew Robinson, best known as the villain from Dirty Harry), who has married one of Frank's former lovers (Claire Higgins). The latter is recruited to supply the cannibalistic Frank with fresh victims, enabling him to reconstitute his own flesh--but will Frank succeed in restoring himself completely? Will Pinhead continue to demonstrate the flesh-ripping pleasures of absolute agony? Your reaction to this description should tell you if you've got the stomach for Barker's film, which has since spawned a number of interesting but inferior sequels. It's definitely not for everyone, but there's no denying that it's become a semiclassic of modern horror. --Jeff Shannon
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