by Kane, Paul
Other U.S. horror movies that challenged the family’s stabilizing role included Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) and Night of the Living Dead, while The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) remains the epitome of dysfunctional family life: a cannibalistic clan who butcher and eat passersby. Similarly, the stalk and slash films of the late ’70s and ’80s depicted killers who had uneven upbringings: Jason from the Friday the 13thseries had a psychotic mother, Michael Myers from Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) was put in a secure psychiatric facility when he was young for killing his sister. Or else they targeted weak families, as Freddy Krueger does in Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984). For a British equivalent, one could go back to Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), in which a father’s experiments on his son turn him into a voyeuristic murderer.
Because of the commercial sense of casting American and British actors, and thanks to Barker’s broad international outlook, Hellraiser could claim a lineage to both U.K. and U.S. “family horror” films. But, at its very core, it is a British film with a British writer/director. If anything, the film’s bland domestic setting, the suburban environment against which such an extraordinary story plays out, has its origins in the black and white Kitchen Sink or British New Wave dramas of the late 1950s and 1960s, typified by films like Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson, 1958) and A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961)—a realism which helps immensely when it comes to suspension of disbelief. At the very least, the saga of the Cottons, on one level, is pure British soap opera in the Eastenders mold.
But there is a massive difference. Hellraiser scratched beneath the veneer, in much the same way David Lynch did with small town America in Blue Velvet (1986). Barker’s film is a metaphor for what really goes on behind the net curtains in certain British households, and not just because of its S&M overtones. This concentration on verisimilitude, on human and family situations, could also be the reason Hellraiser has been dubbed “Ibsen with monsters.”7
The relationships between family members are key to the understanding of Hellraiser and how it subverts conventional roles. The four primary characters are all introduced to us by way of their position in this family. Julia and Larry are man and wife; Kirsty is Larry’s daughter and Julia’s stepdaughter (we discover the real matriarch has passed away when the removal men comment that Kirsty has her mother’s looks. “Her mother’s dead,” snaps Larry), while Frank is the black sheep brother and Kirsty’s uncle. As a primary player in this story, Frank states his affiliation every time he encounters a new character. “I’m Frank,” he tells Julia when he turns up just before the wedding, “Brother Frank.” Later, when Kirsty comes across him in the attic, he says: “Kirsty, it’s Frank. It’s Uncle Frank.”
Barker then deliberately contorts the roles so that they often result in uncomfortable and disturbing viewing. Julia is Larry’s wife, yet there are times when she acts more like his mother. When he cuts his hand he seeks Julia out. “You know me and blood,” he says, looking like he’s about to faint. Julia immediately adopts the position of caring parent, holding his arm up, preparing to rush him to the hospital and comforting him by saying, “It’s all right.” Here is another reason their marriage is on a collision course for disaster. In true Greek tragedy form, Larry is fulfilling some subconscious Oedipal desire to sleep with his mother (or a figure who represents his mother). But this situation is fundamentally wrong and Julia knows it. As stated earlier, she uses her sexuality to divert Larry when he is about to investigate the attic room, but cannot go through with the act itself: for one thing her real lover is watching close by.
Conversely, there are moments when Julia becomes the child and Larry the parent, the most obvious example being when he thinks she is ill, after she has committed the first murder, though this could just as easily translate as subservience. His throwaway joke of, “Wanna cookie, little girl?” is disquieting, especially when one scrutinizes his relationship with Kirsty in more detail.
Kirsty is introduced via a telephone conversation with her father, and the contrast between his body language with Julia and now is incredibly revealing. Larry’s face lights up; there is pure delight in his voice. Kirsty, not Julia, is the great love of his life. When she arrives to help them move in, the kiss they share is full on the lips, not a general peck on the cheek: there is not a hint of betrayal here. Larry’s jealousy of Steve is apparent at the dinner party, and then the pair have an intimate Chinese meal together to discuss Julia. It is evident that the affection he has for Kirsty is mutual. Kirsty has a severe Elektra complex (the female version of Oedipus) when it comes to her father. Her dislike of Julia stems from this love, tinged with jealousy itself. Kirsty’s own body language is responsive in the scenes she shares with Larry, and she phones him in the middle of the night just to check that he is unharmed.
The original character of Kirsty from Barker’s novella is a friend who adores Rory/Larry. Barker might have altered the character’s relationship to Larry—at New World’s suggestion, it should be stressed—but he was still writing and directing it from that standpoint, which is where the incestuous overtones creep in. The genuine feeling of love and adoration the original character of Kirsty had for Rory/Larry remains. This is not to imply that anything sexual has occurred or ever would occur between them. Theirs is a different kind of love, with Larry transferring his devotion for his late wife onto Kirsty, while Kirsty is happy to play the archetypal Freudian Daddy’s Girl.
In stark contrast, Frank’s blatantly lustful feelings for Kirsty are all too evident from their first rendezvous. After establishing he is Uncle Frank, he comments about how beautiful she’s grown. Their clinch is akin to a rape stance. Frank pins her against the wall and growls, “Some things have to be endured. And that’s what makes the pleasure so sweet.” Yes, he is referring to his time with the Cenobites, but also of the forbidden delight the pair of them could experience if only she’d stop struggling. Near the end, he stalks Kirsty through the house, holding up that most transparent of phallic symbols from many a slasher film: the knife. His aim? Penetration. For Frank, as we have seen, there is no difference between love and desire. What he sees when he looks at Kirsty is not his niece, but another potential sexual conquest.
Come to Daddy. Uncle Frank as sculpted by Ian Frost (courtesy Ian Frost).
The fascinating thing is Frank’s use of the phrase, “Come to Daddy.” This not only foreshadows Frank’s “borrowing” of his brother’s skin, providing a clue to his real identity, it also suggests that some part of him actually wants what Larry has: Julia as his partner, Kirsty as his daughter. In one scene Frank, Julia and Kirsty create the three corners of a dysfunctional family triangle, literally, in long shot. “Stay with us,” says Frank. “We can all be happy here.... Come to Daddy.” In this family unit, Kirsty would experience not the deep platonic love she shared with her father, but a more physical level of incestuous love. Little wonder she declines his offer.
Julia’s relationship with Kirsty is also intriguing. She is the archetypal evil stepmother from fairy-tale lore, and this is referenced in Hellbound: Hellraiser II, where Julia says, “They didn’t tell you, did they? They changed the rules of the fairy tale. I’m no longer just the wicked stepmother. Now I’m the Evil Queen.” Kirsty resents Julia for taking her own place as the woman of the household, but if we look at it from the other angle Julia has more than just one reason to hate Kirsty. She is her love rival not only for Larry’s affections—which she insists she doesn’t require anyway—but also Frank’s. Both men are attracted to Kirsty in different ways, and Julia can’t help but be resentful of her younger, apparently more attractive, adversary.
Anyone outside of this “family unit” isn’t utilized much in Hellraiser. This explains why Steve, as an outsider, is allowed to participate only in the very last sequence of the film. Even then he is virtually relegated to the role of spectator while Kirsty battles it out with the Engineer. Equally, the Cenobites, regardless of their undeniabl
e screen presence, appear only very briefly, although it could be argued that they form a family unit of their own, with the lead Cenobite as father, Female Cenobite as mother, and Chatterer and Butterball as the two siblings—mirroring Frank and Larry.
Secrets and Masks
Another important motif in the film is that of masks. Gary Hoppenstand notes in his essay “The Secret Self” that Barker’s characters often hide their true natures: Mamoulian from The Damnation Game might appear to be all powerful, but his use of these supernatural abilities is simply a smokescreen for who he really is, weak and vulnerable; the central hero Boone from Cabal (and Nightbreed) has a dark, bloodthirsty side, which forces him to hide away and seek the town of Midian—yet he is also in his heart a leader; the ape in “New Murders in the Rue Morgue” pretends to be human,8 a homage to Poe, one of Barker’s favorite authors as he was growing up. Barker has expressed a particular admiration for the stories The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), about another fated family cursed by evil, and The Masque of Red Death (1842), where a deadly plague disguised as one of the guests at a masquerade ball infiltrates a sealed off Abbey:
The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revelers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.9
Just as the Red Death did, most of the characters in Hellraiser wear masks, too. Sometimes they are corporeal, other times less so. Frank’s face is stripped from him at the beginning; in fact, it becomes a puzzle in itself that the lead Cenobite has to put together. When he returns without his skin, Frank takes the drastic measure of stealing his brother’s face. This he uses to deceive Kirsty, gain her trust, and play out the role of her father, albeit briefly. He also fools the Cenobites, who must hear from his own lips that he is Frank. When he confesses, they strip this second mask away from him accordingly.
The mask Julia wears at the beginning is the face of a happily married woman. She wears another mask when she preys on her female victims, sexually alluring and available, with sunglasses to cover her eyes. The more she kills, the more she turns into a Lady Macbeth figure who can wash the blood off her hands but carries the mark of it nonetheless. Julia is able to conceal these crimes from her husband behind a façade of innocence, but her half-smile as she remembers the murders betrays her.
Larry wears the mask of a man who fundamentally believes—or should that be hopes?—Julia still loves him, but has his doubts. His nice guy act also cloaks a subconscious undercurrent of rampant emotion which he can release only by watching boxing on television. He would love to be in the ring himself, but unlike his brother he has repressed these feelings to the point where he is a pale shadow of a man. The scene between Larry and Julia when they are watching the boxing match is therefore laced with ironic black comedy. When Larry comments that she used to hate this kind of thing and asks if it’s upsetting her, Julia replies coolly, “I’ve seen worse.” Both are hiding their secret selves from each other, but, in fine theatrical tradition, Barker has revealed them to the audience for their fullest effect.
Kirsty barely disguises her feelings about Julia, so her one true mask is that of vulnerability she displays with Steve. She allows him to dominate the relationship at first, hiding, or even subduing, her true fiery nature—which forces him to become more like her father, and thus more attractive in her eyes. It isn’t long afterwards that her true character surfaces, more in keeping with a horror heroine who doesn’t need a man to fight on her behalf.
Lastly, the box and its keeper wear their own masks. Camouflaged as a trinket, the Lament Configuration is really a doorway to another very dangerous dimension, just as the carpet in Weaveworld (1987), the dream sea Quiddity in The Great and Secret Show (1989) and the lighthouse in Abarat (2002) are portals to other places. Essentially, though, it is more than that. It is Pandora’s Box by any other name.
There are various versions of the Pandora legend. One Greek version says that Pandora was created by the gods and taken as a wife by the titan Epimetheus. Pandora had a sealed vase, which Epimetheus opened, causing all the troubles, weariness and illnesses of mankind to escape. In a Roman retelling it was Pandora herself who opened the box—brought by Mercury—and once all the evils had escaped the only thing left inside was hope. In the first, we can exchange Epimetheus for Frank, while in the second, Pandora herself becomes Kirsty. But one thing remains a constant: the disguise of the innocent-looking vessel.
The keeper in Hellraiser (Frank Baker), who initially appears as a derelict, is also much more than he seems. He goes from being a character who seemingly has no power, except that of unnerving people when he eats bugs or stares at them, to one who obviously has a great deal. At the end, he is the one who retrieves the box from the flames, simultaneously transforming into a winged skeletal creature. Beyond the human flesh, he is obviously a demon himself. Crucially, he is the “person” who returns the box so it can be purchased by the next Frank Cotton who comes along, literally completing the circular narrative. Without him, there would be no Hellraiser story.
Heaven or Hell
To conclude, we have the religious aspects of the movie. Though not particularly religious himself, Barker has always said that, “The Bible is a source of inspiration constantly for me and remains a significant source of inspiration ... biblical stories have a kind of ... primal quality to them.”10 This has been especially true when constructing his own mythologies, including Hellraiser’s, as we shall see later on, but also when considering the eternal struggle of good versus evil.
Filmically, in this respect Hellraiser shares its roots with movies like The Exorcist and The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976), which also address this question through the device of demonic interjection. But the lines between notions of good and evil in Hellraiser are far less distinct. In The Exorcist the evil is quite obviously the demon that has taken control of the child Regan, while at the other end of the scale are the priests attempting to free her soul. Karras may well be losing his faith but there is no question as to his intentions, nor which side he fights on. Likewise, Damien has—indirectly—committed murders, manipulated events and positioned himself to take over the empire of his “father.” Gregory Peck’s politician Thorn and David Warner’s photographer Jennings may not be the most religious people, but during the course of the film they seek out those who are—like the monks in Italy, or Leo McKern’s Exorcist. The polarization between good and evil, between who should win and who should lose, is extremely clear-cut; and in religious terms it comes down to the simple conflict between God and the Devil.
The cover of Clive Barkers Abarat, featuring Barkers own artwork ( HarperCollins and Clive Barker, used by permission).
At the outset of Hellraiser Kirsty might appear to be on the side of Heaven as she occupies a contrary position to the Cenobites. The first time we see her, she is virtually in soft focus, her face bathed in light like an angel. During the Argentoesque dream sequence, too, with white feathers floating around her, Kirsty resembles the Madonna from a painting by an Italian master. Even her name is Christ-like. Kirsty also wears a white T-shirt throughout the film, in line with the basic iconographic symbolism of color clothing schemes.11 This follows if we also examine Julia’s choice of outfits: she begins with white blouses, then switches to orange, then finally to dark blue, thus reflecting her journey through passion to the dark side.
However, Kirsty does not adhere to the moral codes of a Heavenly heroine, or even a heroine from previous horror films. Most noticeably, she does not remain virginal. Whether or not anything happened after her kiss with Steve, it is still insinuated that she has slept with him. In slasher films this is usually the grounds for punishment by the killer, as Carol Clov
er elucidates in her groundbreaking book, Men, Women and Chainsaws. The Final Girl, as she calls the Stalk and Slash heroine, is usually a “spunky enquirer into the terrible place,”12 but never sexually active. Secondly, when Kirsty first arrives at the house on Lodovico Street, she sees statues of saints and Christ on the doorstep, cast out ready for Hell to enter. Her reaction is simply to smile, shrug, and walk in through the door. Such ignorance of the portent leads to terrible heartache later. Perhaps this is why the statue that falls out and scares Kirsty as she is being chased by Frank has to be Christ—in retaliation for her apathy? But given this, Kirsty still turns her back on the power of faith and uses her own mettle instead.
There was even a deleted scene where an evangelist spoke to Kirsty directly through the radio to warn her, which would have highlighted her rejection yet further:
INT: KIRSTY’S ROOM. NIGHT
Music from the radio: a love song. The radio is badly tuned: the song sounds tinny. It fades, then comes back into focus again. We move around the room, over an unfinished puzzle, left on the bed; over a few pictures of LARRY, set lovingly beside the bed, and finally, onto KIRSTY, who is drying her hair after a shower.
The radio channel slips. The radio whines. Then, an evangelist’s voice on the air-waves.
EVANGELIST: The Devil is watching you. That’s the message I came here tonight to bring you. The Devil is watching you and he sees the corruption in your hearts. He hears you! He sees you! Every night, every day.