The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy

by Kane, Paul

  While he was waiting, Atkins actually bumped into this mystery person. His first impressions were not entirely favorable: “I saw an example of the type I’d learned to dismiss as the Would-Be Russian Poet—collarless shirt, tatty trousers, little wire-framed glasses, and a very embryonic beard. He needed only the long, black greatcoat and the volume of Pushkin to fit my arrogant preconception completely.”4 Atkins, himself dressed like a stereotypical musician, was gigging in bars with his school rock band. When Graham arrived, he introduced Atkins to the stranger, who turned out to be Clive Barker. Within an hour of meeting Barker, Atkins had already met the rest of his fledgling theater company and a week later he was preparing to work with them for the duration of the summer.

  This time would be a revelation for Atkins, opening his eyes to the creative process:

  “You grow up in a working-class situation in a depressed industrial town like Liverpool and one always thought that the artistic life was something other people did. And Clive was very good—without lecturing or trying to make cod speeches about doing this stuff—he simply seemed to offer an example that, my God, actually you can do this. It’s just up to you. If you want to try this there aren’t any rules, you don’t have to pass an exam, you can just start doing theater, you can start making movies, you can start writing, you can start drawing, painting, whatever.”5

  Abandoning his plans to become a teacher, Atkins pitched in with the group, acting in plays, and starring as the lead in The Forbidden: “In the same kind of arrogant assumption that we could make world-class theater on no money, we decided we could probably make world-class cinema on no money, too.”6 It was Atkins’ first, but far from his last taste of making films.

  Atkins was with the Dog Company for five years, then for about five years he followed his childhood dream of trying to make it with his band, The Chase. Although they never scored it big with a record contract, they were able to make a living playing regularly at pubs and clubs. “After the acting and music,” explained Atkins once, “I turned thirty, and mid-life crisis hit. It was kind of financial and directional. In a way I had lived all my twenties for the pleasure principle.”7

  The music wasn’t really satisfying him anymore and so Atkins returned to writing, something he had dabbled in before but never pursued aggressively. He produced some short stories and then a novella called The Vampires of Summer, which he showed to Barker. As a consequence, his old friend rang him in July 1987 and asked if he’d ever written a screenplay. Atkins replied that he hadn’t but having been a cinephile all his life would like to try. Barker then encouraged Atkins to lie through his teeth at a dinner meeting in London with himself and Chris Figg, and suddenly he was being offered the job of scripting the next installment in the Hellraiser saga.

  Following the meeting, Barker took Atkins back to his flat and, with the help of a bottle of bourbon, they came up with an outline for a story. Ideas were thrown back and forth, but what was paramount in Barker’s mind was that this movie should show a lot more of the Hellraiser universe than they were able to before. “It would be great to get some sense of mythology,” commented Barker later, “I’m very much into pulling the elements of myth together. I would be pleased if people could get a sense of the history of the Cenobites and this puzzle box.”8 The mythology would also include a reason for the Cenobites’ existence, including the god that they serve. Barker was very keen on making Julia the central figure this time, though, someone who might even take the series into a third chapter.

  Once the pair had a basic plotline, Atkins was sent to a hotel for the next two and a half weeks to write a first draft screenplay, armed with a copy of Hellraiser to help him lay it out correctly. During this time, both Barker and Figg showed a great deal of trust in the new writer; Barker avoided pressuring Atkins if he saw him out socially, and Figg would only ring to ask in passing what page Atkins was on. Remarkably, he delivered a 95 page screenplay on time, and one which showed he had a natural talent for it.

  The story picks up just hours after the events in Hellraiser, with Kirsty in a psychiatric hospital. She tries to convince the authorities of what has happened, but the only person who will listen is the institute’s director, Dr. Malahide. Unfortunately for her, Malahide is an occultist, desperate not only to open up the doorway to Hell again, but also to bring back a guide in the form of Julia by spilling blood on the mattress where she died. Add to this a young female patient called Tiffany who is obsessed with puzzles and Kirsty’s compulsion to save her father from Hell, and you have the crux of what would eventually become Hellbound.

  There was an agonizing three day wait for Atkins while both Barker and Figg read what he had done, but they were extremely pleased and had only made a few notes about changes. Typically—considering what he wanted to do with Julia and Frank’s lovemaking scene—Barker wanted to take the sex between the doctor and skinless Julia even further, alluding to what he called “flayed fucking.” Not even Frank and Julia had attempted this. Atkins did the rewrites back in Liverpool, which led to some embarrassing phone conversations dictating the skinless sex scenes to Figg’s assistant, Louise Rosner, over a rather bad line.

  In the meantime, the search for a director had been taking place, something that wouldn’t prove as hard as Barker or Figg initially thought. Seven weeks into the shooting of Hellraiser New World had sent one of their employees to oversee the final stages of filming, and of postproduction. At first it was something Barker resented and he was prepared to fight this executive tooth and nail if he caused trouble. Thankfully, nothing could have been further from the truth. The person they sent was Tony Randel, who grew up watching late night horror films and whose favorite films included Rosemary’s Baby and Invaders from Mars. He’d started out in the film industry toiling away in the mailroom at the old New World (when Roger Corman had been in charge) and worked his way up to special effects editing, soon moving on to trailer and feature editing. Randel eventually became postproduction chief for Corman’s new Millennium company before rejoining New World and working on the rejigging of the Japanese perennial, Godzilla, for a Western audience.

  When they met for the first time, he and Barker immediately hit it off and Randel was very supportive of the kind of film they were trying to make. He persuaded New World not to cut back on the usage of the Frank character (their reasoning being that the main villain shouldn’t be seen as much as he is), brought Christopher Young on board, and helped out in the editing room. In addition, Randel suggested the shots of Kirsty down by the docks, to open up the film a little bit more, and even secured the £15,000 needed to shoot this scene. His help earned him not only a special thank you on the credits, but also the respect of Barker and Figg, all of which was leading, inevitably, inexorably, to Randel taking over the reins for the sequel: “Having done so much work on the original film I had become very familiar with the material, and had an affinity for it.... I had come to Chris and Clive and said I would like to do the sequel, because they’d actually hired or wanted another director to come onboard before but he had to drop out, and once he’d dropped out I said I think I’d like to come in and give it a whirl.”9

  As a consequence, the first draft of the script was passed on for New World’s executives and the new director of Hellbound to read on August 8, 1987. The sense of urgency Atkins had experienced suddenly dissipated, as it took them until October 7 to get back to the team. Atkins was brought to London again to work on a second draft, but this time Randel was also flying in from Los Angeles to collaborate. Obviously, never having met Randel, Atkins was worried about how they might get on. “I had very little experience of the film world,” said Atkins, “so my assumption when I heard that a former executive of New World Pictures is coming in to direct the movie and you’re going to work together, was I pictured a guy at least ten years older than me in a three-piece suit. And Tony, having read the script, apparently pictured a multi-pierced tattooed punk.”10 It must have been like déjà vu, being back in that libr
ary not knowing what to expect.

  Director of Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Tony Randel (photograph credit: Colin Fletcher).

  Randel did little to calm Atkins’ fears when he rang him from his—more expensive—hotel to discuss the script: “Dr. Malahide. That’s a great name.... I’m going to change it.” Atkins’ reaction was, “My God, all the stories are true. These directors, they fuck with you.”11 Upon meeting an hour later they discovered that none of their preconceptions were correct. The pair got on famously—and have in fact been firm friends ever since. Randel even introduced Atkins to the wonders of word processing on his own portable Compaq. (Atkins’ first draft had been pounded out on a Smith Corona typewriter).

  Naturally Randel brought some of his own ideas to the table, but the main concern was from New World, who wanted a whole new third act. The story points of the ending, such as Julia’s revenge on Frank, the reversion of the Cenobites to their human forms and Kirsty and Tiffany’s escape, would remain, but there was to be more made of the hospital sequences, including a chase sequence that resulted in one of the major myths about Hellbound. In this scene Pinhead and the Female Cenobite appear in full surgical regalia, and, as Atkins told Dread magazine some years later, “The girls got in an elevator, went downstairs, real creepy atmosphere. Two surgeons arrived and questioned them. As they were talking, the surgeons suddenly turned into Pinhead and the Female Cenobite.... It could have been a good scene. Then the Cenobites chased the girls.”12 Sadly, due to technical difficulties when filming, the scene ended up looking quite bad. This didn’t stop the marketing department placing pictures of Pinhead and the Female Cenobite in their gowns on video covers, causing much speculation about the deleted scenes.

  Barker was out of the country when the second draft was written, but advised Atkins over the phone to simply make the changes New World wanted to keep them happy. So Randel and Atkins came up with a rough 150 page script incorporating New World’s wishes and any more ideas they’d had themselves. Following another meeting with Barker, during which he offered his opinions, the screenplay was polished and reduced to a workable length. Storyboard artist Floyd Hughes was then brought into the equation and between him, Atkins and Randel—who was by now having meetings with members of the crew such as the director of photography, Robin Vidgeon, the production designer, Mike Buchanan, and Image Animation—they refined the second draft and had it ready for handing in to Chris Figg on November 2.

  There are still quite a few differences between this script and the one that was finally filmed, though. At the beginning we have an extended version of the sequence that introduces us to Pinhead in his human guise, including a lengthy bartering scene at the bazaar which would have been in keeping with Frank’s bargaining at the beginning of Hellraiser. Pinhead’s first words also echo Frank, “Kirsty, come to Daddy,” but somehow they didn’t ring true. Much better is the line: “The suffering, the sweet suffering....” One of the police officers at Lodovico Street cuts himself on his own notepad and spills a few drops of blood on the mattress where Julia met her end.

  The original speech that Malahide (soon to become Channard after Dr. Christian Barnard, the first surgeon to perform a heart transplant) makes during an operation is intact; it was later changed by Barker during postproduction to prefigure the link between the mind and Hell’s labyrinths. There is a sequence near the beginning, where Tiffany has escaped and found her way to a deserted carnival and it is Malahide who brings her back, that emphasizes his control and domination over her. As mentioned, we have the more overt sex scene between the doctor and Julia, and Kirsty finds a room in Hell with photographs of her mother (a scene filmed and recently restored for the DVD release of Hellbound). Browning—the character who slashes himself with a knife on Julia’s mattress—is shown in his own private “bug hell.” And, of course, there is the scene with the Cenobites as surgeons. The major deviations, however, were not due to artistic determination at all. They were necessitated by two members of the returning cast.

  When it became clear that a sequel was going to be made, several members of the ensemble from Hellraiser came onboard again. First there was Ashley Laurence reprising her role as Kirsty. Speaking about this, she said, “I was signed for a two-picture deal. I didn’t know what that meant but I knew I was doing Hellbound when I was doing Hellraiser.... Oh, there’s a lot of nastiness I have to go through this time. There’s catwalks and abysses and labyrinths and all sorts of things.”13 Without her as its focal point the storyline would not have worked at all. Clare Higgins also agreed to return as Julia. “I had to come back,” she told the media, “because playing the Queen of Hell was an opportunity I just couldn’t miss.”14

  The actors who played Frank, in both his forms, with skin and without, were set to come back: Sean Chapman and Oliver Smith. Three of the original Cenobites, Nicholas Vince (Chatterer), Simon Bamford (Butterball) and Doug Bradley (as, who else, Pinhead) signed on again. And there was even a role reprisal for Oliver Parker as the removal man at the end. Most significantly, there was to be support again from the Hollywood actor and most famous member of the cast, Andrew Robinson, who would be playing Larry again.

  Or so Atkins and Randel thought.

  Larry had a vital function in the second draft of the screenplay. In his skinless form he appears to Kirsty at the hospital and entreats her to help him escape from Hell. This is the crucial motivational force for her to seek out the box and run the risk of confronting the Cenobites again. Once inside, she finds Frank and Larry fused together and they fight each other in Frank’s “knife room.” Larry then goes with both Kirsty and Tiffany to find a way out of Hell. It is a new Larry we see in the sequel, more determined and forceful, not willing to let anything or anybody hurt his daughter anymore. As the script says when Larry steps between the Malahide Cenobite and his two charges, “It is not fear, nor defiance. It is simpler than that. He is really, really pissed off.”15

  While understandable after everything he has been through—he’s been lied to by his wife, killed and had his skin stolen—lines like, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on” simply don’t sound right coming from his lips. However, the scene where he is instrumental in helping the girls escape from Julia in the tunnel does blend in very well, and finally gives Larry his revenge. Sadly, very soon afterwards Larry has a heart attack and drops out of sight until the very end, where we just get a quick shot of him recovering in bed.

  As it transpired, all the scenes involving Larry would have to be revised anyway when it was discovered that Robinson’s casting hadn’t been confirmed and he wasn’t available for filming in early 1988. This news came after Atkins and Randel had flown to L.A. for meetings with New World and a final third draft of the script had been delivered in December. An emergency meeting was called at the offices of Pinewood, where the film was due to be made, and Barker, Randel and Atkins went through the script, factoring in this new development. Over the course of two days, a shooting script with these changes was produced which would pretty much resemble the film we now know as Hellraiser II.

  I said there were two changes involving returning cast members, and the second revolves around the ending. As it was written and appeared in the second draft, the coda has Julia emerging from the mattress as the workman is left alone with it, a re-creation of the earlier scene with Browning:

  SECOND WORKMAN: ... Gimme a hand with this.

  Almost faster than the eye can register it, a hand shoots out from the mattress and grabs his wrist.

  He has about half a second to issue a strangled shout and then, hideously quickly, a matter of two seconds or so, his body is drained of all life and the dried husk collapses to the floor.

  The first WORKMAN appears hurriedly in the doorway and then freezes, an awestruck expression on his face.

  JULIA is rising, headfirst and upright, from the centre of the mattress. The movement is smooth, magical, unsettling. It is graceful but not slow. JULIA is fully fleshed, fully skinned, and fully dr
essed. She is in a replica of the dress CHANNARD bought for her, but this one is jet black. She looks fabulous.

  As the WORKMAN stands open-mouthed, her feet clear the mattress. But they don’t stop there. She slows to a graceful halt about six inches above the mattress. She stretches and flexes her arms sensually. Then her head swivels and her excited, aroused eyes meet those of the WORKMAN.

  JULIA: I’m Julia. Love me.

  Suddenly, her head tips back and, accompanied by JULIA’S delighted laughter, a wide beam of Hell’s black light flies at the ceiling from her open mouth. Instantaneously, it spills across the ceiling and falls, like a fountain of blood, across the screen.

  COMPLETE BLACKNESS

  THE CREDITS ROLL.16

  This was all calculated to carry Julia through into the next film, just as Barker wanted, making her the Queen of Hell and a recurring figure throughout the franchise.

  There were just two problems. The first was that Clare Higgins, in spite of her enthusiasm for this sequel, had no wish to play the character in a further Hellraiser picture, nor did she have any aspirations to become a kind of female horror icon. The second thing was, as we have seen, the viewers and fans had already chosen Pinhead to be the recurring villain of the franchise. As Atkins clarifies, “Clive’s original wish was that Julia from Hellraiser would be the Freddy Krueger of the Hellraiser series and Pinhead and the Cenobites would sort of be the background monsters.... What happened, of course, was the public got in the way. They fell in love with Pinhead.”17

  There were new members of the cast as well, though. Sixteen-year-old Imogen Boorman was chosen to play Tiffany because of the fresh-faced angelic look of innocence she displayed, so it was strange for other cast members to see her having a break to smoke between takes. Boorman’s previous credits had included starring alongside Patsy Kensit, Daniel Day-Lewis and Elizabeth Spriggs in the 1982 TV adaptation of Frost in May, plus a stint on the popular Saturday tea-time science fiction show, The Tripods, based on the John Christopher novel. She also featured in the Dennis Potter scripted drama exploring the darker side of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Dreamchild (Gavin Millar), in 1985. Speaking about the role, Boorman said, “She’s basically the puzzle-solver. Without her no one would be able to get down to Hell. She’s meant to be very intelligent.... The worst thing I have to do in this film is pull Julia’s skin off.... But there are some nice bits in it that you don’t find in most horror films.”18