The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy

by Kane, Paul

  But all this was overshadowed by the financial returns of the film when it opened, which almost matched Hellraiser in its U.S. domestic gross ($11,090,000).27 When asked what he wanted to achieve with the movie, Randel said, “I wanted to bring something new to the sequel.... I wanted to enlarge the scope of the picture. It eventually encompasses the entirety of Hell itself, which creates a kind of inverse claustrophobia: You’re in this vast open space where anything can happen, which can be more oppressive than being in a closed, inescapable place.”28 This is, of course, the opposite of Hellraiser’s vision. What Randel—and Atkins—actually did accomplish was to polarize opinion, both fan-based and critical. People either loved Hellbound or hated it, there was no middle ground. But what of the merits of the film itself? What of the themes and influences? It is to those that we now turn our attention.

  7

  OPENING DOORS

  Into the Underworld

  As we have seen, Clive Barker’s exposure to Jean Cocteau’s films at an early age influenced his creative output later. It is an admiration that Barker shares with Peter Atkins, who has publicly stated that Orphée, or Orpheus (1949), is his favorite film of all time.1 Small wonder, then, that in its central themes and story Hellbound should pay homage to the film, and the legend that inspired it.

  The original Greek myth revolves around the greatest of all musicians, Orpheus, who sang songs about the creation of the universe and the battles of Zeus and the Olympian gods against the Titans. But his songs also had magical qualities that could calm nature and humans alike, and it is told that he soothed the sailors onboard the Argo when Jason was searching for the Golden Fleece. Upon his return he fell in love with a woman called Eurydice, but on their wedding day, while she was strolling through a meadow, she was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. Orpheus vowed to find her in Hades—the land of the dead—where his music allowed him passage across the River Styx and pacified the three-headed dog Cerberus guarding the Underworld. Orpheus sang his sad lament to the King and Queen of Hades, who granted his request: he would be allowed to take Eurydice with him as long as he didn’t look back before reaching the living world. Unfortunately, on their way to the Overworld, Orpheus turned to look at his wife and she faded away. Returning to Thrace, he remained on a hillside singing sad songs for the rest of his days.

  Cocteau’s reimagining and updating of this myth is introduced by the director himself, and opens with the poet Orpheus in a Parisian café. Another bard called Jacques Cégeste appears, with the mysterious Princess. The drunken Cégeste is then run over and killed by a motorcyclist, but the Princess seemingly revives him and takes him through a mirror inside her villa. Unable to follow, Orpheus returns to his pregnant wife Eurydice, but is now preoccupied by what has happened—in particular the messages coming through from the Underworld on the Princess’s limousine radio. Her driver, Heurtebise, reveals that both he and the Princess are ghosts. Complicating matters is the fact that Heurtebise is attracted to Eurydice and the Princess to Orpheus. But when Eurydice herself is killed in an accident, Orpheus is distraught and determines to find her in the Underworld. He is now told that the Princess represents Death, and mirrors are the doors by which death comes and goes.

  Heurtebise gives him a pair of magical gloves so that he can travel through one of the mirrors. There he finds the Princess on trial for bringing Eurydice to her domain and desiring Orpheus. Orpheus is allowed to go free as long as he never speaks about what he has seen in the Underworld, and Eurydice can go with him if he promises never to look at her. But in their car he accidentally catches sight of her in the rearview mirror and she vanishes. In a variation on the original ending, Orpheus is shot but the Princess gives up her power so he can live again. Back in his world he finds Eurydice, who awakens, claiming she has had an awful nightmare. The pair go on to have their child, while both Heurtebise and the Princess are arrested by the guards of the Underworld.

  Hellbound concerns itself with two other forays into the Underworld, each for completely different reasons. On the one hand Kirsty can be seen as Barker and Atkins’ proxy for Orpheus and her visit is motivated not by a wish to bring back her partner, or husband, but her father. Yet, as we have discovered, the love Kirsty and Larry share is somewhat deeper than that of most daughters and fathers; indeed, they were initially ill-fated “lovers” in the original novella. The rationale for beginning the story almost immediately after the events in Hellraiser is to compound Kirsty’s failure in the first movie. In spite of all she did, she couldn’t save Larry from Frank, couldn’t stop him from being taken to Hell by the Cenobites, although this is largely implied by subsequent events.

  At no time do the Cenobites ever claim to have imprisoned her father; they just wanted Frank, and eventually Kirsty. Thus, when the skinless version of her father appears to Kirsty in her hospital room, slumped by the radiator, it is a potent reminder of that loss. If this in itself isn’t reason enough to venture into the Underworld, he also writes in his own blood, “I am in Hell, help me,” an entreaty she cannot possibly ignore. The bond between them is then highlighted by the camera circling around Kirsty, tracking her as she touches the blood on the wall and puts it to her lip, symbolically showing that they share the same life force, the same love. And where blood brought Frank back from Hell in the first film, it has exactly the opposite effect here—drawing Kirsty to Hell. She has no choice but to undergo the pilgrimage to free her tormented father.

  To this end she seeks help herself, telling her story to Channard and Kyle, in effect singing her own lament to them. Kirsty recounts the events of Hellraiser in flashback and how her father met his end, bitten by the poisonous snake Frank. “Frank and Julia,” she says, “they’d taken his skin and given it to Frank.” What more could a reptile want than a fresh skin? At first it looks like they don’t believe her, but secretly Channard knows she is telling the truth because he has made it his life’s work to study this particular Underworld. Moreover, his intention is to journey there himself. As he tells Kirsty following her outpouring, “There is much we must investigate, much I have to do.” To begin with, he must call forth his very own ghost princess, in the guise of Julia, whom he now knows died on the mattress at Lodovico Street. “You have to destroy that mattress,” Kirsty warns. “See, Julia died on it and she can come back now like Frank.”

  Blood is the key again to communication with the other side, and Channard finds a willing volunteer in Browning, a patient so unstable he imagines insects are crawling over his body. Browning is asking for help of a very different nature, which Channard supplies by freeing him and presenting him with a straight razor. As Browning starts to cut himself on the mattress and Julia emerges, Channard, like Kirsty, comes into contact with the blood—except now it is involuntary, splattered over his face during the frenzied attack. Nevertheless, it is a signification that he will also be traveling to the Underworld soon. His motivation: not to find a long lost loved one, but rather to find himself. Earlier, Kirsty asked Kyle if Channard had got a ticket to Hell, the answer to which is yes. And now they both do.

  Except the doorway on this occasion is not a river, a gate, or even a mirror, but the Lament Configuration puzzle box. To this end, both Kirsty and Channard require someone to breach the gap, and they discover this in the newly introduced character of Tiffany, a mute girl who has an uncanny ability to solve puzzles. The connection is foreshadowed by the shots of steam from a radiator as skinless “Larry” appears to Kirsty being juxtaposed with Tiffany’s solving of a wooden puzzle, not unlike the Lament Configuration. It is noteworthy that Kirsty herself is not allowed to open the box a second time. The obvious conclusion is that, just as Channard has Julia as his guide, Kirsty needs Tiffany for a companion. Kyle, although he comes to believe her story in the end, is little more than an echo of Steve—as ineffectual as he was. Kyle is merely a narrative device for delivering Kirsty to Channard’s home, so that she can cross the threshold into Hell and meet up with her true guide: Tiffany.
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  Kirsty plays the Orpheus role but is hoping to bring her father back from the Underworld. Hellbound: Hellraiser II still (photograph credit: Murray Close).

  Because Andrew Robinson was not available to play Larry, Kirsty—unlike Orpheus—was destined never to find her loved one again. But perhaps this was just as well, if his fate was to be comparable to Eurydice’s. Instead, she discovers she has been tricked by Frank, summoned to his own private Hell to be his sex slave. But this doesn’t mean she comes away from her quest empty-handed—far from it. Yes, she has failed again in her mission to save her father. But then again, there is no concrete evidence to suggest that he is even in the Underworld at all. When Kirsty says to Pinhead, “I’ve come for my father,” the demon replies, “He is in his own hell and quite unreachable.” It follows logically that if he is unreachable, then he might not be there. After all, Kirsty finds Frank easily enough. Perhaps Pinhead is merely referring to the hell of knowing Larry would never see his precious daughter again. Punishment enough for one who cares so deeply.

  Frank, too, hints that her father isn’t down here when he says, albeit rather tongue in cheek, “Oh come on, Kirsty, grow up. When you’re dead, you’re fucking dead!” But her story—comparable to the sad song Orpheus sings—stays the Cenobites’ hands for at least a little while. The Guardians of this Underworld grant her the autonomy to look around before they take her. “Please, feel free to explore,” Pinhead tells Kirsty, though, this being Pinhead, he caps the offer with another threat: “We have eternity to know your flesh.”

  Ironically, Pinhead and the other Cenobites are the ones Kirsty helps the most. After seeing a sepia-toned photograph of Pinhead before his transformation, she works out that they all must have been human at one point. Though they deny it when Kirsty first broaches the subject—“We have no more surprises,” states Pinhead, and the Female Cenobite emphatically declares, “We have always been here”—when they meet up again, she convinces them. Kirsty hands Pinhead the photograph and he is forced to confront his past. “No, this one didn’t escape—it’s you. You haven’t always been this way,” Kirsty argues. “You were human, remember? Remember all your confusion, think.... You were all human.” This revelation causes them to lose the ensuing fight with Channard, but also liberates them. The Cenobites revert back to their human selves, escaping from their own Hells. And in freeing Pinhead, doesn’t Kirsty also free a sort of father figure, too? One who buys her time to escape from Channard.

  Tiffany is the other soul Kirsty helps and frees in lieu of her father. She is the only person who manages to get through to the young girl. In return for her aid as a guide, Kirsty will help her to become more confident and even recover her power of speech. “Look, we’re alone in all of this, and we have to help each other. Yeah?” Kirsty says. It is a bargain of sorts—well, this is Hellbound—but it is one of mutual consideration and benefit. This is the only offer of help that actually works, because there is support on either side. All the others fail because they are misguided or one-sided. Browning’s plea for help leads to his spectacularly bloody death; Frank’s supplication was—as always—grounded in deceit; and Tiffany’s mother definitely asks the wrong doctor to help her daughter.

  Channard’s response to Julia’s “Help me” request is to provide her with fresh bodies from his underground cells. Paralleling Frank’s actions in the original, she uses Channard to make her whole again, finally providing her with skin. The pact they have made is for Julia to be his escort. But like Frank before him, Channard gets much more than he bargained for when Julia hands him over to her master, Leviathan, to be remade as a Cenobite. Though this might be interpreted as a betrayal, chiefly because the transformation process is so painful—both to endure and to watch—Julia is only giving him what he wanted. Furthermore, he has already indicated this himself. When Julia gives him a chance to back out and asks, “You’re sure this is what you want?” he confirms, “It’s what I’ve always wanted.” His own evil, manipulative nature is given an outlet in Hell and he can be the creature he always wanted to be—powerful, sadistic, unstoppable. As he says himself when he comes out of the Cenobitization chamber, “And to think I hesitated.” This is the only person Channard sought to free: the ultimate selfish act of a man who has devoted every waking minute to his own needs. For Frank, this was grounded in pleasure, but Channard’s weakness is knowledge—of the labyrinths of the mind, of the occult, and ultimately of his true self. His eventual downfall is not Julia’s doing, it is his own—attempting to kill Tiffany when his hand-tentacles get stuck in the ground, ripping his head in two.

  Of the journeys Kirsty and Channard take into the Underworld, hers is the more successful. She may not have found her father or brought him back, but she did save the Cenobites from themselves and Tiffany from a life spent in solitude piecing together puzzles. Channard, even though he was given what his heart desired most, squandered the power and ended up annihilating himself in the process.

  Mazes and Monsters

  The Orpheus Legend isn’t the only Greek myth Hellbound draws upon. In its depiction of Hell with the Channard Cenobite at its core, it also closely adheres to the tale of the Minotaur in the Maze. This begins with the story of Minos who, before he rose to power as King of Crete, prayed to the god Poseidon to send him a white bull as a sign of his favor. Minos had promised to sacrifice the bull, but instead kept it and sacrificed one of his own. As a result, Poseidon made Minos’ wife Pasipha fall in love with the bull and the offspring of their union was a half-bull, half-man creature. Kept in a labyrinth built by the architect Daedalus and offered sacrifices, it was eventually defeated by the hero Theseus with the aid of Daedalus’ daughter Ariadne, whom he had fallen in love with. She promised to provide the means to escape from the maze if he agreed to marry her, and, using thread, he was able to find his way out again.

  For Hellbound we can easily substitute the Channard Cenobite for the Minotaur, the beast at the heart of this hell feeding on sacrifices of his patients. In this reading, Kirsty becomes Theseus, aided by Tiffany’s Ariadne. (Hellbound has no real love interest, so friendship takes its place.) Together they are able to defeat the monster and find their way out of the maze—much to the chagrin of the monster’s mother (Julia) and father (Leviathan).

  You Wanted to See

  Another important theme in Hellbound is that of voyeurism. Just as Frank was the supreme hedonistic thrill-seeker, Channard is easily his equal in terms of his desire not only to know, but to see. The very first time we encounter him, he is peering into a human brain, looking into the most private depths of the mind. The rewritten speech he gives goes:

  The mind is like a labyrinth, ladies and gentlemen, a puzzle. And while the paths of the brain are plainly visible, its ways deceptively apparent, its destinations are unknown. Its secrets still secrets. And if we are honest, it is the lure of the labyrinth that draws us to our chosen field, to unlock those secrets. Others have been there before us and have left signs. But we, as explorers of the mind, must devote our lives and energies to going further, to tread the unexplored corridors in the hope of finding, ultimately, the final solution. We have to see, we have to know.

  It prefigures beautifully the unseen and unexplored corridors he will soon be venturing down in Hell.

  Channard’s underground cells, where he keeps the particularly gruesome cases, come with their own slots in the doors that he can peer through—and we, too, are given a sample of what’s inside. Later, when he is walking with Julia along those corridors of Hell, we can see the similarities between his cells and the private purgatories prisoners are kept in. Channard once again has the opportunity to look through an opening and sees male and female figures writhing with a mixture of pleasure and pain. In a scene dropped from the second draft Channard was also to be granted a glimpse of Browning trapped in another cell at this point, the insects still crawling all over him.

  Channard loves to witness the anguish of others, but always surreptitiously, without
them knowing. It is his very own secret self. In contrast, Kyle—who is everything Channard isn’t—kind, sympathetic and helpful—almost throws up when he is forced to watch Browning’s demise from behind a curtain in Channard’s house. A couple of glances are all he can take, and even these disturb him so much he has to escape as soon as possible. By the time he returns to the house, he has built up some nerve and compels himself to look inside the slaughter room, ignoring the warning from Julia that, “It’s just terrible.” And this curiosity will lead to his death when, after he sees the corpses, Julia kisses him in a parody of the kiss she and Frank once shared.

  The “seeing” motif recurs with other characters as well. The first shot of Kirsty is a close-up of her eye, pulling out and slowly rotating as if to emphasize that she has already seen far too much, but there is more to come. Julia, also, when we first see her on the mattress, is identified by her eyes. Filmed in reverse, the stark whiteness against the red of her skinless body is both surreal and potent. Like Kirsty, she is no longer the person she once was; Julia, too, has seen things no one should ever have to see, the sights Pinhead spoke of in the first Hellraiser. Even when she is wrapped in bandages, it is her eyes that stand out, and she can’t help raising Channard’s finger to one orb, trailing it through the blood beneath.

  Even the Chatterer Cenobite receives a pair of eyes in the time between our earliest meeting with him and our last. This was meant to be bridged by a scene showing him being altered, but as confusing as it is for viewers it does visually compound what the Cenobites go through when Kirsty tells them the truth, opening their eyes metaphorically to their past.