The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy

by Kane, Paul

  9

  THE DEVIL YOU KNOW?

  Visions of Hell

  In our discussion of Hellraiser, we touched briefly on the fact that the Hell it depicted—and its demons—were unlike any other seen before at that time. Hellbound took this basic premise, not to mention Barker’s imagery, and extended it further. In the first film we get to see only one corridor in Hell. In the sequel, we are presented with Hell in all its awe-inspiring grandeur. But just how different is it to any renderings from the past? As we’ve already seen, in Greek mythology Hell is a cavernous Underworld, located in Hades and reached by crossing the river Styx. The Romans had their own equivalent, a kingdom ruled by their god Pluto. But possibly the most famous source about Hell is The Bible. Here the Infernal Region is described in a number of entries:

  The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.1

  And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.... Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.2

  But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.3

  There are also references to Hell being within the earth, somewhere that sinners descend into like an abyss. It expressly describes the earth opening up and the wicked being dragged down into Hell.4 People have speculated that this might be a metaphor, however, to indicate a separation from God, the darkness of the abyss a direct contrast to the light of Heaven and all it represents. In addition, The Bible provides enlightenment about what life is like for the damned that dwell in the bowels of the abyss.

  If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.5

  But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.6

  Not those of a certain Cenobite, but the teeth of sinners themselves. But what of the eternal torments they must endure?

  It implies that all the pains and horrors of earth put together are nothing compared to what awaits the inhabitants of Hell. Yet the greatest torment of all is called the poena damni, or pain of loss: the soul’s separation from God. A secondary torture is mentioned, too, the poena sensus (pain of sense). This could take on many forms, but the most familiar to us would be burning in the flames of Hell, which do not kill the victim, forcing them to endure the sensation of burning indefinitely. Their company in this place would be demons, liars, sorcerers, murderers, cheaters and fornicators, who would gloat over such sufferings. In effect, as the New Testament lays it out, Hell is a place of corruption, unquenchable fire and—of course—brimstone.

  Muslims have a similar view of Hell, but the Islamic Hell, or Jahannum, is reserved only for all unbelievers in the Islamic faith, no matter how God-fearing they are in their own religions. Buddhists descend into one of many Hells because of evil karma (which means any action of doing). The eight hells or Jigoku are as follows: The first is for murderers, who kill for gratification: The Hell of Repetition. The next is the Black Rope Hell, for those who have killed as part of another crime; Tortures here include black birds plucking out eyes, demons ripping out entrails and tongues. The Crowded Hell relates also to killing or stealing and sexual indulgence. Desire is at the heart of the Fire-jar Hell, where you could have your eyes burnt out for dwelling on the vision of a desirable woman. The Screaming Hell is for those who abuse alcohol or other drugs, or encourage others to do so; while The Great Screaming Hell waits for those who have used their voices to spread evil. The Hell of Burning Heat is for those with dishonest viewpoints; and in the Diamond-beak Hornet Hell, the sinner is forced to drink his own blood and eat his own flesh. The Burning Hell of String-like Worms is concerned with sexual crimes of a religious nature; and, finally, the eighth, Hell Of No Interval, is the most serious, meant for those who have killed their own parents, or caused harm to the Buddhist community in some way.

  Hindus have a comparable notion concerning multiple hells. Writers of law books, or Smritis, like Yogi Yajnavalkya and Vishnu, have given descriptions of the various Hells and the variety of pleasures in Heaven. For example Yajnavalkya mentions twenty-one Hells in his law book. In both these religions, Hindu and Buddhist, the sinner is given the opportunity to be freed once the bad karma has been worked through, and is then reincarnated. The punishment in Hell is not remembered by the soul when it is reborn; therefore, the chastisement in Hell is of a more reformatory or educative nature.

  The idea of such levels of Hell was taken up by an Italian writer in the middle ages. Alighieri Dante (1265–1321) died shortly after producing his most famous piece, the Divine Comedy. It is a narrative poem in which Dante, with Roman poet Virgil as his guide, undertakes a religious pilgrimage to find God. His journey takes him through Hell, Purgatory and finally to Paradise. Dante’s Hell, or Inferno as it’s more popularly known, has nine circles. In each circle the pair witness sinners being punished for their misdoings on earth, guilty of three types of sin: Incontinence or loss of control; Brutishness; and Malice or Vice. The Inferno is intricately structured, covering the entire range of possible transgressions.

  In Circle One we find pagans and unbaptized infants in limbo; in Circle Two the lustful; in Circle Three the gluttonous; in Circle Four the hoarders; in Five the angry and wrathful; in Six heretics; in Circle Seven (descending now to the lower regions of violence and fraud) the violent—split into sections that include murderers, suicides and those harmful against God; in Circle Eight we have sorcerers, fortune tellers, hypocrites, thieves, alchemists, impersonators and counterfeiters; and, finally, in Circle Nine there are the traitors to kin and country, and guests and traitors to lords and benefactors. It is also here that we find the Ultimate Destroyer Lucifer.

  Pictorially, artists such as the Limbourg brothers (1380–1416), Franco-Flemish painters, have been hugely influential. One of their most original and beautiful miniatures, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, depicts the aforementioned Lucifer and the other fallen angels catching light as they touch the earth, the flames a golden color against shades of blue. Hieronymus Bosch (c.1445–1516) is another name synonymous with visions of Hell. His depiction in the right-hand panel of the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (The Musical Hell) shows all manner of strange and grotesque imagery. Here the sinners are being harassed by the likes of birds and swine with human attributes, as well as being surrounded by animal skulls and a pair of human ears with a gigantic knife-blade protruding from them. There may not be any fire, but there are plenty of demons representing the full spectrum of human fears.

  Returning to William Blake, his illustrated Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) has images which imagine Hell as a dark place surrounded by flames. This is backed up by lines like “As I was walking among the fires of hell...” The sinners in his version of The Last Judgment are rising from the caves and flames, all naked and packed into tiny spaces, some praying for forgiveness. He was also responsible for illustrations such as “Dante and Virgil at the Gates of Hell,” which shows the two men at the entranceway about to walk into a burning conflagration.

  Dantes Inferno: The Thieves Tortured by Serpents by Gustave Dor.

  But perhaps the most significant of all was Gustave Doré’s 1861 black and white illustrations that accompany Dante’s Divine Comedy. These include winged creatures with pitchforks attacking Dante and Virgil, while cavernous regions and fire belch up from below. One of the most iconic images, though, has to be that of
the doomed souls. These actively swayed how cinema would later portray Hell and those trapped inside.

  For example, one of the earliest films to capture Hell on celluloid was L’inferno—a five-reel Italian epic that was directly inspired by Doré’s pictures, and was brought to the U.S. by Warner Brothers in 1911. The Devil’s Assistant (Harry A. Pollard, 1917) draws more on the classical myths—complete with Cerberus and Styx—but two more movies followed in 1924 and 1935 that also adapted Doré’s visions for the cinema, both entitled Dante’s Inferno. Although not given that much screen time—possibly because of the budget required—Hell has been glimpsed in films from that moment on, and usually as the underground, fire-ridden landscape that has seeped into our consciousness over the centuries—most recently in films like Spawn (Mark A.Z. Dippé, 1997) and Constantine (Francis Lawrence, 2005). It’s also worth noting that “access” to Hell has cropped up in various locations, including a local fair in Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962)—which Hellbound paid homage to in its own carnival sequence—a refrigerator in Ghost Busters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) and at the bottom of the garden in The Gate (Tibor Takács, 1987).

  The depiction of Hell as seen in Hellbound is unique among those from the worlds of religion, literature, art and film. Certainly there are elements that bear a striking resemblance to those in this sequel. Yes, there are sinners here and, yes, they are being tortured: some in ways that the Bible and other holy books pre-empted. The Pain of Sense, for instance, could very easily be describing what the victims of the Cenobites are put through. And some of the ordeals from the Buddhists’ Jigoku might prove adequate for the Cenobites to extract the maximum amount of suffering—especially when they combine the psychological with the physical. But there is one important distinction. When you die, you don’t automatically go to this Hell. It is not a punishment for all the wrongs you have done in your life. You could have lived the purest existence ever and still fall victim to this particular Hell. All you have to do is open the box. And the pain the Cenobites inflict is intermingled with pleasure.

  The look of the place—for which much of the credit goes to matte artist Cliff Culley—is labyrinthine in nature, as is only to be expected. Another puzzle like the box. But it also seems to have been inspired by three distinct artists. The first is Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778). His Prison etchings represent only a small fraction of his total output, and were not even of central importance to the artist, but they have become his most famous works and in them we can clearly see the later mechanics of Barker and Atkins’ Hell. From stone archways to elaborate staircases and walkways, Piranesi’s Prisons so closely match those of Hellbound that you fully expect to see Pinhead there.

  The second is Maurits Escher (1898–1972). His wood engraving of Porta Maria dell’Ospidale, Ravello 1932, depicts another archway not unlike those Kirsty and Tiffany find themselves in, but it is his other work, like his 1938 lithograph Cycle, 1951’s House of Stairs and Relativity (1953), which are characterized by their abnormal patterns or stairways appearing to double back on themselves with a warped perspective, that are most reminiscent of Hellbound’s delineation of Hell. If we now add the work of the more recent Swiss Surrealist artist H.R. Giger (the man responsible for the look of the monster in Alien) we are even closer to the depiction of Hell in our film. Giger’s paintings mix the organic with their surroundings, and his biomechanical vistas in shades of grays and beige wouldn’t be too out of place in Hellbound. What’s more, Giger’s work comes the closest in tone to what the mythos is really all about, that fine line between pleasure and pain. Between fear and enticement. Paintings such as The Witches’ Dance (1977) and Vlad Tepes (1978) are definitely Cenobitical in nature, and reveal more than a hint of that “repulsive glamour” Barker has talked about.

  There are no caves in this Hell, only corridors, steps and dark storm clouds on the horizon. The captives aren’t packed into small confines, but given the space of their own personal Hells. This Hades is not the epitome of chaos, but of order. And the flames are provided not by the environment, but by Kirsty when she sets fire to Frank’s boudoir. They are not meant to be part of his punishment at all, just part of Kirsty’s escape plan. Finally, this Hell shares the view that torment should be forever. Working through your bad deeds or repenting will not earn you a way out—karma has nothing to do with it. The only means of exit is to escape, as Frank does in the first film.

  History of the Devil

  Just as the idea of a fire and brimstone Hell is deeply rooted in Christianity, so, too, is the Devil as a personification of all-powerful evil. The word devil itself seems to be derived from the Sanskrit, div, although in biblical terms it came from translating the Hebrew “Satan” (originally a tester of men, or God’s prosecution lawyer, only later turning into God’s Adversary) into the Greek “Diablos.” So two separate representations were merged into one. He was consequently used by early Church fathers to explain evil acts in human nature and to convert pagans to Christianity. This concept is far from peculiar to the Christian religion; indeed, it echoes Ahriman, the Zoroastrian epitome of destruction and lies, as well as other nature spirits and deities. However this religion is the one that made the figure their own, simultaneously incorporating and distorting it over the years.

  A typical representation of the horned Devil (courtesy David A. Magitis).

  The myth of Lucifer being a fallen angel also stems from The Bible. Lucifer—which in the Hebrew means “day-star”—is mentioned in the book of Isaiah: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.” This was used to demonize Lucifer as an outcast from Heaven, who was banished along with his followers for refusing to worship Adam. A subsequent connection was then made to the serpent that tempted Eve to persuade Adam to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden. The final piece of the puzzle comes in the Book of Revelation (12:9): “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out to earth, and his angels were cast out with him,” thus to begin an ageless battle with God for human souls.7

  This is the legend John Milton (1608–1674) utilized for his well-known poem, Paradise Lost (1667). Here Satan vows to corrupt God’s new creation, man, and heads off to find Adam and Eve. To warn them, God sends the angel Raphael, who tells them the circumstances in which Satan fell. One of the principal angels in Heaven, Satan refused to bow before God’s Son. He rallied angels to his cause and a three-day battle ensued, which ended in Satan retreating. God then made man to replace the void the fallen angels had left. Satan wrought his revenge on Adam and Eve accordingly, but when he returns to Hell he finds that he and his subjects are being transformed into hideous monsters, and that he himself is becoming a snake. Upon hearing Adam’s appeal for forgiveness, God decides not to abandon the human race completely to Satan, his daughter, Sin, and his son, Death, but sends his own Son as a man to sacrifice himself and defeat the evil trinity.

  The Devil has adopted other names over time: Abaddon, Behemoth, Belial, Asmodeus, Beelzebub. But the classical look is rooted in early patristic writings of the fourth century, giving the pagan god Pan—characterized by a goat’s head and cloven hooves—a more human appearance. But the idea of a winged, horned creature again has more to do with illustrations like those of Doré’s, where the tiny specks of Dante and Virgil come across Satan. This traditional form can be seen in many silent movies from La Manoir du Diable (Georges Méliès, 1896) to Häxan (Benjamin Christensen, 1922), then later in such films as The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher, 1968), The Devil’s Rain (Robert Fuest, 1975) and The Unholy (Camilo Vila, 1988). The creature even made an appearance in Disney’s 1940 cartoon, Fantasia. More often than not, though, the Devil in cinema has been portrayed in his human guise. Typical examples include The Devil (James Young, 1921), Puritan Passions (Frank Tuttle, 1923), Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch, 1943), Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967)—in which he was played magnificently by Peter Cook—and The Witches of Eastwic
k (George Miller, 1987), where Jack Nicholson made his mark as Old Nick.

  In Hellbound we are introduced to an entirely different kind of Devil. The name Leviathan also originates from early Christianity and Judaism. The conjunction of Judaism and Zoroastrianism in the fifth century BC resulted in quite a complex demonology, which was incorporated into the former’s religion. This was when Leviathan was given as a name to a demon of chaos. But if we consult the Bible once more—the Old Testament, to be exact—we discover that Leviathan represented a kind of malevolent creature, in the form of a serpent or crocodile, or even a huge sea beast. As with the Devil, it was customized over the centuries to become a more generic symbol of evil. More specifically, in the Ugaritic religion Leviathan is the actual name of a God of Evil, and it was ascribed to a demon of envy in medieval times. Interestingly, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) also named his most famous book Leviathan. In it he advocates absolute government as the only way of achieving order. He proposed a social contract under which the ruled agreed to obey the ruler if he in turn provided social peace.

  Leviathan, we are told by Julia, is the “god of flesh, hunger and desire.” Everything you’d expect from the Devil, apart from one thing. Surprisingly, Leviathan is also a god of stability and order. In its Hell, there is no mayhem—everything is methodically thought out and rules are followed or anarchy may destroy Hell completely. Like the society Hobbes is proposing, Leviathan provides the much-needed immovability of this region, in exchange for complete and utter obedience: from his Cenobites and in turn from their victims, even if force must be used—and actually it might prefer this. Julia tells us that Leviathan has sent her out to find souls, but it is not interested in waging any war against the good or even corrupting humanity. In the world of Hellraiser, humanity is already corrupt and all Leviathan is doing is taking advantage of the fact.