The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy

by Kane, Paul

  “It began mostly as a way of jotting down what I thought my own worst nightmare was,” said Soisson upon watching the finished film.1 This turned out to be implanted memories through drug-induced suggestion and being buried alive. The story came across the desk of Nick Phillips, executive producer on Deader and the eighth film. “I thought it was just great in and of itself,” he enthused. “And in trying to find some use for it, we obviously decided to try to integrate it with the Hellraiser mythology.”2 With time fast running out, Bota contacted Carl Dupré, who had been one of the writers on Hellseeker. Dupré had to work fast and turned the treatment into a script within two weeks. In this he played around with the Hellraiser mythology, thinking outside the box to create an Internet gaming ring called Hellworld that would entice the players to come to a Hellraiser party, thereby utilizing the Gothic-looking house in Bucharest that would have been the location for the movie in its original form. The writer did leave some of the scenes vague, though, in particular the murder sequences, so that others could have their say. Once Deader had completed shooting, Bota and the producers retreated to their hotel to bat around ideas. Bota had only one week’s preparation time (where usually a director would enjoy about five). But soon the moment had arrived and the shoot was about to begin.

  The makers had to think on their feet in terms of casting as well. But Bradley was already over there and two of the other slots virtually filled themselves. Khary Payton had just starred in Dimension’s Dracula II: Ascension (Patrick Lussier, 2003), so he was fresh in their minds when it came time to fill the role of Derrick. He also came with the added bonus of having had his head cut off in that film, so they could use this prop again for his death in Hellworld. Speaking about the movie Payton said, “Hellworld is like candyland without the candy. It’s a state of mind ... All hell breaks loose again. And why wouldn’t it? It’s Hellraiser.”3 Payton, who had also featured in TV shows like Walker, Texas Ranger and Imagine That, would bring a welcome spark of energy to the whole proceedings.

  Newcomer Anna Tolputt had already auditioned for the part of Marla in Deader and impressed Bota. The young English actress wasn’t quite right for that part, but when the role of Allison came up she would prove perfect. With just the right hint of “Goth”—and resembling Thora Birch in The Hole (Nick Hamm, 2001)—Anna would have one of the most horrific deaths of any Hellraiser film, being bled dry in the Sacrificial Chair with two spinning razor-sharp wheels.4 She would also have to be buried in make-up for the chase scene around the house and for her final death scene in the coffin where she has clawed out her own throat.

  Born in 1983, Henry Cavill grew up in Jersey on the Channel Islands. He became interested in theatre acting at boarding school, and this in turn eventually led to film work. His first appearance on the big screen was playing Thomas Aprea in Laguna (Dennis Berry, 2001) and this was swiftly followed by a role in the major Hollywood swasherbuckler, The Count of Monte Cristo (Kevin Reynolds, 2002), alongside Guy Pearce and Richard Harris. He also appeared on British television in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (both 2002). With his dark good looks there is little wonder he only just missed out on playing Superman, but for the role of Mike in Hellworld Cavill would also display a distinctly comic sensibility that would lighten the mood in between the darker parts of the film.

  The other male lead was a role filled by Canadian Christopher Jacot. He had a number of TV and film credits to his name by the time he was cast in Hellworld, including Twice in a Lifetime, The Famous Jet Jackson and MythQuest on the small screen, and Get Over It (Tommy O’Haver, 2001) with Colin Hanks (son of Tom) and Kirsten Dunst, and The Bay of Love and Sorrows (Tim Southam, 2002) in the cinema. He would bring just the right balance of brooding teen angst and vulnerable hero qualities to Jake, best friend of the boy who dies at the start of the film because he was playing “Hellworld.” “He gave a performance filled with despair and anger,” said Bota about the young actor.5

  For the key role of Chelsea, those casting turned to up-and-coming starlet Katheryn Winnick, who was born and raised in Etobicoke and could speak only Ukranian until the age of eight. Winnick studied acting in New York and had made a name for herself in TV shows like Student Bodies, PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal and Relic Hunter, and had also starred in Two Weeks Notice (Marc Lawrence, 2002) with Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock. Winnick was one of the hopefuls of 2002’s The It Factor which proclaimed her to be one of the next talents to have “it.” When the makers found out that not only did she have the looks, but also holds a third-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, a second-degree black belt in Karate, and is a licensed bodyguard, they quickly wrote in a couple of scenes that would show this off (namely when someone tries to pick her up at the party and when she roundhouse kicks The Host near the climax of the movie). “You know, I think the actual footage of it looks like a double,” said the actress of that last scene, “because my hair was in my face. But no, Mom, that’s me. I did it!”6 Since making Hellworld Winnick has gone on to star as Ivana Trump in the biopic Trump Unauthorized. “It’s the untold version,” she says. “It’s not Donald’s version.”7

  Playing the Uniformed Cop who comes to check out Chelsea’s phone call was a face familiar to British audiences. Victor McGuire had starred for many years as Jack Boswell in the sitcom Bread from the mid 1980s onwards, and then in another successful comedy as time-traveling Nicholas Lyndhurst’s pal, Ron Wheatcroft, for Goodnight, Sweetheart (1993–1999). Movie audiences might recognize him from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie, 1998) and Thunderpants (Peter Hewitt, 2002). For someone who knows him from these UK roles it is a little strange to see him with a New York accent, but he masters it quite well.

  David Robinson would join him as Cop #2, under some very unusual circumstances. David, from Cheshire, England, won a competition to find “Britain’s Scariest Person.” “The competition’s not been held since, so I guess I still am!” said David. “The prize was for a walk-on part in a horror movie and I was thrilled when it was eventually arranged to be a Hellraiser movie.... The first scene I shot is right near the end of the movie where we pull Chelsea from the coffin.”8 David was absolutely delighted at his prize, being a massive Hellraiser fan (which was coincidentally what the whole film was about). After chatting with Gary Tunnicliffe, the pair became friends and David now runs his Web site (www.garyjtunnicliffe.com). It’s to be hoped it won’t be David’s last appearance on-screen as he does a very good job.

  Like Andrew Robinson in Hellraiser, the film’s biggest coup would be securing the services of Lance Henriksen. A true Hollywood veteran, Henriksen was born in New York in 1940 and studied at the Actors Studio before securing parts in off-Broadway plays. In the ’70s he starred in such classics as Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975) with Al Pacino, Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and the second outing for the demon child in Damien: Omen II (Don Taylor, 1978). In the ’80s he enjoyed even more success when he was almost cast as The Terminator in James Cameron’s futuristic thriller, and his eventual role of Detective Vukovich led to a part in Cameron’s next movie, Aliens (1986). It was this that really catapulted the actor to fame, playing the heroic android Bishop—a franchise role that he would reprise for two of the later films (including 2004’s prequel Aliens vs. Predators directed by Paul W. Anderson). Parts in Kathryn Bigelow’s savvy vampire movie, Near Dark (1987), The Pit and the Pendulum (Stuart Gordon, 1990) and John Woo’s first U.S. film, Hard Target (1993), came next. But it was the spin-off from the highly acclaimed X-Files, Millennium—also created by Chris Carter—that gave Henriksen his second most famous role: that of ex-FBI profiler Frank Black (1996–1999). Nor was Henriksen a stranger to haunted buildings like the one in Hellworld, having starred in House III: The Horror Show (James Isaac) in 1989.

  Writer of Hellworld, Carl Dupré, on the steps of the Hosts house (courtesy David Robinson).

  His involvement in the film came after Bota bumped into him in a r
estaurant in Romania on the director’s first day there; Henriksen was just finishing up duties there on Mimic 3: Sentinel (J.T. Petty, 2003). Bota told him how much he admired his work and that he really wanted to use him in something. There were no parts appropriate in Deader but Henriksen told Bota to send him something to look at. This turned out to be Hellworld, with Dupré being in the fortunate position of writing the part of The Host with Henriksen in mind. When the actor read the script back in America, he was so excited by it he got on another plane and flew back to Romania. “I was very happy and very fortunate to have Lance Henriksen step into the role of The Host,”9 said Bota, who immediately put him to work when he got there, digging the holes that the teens would eventually find themselves in. Professional that he is, Henriksen also made a request of the make-up department that they glue his ears back so he would look more feral—like a wolf or a Doberman.

  As with Deader there would also be some peripheral members of the cast who were sourced from Romania itself. To begin with, there were the two girls actually from the train carriage scene with Joey in the previous film, who would now stand in for Gratuitous Tit-shot Girl and Sister Ursala. Ursala (Catalina Alexandru) would be required not only to strip this time but also to play a ghost nun who seduces Jake and sleeps with him in an attic room of the house. The police officer victim who gets staked in the mouth by Pinhead (Costi Mirica) and the smoothie who tries to pick up Chelsea (not credited) couldn’t speak a word of English and had to have their lines dubbed over. Someone else who didn’t get to say much, but wasn’t Romanian, was writer Dupré himself, who turns up as a barman in one scene, following in a tradition set by Peter Atkins back in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth.

  Crew-wise, Gary Tunnicliffe was a given, although he did find time to go back home briefly between shoots. In early drafts of the script there was something called the Hydro baby, which would come from inside a jar and run around attacking people à la Chucky. Bota asked Tunnicliffe to design this, but the cost of operating it would have been prohibitive. They then thought about a CGI one, which would have fallen—as always—under the remit of Jamison Goei’s visual effects department. In the end, it was decided to just fill what came to be known as the The Specimen Lab set (meant to be the basement of the house) with lots of Area 51-type deformed babies in jars. Tunnicliffe was also responsible for rounding up as much Hellraiser paraphernalia as he could for The Host’s “museum,” such as boxes, chains, and the Cenobite tarot cards. Other than that, it was business as usual, with the effects maestro going to work on the cast and generally piling on the gore, whether it be on hand during Tolputt’s Sacrifice Chair scene or lying just below Winnick to pump spurting blood out of the wound when she is stabbed by mistake. “Actually, all the cast were great,” said Gary. “We did a lot of prosthetics stuff to them and beat them up all quite badly at various points in this, everything from burying them in the ground in the freezing cold to having dirt on them, and they were all real troupers.”10 The cast were no less complimentary of him, Winnick stating, “Gary was a hoot!”11 and Payton saying, “God gave him a gift, and it was to bloody up the world!”12

  Tunnicliffe was also in charge of the Cenobite make-up again, which included Doug Bradley’s distinctive look and the return of Chatterer and Bound, albeit in a slightly different form. Bound—now called Banded—was male this time and responsible for raising one of the teen victims up on a meat hook, taking the scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre just that little bit further. The Cenobites would be played on this occasion by a combination of Tunnicliffe himself, Mike Regan and Snowy Highfield. But Tunnicliffe could also be seen right at the very end, when the coffins are discovered, with notepad in hand standing next to a police car—a character he maintains, with tongue in cheek, is the reporter from Deader who talks to Amy at the start, the only character apart from Pinhead to make it into both movies. He also handled the second unit direction, including various inserts to the film.

  Most of Goei’s postproduction contributions to Hellworld were more subtle but had no less an impact on the overall film—the white mask, for instance, which suddenly takes on a hideous appearance during Mike’s fellatio scene, the extra blood spurts for Allison’s death, and the removal of the floor when trying to give the appearance of a whole room full of dead partygoers hanging from hooks and chains. But his tour de force would be the death of The Host, the Cenobites slicing him in pieces with blades on the end of chains—a homage to Bishop being ripped apart by the Alien Queen in Aliens. And the cinematographer on this shoot was another Romanian technician, Gabriel Kosuth, and the aim this time was to go for an American feel rather than European, because the movie is supposed to be set in the U.S. The DP’s previous credits included 1992’s Filmare/Filmage, which Kosuth also directed, and The Secret Kingdom (David Schmoeller, 1998).

  The music score would come from Lars Anderson, who had worked on Anacardium (Scott Thomas, 2001) and the James Bond video game, Nightfire (2002). Anderson would provide some haunting piano music to match the tone of the ghost-house completely (in particular when Jake and Sister Ursala make love). But the thumping rock soundtrack would be mainly the department of music supervisor Melanie Miller, who brought in stacks of music from bands that the production could afford. The result was even more tracks than Hell on Earth boasted, such as some standouts from Bosshouse like “It Ends,” “Haunted,” “Bug Spray” and the number that ends the movie with perfect irony, “Look Who’s Standing Tall.” Other tracks included “91” by Skipngonaked, “Stay With Me (Unlikely)” and “Frozen” by Celldweller, “1 Man” by Sons of Poseidon, “Glass Procedure” by CIRRUS, “Berlin Wall” by Stumbling Mumbler and “I Funk Therefore I Am” by Sonicanimation.

  Once more, the shoot was a fast and furious one (twenty to twenty-four days), fun but exhausting. Hellworld was shot on location at the big house—with rooms fitted out by production designer Christian Niculescu—and in its grounds, although for the forest shots the crew would have to move about thirty-five miles down the road outside the main part of town. Some interior scenes were filmed in The Writer’s House, the basement of the university hospital and on set (the attic where Chelsea puts her hand through the floorboards, for example). Bota was used to communicating through translators now, but still found it delayed things sometimes. The main problem, however, was the climate. When the clothing for the cast was chosen it was September and still moderately warm. Even when the shoot began in October, the weather held off, allowing Winnick to shoot the scenes where she runs to the car in only her cut-off red top with little difficulty. But by the end of the shoot in December, temperatures for the outside filming had dropped to something like -12° Celsius. A warm trailer had to be standing by between takes for Winnick now, and the steam you see coming from actors’ mouths is very genuine, indeed. As Doug Bradley commented, “There was no getting round the fact that standing in those temperatures was like plunging my head in a bucket of ice.”13 The upshot was Winnick losing her voice at one point and her double catching pneumonia. “It was so cold,” reiterated Winnick, “it was to a point where my lips would freeze and I couldn’t get my words out.”14

  Shooting of the scene where Adam—also a Romanian who could speak no English (Stelian Urian)—has to set fire to himself had to take place in the open air, too, which was a bit of a problem as he was supposed to be digging a grave in his basement. This required the construction of a three-walled set out in a field, and the borrowing of a fire-suit from Mimic 3 which had to be filmed in long shot when ablaze. But it was all worth it, as this resulted in one of the best and most harrowing scenes in the entire movie.

  When a rough cut was ready and brought back to the States, Clive Barker was invited to take a look and again made some notes for Bota. This included teasing out the story of what’s really happening to the teens with quick inserts of them in the coffins during the hallucinatory scenes, and the appearance of two nuns at the start to foreshadow Sister Ursala’s story. This would mean that The Host’s exposi
tion-heavy explanation at the end would be set up nicely, and Bota worked hard on the editing of this to give it more movement. More inserts were filmed the following spring, such as some sunny landscape shots, but by mid 2003 the movie was completed, although as we have already noted it was not released until 2005. What audiences were given then was a self-referential horror movie, an up-to-date, hip and young Hellraiser, made in the post Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) era. Henriksen had himself just starred in the third installment of that particular trilogy (Craven, 2000). But was there more beneath the surface gloss than met the eye at first glance?

  30

  WELCOME TO THE PARTY

  A Better Place

  The main story of Hellworld is based on two crucial, interlinked concepts, of equal importance. The first of these—exactly like Deader—is given away in the first scene. We hear the sounds of digging even before we see the initial shot of Adam, on his own, working away at the soil. He is literally digging his own grave, but it is the fact that he is alone that is significant—not just physically, but mentally. (We even discover later that his father abandoned him: “I don’t even think he’s got a dad,” says Derrick, “I think he made it all up.”) When the group go to his funeral, they discuss how they should have seen it coming but didn’t, how they couldn’t get through to him. It forms a massive part of the plot, spawning the guilt complex they—especially Chelsea and Jake—have about the suicide. “Suppose we’re in Hell because we belong here,” Chelsea says to Jake when she’s trapped in the attic. “For what?” asks Jake. “For not saving Adam,” she elucidates. “From who?” Jake says, still not understanding. “From himself. From Hellworld ... We knew what Hellworld was doing to Adam but we kept on playing it.” It is vital to note that when she makes this key speech, apart from the mobile phone—which we will come to in a moment—Chelsea is also quite alone. And like the birds she finds there (in direct contrast to the ones flying from the trees at the beginning) she is trapped.