The Hellraiser Thread

[Silver Nemesis]

I was going to post my thoughts on Hellraiser in response to colors' review in the 'Recommend a Movie' thread, but then I decided the franchise might as well have a thread of its own.

I'm not a big fan of Hellraiser, or Clive Barker in general, but I do find his work morbidly fascinating in the same way I find H R Giger's work interesting. I went through a phase of reading many of Barker's books back when I was a student (I read The Books of Blood Volumes I-III, The Hellbound Heart, Cabal, The Great and Secret Show, The Thief of Always, Everville, Coldheart Canyon, Mister B. Gone and several of his comics; I started reading Imajica but never finished it), and I have seen all of the movies he directed and most of the adaptations of his work. I don't like his stuff, but I do occasionally revisit it when I'm in the mood to be disturbed. The three films of his I've seen the most times are Hellraiser I and II and Candyman (1992).

The first Hellraiser film is probably the best British horror movie of the eighties, though that isn't saying much. Barker's often described his work as 'dark fantasy' rather than pure horror, and in the original Hellraiser he did a good job of suggesting a broader expansive mythology on a comparatively small budget. In the first film he offers a glimpse of another world – Hell, or the Labyrinth – and the various nightmare creatures that haunt it. Pinhead, or 'Lead Cenobite', is but one of the many weird beings who inhabit that world. The first film also introduces us to three other Cenobites, the Engineer (the monster that chases Kirsty) and the skeletal dragon creature that seems to act as the guardian of the Lament Configuration (that monster isn't in the original book, so I'm not entirely sure what it's meant to be).

But all of this is merely the backdrop for the twisted human drama concerning Larry, Frank and Julia. The emphasis on plot and character, all set within a contained environment, makes the first movie feel more focused than the majority of its sequels. Like Poltergeist, most of the story takes place in an ordinary suburban house. And like Poltergeist, that house contains a portal to another world. It's a small and concentrated film, but there's always the hint of a larger mythology at work.

The makeup effects and creature designs are outstanding. The practical effects are generally good, though the budget does occasionally reveal its limitations. Most notably during the scene where Kirsty is chased by the Engineer and you can clearly see the trolley on which the puppeteers are pushing the creature. But for the most part, it's a visually striking film. The score by Christopher Young is also excellent. Before scoring Spider-Man 3, Young contributed some pieces to the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack that heavily referenced his work on the first two Hellraiser films.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the first Hellraiser is its weird transatlantic setting. It's clearly set in Britain, and when Kirsty walks along the Thames Embankment you can even see Battersea Power Station in the background.

Yet many of the British actors were dubbed with American accents at the behest of the US distributor, which renders the whole "we're not all frigid" conversation between Kirsty and her boyfriend rather confusing. The filmmakers took the transatlantic thing even further in the second film and depicted American cops with guns investigating the Cotton house. But to my mind, the first two films are clearly set in the UK. Larry, Frank and Kirsty are American (and possibly the Female Cenobite), but everyone else is British.

Speaking of Kirsty's boyfriend, he's utterly pointless and adds nothing to the plot. He's wasn't in the original novella, and I can only assume he was added to the adaptation in order to satisfy the requirement for a love interest. He's never even mentioned in the sequel. His presence also results in a confusing edit following the nightmare sequence. Barker cuts straight from the nightmare to a shot of the boyfriend sitting up in bed sweating, implying that it was his dream we just saw. But we then find out that it was actually Kirsty's nightmare, even though she was still asleep when the dream sequence ended. I chalk this editing gaffe up to directorial inexperience on Barker's part.

To wrap up my thoughts on the first Hellraiser, it's a pretty horrible, nasty unpleasant film that's stronger on visuals and ambience than it is on logic. There are lots of moments that don't make sense, especially during the finale. Why is Chatterer standing with a veil over his head? Why does the wall bleed when the Female Cenobite slashes it? Why does twisting part of the Lament Configuration banish Pinhead but not the other Cenobites? Why does the Engineer suddenly appear through the front door? Why was the vagrant eating bugs in the pet shop? Moments like this illustrate Barker's tendency to create things that evoke a strong gut response without necessarily making logical sense. He's appealing to the pit of your stomach rather than to your intellect. This might explain why the central themes concerning the pain-pleasure principle never landed with me. I could never relate to that subtext. But on a purely visceral level, I think the rest of the film works.

It's not a great movie, and it's certainly nowhere near the level of classics like The Exorcist (1973), but it's visually striking, viscerally effective and highly memorable.

On the trivia front, remember Frank and Julia's third victim? This poor bloke?

Well this is him five years later.

That's American stuntman Mike Cassidy, who doubled for Michael Keaton in The Squeeze (1987), Beetlejuice (1988), Pacific Heights (1990), One Good Cop (1991), Batman Returns (1992), The Paper (1994), Speechless (1994), Multiplicity (1996), Desperate Measures (1998) and Live from Baghdad (2002). He was also stunt coordinator on Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt (2003). But before any of that he was murdered by Frank Cotton.

As for the Hellraiser sequels, the only one worth watching is Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988). This was the only other British entry in the series and was made almost immediately after the original film utilising much of the same cast and crew. It recaptures the atmosphere of the first film and feels tonally-consistent with it. Many fans consider them two halves of the same story.

Hellbound had a bigger budget than the first film, and it uses this to expand and emphasise the dark fantasy aspect of the mythos. It's the only entry in the series in which a significant part of the story takes place in Hell/the Labyrinth. We're introduced to Leviathan, the dark god of the Labyrinth, and we learn Pinhead's back story. It's even nastier and more disturbing than the first film, and the uncut version contains perhaps the most extreme hardcore violence of any eighties horror movie (that's not counting films like Cannibal Holocaust that contain real violence).

Hellbound is also a complete mess. The first film has a lot of things that don't make sense, but the second movie takes this to another level. At times the plot mechanics are incomprehensible. I won't go into specifics about this for the sake of avoiding spoilers, but if we ever have a more in-depth discussion on Hellraiser II it might be interesting to list all the logical lapses and inconsistencies in the story. A major reason it's such a mess is that the plot was originally meant to focus on Kirsty rescuing her father from Hell, but Andrew Robinson declined to return. Some speculate he didn't come back owing to a scheduling conflict or a pay dispute, while others claim that he was put off when he saw the extreme violence in the first film and didn't want to do another. Whatever the reason, his absence meant the entire story had to be rewritten. And so what should have been a plot-driven retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice instead became a Grand Guignol sketch show assembled from disjointed vignettes.

In his review, Roger Ebert said that you could watch the scenes in Hellraiser II in any order and it wouldn't make a difference. This is true of many of the film's Hell sequences, which are largely constructed around gruesome and disturbing images. Those set pieces don't generally follow on from one another in any logical sense, meaning that you could, as Ebert suggested, reorder many of them without it affecting the story. The result is a nightmare movie that scores low on plot and logic but gets top marks for imagery and atmosphere. It also seems to have been influenced by the George Lucas movie Labyrinth (1986), only with Kirsty standing in for Jennifer Connelly and Pinhead taking the place of David Bowie.

Hellbound's imaginative scope frequently outpaces its budget, and on more than one occasion you can see supposedly stone walls shaking as characters bump into them. In other scenes you can see walls rippling like paper under the effect of wind machines. The sets were obviously done on the cheap, and it shows. But I've got to give the filmmakers props for their ambition in trying to making such a big fantasy film using such relatively limited resources. I wouldn't say Hellbound II is a good film, but if you like the first movie and want to see a direct continuation that reveals more of the mythology then it's worth watching. I find it more disturbing than the original Hellraiser.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) is trash. It feels disconnected from the first two movies and was the first entry in the series to be made stateside. It moves away from the ambitious dark mythology of Hellbound in favour of a more reductive approach centred solely around Pinhead. There are some lame new Cenobites, but most of the film is just Pinhead acting like a typical slasher villain, killing people and cracking one liners. The gimmick with the third film is that he's now free of the Lament Configuration and thus unbound by rules, but all that does in effect is cut him off from the rest of the mythos and make him less interesting. I also hate how the writers started having him preface almost every line with the word "Oh" in an attempt to make his dialogue sound deep and portentous. Avoid this one.

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) is a mess that was plagued by a troubled production. It was directed by makeup effects maestro Kevin Yagher, but he was so displeased with the finished product that he had his name taken off the credits. This one does at least try to get back to the dark mythological feel of the first two films, and of all the post-Hellbound sequels it's the one that comes closest to matching their tone and atmosphere. There's a decent fan edit that's currently available on YouTube, where the editor has reordered the sequence of events, restored important deleted scenes and added music by Christopher Young. I'd recommend watching that version over the one that's commercially available. But even the fan edit can't save it entirely. Bloodline is better than Hellraiser III, but it's still nothing to write home about.

Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) was written and directed by Scott Derrickson, who later went on to make The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Sinister (2012), Doctor Strange (2016) and The Black Telephone (2021). I saw it so long ago that I can barely remember it, but from what little I can recall it wasn't too terrible. It's more of a psychological horror film in which the Cenobites are used sparingly, but if you can overlook their lack of screen time it's ok.

Inferno was followed by Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002), Hellraiser: Deader (2005), Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) and Hellraiser: Revelations (2011). I haven't seen any of these, and I've only heard bad things about them. Apparently Ashley Laurence returns as Kirsty in Hellseeker, and Henry Cavill has an early role in Hellworld. I did see Hellraiser: Judgement (2018) when it first came out, but I can barely remember it. I haven't seen the new film yet.

So that covers my thoughts on the Hellraiser film franchise. One final thing I'll mention is a comic story titled 'The Harrowing' (Clive Barker's Hellraiser #17-18, January 1992), which was written by Barker and illustrated by Alex Ross. If you enjoyed the first two movies, then this is worth reading. It's better than the other movie sequels.

To reiterate, I'm not really a fan of this particular franchise. I've delved into it in the past, and I've still got the first two films on DVD, but I don't feel any affection towards the IP. It's a little too sadistic and nihilistic for my taste. Is anyone else on the site a fan of Hellraiser? Do you have a favourite film in the series? Did anyone bother reading The Scarlet Gospels or watching the latest film, and if so what did you think of them?

[The Joker]

Nice write up, Silver.

Like you, I can't honestly say I've ever been a big fan of Hellraiser. I kinda like the concept, and find the cenobite/engineer/leviathan mythology interesting, but never really clicked into the film series. There was a time, I think 2011-ish, where I, for whatever reason, was flirting with taking a deep dive into Hellraiser, and ended up purchasing the first two movies, but it pretty much ended there. I personally find the 2nd one, "Hellbound", to be more of a fun watch than the original, but not by much.

As a kid, I remember seeing bits and pieces of Part 3 "Hell on Earth" on HBO during late nights in the early-mid 1990's, and was just never really impressed with that one. As, in my minds eye, the continual one-liners spoken by Pinhead just resulted in him coming across as yet another Freddy Krueger imitator. Although, yeah, sure, that's certainly not how Pinhead was conceived or portrayed as such under Barker's pen (as far as I can tell), and he definitely doesn't come across like that in the first two films, but Pinhead's dialogue is just one of the many shortcomings Part 3 had going on. Plus, as you alluded to, the new cast of Cenobites just came across as incredibly lame and juvenile. Especially compared to the original versions; Chatterer (I assume the most popular cenobite outside of Pinhead), Female Cenobite, and Butterball.

I don't believe I've ever bothered with any of the rest of the films, nor have I ever read a work by Clive Barker to be perfectly honest. I've seen the guy in some interviews and documentaries, and he comes across as a nice enough guy. My personal favorite interview, is probably the one he did for the original DVD box set for all the Freddy Krueger films (prior to FvJ), in which he goes over the differences between Pinhead and Freddy. Commenting, that Pinhead, in his mind, comes across as "worn down" as a servant of hell and Leviathan, where Freddy is much more of a "lively" villain. That Pinhead would have a mindset where he's very much something of a elitist with his rank, wheres Freddy comes across like a man of the people, ect ect. This was of course back when DVD extras was a new thing, and I found this interview interesting considering it was coming from Barker's personal views of each character.

So yeah, not a big fan of the movie franchise, but the mythology/characters are compelling for me to a certain degree.

[Silver Nemesis]

As a kid, I remember seeing bits and pieces of Part 3 "Hell on Earth" on HBO during late nights in the early-mid 1990's, and was just never really impressed with that one. As, in my minds eye, the continual one-liners spoken by Pinhead just resulted in him coming across as yet another Freddy Krueger imitator. Although, yeah, sure, that's certainly not how Pinhead was conceived or portrayed as such under Barker's pen (as far as I can tell), and he definitely doesn't come across like that in the first two films, but Pinhead's dialogue is just one of the many shortcomings Part 3 had going on. Plus, as you alluded to, the new cast of Cenobites just came across as incredibly lame and juvenile. Especially compared to the original versions; Chatterer (I assume the most popular cenobite outside of Pinhead), Female Cenobite, and Butterball.

The Freddy Krueger comparison is spot on. Hell on Earth was released one year after Freddy's Dead, and the film industry was obviously looking for the next horror icon they could mass market. Although Clive Barker is credited as a producer on Hellraiser III, my understanding is that he came aboard late in the production and had no creative involvement. It shows. Hellraiser III feels as though it was made by people who'd seen the first two films without fully understanding the creative process that went into crafting them. So they just settled on trying to make Pinhead the next Freddy and ran with it. But the series should never have centred on Pinhead.

He wasn't the protagonist, or even the primary antagonist, in either of the first two films. In fact he only had about eight minutes of screen time in the original Hellraiser. The villains in the first movie were Julia and Frank. The villains in the second movie were Julia, Channard and Leviathan. Pinhead was a side character that fans latched onto, similar to Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back. Sure, they stuck him on the poster. But he didn't become the main character until the third movie, and that was the precise point when the original film series entered its lengthy death spiral.

Supposedly Clive Barker's plan was to make Julia the central figure of the series, positioning her as a sort of female counterpoint to male horror icons like Freddy and Jason. The final scene of Hellbound shows the pillar emerging from the bloodstained mattress. However, the original 'Queen of Hell' ending showed Julia emerging from the mattress wearing a black dress with black light shining out of her mouth.

The series might have fared better had they gone in that direction.

I don't believe I've ever bothered with any of the rest of the films, nor have I ever read a work by Clive Barker to be perfectly honest. I've seen the guy in some interviews and documentaries, and he comes across as a nice enough guy. My personal favorite interview, is probably the one he did for the original DVD box set for all the Freddy Krueger films (prior to FvJ), in which he goes over the differences between Pinhead and Freddy. Commenting, that Pinhead, in his mind, comes across as "worn down" as a servant of hell and Leviathan, where Freddy is much more of a "lively" villain. That Pinhead would have a mindset where he's very much something of a elitist with his rank, wheres Freddy comes across like a man of the people, ect ect. This was of course back when DVD extras was a new thing, and I found this interview interesting considering it was coming from Barker's personal views of each character.

I remember that interview from the FvJ DVD. I thought it was a bit random that Barker was there, considering he had no involvement with that movie, but it was interesting to hear him talk thoughtfully about other people's creations. He analysed and compared them fairly instead of just saying that his horror villain was better.

[thecolorsblend]

Supposedly Clive Barker's plan was to make Julia the central figure of the series, positioning her as a sort of female counterpoint to male horror icons like Freddy and Jason.

That... makes perfect sense. She's British (which ultimately would've allowed the sequels to take on the proper tone Barker intended) and is probably the best written character in the original film. I thought it was a waste to kill her off when she was the most interesting character in the original for me.

What you're saying here makes SO much sense.

[Silver Nemesis]

I thought it was a waste to kill her off when she was the most interesting character in the original for me.

She was easily the most well written character in the original. Frank is a one-note hedonistic villain. Actor Sean Chapman, who played Frank in the scenes where he still had skin, said in an interview once that he believes Frank did possess a small shred of goodness in him. That he had a spiritual and religious side that was searching for God and the divine. I'm not sure if that was Barker's intent, or if it even comes across that way in the finished film, but that interpretation adds an interesting extra layer to the character. Otherwise he's just a straightforward evil sadistic pervert.

Larry's a nice enough guy, but he doesn't seem to have much going on upstairs. There's not much to say about him.

Kirsty is fine as your typical final girl, but her relationship with Larry was more interesting in the original novella. In the book Larry is named Rory, and Kirsty isn't his daughter. Instead she's a friend of his who is secretly in love with him. In the movie Kirsty resents Julia because she sees her as a wicked stepmother who isn't good enough for her dad. In the book, Kirsty dislikes Julia because she's jealous of her relationship with Rory/Larry and doesn't trust her not to hurt him. The literary Kirsty's secret yearnings for a married man connect with the broader themes of adultery and forbidden desire that permeate the story.

That said, I think Ashley Laurence is good in the role. She's very cute and wide-eyed at the beginning of the first film. And by the end of the second movie, she's literally gone through Hell and emerged a stronger and wiser woman. I find her more compelling in Hellbound. She spends most of the first film running away from her fears, while in the second movie she has to face them head on and voluntarily venture into the depths of the Labyrinth to save her father. That father/daughter bond is the only wholesome and non-twisted relationship in either movie. Well, that and Kirsty's friendship with Tiffany.

But Julia is clearly the character that undergoes the most development across the two films. At the beginning of the first movie she's a squeamish adulteress pining for her forbidden love, and from there we see her sink through one moral compromise after another until she's become a serial killer desensitised to the most horrific violence imaginable. In Hellbound she's depicted as a demon dedicated to serving Leviathan. Not a Cenobite exactly, but something perhaps even worse. It would have been interesting to have seen where the series might've gone if they'd continued making them in Britain with Barker at the helm and Julia as the main antagonist.

Channard in Hellbound is also an intriguing character. Despite his seemingly endless repertoire of bad medical puns, I always found his Cenobite form as 'the Doctor' more intimidating than Pinhead and the others.

He's deceptively calm and softly spoken in his human form, yet it's strongly implied that he was psychotic from the get-go. At one point we see a brief flashback to his childhood self cutting open an animal, and the adult Channard was willing to sacrifice his patients in order to resurrect Julia. Julia needed some coaxing before she was willing to bring victims to Frank, but Channard required no such persuasion when it came to feeding Julia innocent lives. Like Jonathan Crane, he's a textbook example of the madman running the madhouse. He and Julia were a match made in Hell.

[thecolorsblend]

But Julia is clearly the character that undergoes the most development across the two films. At the beginning of the first movie she's a squeamish adulteress pining for her forbidden love, and from there we see her sink through one moral compromise after another until she's become a serial killer desensitised to the most horrific violence imaginable. In Hellbound she's depicted as a demon dedicated to serving Leviathan. Not a Cenobite exactly, but something perhaps even worse. It would have been interesting to have seen where the series might've gone if they'd continued making them in Britain with Barker at the helm and Julia as the main antagonist.

I can see SOME logic in positioning Pinhead as the principal villain of the series. Because Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees all have iconic, instantly recognizable appearances. But Julia, as presented in the original film, doesn't.

Still, Julia is such a great villain...

[Silver Nemesis]

It also seems to have been influenced by the George Lucas movie Labyrinth (1986), only with Kirsty standing in for Jennifer Connelly and Pinhead taking the place of David Bowie.

I watched Labyrinth this week for the first time in years, and I was once again struck by the similarities with Hellbound. I think Jim Henson's movie must've influenced Barker.

The protagonist in both films is a young American woman (Sarah Williams/Kirsty Cotton) whose grip on reality is questioned by those around her.

Both heroines have a strained relationship with their stepmothers (a massive understatement in Kirsty's case). Photographs of the protagonist's biological mother are glimpsed in both films, though neither character appears in the flesh.

The protagonist believes a member of her family (her baby brother in Labyrinth/her father in Hellbound) has been captured by monsters and taken away to a fantasy world resembling a vast labyrinth.

A powerful and sinister male figure from that other world (Jareth/Pinhead) appears in our world and opens a gateway linking the two realities.

The protagonist uses this gateway to enter the other world and frantically wanders the labyrinth searching for her loved one. Both labyrinths are populated by weird creatures. Humans who become trapped there can be transformed into goblins/Cenobites.

The villain occasionally appears throughout the heroine's quest to taunt her. There's a seductive interplay between the two, with Jareth/Pinhead repeatedly trying to tempt Sarah/Kirsty, and the heroine having to get by on her wits and negotiate her way out of danger.

Both films include a scene where the protagonist thinks she's back in her own home, only to then realise she's still in the labyrinth.

During the Fire Gang scene in Labyrinth, one of the Fireys pulls out his own eyeballs and rolls them like dice. There's a scene in Hellbound where a clown is shown juggling with his own eyes.

The scene where Sarah is chased by the Cleaners in Labyrinth foreshadows the scene in the first Hellraiser film where Kirsty is chased by the Engineer.

The works of Dutch artist M. C. Escher clearly influenced the depiction of the labyrinth in both movies.

Escher's 1953 picture 'Relativity' can be seen on the wall in Sarah's bedroom in Labyrinth, while his 1938 work 'Day and Night' is displayed at the Channard Institute in Hellbound.

There are probably other parallels, but those are some of the more obvious ones.

Another dark fantasy film that I suspect might have influenced Hellbound is Ridley Scott's Legend (1985). I'm thinking of the scene where the Lord of Darkness/Julia is being blasted along a passageway by a strong gust of wind. In both films the villain reaches out to grab the walls while simultaneously clutching the MacGuffin (the alicorn/the Lament Configuration). The imagery in both scenes is strikingly similar, as is the way they are shot and edited.

In both movies the villain is blasted away by the supernatural wind and the hero recovers the MacGuffin. In the case of Hellbound, literally no explanation is given for why this happens. It makes slightly more sense in Legend.

[thecolorsblend]

Oh man, I can't remember where I read it, but I glanced at an interview YEARS ago where Barker was asked about Labyrinth and indirectly said it was an influence. This was back in the 2000's and it's not like I bookmarked it. But he has spoken about this at least once. So, you're definitely on the right track there.

[Silver Nemesis]

Oh man, I can't remember where I read it, but I glanced at an interview YEARS ago where Barker was asked about Labyrinth and indirectly said it was an influence. This was back in the 2000's and it's not like I bookmarked it. But he has spoken about this at least once. So, you're definitely on the right track there.

That's interesting. I've never heard him openly acknowledge the influence of Labyrinth before, but it would make sense for him to do so. Barker seems to draw a lot of influence from fantasy fiction, and in particular fairy tales and stories made specifically for children. He made a TV series in 1997 called Clive Barker's A-Z of Horror, and the following episode includes a segment on the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Starting around the 19:10 mark:

Notice the iron maiden behind Tim Burton? Looks familiar...

The back section's missing, but it looks like Tim kept the doors as a souvenir.

Anyway, getting back to Barker's fantasy influences, I remember reading his novel The Thief of Always and finding it strongly reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's book Something Wicked This Way Comes. There are similarities in plot and tone, but also in the style of prose.

Here's the opening paragraph of the prologue to Something Wicked This Way Comes:

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: a school month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September's a billion years away.

Now compare that with this extract from the opening chapter of The Thief of Always:

The great gray beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive [...] It was a monstrous month, that was for sure; a dire and dreary month. The pleasures of Christmas, both sharp and sweet, were already dimming in Harvey's memory, and the promise of summer was so remote as to be mythical. There'd be a spring break, of course, but how far off was that? Five weeks? Six? Mathematics wasn't his strong point, so he didn't irritate himself further by attempting – and failing – to calculate the days. He simply knew that long before the sun came to save him he would have withered away in the belly of the beast.

I'm sure Barker has acknowledged Bradbury as an influence, and in this instance he's drawing from yet another fantasy/fairy tale story centred on children. The Thief of Always has nothing to do Hellraiser, but I thought I'd note the connection anyway.

Barker has definitely cited French artist Jean Cocteau as an influence, and Cocteau's 1950 film Orphée almost certainly inspired aspects of Hellbound. Orphée is not a horror film, but a fantasy that updates the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice to a contemporary setting. As in the original myth, the protagonist has to venture into the world of the dead to bring back a loved one. Cocteau visualises the underworld as a dark realm filled with decaying ruined structures, not unlike the Labyrinth in Hellbound.

To repeat what I wrote at the start of this thread, I'm not really a fan of Barker and yet I do find some of his work interesting. One of the reasons is the way he combines very different influences to produce something with its own distinct identity. For example, mixing innocuous elements taken from M. C. Escher, Jean Cocteau and Jim Henson to create something as horrific as Hellbound.

[thecolorsblend]

A horror YouTuber that I follow did a retrospective about the original Hellraiser film. I enjoy thoughtful commentary and he's good for stuff like that.

Probably should've posted it here sooner. But what can you do?