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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - September 18th

"HELLRAISER" released in 1987

At a remote estate, amoral hedonist Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) solves the Lament Configuration - an ornate puzzle box he purchased in Morocco, on the promise it will open a portal to a realm of new carnal pleasures - and summons the Cenobites, an extra-dimensional race dedicated to the extremes of sadomasochism with a religious devotion, in Clive Barker's dark chiller, Hellraiser!

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Years after the disappearance of his brother Frank (Chapman), Larry (Andrew Robinson) moves into Frank's old house to rebuild his strained relationship with his second wife, Julia (Clare Higgins). While in the attic, Larry accidentally cuts his hand and his blood drips onto the  floor. The blood resurrects Frank as a skinless corpse (Oliver Smith), and is later found by Julia. Still obsessed with Frank ever since starting an affair with him just after her marriage to Larry, Julia agrees to harvest blood for Frank so he can fully regenerate, picking up men at bars to take home to "feed" to Frank. Meanwhile, Larry's teenage daughter, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), starts to notice Julia bringing her victims back to the house and, while following her to the attic, interrupts Frank's latest feeding. Fleeing, Kirsty takes the Lament Configuration with her, later solving it in her hospital room which summons the Cenobites. Their leader, Pinhead (Doug Bradley) explains that although the Cenobites have been perceived as both angels and demons, they are simply "explorers" from another dimension seeking carnal experiences, and once the puzzle box is solved, whomever summoned them must go with them! Kirsty quickly bargains for her freedom when she informs them that Frank has escaped from their realm, and offers to return Frank to them in her place. With no choice, Kirsty returns to confront Frank and Julia (unaware that they have already murdered her father Larry, with Frank now wearing his skin) and find a way to defeat them before she too is taken to Hell!

[after being summoned by Kirsty]
Pinhead: We have such sights to show you!

Top:   Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) steals the Lament Configuration;

Above:   The box summons the Cenobites, including their leader, Pinhead (Doug Bradley)

Based on his own novella, The Hellbound Heart, author Clive Barker chose to adapt the book to a movie himself, having previously been disappointed with how his screenplays for Underworld and Rawhead Rex (both in 1986) was handled. The concept of a cube being used as a portal to hell has its basis in the urban legend of The Devil's Toy Box, which concerns a six-sided cube constructed of inward-facing mirrors. According to legend, individuals who enter the structure and then close it will undergo surreal, disturbing phenomenon that will simultaneously grant them a revelatory experience and permanently warp their mind. Studio New World Pictures decided however that The Hellbound Heart sounded too much like a romance and asked Clive Barker to change it. Barker (perhaps jokingly) offered Sadomasochists from Beyond the Grave, which was rejected for the overtly sexual content, but the film was still shot under that title with the lack of any other options at the time. During production, with a title still not settled on, Barker ultimately opened the floor to the production team to offer up their own suggestions, prompting a 60-year-old female crew member to offer up, What a Woman Will do for a Good Fuck!

The studio had planned on casting stunt men as the Cenobites to save on production costs, but Barker insisted on hiring actors, reasoning that even if the characters did not speak and appeared under heavy make-up, their body language would still convey a personality. Originally, The Chatterer and Butterball Cenobites had dialogue in the original script. However, when their make-up made coherent speech impossible, their lines were given to the Female Cenobite and especially Pinhead, which helped to cement his reputation as the film's trademark character. The signature role of Pinhead would ultimately be portrayed by Doug Bradley, having been offered either this part or that of one of the Mattress Movers by Barker. Bradley almost did not accept the role as being a new actor, he felt it was important to see his face on screen, not buried underneath the prosthetic Cenobite makeup (which would take over six hours to apply each day). Character actor Lance Henriksen was offered the role of Frank by New World Pictures, but he turned it down fearing that if successful, he would have to appear in a series of sequels, which he wasn't keen on (although Henriksen would later go on appear in one of the Hellraiser sequels, Hellraiser: Hellworld in 2005). The role of Frank Cotton would be played by Sean Chapman, who ultimately had his lines dubbed (as well as other English actors) by American actors when New World thought the film would be more marketable if it was set in America. Hellraiser would also be the film debut of Ashley Laurence as the young protagonist Kirsty Cotton, and would subsequently play the role twice more in Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) and Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002).

Frank Cotton: I thought I'd gone to the limits. I hadn't. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits... pain and pleasure, indivisible.

Top:   Frank (played as Skinless Frank by Oliver Smith) recruits his former lover, and wife of his brother, Julia (Clare Higgins) to help him regenerate;

Above:   Frank, having murdered his brother Larry (Andrew Robinson), now wears his skin!

Barker admitted his own lack of knowledge on filmmaking - having only made two short films before making Hellraiser - stating that he "didn't know the difference between a 10-millimeter lens and a 35-millimeter lens", but the cast and crew were mostly forgiving. Two of the actors would also find the shooting process difficult; the first being Sean Chapman where, for the scene where he is hung upside down, covered in blood, and spun around, causing him to vomit after each take (eventually Barker used the shot from earlier camera tests in the final cut), the second being Doug Bradley, who often missed his marks on set as he couldn't see through his black contact lenses and was afraid of tripping over Pinhead's skirts. The special effects of the unnamed creature, known as "The Engineer" in the novels, proved difficult as the creature was difficult to manoeuvre. Later reviewers would often complain about the quality of the effects, but as Barker explains, due to the very limited budget, there was no money left to have the FX done professionally after the primary filming, so Barker and a "Greek guy" animated these scenes by hand over a single weekend. Barker also later claimed he was surprised the FX turned out as well as they did considering the amount of alcohol the two consumed that weekend!

Barker also experience difficulty with the MPAA over the cut of Hellraiser, after they initially rated the film X. To get an R rating, Barker made several cuts to the film - including consecutive hammer blows during an earlier murder scene and close-ups of Kirsty sticking her hand into Frank's flesh - all with the intention of watering down the overall impact of the piece. Also trimmed down was a S&M scene between Frank and Julia, with footage of Frank spanking Julia being cut completely and Frank's "thrusting" being cut back from three thrusts to two as Barker sarcastically commented, "The MPAA told me I was allowed two consecutive buttock thrusts from Frank but three is deemed obscene!"

TRIVIA:   Comedian Louis C.K. jokes that people should have to solve the Hellraiser Puzzle before being allowed to text when drunk.

Top:   Actor Doug Bradley in the make-up chair;

Above:   Author and filmmaker, Clive Barker on set with Oliver Smith

Hellraiser had its first showing at the Prince Charles Cinema on 10 September 1987, before it's official release in the UK the next day. As it turns out, actress Clare Higgins (who plays murderess Julia Cotton) hates horror movies and when she saw this movie for the first time at the premiere, she had to leave after 10 minutes because it freaked her out so much. Reportedly, she has never seen the whole movie. Reviews in the United Kingdom were mostly positive with  Time Out London referring to the film as "Barker's dazzling debut" that "creates such an atmosphere of dread that the astonishing set-pieces simply detonate in a chain reaction of cumulative intensity" and concluded that the film was "a serious, intelligent and disturbing horror film". Kim Newman writing for the Monthly Film Bulletin noted that the most immediately striking aspect of the movie is its seriousness of tone in an era when horror films (the Nightmare on Elm Street or Evil Dead films in particular) tend to be broadly comic.", and Melody Maker describing it as "the best horror film ever to be made in Britain". Later released in the US on 18 September 1987, where Hellraiser grossed nearly $15 million, the reviews were not as kind with The Washington Post referred to the film as a "dark, frequently disturbing and occasionally terrifying film" as well as noting that "Barker's vision hasn't quite made the conversion from paper to celluloid [...] There are some weaknesses, particularly the framing of close-ups and the generic score, but there are some moments of genuinely inventive gore [...] the film falls apart at its climax, degenerating to a surprisingly lame ending full of special effects and triumphant good", and Roger Ebert stating "This is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination."

Despite the reviews, the box office success of Hellraiser started an entire new franchise for New World, and subsequently Miramax/Dimension Films with the sequels; Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), Hellraiser: Inferno (2000), Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002), Hellraiser: Deader (2005), Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005), and Hellraiser: Revelations (2011). Doug Bradley would play the role of Pinhead in each of these films, save for the last film, Revelations. His refusal to return to the role was in part due to the quality of the script, as the film was being rushed into production so that The Weinstein Company would not lose its rights to the franchise before it could produce a more profitable remake of the original and shot the film over two weeks on a budget of $300,000. On 20 October 2010, it was officially announced that Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer were to direct and write, respectively, the reboot of the Hellraiser franchise, with their version differing from the original. However, in 2011, Farmer confirmed that both he and Lussier were no longer attached to the project. And then on 24 October 2013, Clive Barker spectacularly announced that he will be directing and writing the reboot with actor Doug Bradley attached to play Pinhead yet again!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   63%

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