By Melissa Antoinette Garza
Hellraiser has to be one of the only horror classics I had never seen. It always interested me, but I heard such mixed reactions about it. I always thought that Pinhead looked really cool, but I wasn’t sure if there was any substance behind the films.
Since, it was on Netflix and I have nothing else to watch, I figured I’d give it a go. The film starts when Frank (Sean Chapman) obtains a strange box from an old Asian man. I always found that movie trope strange if not a bit disturbing. In the 80s different minorities were used as a catalyst for whatever tragedy was imminent. Whether the Voodoo Princes and Princesses or the wise Asian man who knows the consequences ahead, they always were present. Into the early to late 90s, it was often changed to the psychic African American woman who wanted to help whomever was endangered. Whatever the psychology was behind this stereotyping and type-casting, I’m certainly not sorry to see it go.
Anyways, Frank takes the box home and figures out how to open it. Suddenly, a blue background appears with chains hanging from the ceiling. He screams as he is torn apart.
When Frank’s brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his wife Julia (Claire Higgins) show up to move in, Frank is nowhere to be seen. His belongings are still there along with food that has since rotted and now show maggots.
As Larry moves the belongings into the house, Julia looks around. She finds a picture of her with Larry. She rips the evidence apart and begins remembering the days before her wedding when she met Frank and cheated on Larry with him. Whereas Larry was kind and gentle, Frank was dark and intense.
Julia is startled back into reality when Larry cuts his hand. She tends to him, and rushes him to the hospital. The blood from the cut falls to the floor and in the absence of anyone to see, a deformed zombie-like Frank emerges from the basement.
Later, when Julia excuses herself from dinner, she finds Frank who begs for her help. She’s disgusted by his appearance, but asks him what he needs. As it was Larry’s blood that brought him back, he asks her to find more blood so that he can be completely reformed. She reluctantly agrees.
Meanwhile, Larry’s daughter and Julia’s stepdaughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) has somewhat psychic revelations within her dreams and fears for her father’s safety. Odd things happen when she’s awake as well. What looks like a homeless guy seems to follow her everywhere. When working at a pet shop she finds him eating crickets and kicks him out. When her boyfriend shows up asking what’s wrong, she sees that the man vanished into thin air.
Julia goes to a bar and brings a smarmy jerk home and bludgeons him for Frank who feeds on the blood. She leaves to clean herself off and when she returns, the body is drained of all its blood and Frank, though still disturbing to look at, can walk.
He tells her that he needs a few more sacrifices to be whole so that he can escape the Cenobites. The Cenobites are sadomasochistic explorers from a different dimension who keep their prisoners in a state of both pleasure and pain. Their leader is Pinhead (Doug Bradley) Since, they know that Frank has escaped they are searching for him.
Frank is a complete jerk. He threatens to kill his own brother if she doesn’t immediately get someone else so that he can be fully reformed and they can run away together. I haven’t a clue what Julia sees in Frank. He’s pompous, demanding, violent, self-serving and disloyal. He is more than willing to kill and/or rape his niece as long as it keeps him away from the Cenobites. Kirsty grabs the box and throws it out a window, making Frank go nuts enough for her to escape, retrieve the box and run. She eventually passes out and wakes up in a unnerving and dim hospital room with a nurse who appears to have stepped out of the 1950s watching over her.
Once the nurse leaves her in the room, she begins to play with the box which opens. When it does the walls within the hospital come undone. She walks down the hall only to be nearly attacked by something that looks like a caterpillar version of the deformed twin from Basket Case (1982).
Soon, she’s standing before a bunch of the Cenobites who tell her that she summoned them by opening the box. She barters for her own life by saying she’ll bring them to Frank.
She runs back home finding her father and Julia. They claim Frank is dead, but she knows something is awry. She insists on seeing Frank’s body when the Cenobites show back up.
The conclusion is fantastic and fitting of the full flick. I was honestly shocked at how little Pinhead was in it. From what I heard, I thought this was going to be a glorified porn with disgusting elements while Pinhead over-saw the entire debauchery. I was expecting a Sodom and Gomorrah of sorts, but instead was greeted with developed characters, an interesting plot, great actors, amazing special effects/make-up, and a fantastic horror story.
I definitely recommend this for those who haven’t seen it, and even for those who haven’t seen it in awhile. Definitely don’t come in thinking you’ll get 90 minutes of Pinhead, because in actuality, he’s probably on-screen for only 2 minutes. He steals those scenes, but I certainly assumed he’d have a larger role.
Apparently according to IMDB, the plot of this film has a small connection with an urban legend. I’m definitely a fan of urban legends, but had not yet heard of this one. It follows an item called the Devil’s Box that when opened reveals aspects of Hell that one can never unsee and thus it leads to madness.
Scared Stiff Rating: 7.5/10
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