Hellraiser

(1987) ****

I tend to think of Clive Barker as a bit of a hack, having been let down by most of what I've read of his. I feel like the majority of things with has name on them presumes a coolness it doesn't actually have. Sort of an "ooh, I'm from London, I'm a contemporary of Neil Gaiman" kind of thing. But I seemed to recall this movie having a special bite, and I was right.

There's something about the Cenobites that bugs me. I like old Pinhead, but his particular deformities are much more striking than any of the others. There's no blood in his grid-cuts, whereas the others have much more violent mutilations (Pinhead's got those wounds on his chest, but I never could figure those out). Somehow I read that as a failure of imagination, and that's why I like the derivative clones in Dark City better. I also tire of all the Pain/Pleasure, "demons to some, angels to others" spiel. Okay, celestial S&M, we get it. Now, who exactly sees you guys coming and says "oh look, angels"? We've seen you do a lot of work, and I can't help but notice that you're reeeally, really really really more about the pain. Can we just acknowledge that and shut up?

(Sorry, I had my fill of that kind of posturing with Strangeland.)

What I did like about this was Frank and Julia's story. The small story. It's assembled remarkably well, with the flashbacks of their affair dovetailing nicely with Julia's husband Larry walking into the haunted attic with the mother of all hand wounds. The fat sounds the drops make as they hit the floor, the quantity of it -- it all sets the wet, visceral tone of the horror to come. While I taunt Barker's high-handed notions of "the edge of experience," he does manage to capture a gooey, disgusting feel for his film that is in perfect pitch with his ideas.

So here's Frank, the once-sexy bad guy now stuck with bloody, oozing recuperation, and here's Julia, with her unnerving silence and her icy fire. The ease with which she adopts the job of serial killer is simply delightful, and her work is nasty like a hammer in the teeth. Their connection was the taut core this movie formed around, and I liked it best when they were on screen.

Cenobite dissing aside, I got some genuine prickles watching Kirsty trying to talk her way out of being taken to Hell. While not as charming as the villainous duo, she provides some believable energy and emotion, and watching her desperate maneuvering around the house was a worthy endgame. The way things worked out, though, I think they should have ended it without having the Cenobites chase Kirsty around. The crappy special effects at the end are only part of the problem; watching someone trying to do a thing with a box just isn't that exciting.

I haven't been spending too much time getting mired in the horror tradition of the ending stinger, since that's when most of these movies throw logic to the void. This one gets special mention for ludicrosity, when the weird homeless guy takes the magic box off the flames -- and turns into a skeleton dragon! No no, a bad marionette skeleton dragon! Didn't see that coming, didja?