I decided to do something different for a change, and look at a movie rather than an album. Of course, being a fan of weird music, it's no surprise that i'm also a fan of weird flicks! Specifically, I've always had an affinity for the genres of horror, science fiction, and comedy, with some of my favorite movies having a mix of all three. I'll start off with a movie that truly is the perfect incarnation of the phrase "Love it or hate it"...
From the introduction to the very last scene, Hellraiser is an incredibly odd and at times non-traditional horror movie. Rather than focus on the standard battle between "good" and "evil", where young twenty-somethings with a deus ex machina defeat some ancient and wicked force, Hellraiser is at it's heart a story about the role of pleasure and pain in the human psyche. Of course, while one of the characters is eventually pegged as the "hero" whom the audience is supposed to root for, the movie actually spends most of it's run time examining the relationship between the two characters who become "the villains". In fact, you get the feeling that Clive Barker (the director, and author of the novel from which the movie was based) was constantly pressured by the studio and producers to make the film more simple and clear-cut then he wanted it to be. Everything from the scenes (which were edited to appease the MPAA) to the title of the movie became issues. Originally named "The Hellbound Heart" (after the novel), the studio asked for a change, citing that it was too "romantic" sounding. They asked for new ideas; Clive jokingly came up with the overly-literal "Sadomasochists From Beyond the Grave", and an elderly woman in the film crew apparently offered the joke suggestion "What a Woman Will Do For a Good ****". Needless to say, the studio rejected the titles, and eventually everyone settled on "Hellraiser".
Hellraiser is mostly the story of these two characters: a middle-aged woman who no longer loves her husband, and the living corpse of her husband's brother (who, in life, had an affair with her)
The difficulties of the movie didn't end with the road-bumps during it's creation. After it was released, viewers and critics alike had no idea what to make of what they had just seen. It isn't hard to see why people were confused and in disdain; the movie constantly tries to accomplish too many things in it's run-time, and this creates odd inconsistencies. For example, the first half of the movie relies mostly on suspense (and the dialogue between the characters) to affect the audience, however the second half features many cheap jump scares and the "cat and mouse" cliche that audiences were fairly tired of. The movie was at times a very tasteful and suspenseful work of horror, which many people thought didn't mesh well with the heavy scenes of (what they claimed was "tasteless") gore. Also, most of the movie centers around the idea that humans are always driven to do what brings them pleasure, forming morality after the fact to try and justify their inclinations, while also examining our odd fascination with danger and pain, trying to find the blurry (or maybe non-existent) line where the sensation of pleasure
becomes pain. The first two thirds of the movie shy away from the labels of "good" and "evil", portraying the humans and demons without clearly defining any heroes or villains (making it hard to truly hate any character, since they're all mostly given motives for their actions). However, the final part of the movie throws the moral neutrality out the window, and becomes a generic battle between a human and demons. These odd dualities left a bad impression on audiences, causing half of the audience to absolutely hate the movie, and the other half to love it to the point of making it a cult classic. The critics were just as divided: while some praised the movie for it's merits, others were not at all impressed. As Roger Ebert himself put it: "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."
The Cenobites, demons who care only for exploring the limits of pleasure and pain.
The plot of Hellraiser isn't quite clear when it first begins, opening with a scene of intense gore that goes unexplained until later in the movie. It begins with a man purchasing a strange cube from a mysterious merchant, and later tinkering with the cube in an empty room. As he later explains, his goal was to experience everything the world had to offer, to come to an understanding of pleasure and pain. Normal pleasures (including having an affair with his brother's wife) had grown to bore him ("It's not enough. It's never enough"), and so he sought down an artifact that would supposedly grant him otherworldly experiences. He opens the cube, and it brings forth a cadre of demons that torture him until he is literally in shambles (
). Of course, their powers prevent him from actually dying, and they eventually bring him back to their home dimension. He becomes their slave, presumably for all eternity, or so the demons thought. His brother and sister in law move into his old home (which was left by the brothers' parents as inheritance to the both of them), and he uses the common blood between him and his living brother to anchor him back into reality. However, he comes back without any definite form, being a jumble of bones and tissue, and the only way for him to completely regain a body is to drain the essence of other living beings (or possibly just rip off their muscles/skin/etc. to use as his own, the movie never quite reveals which it is). After using a puddle of blood to give himself a basic form (in a fantastically eerie display of practical effects), his brother's wife finds him in the attic, and reluctantly agrees to help him.
The daughter, who eventually becomes the hero of the movie, tries to protect her father while evading his brother and the demons that are chasing him.
What impressed me most as the movie played out was, surprisingly enough (in a cult horror movie), the acting. Julia, played by Clare Higgins, does a fantastic job of conveying exactly what the character is thinking without ever having to say more than a few words at a time. There's a specific scene where she's saying goodnight to various guests at a dinner party, and when she reaches her husband, you can instantly see that she simultaneously loves him (deep down, anyway) and hates him. Andrew Robinson plays the part of the aloof and somewhat benign husband, and he plays it very convincingly and while his acting can seem a bit odd here and there, it actually fits his character pretty well. Later on, (serious spoilers from this point on) he plays the role of his reanimated sibling, after his brother kills him and steals his skin/face. As the "villain" of the end of the movie, Robinson does an incredible job, especially with his parting lines of the movie (which I'll probably address later on). The daughter, Kirsty, is played by Ashley Laurence, who does a good job of conveying a sense of shock at what the character is witnessing. However, I found some of her lines to be written and delivered a bit awkwardly, being too stiff, and it unfairly sets her character up to deliver some of the worst and most cheesy/overracted lines of the movie. Lastly, there's the resurrected brother, Frank, played predominantly by Oliver Smith (Sean Chapman plays him during flashbacks, when he still has his original body). In the flashbacks, he really doesn't pop up that much, making it hard to really critique Chapman's performance (I thought he did alright, though). Smith's time as Frank, however, when the character is a skinless body of exposed muscles and bone, is very memorable. Beyond these characters (who, to be fair, all have the occasional moment of cheesiness), everyone else was pretty forgettable. The movie introduces a love interest for the daughter (*groan*), but luckily for us he basically shows up only three or four times. I'm also glad that they didn't have him fulfill the cliche of popping up at the last second to rescue the girl, and in fact she's the one who ends up doing everything and saving the day (while he just stays in the background, trying not to get killed). Another thing that the film does right is that, quite frankly, the physical effects are stunning. However, Barker and the film crew ran out of money near the end of filming, which resulted in some very crude and dated effects as well. Below are two examples:
Here, you can see that they put a lot of effort into the designs of the demons.
And here is a goofy blob of rubber that never fails to make audiences laugh uncontrollably.
The movie also has some interesting scenes, as well as metaphors and symbolism, that add depth to the characters in a way that you might miss during the first viewing. Kirsty gets most of the weird symbolism that never gets explained. The baby crying in the distance during her nightmare, the sound of pigeons flapping their wings that she continually hears throughout the movie and the homeless man that usually appears not long after or before the sound (who stares at her with strangely clear and young eyes). Although later, the homeless man turns into a demon and saves the cube from being destroyed, but that doesn't quite make sense when looked at literally; at that point, the portal between worlds had closed, and all of the demons had disappeared. Not only that, but he had first appeared before the cube had even been opened by Kirsty. It seems more logical that he (and the pigeons) are a symbol, something about the alluring and yet disgusting nature of the strange and mysterious, and his saving the cube is a way of saying that humanity can never be free from our curiosity; someone will always come along, eventually, to give in to their curiosity and "open the box". In terms of the other characters, they also have their symbols and telling moments. The most obvious (yet also strangely easy to miss) is when Julia kisses Larry so that he doesn't notice skinless Frank lurking about. Larry takes that as an invitation to have sex with her, and Julia goes along with it, until Frank enters the room with a knife. Julia starts shouting "No! Please don't!", and she yells it quite a few times, and yet Larry (who has no reason to believe that she's
not yelling at him) keeps on as if nothing's wrong. She pretty much has to toss him off, and he gets offended, asking "What's the matter with you?". At first, this just seems like lazy writing; Larry obviously had to have heard her, so it's idiotic to think that he waited for so long before stopping. But then you think about it, about his delay and response, and if it was actually intentional. The movie hints that the two are having marriage problems, and that Julia is "unsatisfied" with him as opposed to Frank, despite her husband trying to please her, and Larry's reaction to her screaming makes it seem like it's something normal for them (especially considering that the movie makes Larry out to be too sheepish to take advantage of anyone). Either way, the movie just implied that either Larry was approaching the point of rape without giving a care (which would give quite a dark side to his otherwise happy and goofy persona), or that doing so was something that Julia normally
expected him to do. It's freaky, no matter how you look at it, because it makes the relationship between them that much darker. And then there's the matter of the scene preceding the ending. It's become somewhat of an iconic moment, popping up in many "Best Last Words" compilations and lists, and is completely open to interpretation. If you've never seen it before, here it is...
"Jesus Wept". Not exactly what you'd expect a murderer to say before being torn to pieces by dimension-traveling demons. At the time, critics brushed it off as being just a meaningless bible quote, added purely to sound interesting. In a way, they're right; when the scene was being filmed, the original line was supposed to be "**** you", but Robinson (the actor in the scene) asked Barker to change it to something more meaningful, memorable and mysterious. Specifically, he asked for that quote from the bible, and Barker immediately saw the potential in it, and reworked the scene. It's actually an ingenious line, when you look at the context of the phrase: In the bible, Jesus (depending on interpretations) is either crying for his friend Lazarus, or he's crying because of the faithlessness of Lazarus' family. In the first interpretation, it would mean that Frank is admitting that his actions were in vain (as Jesus wept for a dead man, despite know that he can bring him back to life with little effort, which he does, making the tears pointless). In this case, it seems like Frank is saying that there was no point trying to fight the demons, as he was always destined (because of his curiosity and passions) to be their slave. In the second interpretation, where Jesus cries because Lazarus' family is upset despite knowing that he can and will bring Lazarus back, Frank would be making more of a commentary on humanity, and how we're ruled by fear and doubt. We'll always be repelled by (and attracted to) the unknown, to death and pain, and ruled by fear. Jesus weeping, in this case, is almost as if he's sad because of this flawed and unchanging nature of humanity, and it gives Frank's words a kind of edge (as if he's saying "**** it, we're all screwed no matter what we do."). Another way to look at his words is by taking "Jesus Wept" as it is used as a phrase. People say it as a way of expressing frustration and mounting troubles (i.e. someone steals your car, and then you find out that your spouse is leaving you). In this case, Frank might simply be saying that he knows everything is about to go to hell (literally). There are many interpretations of just what Robinson had in mind when he chose that specific line, and when you take his strangely genuine smile into account, the possibilities only grow. This is the most highly discussed part of the movie, and everyone has their own idea of what was going through Frank's head. Was he giving up, smiling in despair? Was he actually enjoying the moment, knowing that his pain was simply the price of the curiosity he loved so much? You decide.
Even demons need to chill every now and then.
I consider Hellraiser to be a great and ambitious movie, definitely one of the classics of the horror genre, but also one that has far too many flaws and inconsistencies to be a true masterpiece. However, despite it's problems, you can really see that Clive Barker tried as hard as he could to bring his novel to life, and his hard work really shows in all of the movie's successes and strong points. There's a legitimate sense of intrigue and charm that seperates this movie from it's peers, and it actually makes you feel somewhat sympathetic for the "villains". With Frank, you can feel his sense of urgency and fear as he knows that the demons are coming for him, even as he takes monstrous actions to try and reclaim a physical body and escape from them. With Julia, you can see her sense of boredom with her husband (and life in general), almost feeling bad for her despite her infidelity and the actions she takes on behalf of Frank. There's also Larry, who legitimately tries to be a good husband and father, trusting his wife until the very end. And of course, you can't help but feel bad for Kirsty, who gets dragged into everything because of the actions of others, and is simply trying to keep her family together. When the acting works, it works very well, and the same can be said of the (now somewhat dated) effects. There are layers to the action (albeit not as much as in more intellectual films) which may serve as good food for thought. All in all, I'd definitely recommend Hellraiser, even though I already know that half of you will hate it. It seems like this movie will always be destined to walk the line between being great and horrible in the eyes of the viewers; which will it end up as for you?