Harefooted Halloween: Hellraiser

What I Liked: This one has a unique story.  A puzzle box summons demons, that were once human, to come and torture you for all eternity.  But that’s more the background.  The main plot involves a guy who escaped the weird torture world and needs human flesh to put himself back together.

Yet another movie with remarkable makeup effects.  The skinless human that drips blood everywhere is such a fantastic idea and man does it look good.

What I Didn’t Like: The acting and dialogue isn’t the best.  Both feel contrived at least half the time and fall kinda flat.

Overall Impression: This is a great little horror gem that everybody knows about but not a lot of people have seen (I think).  I can think of a couple of reasons why this got left by the wayside.  One big reason is that horror in general was starting to go on the decline in the late 80’s.  Slasher, zombie and all sorts of other horror subs had been around a while by then and audiences were getting tired of it. 

The other big reason is that Hellraiser doesn’t follow a conventional horror narrative.  There are, pretty much, no rules in this series.  How and why the puzzle box works, as well as how the Cenobites (Pinhead and co.) work is never explained.  I can see this being too much for most folks to want to put up with.  Definitive rules make for easier viewing (examples: Freddy attacks you in your dreams, kill a vampire by driving a stake through its heart, etc.) and this didn’t have that.  The Cenobites would appear whenever the plot needed them to and would get defeated because the film needed to come to an end.

I’ll tell ya though, I don’t mind being embroiled in the chaos of this picture because the design of the Cenobites is genuinely creepy, the story doesn’t get bogged down or sidetracked, the effects work is remarkable and the plot is pretty original.

Fair warning, there’s a lot of ghastly imagery that may not be everyone’s cup of tea.  But if you like lots of blood and spooky ass fucked up humans from hell in your tea then have a drink.  This tea goes down surprisingly smooth for being so sordid.