Tag Archives: Hellraiser

HELLRAISER: THE FOUR BEST FILMS

Halloween Month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog with my take on the top four (of ten) movies in the Hellraiser franchise. 

HellraiserHELLRAISER (1987) – “Jee-zuz WEPT!” Clive Barker helped translate his novel The Hellbound Heart to the big screen in this film. It’s incredibly rare for a novelist to get to DIRECT a movie version of one of his own works but Barker made the most of it.

Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) has exhausted sexual sensation with women, men, corpses and animals. Seeking new stimulation he solves LeMerchand’s Puzzle Box, a “Rubik’s Cube From Hell” which leaves him at the mercy of the demonic inter-dimensional sadomasochists called the Cenobites of the Order of the Gash. 

Suffering unimaginable torments as the M in this S&M relationship, Frank struggles to escape the Cenobites for good, even if it means sacrificing his brother Larry plus Larry’s wife Julia (Clare Higgins) and daughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence). Continue reading

9 Comments

Filed under Halloween Season

CLIVE BARKER’S THE SCARLET GOSPELS (2015)

Scarlet GospelsTHE SCARLET GOSPELS (2015) – Written by Clive Barker, or I guess I should make that “Written by Clive Barker” (wink). I notice from other reviews of this disappointing novel that I’m far from alone in thinking Barker wrote only the Prologue and a ghost writer completed the work. Probably Damon Lindelöf. (I’m kidding!)

How do you go wrong with a novel featuring Barker’s recurring Occult Detective Harry D’Amour taking on the Hell Priest aka Pinhead (or “Lead Cenobite” as he was known to the ancients. Hellraiser fans will get it.)? How do you do it? With horrific writing that is worse than most fan fiction, that’s how.

Let’s start with the good: the Prologue. This prologue is so tantalizingly good that the jarring plunge in quality the rest of the way makes reading The Scarlet Gospels feel like some exquisitely refined brand of torture being pioneered by the Cenobites and their Order of the Gash.  Continue reading

28 Comments

Filed under Halloween Season

HELLRAISER: ORIGINS TRAILER

Hellbound HeartRegular readers of Balladeer’s Blog may recall how fond I am of Clive Barker’s novel The Hellbound Heart and the subsequent Hellraiser horror film franchise. Mike LeHan and Paul Gerrard directed and produced a 2013 spec trailer hoping to get a reboot of the series greenlit.

Unfortunately that did not happen, but their trailer shows a lot of work went into it. The depiction of Hell is in keeping with the spirit of the first two Hellraiser movies and the re-imagining of Pinhead is intriguing but not entirely appealing. Anyway, the spec trailer is worth a look if you’ve already read Barker’s The Scarlet Gospels and are starved for more Cenobite material. 

12 Comments

Filed under Halloween Season