By now you've probably noticed a lot of people making scathing, misspelled diatribes against FX artist/writer/director Gary Tunnicliffe in regards to the announcement that he is helming a new Hellraiser film. Also Doug Bradley will once again not be Pinhead. Take a deep breath. Filming has just started and there has been no footage to pass judgement over. (By the way, the new subtitle for this tenth entry is Judgement.)
Every time I see a post about the new Hellraiser film on social media it's followed by comments seething with anger, people convinced without a shred of evidence that this will be the worst sequel of all. I ask myself, why, children, why are you so angry? Yes, Revelations sucked. It was a hack job to keep the Hellraiser rights within Dimension's control. And Hellworld was almost as bad, but to say the franchise hasn't been good since the first or second film is at best a matter of a opinion and at worst a lie.
Considering that about half of the sequels were based on non-Hellraiser scripts with Pinhead plugged in and they still wound up watchable, dare I say enjoyable, is somewhat miraculous. Story wise, everything post Bloodlines and up to Hellworld mostly suffered from low budgets. There were some story flaws, true, and the films did little to advance the actual story that began with the first film. Hellraiser is not the first franchise to be guilty of such sin though. Look at every Friday the 13th film after Jason Lives. As much as I love F13, most Hellraisers after Bloodlines are better than most Fridays after Jason Lives. Strangely though, a steaming pile of dung like Jason Takes Manhattan gets more love than Deader. Has Hellraiser simply become fandom's punching bag?
Let's compare Hellraiser with some other big franchises; Halloween lost it's way after part six and Texas Chainsaw after part three. A Nightmare On Elm Street reached it's peak with The Dream Warriors and while it kept the story intact for three more sequels it suffered from the law of diminishing returns. All five of the franchises have suffered from bad sequels and/or remakes of wildly varying quality. They all also suffer from a case of arrested development. None of them have ever really taken a chance with a major reinvention of the franchise or ever evolved the story. (Wes Craven's A New Nightmare took a stab at this, but didn't recharge the franchise so much as it gave fans a chance to see Nancy [Heather Langenkamp] take on Freddy one more time.)
Some of the comments that have been echoed the most have been "No Doug Bradley, no Hellraiser" or "No Clive Barker, no Hellraisr". That's as silly as "No Ian Fleming, no Bond", or "No Bob Kane, no Batman", or worse, "No Michael Keaton, no Batman". Sometimes a franchise outgrows it's creator and sometimes the creator has better things to do than churn out sequel after sequel. These childish temper tantrums at writers and directors are as unhealthy as cigarettes for horror as a genre. What is a director? An artist. A director creates. No director sets out to make a bad film (ok, most don't). Even if it's for a pay day more than a creative impetus, no director wants to be associated with a bad film.
I don't expect Judgement to outshine the first two Hellraisers, but I also don't expect it to suck. After everything I've read from or about Gary Tunnicliffe I believe he has embarked on a journey to create a really good Hellraiser film. He's not just a hired gun keeping the rights in Dimension's hands, he's a fan and has worked on the FX for more than half the films in the franchise. So instead of throwing Gary under the bus for attempting what none of us could get done, lets be supportive and send a message to Dimension that we care about Hellraiser and demand quality films from them.
The thing that I connected with Nightbreed the first time I saw it on VHS almost twenty five years ago was the story of outsiders fighting rednecks. I came from a small town and grew up getting bullied by jocks and rednecks on a daily basis. For a while I had shaggy hair and listened to metal and later I cut my hair short and listened to punk, but I always had my nose stuck in a book. I stuck out like a sore thumb and was punished for it. I always wanted a Midian to escape into.
For those unfamiliar with Nightbreed, it's based on Clive Barker's novel Cabal and tells the story of a troubled man named Boone, who is framed for a series of gruesome murders. He's unsure of his own innocence and tries to escape to Midian, a place where monsters are rumored to dwell and all your sins can be forgiven. I don't want to give away too much more of the plot and ruin any surprises, I think this is enough to get you going.
This was a film for all of us who got called faggot, freak, and pussy and had nothing but dread at the beginning of each day for what abuse lay ahead. The producers wanted a monster movie and didn't understand the monsters weren't the bad guys. Did they read the book? So they took the film away and changed it and released a lesser film than author/director Clive Barker had originally made. (I want to make it clear though; regardless of what faults may have lain with the original cut, I always loved it.) As a result the film fared poorly, but gained a cult following that grew over the last quarter century.
A couple of years ago we got the Occupy Midian movement, with fans demanding the release of a director's cut, or Cabal Cut, and the announcement that there would indeed be a director's cut coming to Blu Ray. It felt like another twenty five years between the announcement and Scream Factory's release of Nightbreed the director's cut, but by god it was worth the wait.
Until now I've only watched Nightbreed on VHS, so the Blu Ray adds an even greater feel of "newness" and the there's the more than 40 minutes of new footage. It's bigger, deeper, more sweeping, and beautiful and still just as mean and scary. I rented Nightbreed the week it came out on VHS originally and read it's source novel, Cabal, immediately afterwards and of all of Clive Barker's work it's my favorite of his stories. So this release definitely has a great emotional weight for me, and I'm so grateful to Scream Factory, Mark Allan Miller, Andrew Furtado, and everyone else who helped bring Barker's original vision back to life.
As far as a critique goes, I've got nothing bad to say about this film, at all. Except that it's too short and I want a sequel. If there is anything wrong with Nightbreed, I've been blind to it all along. Some people have knocked director David Cronenberg's performance as Dr. Decker as wooden, but I think that was purposeful, because he's far from wooden once he dons the mask, before doing so he's cold, clinical, detatched-as if he's trying to force a 'normal' facade until he can put his real face back on.
Living in your true face is one of the themes running through Nightbreed. Narcisse (Hugh Ross) tells Boone (Craig Sheffer) he needs to show him (Boone) his true face and the residents of Midian spend there lives hiding from the daylight and the 'natural' world. As a metaphor that reaches across a wide cross section of marginalized people.
For me, coming from a small minded small town, a broken home and living under strict rules against having long hair and listening to certain music or wearing certain kinds of clothing, Nightbreed really resonated with me. Eventually punk rock became my Midian and I started living at night more and more until putting on a work short and combing my hair down felt like putting on a mask.
Nightbreed is the type of sweeping epic we need more of in the horror genre. With so many mindless zombie, remake/reboots and cookie cutter found footage films out there, Nightbreed is a breath of fresh air and sets a standard to strive for.
It starts with a scum bag named Frank Cotton seeking a puzzle box that is supposed to unlock the secrets of the flesh, instead it opens a door that lets in four perverted explorers in the extremes of pleasure and pain from an alternate dimension that may or may not be the Biblical Hell. These explorers, known as the Cenobites, quickly decimate Frank's body, literally ripping it to shreds. Welcome to Clive Barker's Hellraiser.
My first exposure to Hellraiser came from watching Siskel and Ebert savage Hellbound; Hellraiser II. Even at twelve I knew those guys were blowhards and didn't care for scary movies. The Cenobites, Pinhead, Female, Butterball, and Chatterer were like nothing I'd seen before. Dressed in kinky black leather with mutilated flesh, these guys went beyond the pale and made Freddy's striped sweater look quaint. Based on the footage shown, Hellbound looked amazing, but I'd be sixteen before I finally got see the first two Hellraiser films. By then part 3, Hell On Earth was coming out, so I got to watch all three in quick succession while reading the original novel, Hellbound Heart.
My first films based on Barker's work were Rawhead Rex and Nightbreed and I'd read those stories and the Thief of Always. So by the time I sat down to watch Hellraiser, I was already a fan of Barker. The Hellraiser and Nightbreed comics from Epic were also highly sought after items for me.
My expectations were quite high for Hellraiser and I went into the first one with almost no info. To say
the least, I was not let down. I'd call the first two works of art that hold up well today. The gore is still sick, most of the special effects are still effective. Part 3 was a massive let down, with no redeeming qualities.
Hellbound was a film I re-rented often. I loved it's epic nature and how it stood out from other horror films. I didn't return to the first Hellraiser as often, because at the time it just disturbed me too much. I think it still has the power to disturb the uninitiated, but I'm jaded enough now, that I can enjoy it on a technical level. The rebirth of Frank is one of my favorite sequences in horror.
After Hellraiser, much of my art was colored by Barker's influence, even as my disillusion with horror films started to build through the 90's. The image of the four original Cenobites, Pinhead, Female, Butterball, and Chatterer is so iconic and unparalleled. Barker raised the bar for horror artists. With Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Rawhead Rex crossing over in the comics and creating a big shared universe, Barker had created a mythos as exciting as Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos.
When I had the chance to see Part 4, Bloodlines, I was less than excited after 3. I sat in my car at the drive in for the double feature with Tales From The Crypt; Bordello Of Blood. Which sucked.
Bloodlines did not. I know some people balked at Pinhead in space (not nearly as much as Jason in space, I know), but I really enjoyed how the film traced the history of the Lament Configuration (puzzle box) from 1700s France to a space station in 2127. New Cenobites are introduced and the scope of the film restored the epic feel of Part 2.
Even though there have been five more Hellraiser films and part 4 didn't let me down, I haven't had any interest in seeing them until now. I went back to the original two and 4. There is no reason to retry 3. So this weekend I'm watching Part 5 Inferno and will continue through Revelations where we'll pick up MHHABM Part 43; Hellraiser 5-Revelations.
In the mean time, keep watching the sky, nerds. And leave those puzzle boxes alone!
Here's the only good thing from Part 3, Motorhead "Hellraiser"
Coming from writers Clive Barker and Marc Andreyko and artist Piotr Kowlaski comes the new comic series based on Barker's novella Cabal and the 1990 film. Boom! Studios (Hellraiser, Adventure Time) will unleash the first issue this month.
I'm waiting to see if this is a continuation of the original story or a new adaptation. Either way, I'm in. Boom!'s Hellraiser books have been fantastic and have totally redeemed the franchise from the deplorable sequels. I'm an even bigger fan of Cabal/Nightbreed and loved the comics from the 90's and while eagerly awaiting the new Nightbreed Cabal Cut on Blu Ray to be released this is very welcome news.
Nightbreed is about a secret city of monsters that hide away from the world of man. Their secret is revealed when a psychiatrist with a twisted secret tricks one of his patients is a vicious serial killer, setting in motion a series of events that put the Nightbreed in a desperate situation.
Now if we can just get Rawhead Rex back into comics..!
One thing about most of the movies and/or characters I've written about are actually from before my time or came out when I was too young to see them in the theater. So I was thinking about this earlier as I was getting ready to write this next chapter (which was about something else that came out when I was too young to see it during it's first run). Where exactly did I get my horror fix in the 90's? From underground comics and Industrial music.
MURDER INC.-"MURDER INC."
I was collecting every comic connected to Clive Barker I could find (Hellraiser, Nightbreed, NOTLD; London, his Marvel series, like Saint Sinner) as well as Ashes, Dead World, Faust; Love Of The Damned, The Crow, Gore Shriek, Zombie War, etc. I had gotten into horror influenced metal with Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden in middle school, then White Zombie's La Sexorcito; Devil Music
Volume 1 and Misfits Collection and Walk Among Us in high school. The thing about those four groups is that they are all awesome and fun, but a bit cartoonish and not really scary.
Scary music came into my life via my friend Kevin late in my freshmen year. Kevin was a little older and had his drivers license and a car. He'd frequently drive out to Knoxville (our big city) and come back with music we'd never heard of. One day he put a cassette in my hand and said, "If you can get through the first track you'll love this."
PIGFACE-"WEIGHTLESS"
The first track was a twelve minute endurance test called The Love Serenade (I Hate You). The band was called Pigface and the album was called Welcome To Mexico...Asshole. This was my introduction to industrial music. That cassette lived in my walkman for days only being traded out with another tape I was loaned that day, The Words and Music of Lou Reed; The Best of the Velvet Underground. Taken together that was kind of a crazy experience since the wildest music I had owned up to that point was Guns and Roses.
The thing I loved about industrial bands was the emotional, political, sexual, religious, and social extremes that many of the best bands were willing to go to. Listening to Pigface, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Murder Inc, Revolting Cocks, Front 242, Trust Obey, and Skinny Puppy was like a mash up of Albert Camus' The Stranger, Clive Barker's Hellraiser, William Gibson's Neuromancer, and William Burrough's Naked Lunch mashed up into a musical genre. The music was an electro/mechanical alchemy of punk and metal and often more sonically adventurous than either.
TRUST OBEY-"HANDS OF FIRE"
While a lot of bands may not have had an explicit connection to horror, they were able to convey a horrific world view through their lyrics, album covers, videos, and an overall sense of dread the music created. Ministry has two great examples of this. NWO is political and JUST ONE FIX is about heroin (and features Burroughs), but both feel like short horror films.
MINISTRY-"JUST ONE FIX"
Then there's Skinny Puppy's anti-vivisection video. NSFW...
SKINNY PUPPY-"TESTURE"
That's more horrific than most slasher films. It was easy to sit up all night writing horror stories with this music on and it informed and broadened my world view at a crucial time in my youth where I was heading into adulthood in a small town and had very little exposure to what the world had in store for me (Punk rock was doing the same for me at roughly the same time). I was becoming politically aware and also dealing with heavy depression from growing up in a broken home which was manifesting as anger and hate and a pessimism about the future. Nine Inch Nails' PRETTY HATE MACHINE was a good soundtrack for that.
The world of underground horror comics was opened up to me during my freshmen year of high school also, thanks to an issue of Fangoria that featured an article about David Quinn and Tim Vigil's FAUST; LOVE OF THE DAMNED and an issue of Comic Scene featuring an article about James O'Barr's THE CROW (note; actual cover dates are lost to me and I don't remember which came first). I've told the story in an earlier post about how my friend and I went to our second comic con at 14 looking desperately at every booth for issues of Faust and having fully negative reactions from the vendors. These guys were seriously not cool with us or that comic. "No! I don't even carry it in my store. It's sick!" Finally, there was one booth that had four issues and we each bought two and I found issue 2 of The Crow and some Dark Horse ALIENS comics. When we were old enough to drive, we'd spend whole days scouring thrift shops, used book stores, and the one local comic shop looking for more comics like these and that's when we discovered the amazing DEAD WORLD and started regularly reading the HEAVY METAL.
This was a great time for indie comics, especially with the exodus of talent out of Marvel to Image and the (shudder) Azreal era of Batman. My favorite comic book, X-Men, went into the toilet with Chris Claremont's departure. It would be years before I bought a comic from the big two again and Image quickly started to feel like a screw job, with blatent X-Men clone books, poorly written scripts, and late books. I lived for small press black and white comics.
Industrial bands, comic creators, authors of splatter and cyber punk books were all influencing each other and sometimes collided, like in the film adaptation of The Crow from director Alex Proyas, which featured a cameo from My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, a screen play from splatter punk writer David Schow, and had an incredibly hip soundtrack of alternative, industrial, and metal bands, including Nine Inch Nails covering Joy Division.
NINE INCH NAILS-"DEAD SOULS"
At some point Industrial merged with goth and theatrical metal and a lot of it started to sound the same. Bands started sounding the same and there was little innovation and even less to be excited about. The bands that were good, mostly stayed good, if they stayed together, or went off and started new projects that continued their evolution as artists. For me, going backwards to the roots of Industrial was far more interesting. Discovering groups like Big Black, Suicide, Cabaret Voltaire, Killing Joke, The Swans, and Throbbing Gristle have expanded my life's soundtrack and given me plenty of inspiration to write with.
Honestly, with films like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Final Destination, and the Scream sequels coming out like Twinkies on a conveyor belt, it took a while for my faith in modern horror to be re-established. Really, it's been the last ten years where I felt like horror had finally started reaching for the higher artistic standards that other art forms have long since embraced.
Bloody Disgusting has this beauty; the new ongoing Hellraiser series "The Dark Watch" from creator Clive Barker, Witchdoctor writer Brandon Seifert, and artist Tom Garcia. Click the link for the details.
I've been an avid fan of the original book (Hellbound Heart) and the first two films since high school. I collected the old comics series (along with the Nightbreed comics, which crossed over). The film series lost it's way with part 3, though part 4 Bloodlines wasn't bad. Barker returning with Boom's new series has been a blast and it's a great relief that he'll be sticking with the new series.
from Wikipedia; Rawhead Rex is a 1986 British/Irishhorror film directed by George Pavlou and written by Clive Barker. The film is about a monstrouspagan god's bloody rampage through the Irish countryside, and based on the short story by Clive Barker that originally appeared in vol. 3 of his Books of Blood series. Pavlou and Barker had previously worked together on Transmutations (also known asUnderworld).
There was a tv series when I was a kid that played on USA, hosted by Robert Englund and later re-ran on MTV hosted by Stephen King, all about horror in cinema which is where I learned about Dario Argento, Clive Barker and many others. Rawhead Rex was featured on the program and the sight of that giant freak carrying a severed head through a trailer park put the movie at the top of my get list.
I wasn't disappointed when I got home from the video store! The movie was creepy, violent, and weird and I had little context for what I was seeing, which heightened the thrill. Unlike the slashers of the day, Rawhead reached back to pagan lore and delivered an earthy devil that brought down havoc on an Irish countryside that didn't look so dissimilar to my home in the Tennessee countryside.
By today's standards (and I guess by 1987's standards) Rawhead's look was a bit wonky up close, but the movie still holds up pretty well. Back in 2010 Barker had mentioned that he wanted to remake Rawhead, but I've never heard anything else about that.
Rawhead also showed up in the excellent Nightbreed comic from Epic.
Here's the trailer followed by the best scenes compiled by a fan...
