Hellraiser (1987)

The announcement in the mid-1980s by writer Clive Barker that he was to direct an adaptation of one of his own works gave rise to the hope of an imminent change in fortunes for the beleaguered British horror film. They were hopes that were soon dashed when no-one could find the will, talent or funding to pick up the gauntlet that Barker was to throw down but the resulting film, Hellraiser, remains the high point of an otherwise dreadful decade for British horror. It proved to be a remarkably assured exercise in surrealism and perverse sexuality that took the sexual tensions that informed the best Hammer films and dragged them into a darker, more frightening arena.

Disappointed by previous attempts to film his work (the terrible Underworld (1985) and the not-much-better Rawhead Rex (1986)), Barker decided to adapt his own novella The Hellbound Heart and direct it himself. The film proved to be a remarkably assured and perverse exercise in surrealism that almost succeeded in dragging the mordant British horror film kicking and screaming into the 80s. Sadly, in so doing, it kick-started an increasingly irrelevant (and increasingly Americanised) franchise and ultimately did little to inspire a new generation of British horror film makers.

Despite the ludicrous dubbing which seeks to put American voices in the mouths of the obviously British actors (if it's supposed to be the States, why are British trains seen hurtling past the local station?) and the odd stiff performance, Hellraiser is a masterly debut, one that Barker has found almost impossible to match since. His follow up films, Nightbreed (1990) and Lord of Illusions (1995) are severely compromised works which, even without the bedeviling hand of the money men, seemed like poor relations to Hellraiser.

Hellraiser bucked the contemporary trend for teen-oriented slashers and horror comedies and marked the return of a more adult horror, a dark and hellish vision of sexual perversion and dysfunctional families (a vein that has run throughout British horror for many years) that married the intellectual concerns of Barker's prose with the unique and often deeply disturbing vision of his paintings. It poses often uncomfortable questions about the complex relationships between sex, pain, pleasure and death and attempts to answer them in ways that few other films have attempted to do before or since. Given the often awkward way that the British film industry had hitherto tackled sex, it was quite a shock to see just how sexy Hellraiser was - the leather-clad fetish demons the Cenobites are the kinkiest monsters in film history and the brief glimpses into their torture dungeon hints at sensual perversities beyond imagination.

Barker's direction is remarkably assured for a man who had previously only helmed a pair of experimental underground shorts (Salome (1973) and The Forbidden (1978)) and he draws a particularly good performance from Clare Higgins as Julia, brilliantly suggesting a woman freed from the shackles of her sexual repression without the hysteria one might have dreaded. Higgins handles Julia's shift from neurotic wreck to icy femme fatale with considerable aplomb and her gradual transformation into an assured sexual predator is one of the more disturbing aspects of the film. Her career since Hellraiser has been patchy to say the least and its a tragedy that such a powerful performance didn't win her bigger and better roles.

Doug Bradley set the fanboys' hearts a-quiver when he introduced a screen monster to rival anorak favourites Freddy, Jason and Michael, though such comparisons tend to cheapen Bradley's remarkable and restrained performance. The sequels may have reduced Pinhead - a name he's never referred to here, though Barker himself seems to have coined it - to an increasingly irrelevant dispenser of one-liners, but in this first episode he's the most original screen monster in decades. His menace stems from his stillness (he barely moves whenever we see him), his refusal to conform to standard horror movie clichés and from his apparent belief that he's only doing what his victims want him to do - even at the moment of his horrendous death, Frank is in rapture thanks to the machinations of the Cenobites and Pinhead's entreaty to Kirsty ("We have such sights to show you") bespeaks a monster who is genuinely proud of his work... The Cenobites are not the mindless predators of the stalk and slash films - what gives them a unique edge is that they don't hunt their prey, they only come when they are summoned and only take those who want to be taken, the unfortunate misunderstanding over poor Kirsty notwithstanding. Pinhead's description of them as "demons to some, angels to others" seems to suggest that the Cenobites are merely mirrors reflecting back whatever mere mortals bring to them, usually desire, greed and lusts for both power and sex.

The Cenobites are easily the most impressive of the "franchise monsters" - there's no sense here of there ever having been anything human about them, that their only raison d'etre is the infliction of pain and misery upon those who go looking for it. Later attempts to humanise them, particularly Pinhead, have robbed them of some of their mystique, but here they are genuinely unnerving, notable for being intelligent, devious and, in the case of Pinhead, witty monstrosities, a far cry from the personality-free serial killers of the slasher movies. There's a strange seductiveness to the creatures as they cajole, threaten and promise unimaginable pleasures in an attempt to corrupt their victims. Some were disappointed that they got such a small amount of screen time, but Barker knew well enough to leave them in the background, having them emerge at key points to nudge the plot along with another witticism or dark pronouncement. Over-exposure to Pinhead in particular in the increasingly worthless sequels has proved his instincts right.

But at the heart of the film is an unusually well observed human drama - it's the interaction between the characters that brings out the real horror in Hellraiser, the vision of a family on the verge of implosion that unsettles as much as the gore, the demons and the violence. The film revolves around the destructive relationship between Frank and Julia, the latter strong enough to know that she no longer loves her husband and smart enough to arrange murders to feed her new lover, but enslaved by her irresistible attraction to Frank. By the end of the film, Julia is more terrifying than any Cenobite and the reborn Frank's power over her is far more seductive and even more corrupting than anything these demons could dream up - for Barker, the real horrors don't lie in Hell, they lie in bed with us at nights.

Hellraiser remains the pinnacle of Barker's film-making career, which stalled after the failure of Lord of Illusions. It also remains the most ferocious, most original and plain most enjoyable British horror film since the death of Hammer. That it failed to reinvigorate the domestic industry, which was to remain moribund for another decade at least, will forever be a matter of great regret.
KEVIN LYONS