Hellraiser

Hellraiser (1987) is about what happens to people who solve a puzzle box. Frank buys the box and opens it in an attic. It is a door: beings called Cenobites arrive and take him apart. Some time later his brother and his wife Julia move into the house. Julia's blood drips onto the floorboards and Frank slowly begins to return. To complete himself he needs human blood, and she starts bringing men home. The idea is that the Cenobites are not punishing anyone. For them pain and pleasure are the same thing, and whoever opened the box is taken to have asked for it. Evil here is not a judgement but a contract. Clive Barker adapted his own novella The Hellbound Heart, and this was his first film; the story goes that he directed it himself because he was tired of other people ruining his books. The Cenobite designs are based not on fashion but on medicine and the body: nails, sutures, opened skin. The figure known as Pinhead has very little screen time. The budget was very low and most of the effects are practical. The music was to have gone to a rock band; it went to Christopher Young instead and he wrote a symphonic score. That choice lifts the film out of its genre. The series ran past ten films and the later ones weakened steadily. It runs 94 minutes. Good for: eighties horror, body horror, and cult film. Less good for: the violence is very graphic and some scenes are unbearable.