Sunday, September 1, 2013

Hellraiser (GoMA: Monsters)

Not a first time watch, but a first time on the big-screen. I'm glad to say the film still stands up.

The movie starts with Frank buying a puzzle-box, which he takes home an opens, sitting in a circle of candles in a darkened room. All very mysterious. Cut to his brother and his wife returning to England and moving into the family home. They discover that Frank had been staying there, though there's no sign of him. We also learn that the wife and Frank have a bit of a secret history. The husband has a daughter, Kirsty, who lives at her own place, even though her father wants her to live with them, but Kirsty doesn't get along with her step-mother. Anyway, the husband cuts himself and bleeds on the floor where we last saw Frank. The blood is enough to revive him and he enlists the wife to help him, by bringing men back to her place and killing them, so Frank can feed on their blood, bringing him back from the hell he's been trapped in by the puzzle box. Kirsty comes across the puzzle box and opens it up, bringing the Cenobites to her. They want her, but runs away from them, bargaining with the knowledge of Frank, who they don't realise has escaped their clutches. There's a final confrontation at the house, where the Cenobites reclaim Frank, and try to claim Kirsty, but she uses the puzzle-box like a ray-gun and zaps them back to whatever dimension they're from. This is probably the weakest part of the movie, and it's a pity it doesn't havea stronger ending, but it's pretty good up to that point, and it's not awful, it's just kind of perfunctionary.

Even if the rest of the film wasn't that great, it would still have created one of the most iconic, in my opinion, the most iconic horror characters in Pinhead. He's just called lead Cenobite in the credits, but we all know him as Pinhead. It's just brilliant character design. The rest of the Cenobites are nearly just as impressive, but no one can match Pinhead. The make-up effects hold up. The character is threatening and horrific, it's all so good. Not all the effects are so good, but mostly they hold up. I don't mind, they did pretty good with the not very big budget they had. And it's the ideas behind them that are strong. Clive Barker did a good job with creating the mood of the film, so it's all good with me.

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