Review of Hellraiser (1987) by Jeroen V — 30 Apr 2010

What's you're pleasure sir !?

My all-time favorite horror movie. Clive Barker's imagination is unbeatable.

What makes this movie so perfect for me is that Hellraiser is a love story wrapped in horror. It's a perfect way to see how great Clive Barker's mind works....so different from ALL other 80's horror movies.Pinhead was only a "secondary character" yet he was the most memorable one of the lot, and the only one to survive seven sequels. The heart of the story is of course about Julia,Frank,Larry and Kirsty....the Cenobites only appear a few times. I understand why "younger" people are saying "this is not a horror movie" cause by todays standards horror is so visceral,so blatantly "in your face" that nothing is left to the imagination of the viewer. Hellraiser is both so dakly romantic and horrifyng at the same time that I get goosebumps just typing this...lol. This movie will always have a place in my heart :0) The brilliant score by Christopher Young is in my opinion the best he's ever made...no wonder he got "type-cast" to do scores for thrillers and horror movies later on :0) I have to say that I'm a huge fan of Mr. Barkers books...read all of them several times (Imajica about 10 times). Mr.B is also the director of this Hellraiser movie and a few years later he directed Nightbreed (Cabal in book version) where the monsters are the heroes and humans are the villains...it's a wild idea but I really see eye to eye with Mr.Barker.

My point is that Hellraiser is a horror/drama movie with depth, and not a splatter movie where teens are killed off one by one by a psychopath wearing a mask...there were lots of those movies back in the 80's. Hellraiser was so original,so different from other horror movies when it was made back in '86. Here's an interesting fact : The production company liked the dailies on the first movie so much that they started shooting the sequel Hellbound:Hellraiser II even before this movie was showing at the cinemas.