Hellraiser (1987)

Episode 174, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week we decided to go with a well-known favorite 1987’s Hellraiser by the inimitable Clive Barker. This was Clive Barker’s very first film outing actually. He had never, he’d like kind of directed a couple shorts before this but nothing of consequence so he was really a first time director with this movie. He was upset, actually, that a couple of films that had been made before this of his own material turned out really lousy. One of those is Rawhead Wrecks.

Craig: Have you ever seen that one?

Todd: No, I’ve heard about it though. Oh God, I’ve heard it’s a nightmare. I mean, and not in a good way. I’ve heard it’s a terrible movie. So he decided to take things into his own hands and he wrote and directed Hellraiser and New World Pictures, the company that Roger Corman founded,

Craig: Wait, is that right? Roger Corman did New World?

Todd: Yeah, he did.

Craig: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Todd: It was a $1,000,000 movie, it made $20,000,000 in the theater, it was a bit of a success, and also propelled, what are we up to, like five or six sequels now?

Craig: Oh no, more than that I think, like eight. Really?

Todd: Oh my gosh. Okay yeah, so the franchise has moved on and like we like to do on this show, we don’t really want to do the sequels so much until we do the originals. So here we are revisiting Hellraiser. Craig, I had seen this movie before. How about you? What’s your history with this film?

Craig: He’s really got a very dark streak and what I’ve heard about Clive Barker is that he’s kind of a interesting guy i didn’t do as much research as i should have so i apologize i hope i’m not disseminating any false information but i’m pretty sure he’s a gay guy yeah

Todd: that’s true

Craig: You

Todd: know, I have a friend who was a producer. He isn’t anymore, he’s a writer now, but he was a producer for a Canadian production company. and they were doing some television series or something about different people and he actually interviewed Clive Barker at his home and he said it was a really trippy experience because uh he came there and he said he had almost like um what do you call it he had a lot of male servants not servants House service? House boys. House boys, yeah, yeah. All around for most of the time. And anyway, when he was interviewing him, now he’s a painter as well.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And when he was interviewing him, he was working on a commission for Disney. Disney had commissioned Clive Barker to like design, it was either a ride or like a whole separate add-on to one of the Disney theme parks. This would have been in the mid 90s or so. If you can imagine Disney commissioning clive that’d be like going to hr giger and say hey you know design the new mickey mouse ride you know right just keep keep the dicks and vaginas to a minimum you know yeah i i have to admit like this kind of thing like you said it’s a little fringe And it’s not really my cup of tea, that the S&M kind of stuff, the hooks and pulleys and metal and the chains and it’s very Saw-esque as well, right?

Craig: It’s

Todd: kind of pre-Saw. It’s not really my thing, but I can appreciate this movie for doing something completely different, like you said, at the time. And even since then, There hasn’t been a lot in this sort of genre. I guess the other thing closest to what I could say would be H.P. Lovecraft, right? This whole idea there’s this other, well, not really, but there’s this other realm of demons that can come through or can be summoned in. I mean, summoning demons from hell isn’t really a new thing, but somehow this movie presents this as more than hell.

Craig: You know, they want this ultimate experience in pain slash pleasure. Again, like you, like, I’m not into it. We wouldn’t have made it if we were. I don’t know. I mean, you know, let your freak flag fly or whatever, but I’ll take my experiences with the pleasure side. Not the pain as pleasure.

Todd: So I don’t know, like, did he die? Is that what it is? Like, you get this experience, but then you pay with your life?

Craig: It’s not until Larry, as he’s moving in a mattress, cuts his hand on an exposed nail and bleeds onto the floor of the attic, that blood is like a life force that starts that withered heart beating again and ultimately kind of starts to revive him slowly. It’s a great scene. Oh,

Todd: it’s amazing.

Craig: It almost looks like the floor is like soaking in or drinking up the blood and you see that heart beating and then you see this monstrous skeletal creature emerge from the floor and it just looks great. I mean, it just it looks so it’s disgusting it’s wet and slimy and bloody and gross and uh it looks really good

Todd: It’s very much turned out to be a special effects film, I think, because the acting’s not bad. The actors are good. The actors themselves are quite good. Larry is played by Andrew Robinson, and he is a veteran, even at this time, a veteran of television, very recognizable. The female is played by Claire Higgins. Ashley Lawrence, who plays Kirstie, who is the daughter I think it’s

Craig: Andrew’s

Todd: Not even medium shots but like we’re in everyone’s face all the time and that can be a problem. Especially when you linger too long and you know you’re moving around inside this house. Now they had to shoot on location because they didn’t have a lot of money so that probably explains a little bit of why you know they couldn’t have a lot of nice great wide and medium shots. But it has an effect on the film that just I don’t think it’s good you know. I think it highlights

Craig: the

Todd: weaknesses of the, it just makes everything a little too melodramatic feeling. Like a soap

Craig: They could move it up and down a little bit, but there wasn’t a whole lot they could do. And I understand what you’re saying about making it a little bit melodramatic, but at the same time I think that that works for this movie because it makes it feel intimate, I guess. Like, you’re always really close to these people. And I do see the melodrama, but it’s a melodramatic story, really. Because not only is there this weird hellish stuff going on, but it’s also a dramatic tale of this twisted love triangle. You find out through flashback from Julia’s perspective, which, by the way, Claire Higgins, no relation.

Todd: You wish.

Craig: We get these scenes semi-graphic scenes of their sexual tryst right before her marriage. In fact, they, I’ll just be PC and say, make love, even though it’s far from that, on her wedding dress.

Todd: That’s right. There’s no better metaphor than that.

Craig: He says that he needs blood. He said that it was Larry’s blood that brought him back to the state that he’s in now and more blood will help him to continue to revive. She has to think about it for about an hour.

Todd: if even

Craig: right laying in bed with her husband she gets up out of bed and goes back up to the attic and tells him that she will help him and she does and and that’s kind of the thrust of the movie but there’s also I don’t remember when he finally reveals it to her but he revealed he says we need to hurry this up we need to get me fixed up because they’re going to be coming for me the Cenobites yeah he says when they realize that I’ve escaped their Prison or their grasp or whatever. They will be coming.

Todd: Yeah, that’s like the second half of the movie Okay, so what she does and is she goes out and she seduces men which is pretty easy for her pretty easy for any woman really seduces men and brings What what I mean by that is men are generally scum that’s

Craig: what all right, that’s fair. Oh

Todd: They come in and they have a very uncomfortable scene. Yeah. You can tell that she’s kind of like doing what she has to do, but she’s not all that excited about it. She’s clearly uncomfortable. Yeah, and probably the first time she’s done something like this. And he, you know, starts to try to make out with her right there. And then… What’s the matter? That’s

Clip: I’m sorry. Let’s go upstairs. Okay.

Craig: I

Todd: think

Craig: it

Todd: plays even better today. I really do, because I think it’s more true and honest, maybe. Although I also feel like he’s trying to make it seem like these guys have it coming a little bit, or at least that guy does.

Clip: Yeah,

Todd: sure. There’s a little bit of build here that, whether it’s intentional or not, it’s kind of smart filmmaking, because the first guy almost seems like he’s got it coming, in a way. I mean, nobody’s got that coming. but uh right but you know he’s pretty aggressive with her so you don’t feel quite as bad you know that she kills him but then the next two guys you know are total victims and so i’m asking you i was thinking about this while i was watching this movie do you think that her character is a villain or a victim

Craig: But that’s okay when

Todd: you when you point it out.

Craig: I know you say this kind of stuff kind of makes you sick to your stomach. And she goes, uh, it’s fine. I’ve seen worse. Like she just totally gets used to it and maybe even relishes in it a little bit. I feel like she feels empowered where she didn’t before, which is gross, but. understandable to some extent, I guess. I mean, I’m not going to feel empowered by going out and killing people, but if she was unsatisfied and felt helpless in her life to wield this kind of power specifically over men, it’s not illogical. I get it.

Todd: It does kind of equalize her relationship with Frank, right? Because in those flashbacks we see Frank as kind of the predator.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: Who’s seducing and bringing her in and she likes it, but she seems a little scared by it, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, at this point now she’s kind of coming up to his level and she’s becoming more violent and she’s becoming more assertive as well. And that just seems to bring them both of them together even more. It gives her maybe more of a motivation, right? For bringing this slimy, gross, kind of mean character back to life, because now maybe she’s in a better position to receive him.

Craig: You know?

Todd: And his proclivities, because they’re becoming her proclivities too. So it’s smart in that way. You’re right. I guess they’re more of a dual villain in this point. But I think earlier in the film, or at least in the flashback modes, you get the sense that she’s a bit of a victim that’s been cajoled and lured into this web.

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d say she’s… You don’t think so? No, because I feel like she’s

Todd: a willing participant. Well, it’s true. You’re right. It’s wrong for me to brush that under the rug. You know, you cheat on your husband and you chose to do it.

Craig: Right? Right. Right. So,

Todd: yeah.

Craig: And she submits, you know, like, I think that that is part of what draws her to him is that he is so aggressive and, you know, in their sex play or whatever you want to call it, like, He pulls out a knife and you know like there’s there’s knife play and it at one point he gets up and says something like It’ll never be enough and she comes up behind him and is like, please please you can do anything anything like

Todd: I will have to say that I still feel like the way it plays out on screen is a little melodramatic, like it’s a little too heavy, too hard, like soap opera-esque, and I thought it was a little cringy in that way. Thematically and everything it all kind of works, but on the screen is a little too much.

Craig: That’s OK. You can feel that way. You didn’t think

Todd: so, though.

Craig: You thought it worked. You thought it was convincing. No, I thought it worked. Yeah, I thought it worked. I’m not denying that it was melodramatic. It was. I’m not denying that it wasn’t a little bit soapy. It was. But it didn’t bother me. It worked for me. It was just kind of this heightened reality that I was able to roll with.

Todd: The world of the movie you bought into it. That’s fine.

Craig: Well and like you said earlier like Andrew Rob Robinson who plays Larry that he’s this veteran he’s been doing I thought that he was one of the most hammy characters of all of them.

Todd: Oh for sure.

Craig: Not like comedically goofy but you know just kind of this goofy guy and not unlikable and not necessarily unrealistic like we’ve been totally ignoring Kirsty because really for the first half of the movie she’s just around like you just know that she exists and she might be important later which she is but he’s with her very much the dad yeah there’s one scene where they have a dinner party and he’s very much the dad dinner party host

Todd: I think the reason

Craig: is they just never got out of his face. I mean, if you zoom in on an actor and you let those shots linger for just a little too long,

Todd: They shot the movie pretty much in sequence and he said that that was the first sequence they shot and he said looking back on it now like I remember like that day I just felt so out of my depth and I knew it was wrong at the time I was shooting it and he said I still look at it on the screen and I still feel like it’s wrong.

Craig: Yeah, and he admits fully, he had no idea what he was doing. And he says that he was so grateful that both the cast and crew were so willing to just put up with his ineptitude because he had no idea. He was just flying by the seat of his pants. From what I read, he said that it was a good experience, but really only because everybody was so patient and kind. Great, you know, like if I were a first-time filmmaker, you’re lucky to find yourself in this situation where people are willing to be patient.

Todd: Yeah, for sure.

Craig: Because I don’t think that the industry is really known for that.

Todd: It must speak well to his character if he’s the kind of guy that people want to be patient with, right?

Craig: Well, and that’s the thing, like I hear such kind of weird freaky things about him, but when I see him in interviews and things, he seems very charismatic. You know, he seems like somebody that I would be very much interested in sitting down and having a beer with. Just one. And nothing more. Not too many. But he, I mean, he seems like a cool guy. You know, whatever his personal interests are, that’s…

Todd: Who are we to judge?

Craig: Right, like you said, consenting adults, you do what you want to do.

Todd: Well, eventually the daughter does get back into the picture, Kirstie, and it’s really only about the second half, and I think the beginning of that is, I mean, she’s in and out, she has this boyfriend, I don’t even know his name. Was

Craig: it even

Todd: uttered in the movie once? I don’t think it was. He was kind of a throwaway character. Yeah. Almost the obligatory boyfriend, you have to have somebody to help you through the end because we can’t just let a woman do it all.

Craig: Right.

Todd: I think the turning point there is that after, you know, mom has been acting really, really weird, Larry goes out to lunch with her at a Chinese restaurant.

Clip: stand in the driveway and see Julia bringing another man in.

Todd: I don’t know how people don’t discover this creepy half-human in the room upstairs where they all seem to be fairly well-trafficked in this house,

Craig: but

Todd: she ends up discovering him too.

Craig: She sees Julia take the guy inside, and then she hears the attack and when she goes to investigate she sees the guy who’s like half-drained he like comes out and begs her for help and then Frank reveals himself and he is super creepy with her like he yeah he has seen her before and he’s like Kirstie like It’s so lascivious and gross. He has gone from mostly skeletal to now just skinless. You can see all of his muscle and all of that, but he still doesn’t have skin.

Todd: And it’s great makeup.

Craig: It really is. But he confronts her and he talks to her. He’s like, oh, everything’s going to be fine now. Uncle Frank is back. But he also, like, pins her up against the wall. And you can tell that it’s lecherous. It’s so gross. But it’s totally in keeping with his character.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And I didn’t even really understand this. Like, did she really not remember what had just happened? Or was she playing it coy with the doctor? I couldn’t tell.

Todd: I don’t know.

Craig: There are scenes like this where if you really want to be picky, you can be like, you can see that this is something on rollers. Somebody is standing behind and pushing. And if you look really hard, you can see that. But I still thought that it was scary. I

Todd: And then, so that’s why there’s so much quick cutting from that to like a closeup of him and then back to her and then back to that.

Craig: So there’s no reason for heightened emotion.

Todd: Right.

Craig: You are the bad boss and you know it and so that’s what he does. You know he basically just stands there. Yeah. There’s very little movement at all and it’s all done through very subtle nuances in his face and especially through his voice and I I just think that it was really powerful. I’m not surprised that people clung to that character as kind of the centerpiece of this movie and ultimately the franchise.

Todd: Yeah, I don’t think we’d ever seen anything quite like that before. It’s a really unique look and he’s lucky he got his voice in that too because the movie originally took place in Britain and then once the studio realized what they had on their hands they needed it to be marketable in the United States and so

Craig: They

Todd: Oh, she goes back. She goes back to the house. And, I mean, Larry’s dead, right? Right. There’s no scene really about his death, is there?

Craig: Well, kinda. I mean, there was an earlier scene in the movie where Frank wanted to kill Larry and Julia said no.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I’ll get you other guys, but you can’t kill him. But then after Kirsty witnesses all this, they both realize what a threat this poses to them from a legal perspective, because she’s going to tell everybody. And so though it’s not stated outright through the performance, you can tell that she concedes that he can kill Larry. And we don’t, you don’t see it. You just see, uh, Julia say to Larry, I don’t even know where to begin, how to tell you this. And then it cuts away. What’s suggested is that she then takes Larry upstairs to Frank, who then not only drains him the way that he’s drained everybody else, but skins him and puts on his skin like a skin suit.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And so when Kirstie comes home, she’s relieved to find that her dad is still alive. Um, even though he’s not, it’s really Frank and Larry’s skin, which I still kind of don’t really understand how she didn’t recognize that anything was wrong because you can see. It’s pretty

Todd: obvious.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it looks like he’s been skinned, you know, like, you know, all around his hairline is all bloody and, but then she figures it out when Frank once again starts getting gross with her and says his catchphrase, come to daddy. And she realizes what’s going on. And then there’s this whole kind of chase thing. through the house eventually Julia gets a hold of Kirstie and Frank goes to stab Kirstie but Kirstie frees herself just in the nick of time and instead he stabs Julia and he drains her pretty

Todd: quickly

Craig: yeah and she says like not me and he’s like oh sorry nothing personal Which, you know, is totally mean, but, you know, she deserves it, so.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: But anyway, she knows that they were up there, so I don’t understand why she didn’t just lead him directly to them, instead runs around and hides in the house for a while.

Todd: Well, not only that, she like runs around and then she just stops and just weeps at the top of the stairs.

Craig: Like,

Todd: that’s how she gets caught, eventually, by Frank, which is so stupid. Yeah,

Craig: it was

Todd: silly.

Craig: There was

Todd: no reason for, he did nothing for her. No,

Craig: nothing. But they eventually escape, all of them. And the film was criticized for the effects in the last part of the movie. There’s a lot of like light, not like lasers.

Todd: Animated.

Craig: Well, I mean, that’s what it was. They ran out of money for effects. And so, Clive Barker and one other guy who worked on the film over a weekend, Hand-animated all of these effects over the film. I didn’t think it looked bad I mean especially for the time the time it looks fine

Todd: most movies do honestly I’m kind of surprised that these two guys just did it over a weekend to be honest with

Craig: you Yeah, I thought it looked fine. But anyway, they escaped I didn’t mention because it’s I I don’t even know what to say about it. But this creepy guy has been following Kirstie around for the whole movie. And at the very end of the movie, the whole house burns down. And then they show Kirstie and her boyfriend in this lot with these fires burning like it’s supposed to be the remains of the house. It doesn’t look like a house is burned down at all.

Todd: Unconvincing.

Craig: Or is it supposed to be the same guy is selling the box to a different guy?

Todd: Yeah, I think it’s the same guy is selling the box to a different guy. Like, this is just going to repeat over and over again. This is what happens. The box ends up in the seller’s hand. And then, yeah, somebody else gets a hold of it.

Craig: After the third one, almost, well, I think all of the sequels, after the third one, they ended up just using shelved scripts that had nothing to do with Hellraiser, and they just injected the cinebites into them. Oh,

Todd: really?

Craig: The studio doesn’t want to lose its rights to the film.

Todd: So they have to keep making them.

Craig: Right. So they have to keep making them in order to maintain their rights. There have been talks for years about a remake or reimagining of the original. Clive Barker has written a script. for a remake slash reimagining of the original and that was in pre-production for a while and then it just fell apart because of studio business. So who knows what will happen? I am certain that the franchise is not dead. It’s going to be around for a while. What direction it goes in, I have no idea, but it’s going to be around.

Todd: Well, I’m kind of surprised, Craig, that I know this before you do, but it was announced just this month, actually, that it is going to be rebooted. Is it? Yeah, David S. Goyer is going to write and produce. Oh, he directed Blade, Trinity He’s the one who wrote Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy,

Craig: the

Todd: Man of Steel movie So he’s a pretty well-respected writer. It’ll be interesting to see something like this in his hands I was surprised to hear you know that Clive Barker is not gonna have a whole lot to do with it I mean, maybe he’ll have something to do with it, but he’s not gonna write it in anything

Craig: I don’t know. I’d be down for it. Happy to see it get more back to its roots because a lot of the sequels really stretch it. This movie, I liked. I would certainly recommend it. If you’re a horror fan and you haven’t seen it, what is wrong with you? But if you haven’t, see it. It’s good. And the source material. Read the novella. The novella’s really good.

Todd: Yeah, I’m actually curious to do that now that you mentioned it. I want to get out and read some of Clive Barker’s stuff. I’ve never read a single thing he’s written.

Craig: But he did another young adult series, Arabot, I think is what it was called. And it was really good. He’s an excellent writer. You definitely need to read some of his stuff.

Todd: You can also find those on our website, chainsawhorror.com. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.