HELLRAISER [13 FOR HALLOWEEN]

Hellraiser [13 FOR HALLOWEEN]

7/12/2021

Unlike the myriad films that would come after, the original two entries in the franchise understand that the “horror” of the Cenobites doesn't derive from the elaborate mutilations they inflict on the human body (though that, given their supernatural, otherworldly natures, is an arguably infinite rabbit hole). Rather, their disturbance occurs on the dichotomy between the superficial dread and disgust they elicit and the reluctant appeal, even attraction, they clearly exercise over their audience.

Thirteen For Halloween 2021 Hellraiser

As promised, the man himself, Mr. Clive Barker, returns to Thirteen for Halloween (as he will on multiple occasions after this), this time around with a work that practically everyone will be familiar with, certainly in horror circles:

The genre-defining (and defying) 1980s classic, Hellraiser.

What is there to be said at this point that hasn't already been regurgitated ad infinitum, you might well ask? Like many of its core cast, the film (and its myriad, various-quality sequels) has been dissected, picked apart, flayed to the core and procrastinated upon by critics, academics, fans and non-fans alike for decades, at this point. Much has been made of its removal from the popular “slasher” franchises that it shared space with (both cinematically and in terms of genre); the fact that, in the midst of increasingly formulaic, tongue-in-cheek franchises such as Friday the 13th, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street et al, Hellraiser dropped with a dolorous chime of temple bells; a work whose humour is gallows and deeply sublimated, whose nature better resembles an Ibson domestic drama -that happens to also include soul-flaying demons from another dimension- than those it shares shelf-space with.

A great deal has also been written of its transgressive, counter-culture qualities: in the pre-Hellraiser world, the kind of imagery this film bombards its audience with could only be found in university or independent cinema screenings of art-house and foreign fare, the influence of surrealism, giallo; even German expressionism almost non-existent in the popular horror of the era.

It's therefore little surprise that the film -and, later, the franchise- found an audience amongst those starved of such material: the strange, lost and outcast children of the 1980s, who found some identification not only in the film's imagery, but also its import:

Like much of the very best cinematic horror, Hellraiser stands in stark and vicious opposition to proscriptions of tradition: like the works of Hitchcock, Kubrick, Lynch and Cronenberg, it nails its manifesto to the bloodied scalps of screaming victims from the first sequence. This is not a work in which faith or family or friendship will win the day, nor is it one in which innocence is any great defence (as characters Larry and Kirsty Cotton both learn). Here is a film that isn't interested in emphasising the physical threat posed by its monsters (though that element is arguably more profound than the butchery of any ostensibly associated “slasher” franchise). Rather, the film lingers seductively over its most morbid and macabre moments, attempting to make beautiful compositions from wholly grotesque and disturbing subject matter:

Even in the opening sequence, the images of pain and mutilation are rendered in such a manner as to make them stark, affecting, but also strangely enticing; a factor that finds manifestation in the iconic Cenobites:

Extra-dimensional entities of almost alien nature, they describe themselves as

“. . .demons to some, angels to others,”

creatures that operate beyond any bounds of tradition, religion, proscriptions of politics or family. In that, they immediately remove themselves from most of the iconic entities and creatures of yore; the werewolves, vampires, zombies etc that had come to define horror up to that point. Even the barely-coded, conservative morality of slasher-movie killers such as Michael Meyers (and his silent, murderous hatred for sexually active teens) has no purchase here; Kirsty is not “Snow White,” she is not granted power or agency by her apparent virginity, nor is she condemned by appetite or curiosity: what is happening around her is beyond her control or comprehension. She is merely hurled into it by circumstance, the more banal horrors facing her family emphasised and distorted beyond all containment by the inclusion of supernatural elements.

Even here, so early in his career, Barker suffuses his work with a barely-coded contempt for formula, proscription and didacticism: this is not some conservative moral parable or fairy tale, rather an almost call to arms against such things; an attempt to force mainstream horror out of its laziness and rote assumptions by shocking the audience with both its graphic imagery and import.

The Cenobites themselves, whilst ostensibly framed as the iconic “monsters” of the piece, are fascinatingly removed from other horror icons of the era: whereas all others, from Freddy Kreuger to Jason Vorhees, pose nothing but physical threat to those they interact with, the Cenobites come only when called, and then only to fulfil the unspoken promises and desires of those that seek contract with them. They are closer, mythologically, to djinn or genies than Hollywood horror monsters, and in terms of their interactions, to Frankenstein's monster: like that entity, they embody a certain strange and extreme humanity, speaking eloquently and readily and in highly poetic terms, their stillness and presence almost priestly in nature. The original film -and its only sincere sequely, Hellbound- presents the Cenobites as figures of distressing awe; they are morbid and grotesque miracles, as legitimately angelic as they are infernal. This quality is the -so often unacknowledged- core of their appeal:

Unlike the myriad films that would come after, the original two entries in the franchise understand that the “horror” of the Cenobites doesn't derive from the elaborate mutilations they inflict on the human body (though that, given their supernatural, otherworldly natures, is an arguably infinite rabbit hole). Rather, their disturbance occurs on the dichotomy between the superficial dread and disgust they elicit and the reluctant appeal, even attraction, they clearly exercise over their audience. The appeal of the films and the enduring legacy of the franchise itself is more than sufficient evidence of this; without that key element, the franchise would've likely died long, long ago, and be relegated to the dusty libraries of forgotten classics at this point. Instead, fans both old and new continue to flock to the Cenobitic, glorying in its peculiar marriage of the priestly and sadomasochistic, the horrific and the beautiful.

Part of Barker's subtle genius regarding the art-design of the film is in the marriage of the Cenobite's appearance to their natures and philosophy: they are, in Barker's own words: “. . .magnificent super-butchers,” entities whose priestly poise and papal aura is contrasted beautifully by the BDSM elements of their apparel, as well as the elaborate physical mutilations that each one boasts. They effectively advertise their wares and ideology through their appearance: those who seek the iconic Lament Configuration puzzle box do so because they are bored with what waking life has to offer; because they believe themselves to have gone to the limits of what temporal sensuality can contrive. The Cenobites show them the folly of that; providing conditions in which all assumptions of the possible fly apart, along with the anatomies of their subjects. One of the most disturbing -and yet beguiling- elements of The Cenobites is that they offer an escape from banality; something common to practically every entity Barker has ever conceived, which they achieve by transcending all bounds and parameter of known sensation, even bodily definition and integrity:

Assumptions of pain and pleasure mean nothing to them, nor do parameters of morality or physical possibility. Flesh and bone and organ are clay in their hands; mediums of art to be sculpted by the scalpel and the hooked chain, to be stretched to its limits and beyond, pieced back together in new and undreamt of configurations.

They are therefore, by their own admission, agents of a strange salvation as much as they are damnation. As the distinction between pain and pleasure dissolves under their auspices, so too does that between Heaven and Hell. To many who call upon them, The Cenobites are the ultimate angels; creatures who offer them salvation from the banality, petulance and grey stagnation of day to day life. For those the world is not made for; the exiles, the abandoned, the lost, they are gateways to darkly miraculous conditions, in which existence might be endless poetry, no matter how dark or loathsome it might seem to the unenlightened eye.

Whilst later incarnations of the Cenobites would generally abandon this ambiguity, making them little more than the wise-cracking sadists and butchers they were explicitly designed to contrast, here, in the first two films, it is an implicit quality: some taken by the Cenobites -such as Frank Cotton- find the conditions they are subjected to beyond comprehension, and therefore beyond their ability to enjoy or find meaning in. Others come to echo the Cenobites themselves -Julia, Doctor Channard-, finding revelation in the delirious horrors they promise and even a means of redefining all that they assume of themselves (“To think, I hesitiated.” - Doctor Channard).

This is not only the undefined core of the Cenobite's appeal, but also why they resonate so widely to demographics who self-define as exile and outcast:

The film is explicitly designed as a love letter to all those who echo Barker's own outcast condition; an openly gay man operating in the field of horror in the mid-1980s, not to mention the wholly conservative and homophobic setting of 1980s UK. Here, as in all his work, Barker deliberately and explicitly appeals to his fellow freaks and dreamers, the outcasts and exiles that are his tribe. The obvious BDSM elements of the Cenobites notwithstanding (“. . .pleasure and pain, indivisible.”), these entities and the characters that surround them represent an assault upon proscribed parameters and enshrined tradition in all their manifestations:

Whilst the Cenobites themselves actively manifest the transgressions Barker enshrines as sacred and necessary, the family situation around them is one of stark and vicious dissatisfaction: here, Barker dares to proclaim that the “nuclear family,” as proscribed by conservative patriarchy, is not some ideal to be aspired to, but rather its own species of banal horror (especially for women); a cage in which captive birds batter themselves bloody and senseless for want of flight. Here, Barker draws parallel between various ostensibly distinct demographics: the sexual and cultural minorities reflected in the Cenobite's sensualist promises, the metaphysical and ideological outcasts they similarly appeal to, and women, who have traditionally always been the most stark victims of patriarchal proscription.

Julia Cotton is not merely a murderous antagonist who gets her commeuppance at the film's climax. Rather, as the second film emphasises, she is a creature of profound and sincere appetite that has been repressed, poisoned and so profoundly trodden down by the culture and systems in which she operates, she's willing to go to grotesque and murderous extremes just to provide some escape or distraction from her tawdry existence of domestic emptiness. Note in particular how the film makes her more and more her own agent; from the frightened, sparrowy creature of the opening chapters to the “Bride of Frankenstein” murderess who becomes more sublime and beautiful the more men she seduces and murders in order to feed the putative Frank. Of course, the film is ambiguous even here; though her actions are -ostensibly- those of a woman in revolt against the systems that oppress her, she ultimately ends up selling herself into a different kind of slavery under Frank (who, of course, betrays and disposes of her as soon as it becomes convenient).

That is, until the second film, in which it is revealed that she is more wholly herself and attuned to her appetites than Frank could ever be: whereas Frank rejects and escapes the Cenobites, unable to bear the extreme nature of their “gifts,” Julia accepts and wallows in them, finding apotheosis in the dark dreams of Leviathan, god and creator of the Cenobites. Like them, she becomes an agent and an angel of their creed, and one who revels in her condition in ways Frank could never conceive of. Julia is emblematic of the liberation that the Cenobites provide: a condition in which all parameters of sex, orientation, creed, race, culture and gender dissolve, giving way to a purer condition in which even the anatomy that defines what we are is undone. That mingling of the sensual and the spiritual, the base and the metaphysical, is emblematic of the revolutions and renaissances Barker seeks to inspire through his fiction, and which finds ultimate expression in his later novels.

It's therefore hardly a surprise that the Cenobites and Hellraiser in general appeals to a markedly more deviant and expansive demographic than your common-or-garden 1980s horror franchise: many who enjoy horror in its more familiar forms express disturbance or even revulsion regarding this film (not to mention Barker's works in general). Whilst part of that may lie with he graphic presentation of its subject matter, a more significant (but sublimated) cause for this repulsion derives from the ambiguity of its themes and import:

Whilst so much horror media markets itself as transgressive and counter-culture, the truth is, a significant proportion of mainstream horror of the era (and arguably even now) is anything but. Beneath the superficial shocks, the blood and violence, there is often a ruthlessly conservative heart to the vast majority of horror cinema (such that, in the 1990s, Scream would set about directly defining and addressing those concerns).

In Hellraiser, the sexual woman, the adulterer and the murderer are not always punished, but often elevated through their transgressions; their flirtations with patriarchal proscription and traditional structures. Furthermore, the monsters are not unambiguously monstrous. Rather, unlike arguably any other iconic “monster” of the era, the Cenobites come with seductions and promises; invitations to a philosophy that is also a state of being, rendered more attractive and even purer than many the waking world offer, as it is unambiguously lived rather than merely proclaimed. The Cenobites inhabit and manifest their own creed and convictions through their very flesh; a theme that Barker will revisit and obsess over again and again in his later work. In that, their conditions are synonymous with the outre or “deviant” sexual demographics the film derives inspiration from and deliberately addresses: here, BDSM is taken to its utmost extreme and expression via supernatural influence. Sensual pleasure is rendered synonymous with metaphysics rather than contrary to it, and appetite is a sacred artefact rather than something to be denied, denigrated and condemned.

LGBTQ individuals of the era would have found profound -albeit largely unspoken- frisson with that quality, as our relationships, our appetites, our physical relationships to one another, are rendered sacred by both their rarity and ostensible “deviance;” being the factors that conservative patriarchy would use to condemn us, they become abstracted: sex is ideology in such conditions, a revolutionary act, ascended from its heterosexual equivalent. That the film also incorporates adultery, a female protagonist willing to go to extremes to fulfil her own appetites, only emphasies and compounds those themes: Barker draws no distinction between one rebellion or another; rather, he proclaims the transgressive nature of any and all sacred by virtue of their existence. Rebellion is the point, the creed, the rallying cry. Just as the imagery, subject matter and themes invert or overturn those that are standard in horror cinema of the era, so too does the film directly and viciously assault certain cultural and political assumptions (a factor which undoubtedly inspires so much of the discomfort certain audiences express in response to this work). For a horror film of the era to address cultural and political concerns in such a flagrant manner was a transgression in itself, and one that is hardly surprising, given Barker status as both a gay man and, before his opportunity to make this film, part of the expansive underclass fomenting under the oppressions and abuses of Thatcherism.

That Hellraiser acted as a gateway for so many self-defined deviants into fiction and media they might have otherwise shied away -or even been deliberately exiled- from is testament to its enduring significance. The potential for new stories to be told within this mythology that more directly address or derive from the original's subtext is profound, and perhaps necessary, given that the UK in particular is currently awash in a fresh wave of old bigotries and political scapegoating. Works like Hellraiser are not merely distractions or escapism in such circumstances; they are essential reflections and meditations upon the lived experiences of those who suffer under them.