The Kasturi/Files: Episode 21: Hellraiser: Such Sights

It’s Day 21 of The Kasturi/Files at Speculative Chic, as well as Sandra Kasturi’s birthday! And what better to do on an October birthday than to have Sandra and Gemma Files discuss a primo classic of the horror genre: Hellraiser. We have more book recs and cocktails as well — neither for the faint of heart.

Gemma: Clive Barker broke onto the horror scene in the mid-1980s with his Books of Blood, a series of short story collections that broke the mold in almost too many ways to count. Famously, Stephen King heralded him as “the future of horror,” though there was a time when it seemed like King would say similarly pleasant stuff about almost anybody whose manuscript you threw his way. At any rate, Barker remains a bit too art-school/experimental-theater-nerd weird for mainstream anywhere to accept and enshrine him the way he deserved/deserves, not least because he was so unrepentantly, unreservedly queer — not just personally gay and into BDSM, but truly polymorphously perverse in a way that renders the supposedly unnatural supernatural, constantly creating mythologies out of various fetishes and bending flesh to fit them in utterly un-self-censored ways. Needless to say, I love the hell out of him . . . always have, always will. As a fellow horror author, he showed me that with enough energy, willpower and a beautifully grotesque turn of phrase, anything you could barely bring yourself to think about was possible.

Sandra: Barker’s stories and novels are so great; I have always been a fan of his, and he’s the writer I so often point to when I talk about beautiful writing that is in direct contrast to the horror of what he is writing about. And how the juxtaposition of beauty and horror is what makes this genre so great. Even now, I’d say that nobody writes like Barker, except maybe you, Gemma, but you’re not derivative; you do your own thing entirely, but it’s like you are his . . . spiritual sister? Sister in Flesh, perhaps!

But, yeah, okay, I get that maybe some people will never reach a comfort level with Barker (regardless of queerness), because of the sheer strange scope of what he’s writing about and because of the, yes, perverse nature of a lot of what he’s talking about. But he’s still a fucking genius. And he’s a visual thinker too, given that he’s a painter and artist, which might be why his turn at directing a film worked out so well. Normally you’d think a short-story and novel writer wouldn’t really be able to translate their efforts onto the big screen, but Barker did it. Hellraiser is, even today, shocking, violent, upsetting, profound, and profoundly strange.

Gemma: Hellraiser (1987, based on his novella “The Hellbound Heart”) is Barker’s first feature film as writer/director, though he’d previously mapped out a few of the images he uses as part of his no-budget black and white short The Forbidden. (I used to have a copy of it on VHS, but stopped using it in my class about experimental film, because it freaked my students out.) I remember first seeing it with a friend of my mother’s, the same man who once told me: “You’ve become such a populist, Gemma.” This guy was a registered Communist and tended to dislike anything made after 1980, but even he had to admit that Hellraiser had a certain raw appeal. “It’s like if Ingmar Bergman made a Hammer film,” he told me, as we walked out, and all these years later — now I’ve actually seen various Bergman movies like Hour of the Wolf and Through a Glass Darkly — I kind of have to agree: on an emotional level, Hellraiser has all the earmarks of a psychological thriller with existential trappings, except for the fact that in this case, the demons involved are real.

Sandra: Disturbingly real! Pinhead joined a line-up of iconic and immediately recognizable movie “villains” (for lack of a better word), turned into an action figure and grouped with the likes of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Meyers, Chucky, and earlier, more classic monsters from Universal, like Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Wolf Man, and so on. But I feel like this popularization really did the character (and Barker) a disservice. Pinhead and the other Cenobites are “explorers in the further regions of experience,” and Hellraiser itself is like some wholly different visual and mental trip that has nothing to do with any of those other movies or their monsters, other than being forced into some sort of vague classification for the purpose of marketing. Yes, yes, this is horror, we get it. But Hellraiser has more in common with something like Event Horizon, perhaps, than with anything else.

Gemma: The film begins with icy, self-possessed Julia Cotton (Claire Higgins) returning to London with her boring American husband Larry (Andrew Robinson), where they’ve decided to rebuild their strained relationship by refurbishing the family home Larry and his younger brother Frank (Sean Chapman) grew up in. What Larry doesn’t know, however, is that the reason his marriage is so shaky is on the day before his wedding, Frank — a restless seeker after pleasure — deliberately seduced Julia and brought out all her masochistic tendencies, thus spoiling her for any other man (let alone poor moony, vanilla-ass Larry). So when they discover that Frank appears to have been squatting in the house, Julia’s secretly quite excited; maybe she can figure out exactly where Frank vanished to, and meet him there.

What we the audience already know, however, is that where Frank went, few would ever want to follow. As a flashback at the beginning shows us, Frank capped his global dangerous pleasures tour by eventually tracking down the fabled Lemarchand puzzle-box, “the Lament configuration,” a method of summoning the Cenobites from their particular corner of hell. “Devils to some, angels to others,” they are the Order of the Gash, acolytes of Leviathan, Lord of the Labyrinth; their worship takes the former of fleshly dissolution, being pared apart and put back together in a riotous spasm of (un)holy pain. To them, Frank was a total piker, a rank amateur, unworthy of joining their numbers . . . so they just tore him apart, not particularly lovingly, and left what remained of him in place under the floorboards, waiting to be awoken once more by a fortuitous combination of blood (Larry’s) and lust (Julia’s).

Sandra: There are interesting family dynamics at play in Hellraiser, as there so often are in the horror movies I like best — the whole cuckolding of Larry, rendering him even more vanilla and ineffective than he appears. And the weird (or classic?) evil stepmother/disgruntled stepdaughter relationship between Kirsty Cotton, the audience’s POV character, and Julia. But of course Julia really isn’t very nice, so Kirsty’s distaste is reasonable. This is paired with Kirsty’s love for her father in direct contrast and maybe the suggestion that there’s a kind of co-dependent relationship, but at some point, Julia came along and upset the apple cart. What was going on before Julia got there? One wonders. And given what Frank gets up to (and all that incestuous nastiness), you have to consider what the hell kind of household those two brothers grew up in, and how that affected Larry’s family and his daughter, particularly. I mean, did Frank babysit her? Ugh.

In a weird way, when Kirsty bargains her way out of being taken to Hell with the Cenobites, it’s like she’s negotiating a position in another waaaaaaay more fucked-up family, and getting rid of the shitty members of her own family to boot. Now she can have daddy to herself. If she can get him back from Hell. Is it love? Or dysfunction?

Gemma: There’s so much to like about Hellraiser, at least for freaks like me. Roger Ebert decried its “bankruptcy of imagination” when it first came out, yet another example of my otherwise favorite fellow movie critic just not gettin’ something I proudly consider one of the best films in its genre, but I frankly think it has a lot to do with the movie’s sexual content; Your Kink is Not My Kink and vice versa, as the fanfic gals say. It’s a love letter straight from Clive Barker’s id, driven by hungers that render the simple mechanics of BDSM grandiose and awful on a cosmic scale, so I can see how it might feel for some people — straight, male, cis, vanilla people — a bit as though they’re watching Barker act out his fantasies on the big screen, or even (to put it a bit more grossly) like he’s deliberately blowing cinematic ropes into their collective faces. But given I once wrote a story about a woman using a corpse hooked up to a machine that can move it like a puppet to fulfill her necrophiliac boyfriend’s fantasy of getting fucked by something dead in front of a crowd, it . . . just doesn’t bother me as much, I guess. Actually, it makes me laugh in sheer perverse creative pleasure.

Sandra: It probably says a lot about me that I burst out laughing reading those last couple of lines. But yes, nothing in Hellraiser bothered me that much either; I mean, yes, it did shock me when I first saw it, but then, there simply hadn’t been anything else like it on screen, ever. So there was a lot of “holy fuck, did he just really do that?” going on in my brain. And I’ve always had a love affair with deeply violent movies, which is not to say that I find violence in real life acceptable: on screen is exactly where that shit needs to stay. But maybe it’s that Hellraiser speaks to both our ids at the core which is why we like it so much.

The film, like Angel Heart, also got an X rating from the MPAA, and Barker had to cut several scenes in order to get the coveted R (like a longer version of Frank being torn apart by hooks, and his head exploding). Which, in retrospect seems hilarious given what gets past the MPAA these days.

By the way, I looked it up and it turns out there have been ten Hellraiser movies. Ten! Have I been asleep while most of them were released? I’ve seen the first three, but I didn’t see any of the rest of them, so I can’t comment on those. Gemma, did you see any of the others? Ten! Bananas.

Gemma: Seriously. Of those ten, however, I can absolutely recommend at least numbers two and three (Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth), which complete an interesting thematic trilogy in which the Cotton family’s struggles against each other somehow become converted into Pinhead/the Hell-Priest/Captain Elliott Spencer’s struggles against himself. If a person opts for damnation, can they ever become un-damned? (Spoiler alert: No.) Number four is where things really start to fall apart, though it does offer some startling Cenobite designs, along with a brief trip to outer space. (P.S. Did you know that Event Horizon was originally supposed to be a Hellraiser movie? Because it was.) Of the others, Paula Ashe puts in a big rec for Hellraiser: Deader, and I myself was surprisingly impressed by Hellraiser: Judgement, in which Pinhead is played by Paul T. Taylor — its visuals don’t have Barker’s nutso oomph, but it does return to a pseudo-theological vision that hearkens back to the original. Plus, an angel gets eviscerated, which I’m always down for.

Sandra: Whaaaaaat??? Event Horizon was supposed to be a Hellraiser movie? Well, that explains a lot. I know people bagged on that film, but honestly, I totally dug it. Part of what makes Hellraiser so attractive, I think, is that those Cenobites are so entirely themselves. Whatever fucked-up version of the universe they come from (or outside the universe), they are unapologetically who they are.

Gemma: I was actually thinking about what makes Hellraiser’s vision of hell somehow attractive, and it’s about risk, complicity: you state your desire and you pay the price, and if you can do it with a pure enough show of faith, you actually get what you want. Your own weird heaven. You ascend by descending, you alter yourself, you become something Other, but all your weaknesses are converted into strengths. It’s a power fantasy run rampant, a “switch” scenario in which your ability to submit makes you dominant. And I guess my attraction to it not only comes out of this impression I’ve always had that if I want to do something it’s probably the wrong thing to do, but also my attraction to the phrase: “God says, take what you want. And pay for it.” If you can take the pain, you deserve to get what you want. Isn’t that what we all hope for?

Sandra: And the Devil says, “Take what you want. And make others pay for it.” 🙂

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Cocktails: Hellraisers Galore!

Sandra: Because there’s a cocktail for everything, it turns out that, naturally, there’s a Hellraiser. I include it here because of its name, but, frankly, it sounds super gross.

Hellraiser Shot

Ingredients:

• 1/3 part Black sambuca
• 1/3 part melon liqueur
• 1/3 part Strawberry liqueur

Directions:

Pour strawberry liqueur into shot glass, then layer melon liqueur carefully on top by pouring over back of spoon, then black sambuca as the last layer using same technique.

Because there is no situation in the world where I would drink the above, I found this other Hellraiser drink “recipe” from Icon Beverages, as part of their “rocktails” — drinks inspired by rock music. I include it here because it made me laugh.

The Hellraiser

Ingredients:

• Motörhead vodka
• Orange juice

Directions: Put ice in a short glass. Add a large double shot of Motörhead Vodka. Make sure it is a large double. Throw in a splash of orange juice for color and taste.

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Book Recommendations

Sandra: I think I might recommend Kindly Corpses by Zoran Penevski & Ivica Stevanovic. It has a similarly fucked-up aesthetic, and was the top-selling graphic novel out of Serbia. We acquired the English translation and published it through ChiZine’s graphic novel imprint, ChiGraphic. Not safe for work. Or children.

Naturally, I recommend everything by Clive Barker. Or rather, almost everything. If you haven’t read The Books of Blood, you really should, as Barker really did cause a shift in the genre: he showed us the juxtaposition of beauty and horror and how they could meld together and become transcendent. Every story in those six collections is worth reading, but in addition to “The Hellbound Heart,” you should read “In the Hills, the Cities” (simply one of the greatest, weirdest pieces of short fiction ever written), and “The Forbidden,” (on which Candyman was based, as we previously discussed), and the gender-swapping “The Madonna.” I also love “The Nattering and Jack” which is about demonic possession, but is kind of hilarious. Barker’s The Scarlet Gospels was supposed to be the final word on Pinhead, and a great showdown between him and occult detective Harry D’Amour from “The Last Illusion,” The Great and Secret Show, Everville, and more. But Gospels reads like Barker wrote the first couple of chapters and someone else finished it. It’s . . . not that good. But I feel it should be mentioned here just for the sake of completion.

Gemma: May I also put a rec in for Barker’s “Age of Desire,” in which scientists dose a man with an aphrodisiac so strong it makes him fuck them to death, escape and fuck everything else he meets, including A) a cop and B) a wall? I’m going to keep going with the Barker theme and point people towards the various Hellraiser-themed graphic novels published through Epic Comics and BOOM! Studios. Of particular note should be Epic’s Hellraiser, an amazing collection of one-shot/origin stories and a few continuing tales, mainly starring “new” Cenobites like the spectacular Face, a former silent movie actor in the mode of Lon Cheney, Sr. Barker himself co-wrote the BOOM! series with Christopher Monfette, bringing back tried and true characters like the Female Cenobite and Kirsty Cotton. And then there’s my favorite of the extended tales, Epic’s two-issue Hellraiser vs Nightbreed: Jihad, which has amazing art and somehow manages to do well by both franchises simultaneously. Long live the flesh!

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Sandra Kasturi is the publisher of ChiZine Publications, winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and HWA Specialty Press Awards. She is the co-founder of the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium and the Executive Director of the Chiaroscuro Reading Series, and a frequent guest speaker, workshop leader, and panelist at genre conventions. Sandra is also an award-winning poet and writer, with work appearing in various venues, including Amazing Stories, Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, Prairie Fire, several Tesseracts anthologies, Evolve, Chilling Tales, ARC Magazine, Taddle Creek, Abyss & Apex, Stamps, Vamps & Tramps, and 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin. She recently won the Sunburst Award for her short story, “The Beautiful Gears of Dying,” in the anthology The Sum of Us. Her two poetry collections are: The Animal Bridegroom (with an introduction by Neil Gaiman) and Come Late to the Love of Birds. Sandra is currently working on another poetry collection, Snake Handling for Beginners, a story collection, Mrs. Kong & Other Monsters, and a novel, Wrongness: A False Memoir. She is fond of red lipstick, gin & tonics, and Idris Elba.

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Formerly a film critic, journalist, screenwriter and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work, two chap-books of speculative poetry, a Weird Western trilogy, a story-cycle and a stand-alone novel (Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst award for Best Adult Novel). Most are available from ChiZine Publications. She has two new story collections from Trepidatio (Spectral Evidence and Drawn Up From Deep Places), one upcoming from Cemetery Dance (Dark Is Better), and a new poetry collection from Aqueduct Press (Invocabulary).