To Hell and Back
Most of my days in college were a constant struggle between going to class and doing the work I knew I should be doing versus just saying “screw it” and renting a movie instead. My first experience with Hellraiser (1987) was on a day where I decided to embark upon the latter course of action.
At the time, I would head to the video store and look for horror titles I had heard of, but had never seen. The really famous ones. The ones I knew most horror fans would get up in arms about when they discovered I was unfamiliar with them. So, when my eyes passed over the infamous title and the striking image of a pale man with nails sticking out of his head, I knew what I’d be taking home with me.
I had mostly become accustomed to slashers by then, so the shock of seeing something as adult and psychologically distressing as Hellraiser was jarring to say the least. The sense of passion and sexuality, the longing for intensity breeding and bubbling below the surface of the film was off-putting in a way that I couldn’t describe. So much so that it turned me off to the film and I walked away decidedly unsatisfied.
It wasn’t until years later when I revisited the picture that I was able to reinterpret my initial reaction. The film affected me, and powerfully so. When that happens, it’s often easier for us to turn away from the perpetrating work of art rather than embrace and decipher it.
The film was a low budget affair, a passion project of all involved and that sense of romanticism which permeated the creation of the picture is ever present on screen. The words on the page are subtle and suggestive, seeds for the visualization that would come as the various artists and opportunities presented themselves. No scene in the film represents this ideology more than Frank’s rebirth in the attic.
Later, I discovered that the scene was an addendum. Put in after the film was shot and the producer’s saw how the power of what Clive Barker had accomplished could be amplified with more time and resources. Still, without the initial thrust of the story and thematic underpinnings of the work, the need for more effects would not have been apparent, or, potentially, effective.
What was originally conceived as a more suggestive and largely off-screen transformation, Frank’s revival became what is not only a practical effects showcase (conceived and executed by the great Bob Keen) but a grandiose moment in the story, complete with a romantic and beautiful swell of Christopher Young’s score. The sequence embodies the deep, carnal desires that Barker explores in the film all the while standing as an astonishing visual achievement in low budget filmmaking. Engaging the viewer in this way, viscerally and emotionally, this scene serves as evidence as to why Clive Barker is such a prolific storyteller and why Hellraiser remains an important influence to the horror genre at large.
THE SCENE
Larry stumbles into the attic. Julia turns and watches as large droplets of blood strike the ground. Julia rushes over to Larry. She decides he needs stitches and they exit. Blood seeps into the floorboards. In the hallway, they encounter Kirsty and the three of them leave to drive to the hospital. After, the floorboards in the attic room begin to creak. Slowly, liquid emerges from the floor and a form begins to emerge. Muscle and tissue come together and the scene concludes with a malformed version of Frank screaming in agony as he is reborn.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
Initially, the scene reads almost identically to the manner in which it plays out on screen. Larry enters the room and Julia turns from her silent communing with the room. Already, the script is suggesting that Julia is aware of Frank’s presence, that their connection has breached worlds.
On screen, Larry’s blood plummets to the floor in huge, echoing dollops, splattering onto the wood in bright red puddles. Visually, there’s a sense of majesty to the blood, of power. The screenplay says of this:
Blood has started to drip, unnoticed by either of them, onto the bare boards. Heavy splashes.
The lack of recognition from Larry and Julia, that is, the underestimation of the evils which Julia was suggested to have sensed, is representative of humanity as a whole. More specifically, the self-centered, self-concerned nature of people and their unwillingness to be in tune with their more carnal, animalistic tendencies, blinding them to the darker, more potent dangers that the world around them has to offer.
The camera moves elegantly and gracefully around Larry and Julia as she talks him down from fainting, the frame landing firmly on the wound itself: a swollen, angry gash, leaking strikingly red blood all over his hand and wrist.
“The blood keeps hitting the floor. Slap; slap; slap.
The image cuts back and forth between the blood striking the floor and the two tending to the wound. The motion continues to suggest an emotional disconnect between the life giving blood leaving his body and the sense of mental preservation Larry is attempting to maintain whilst dealing with his wound. Slowly, they make their way out of the room, unconcerned with the blood spilled.
Once gone, the screenplay deviates, following the characters into the hallway to have a conversation with Larry’s daughter Kirsty. Instead, the viewer watches as the blood is slowly sucked into the wood floor, leaving not a trace of red behind. Then, the camera sinks down below the floorboards, landing on a beating heart, held in place by a series of sinew-like cobwebs, spotted with what looks to be pieces of flesh and muscle.
While the depiction of the blood seeping into the floor does appear a few paragraphs later, the feature opted to focus on the blood first as opposed to the actions of the characters. Not to mention, the beating heart is altogether absent from the script. Once again, the visuals emphasize the nature of the house and the horrors it contains, providing context and insight to the audience to be juxtaposed against the detachment of the characters.
After this, the events in the hallway play out as scripted, the decision being made for Kirsty to drive her father to the hospital and they leave. However, the camera does not follow them. Slowly, carefully, almost cautiously, it makes its way back up the stairs. The score is pretty and almost calming given the eventuality that surely waits in the room. The image dissolves and the attic room once more occupies the frame. The room creaks rhythmically, filled with a slight hollow wind, as though the house were taking deep, purposeful breaths. The floorboards begin to rumble, breaking apart and expelling the nails holding them against the structure’s frame.
We are officially off script.
In a series of close ups and medium shots that truly call attention to the extent and impressiveness of the effects, liquid pools on the boards and fog appears. Suddenly, two skeletal arms reach up from the viscous pools of goo. Nearby a goopy puddle of thick blood and tissue form together to create what looks like a rudimentary skull. All the while the arms push against the floor, attempting to force itself up from the depths of the house from which it arose.
The music swells and becomes more like a waltz. Romantic. Passionate.
Two thick antennae-like limbs, seemingly constructed of muscle and sinew, protrude from the neck of the skeletal body which has taken shape around the arms, each moving independently of the other as though feeling out their surroundings. The odd skull seems to build a brain around itself and the skeletal form shoves its antennae into it, raising it out of the sticky protoplasm it’s sprouting from. The thing grows fingers and a rib cage, all the while becoming more and more human-like in nature, albeit a demented vision of one.
Finally, the pathetic creature, now a skinned, monstrous human torso and head, pushes itself away from the floor from which it was previously imprisoned, releasing a roar of agony and pain.
Of this, the script simply reads:
We pan up the wall. The plaster is quite smooth; indeed, its now begins to grow restless, and cracks. Something begins to move in the wall…
Instead of understated subtly, the audience is left in awe, fully aware of the monster that awaits the characters in their attic room and, moreover, the life-giving force it requires to grow and evolve: blood.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“I don’t know how the movie would’ve played without that sequence,” Clive Barker said in an audio commentary located on the Arrow Video Hellraiser blu-ray release (Available for purchase here), “it would’ve been nowhere near as effective.”
Hellraiser is a film about passion: passion lost, forgotten, remembered and found. Beyond that, it’s a story about what happens when the repression of said passion goes untended and waits, in the words of Mr. Barker on the aforementioned commentary track, “embryonically under the floor.”
The script was written well aware of what the budget was going to be. Within those confines, Barker was able to craft something subtle, yet deranged; romantic yet repulsive; beautiful yet hideous. And when his producer’s finally witnessed the vision that Clive Barker had realized, they concluded what is now so painfully obvious:
Expertly realized visual effects can embolden an already masterful picture. Not only that, they can alter the DNA of the audience’s experience, strengthening the thematic thrust and altering the context by which the viewer digests the story.
Given the extra time and resources (even if they were slight), effects artist Bob Keen took what he knew about the story and injected life into the off-screen, implied resurrection of Frank. Given artistic freedom and ushered forward by Clive Barker, he was able to follow his own passion and create landmark effects that hold impressive weight to this day. In an article titled “Practical-ly Perfect: Celebrating the Special Effects of Hellraiser” written by Heather Wixson and published on dailydead.com (Found here), Ms. Wixson interviewed effects artist Bob Keen regarding his work on Hellraiser, post the creation of the Cenobites:
“We then had to create all the other effects, which I thought were the really fun things to do in the film. The Cenobites were really hard work, but still great fun, too. The effects, though, became something where I could draw on all my experiences from the other films I’d done effects-wise.”
Fun. The artists crafting this macabre fantasy were able to truly express themselves, realize the story and the visuals they so desired… and they had fun doing it. Budget and time are helpful, often necessary, but what truly matters, much like in the confines of Hellraiser, is passion. Even if, as Clive Barker pointed out in his audio commentary, that passion means you have to create a beating heart by inflating “a plastic bag by special effects man’s breath,” then so be it.
I can’t remember what class I skipped that day in Champaign, but I can absolutely remember my first, uncomfortable experience with Hellraiser. No, I didn’t get it at the time, but I believe that is a testament to where I was at in my journey into horror and the power of Clive Barker’s ability to tell a disturbing tale. His is a talent to burrow into the subconscious and hold a mirror up to humanity’s darkest, most carnal instincts and desires. I was not prepared then.
Perhaps, I never will be. But that doesn’t stop me from trying.
I think Clive Barker summarizes the feeling of watching and digesting this scene (and, indeed, the film) best during his commentary: “Suddenly we’re not sitting there being scared by this, we’re being perhaps, hopefully, even astonished.”
And, with that, Mr. Barker, I think you’ve finally enabled me to interpret my feelings regarding my first viewing of Hellraiser.
Astonishment, is right.
Hellraiser (1987): Written and Directed by Clive Barker
NOTE: To read more of Heather Wilson’s interview with Bob Keen and other great effects artists, check out her book: Monster Squad: Celebrating the Artists Behind Cinema’s Most Memorable Creatures (Available to purchase here)
