Hellraiser (1987, covered by Scriptophobic columnist Paul Ferrell here) is an ode to the disgusting. It is a film about the beauty of bodily ooze, and one woman’s, apparently unwavering, attraction to it. The upscale, housewife Julia Cotton does dirty acts, in the dirty attic, of a dirty house, with a dirty man, and the audience loves it. The horror genre is a place to explore what society represses, and it is no secret that society has spent a lot of time pretending that women can’t have the same sexual thoughts that men do. Hellraiser shows us a glimpse of what an unbridled woman could look like, but is it a celebration or a condemnation?
If you are a frequent user of the internet you may have run across an idea floating around that the book Lord of the Flies is not actually an exploration of what all humankind would devolve into if freed from the restraints of society and reconnected with its baser instincts, instead it is just what rich boys would do in the situation. Classic books about humans gone wild, such as Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness, focus on men as the default image of humankind, but while watching Hellraiser I began to realize that this film marks the creation of the other side of this coin. Hellraiser is a film about a woman giving in to her fundamental human nature.
Julia’s restrained way of speaking, tailored clothes, and businessman husband portray her as someone very much shaped by the rules of society. Her step-daughter, Kristy, calls her uptight and frigid, but there are glimpses of Julia’s true connection to the primal body throughout the film. Before the film starts to truly get down and dirty, there is already hints to the audience that Julia is willing to be far more connected to the body than one might realize. 
While Julia reminisces about her first meeting with her, often sweaty, lover Frank, it is revealed that they had sex on top of Julia’s wedding dress. As the film is showing this flashback of Julia choosing to literally put sexual passion above society’s traditions, her husband, Larry, cuts his hand on a nail in present day. The exaggerated, red blood pours from his hand, and he is unable to look at his own bodily fluids without fainting. Julia, however, has no problem accepting the bloody hand. This is an interesting dynamic if one looks back at the history of swooning ladies in film. In this scenario, Larry is the person too delicate, too constrained by society, to accept his body’s nature, whereas Julia is free from this constraint.
Julia is a woman in control of her sexuality, yet overcome by it. She wasn’t written as a one dimensional sexpot, instead she shows a clear set of likes and dislikes. She enjoys the rough sex she receives from Frank, yet she is able to show disgust for the bed delivery men that leer at her and the sexually aggressive man she picks up at a bar. 
Her transformation from horny housewife to murderous femme fatale doesn’t come with a new, more revealing wardrobe, instead she continues to dress in her usual stylish, yet modest, attire to pick up men. She is a woman aware of the sexual pleasure she has the potential to feel and unapologetic about seeking that pleasure. This search for ecstasy leads to physical pleasure, instead of rational thought, being the driving force of Julia’s actions. It is not uncommon for women to be portrayed as characters driven by irrational motives, however, emotions and emotional release are what have been seen as the proper form of ecstasy for women to seek. Julia defies this stereotype when she turns her back on her emotional ties to her clean cut husband in favor of quenching her primitive thirst.
In the hierarchy of what society deems low culture, gross-out horror is barely above pornography, yet this is where we find the sexual desires of women regulated to. Women’s sexuality is placed in the same realm as monsters, demons, and murder. Julia’s sexual aggression bleeds into a violent aggression. She chooses to kill men with a hammer, which is both messier and more primitive than killing with a gun, yet doesn’t hold the same phallic nature as a knife, often seen in slasher horror, does. 
The blood of her male victims splatters across her face, conjuring images of other bodily fluids, as if the murder is a completed sex act. The problem is there are two sexual deviants in Hellraiser, Julia and Frank, but their sexual deviances have very different impacts. Frank’s weakness for physical pleasure leads to his own demise. His need to explore all the pleasures the world has to offer is what lead him to open the puzzle box, which in turn traps him with the Cenobites. While Julia’s sexual weakness eventually leads her to a similar ending, it first destroys the men who fall prey to it. Julia’s mission to do whatever it takes to receive the sex she desires has a direct body count where Frank’s sexual desires do not. Frank may use these deaths to escape the Cenobites but Julia kills for Frank specifically because of her sexual nature. Furthermore, the men killed by Julia fall into her trap because of their own lust, but that lust only leads to their harm and no one else’s. What the audience is left with is a parable on how men who give in to instinct destroy themselves, while women who give in to instinct destroy everyone.
Vincent Bec is a recent graduate of North Carolina State University in Psychology, Media Communication, and Gender Studies. Their life is currently dedicated to getting into a Film Phd program so that one day their ramblings about gender and sexuality in horror films can be backed by a doctorate. They regularly contribute to Anatomy of a Scream and Grim Magazine. Their writing has also appeared on the website Screen Queens.
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