HELLRAISER: 20th Anniversary Edition

Announcing the appearance of a major new talent in the eighties with The Books of Blood, Clive Barker brought to both fiction and films the resonance of a poet and the emotional/intellectual breadth of a philosopher. While his stories shattered sexual and cultural taboos, deliriously merging the pornographic with graphic violence, he proved that he wasn't simply a poet of perversion. He could spin a line with the best of them. An eloquent defender of the genre, a storyteller of old, and a modern mythmaker, Barker could clearly think as well as write, and his most horrific creations and nightmares were often as cerebral as they were dripping blood and cum. His subsequent novels and motion pictures continue to shatter taboos, speaking up for fetishes, fear, and freedom. Yet his most penetrating work of death and desire, dread and delight, was his very first foray into the fantastic. Hellraiser stroked the intellect as surly as its sado-masochistic imagery stroked the hidden desires of its characters. An ode to the grotesque, making the horrific beautiful, this de Sadian examination of the contradictory impulses of pain and pleasure ushered cinema audiences weaned on the 'safe' horrors of Freddy into bold new territory. Dealing with images and themes as old as sin, yet turning such concepts as salvation and damnation on their collective heads, this necrophilia-laden love story made terror attractive, and put Barker on the map.

A Faustian parable of love and lust behind the grave, Hellraiser contains enough plot threads and themes for a whole slew of films. Adapted by Barker from his own The Hellbound Heart, this terrifying tour-de-force features at least three concurrent narrative threads: a demented love triangle, a Faustian pact, and lust from beyond the grave. Any one of these could be expanded into a novel or feature length form but Barker manages to interweave them together in near flawless economy and believability. When Larry Cotton and his bitch goddess wife Julia move into the old family home, now abandoned, they are struggling to fix their marriage after unnamed but guessable difficulties. Once there, Julia becomes obsessed with the memory and presence of Frank, Larry's brother, with whom she had a lusty affair. When blood resurrects the deceased Frank (a typical bad boy/maker of the Faustian pact), Julia is moved by the memories of flesh and desire to kill in order for him to continue adding substance to his form. More than a black widow, she becomes a sick type of hotwife, cuckolding Larry with the dead! When Kirsty, Larry's daughter, finds a puzzle box that summons otherworldly demons bent on giving humans ultimate experiences in pleasure and pain, a whole new dimension of unease and awe is brought to the story. Kirsty must somehow survive the ministrations of pinhead and the other cenobites and save her father from Frank.

An emotionally draining story of terror and tragedy, Barker's pet themes of Faustian desire for experience, sexual excess, and transformation are captured with clarity and insight. The world of Hellraiser is the world of our subconscious, dark and deadly and strangely attractive. The cenobites, the incestuous leanings of Frank, the bitch Goddess Julia (who is the dark manifestation of the mother goddess in all her horrible beauty), all of these retranslate cosmic and ancient archetypes. Crossing thresholds of homosexuality, incest, and the evils of organized religion, Barker's work is just as significant for the detailed craftsmanship that accompanies each of his dark journeys through myth and magic. For him the very world is a canvas upon which to construct his deeply personal yet cosmically revealing epics. A weaver of modern myths boldly interweaving real histories with the 'secret histories' of beings, powers, and places (themselves a mingling of communal archetypes and his own penchant for casting ancient themes into modern and culturally pertinent molds), Barker's storytelling is somehow both personal and cosmic. A shaman of old evoking fables from firelight, he instils erotic depth and moral ambiguity in this tale of puzzle boxes and pleasures so profound that they hide terrors. Pain and pleasure become one and indistinguishable, as do the gods and demons who have housed our collective and personal fears/desires for so many centuries. As a work of myth, Hellraiser retranslates the fears of eternity, charting the delirious byways between death and the maiden. As a work of art, Barker's debut strove to find a new language for our fears, new masks for the demons inside our skins. As a cinematic entertainment, Barker's adaptation of his own novella showed us how far imagination, desire, and creativity could take us. It was, and is, a masterpiece in the annals of the macabre. "We have such sights to show you!" And he did!

A faery tale for the modern imagination, Hellraiser truly took us where we had never been before. Now, continuing their mark of excellence, Anchor Bay presents this hearty stew of sado-masochistic demons and tough love in a wonderfully packaged, technologically superior edition stuffed full of extras. This anamorphic widescreen presentation is featured in 1.85:1. Free from grain or image softness, the print is clean and crisp, the colors bold. Audio is just as proficient, featuring two tracks in Dolby Digital Surround 5.1 and 2.0. Both are free from hissing and interference. Features are plentiful, creating a historical and creative context for the film, Barker, and the cast. Besides Theatrical trailers, TV Spots, and a Storyboard Gallery, the disc also includes an extensive Still Gallery, Posters and Ad Gallery, and DVD-ROM version of both the first and final draft screenplays. While some features are brought over from the earlier special edition disc, enough new material is included to make it worth a double dip. "MR. Cotton, I Presume?" interviews Andrew Robinson as he discusses preparing for his role, memories of Clive and the set, and his career overall. In "Actress From Hell" Ashley Laurence deadpans a bubble headed teeni-bop, jokes with the camera, and discusses her attraction to dark art. "Hellcomposer" features Christopher Young as he waxes enthusiastic about his younger days, love of the fantastic, and how he fell into the job of scoring his bizarre love story. "Under the Skin," meanwhile, takes us through Doug Bradley's mind, as he weighs in about starring as the pin-studded bad boy, and "Hellraiser: Resurrection is brought over from the original disc. Another titular treat is the audio commentary with Barker and Laurence, which is moderated by Peter Atkins and as clever as it is insightful.

Review by William P. Simmons