The rebirth pains of ‘Hellraiser’ continue
by Ben Bussey
After a great many years of the inevitable Hellraiser remake languishing in development hell (pun intended, of course), things have suddenly got busy on the Cenobite front of late. First yet another direct-to-DVD sequel, Hellraiser: Revelations, went into production. Then just a few days ago, it was announced by Bloody Disgusting that Christian E. Christiansen (presumably related to Sandford’s favourite son Aaron A. Aaronson) was in line to direct a teen-oriented remake, potentially with Amber Heard on final girl duties. But now it seems those reports have been rubbished entirely, with both BD and Shock Till You Drop announcing that the Hellraiser remake will remain strictly R-rated, and is now in the hands of writer-director team Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer, the guys behind My Bloody Valentine 3-D and the upcoming Drive Angry.
I’m not sure which part of this I find the least palatable. It’s pretty much accepted as a given that the currently-in-production cheap quickie sequel is being made simply to renew Dimension’s rights to a franchise which for more than a decade they have largely mishandled. That said, I cannot speak of this mishandling entirely from personal experience as I haven’t seen at least the last four or five installments in the series, in large part because they have to date not been released in Britain. This in spite of the fact that, although this seems to be forgotten, the original Hellraiser and its first sequel are very much British films.
I should make my position on this matter crystal clear: I absolutely love Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. Alongside the original Nightmare On Elm Street, I regard it the finest horror of the 1980s, and that’s saying something given that the 80s is probably the era of horror cinema that is closest to my heart. Part of what I find so wonderful about Barker’s film is how it is at once clearly a product of its era, yet turns so many conventions on their heads. There are clearly elements of the slasher film present, most notably with Ashley Laurence’s Kirsty embodying the textbook final girl and the housebound, stalk-’n'-slash ”cat and mouse shit” of the last reel. But the mystical and sexual elements take things to a whole different place: considerably more adult territory than was (and remains) the norm.
I don’t mean ‘adult’ in the “tee-hee, look, they’re getting naked and shagging” sense. I mean that Hellraiser, and to a degree Hellbound: Hellraiser II, are largely interested not in the growing pains of adolescents but the anxieties of adulthood. After all, the real central protagonist of Hellraiser is not Pinhead, nor Kirsty, nor even hell’s escaplogist Frank: it’s Julia, Frank’s one-time lover. Her lack of fulfillment in her marriage and her lust for Frank drives her to kill for him so he can regain human form. As such, it is these very grown-up concerns that drive the narrative. And while the theme of desire driving people to the dark side is a constant in the films (or again, at least as far as I have seen into the series), I don’t think it was ever explored as powerfully as in Barker’s original. I might also add what a crying shame it is that Barker never progressed further as a filmmaker: Nightbreed’s problems are well-documented, and Lord of Illusions just feels phoned in on every level, but on the strength of Hellraiser the potential was clearly there for Barker to become one of the great horror directors.
Can we expect a film from Lussier and Farmer to take Hellraiser back to those heights of sophistication? What can I say, it just doesn’t seem at all likely to me. I certainly don’t dislike the guys: Farmer penned Jason X, one of my favourite Friday the 13th films, and I was pretty excited by the recent trailer for Drive Angry, which looks like it could be a nice bit of supernaturally-tinged car chase action insanity. But Lussier’s Dracula 2000 was lacklustre in the extreme, and I really didn’t care much for My Bloody Valentine 3D either. With these guys taking the reins of Hellraiser, perhaps we can expect something more along the lines of Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth; a more popcorn take on the material, with a greater emphasis on special effects and gore gags. That needn’t be a bad thing necessarily – after all, I like Hellraiser III a lot, even if it is on many levels diametrically opposed to what went before it. But is it really the best thing for the series?
It doesn’t seem too long ago that Pascal Laugier was in line for the job. Even though I have my hang-ups about Martyrs (think I may be the only person at Brutal As Hell who doesn’t like it), that was a choice of director that made sense; someone who would give as much attention to the psychological territory as the viscera. Not long after that, if I remember correctly, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury were being lined up. Again, a logical choice; Inside is a terrific film that really gets under the skin. For Dimension to have gone from these challenging French filmmakers to the guys behind My Bloody Valentine 3D is, I think, a fairly clear indication of their hopes for this film. They want something marketable, something that won’t deter John & Jane Doe from buying tickets. I’m sure they’ll get it, too. But I fear it won’t be as much as a shadow of what Hellraiser was to begin with.
Yes, I know, I should probably be over this remake anxiety by now. After Chain Saw, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, it was of course a foregone conclusion that Hellraiser would get swept up in the remake net, and in spite of my anxieties this writer and director are by no means the worst people that could’ve landed the job. Ultimately it is not them I have the issue with; it’s the Weinsteins, and their really rather callous treatment of this property that I and a great many other horror fans hold so dear. Sincerely, I hope Lussier and Farmer prove me wrong. I hope they pull a few surprises out of their sleeves and take Hellraiser back to where it belongs. As ever, we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, no tears please; it’s a waste of good suffering…
