JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Sam Panico One of my interns at work asked me the other day, "You watch all of these horror movies. Don't they scare you?" No, they really don't. Not anymore. Some of them disturb me, like the cannibal films. But only one still kind of scares me. And that would be Hellraiser.There was a time, before the eight sequels to the film and BDSM became well-known fodder on shows like Law and Order that Hellraiser seemed like it came from some alien land more than its true origins. The monsters of the piece, the Cenobites, looked like nothing we'd never seen before, all leather, blood and open festering wounds. The idea that sex and pain could be united wasn't trite back in 1987, so it's difficult to convey the power and fear this film had. It feels wrong. It feels dirty. It feels evil.How this movie was made for $900,000 blows my mind. It looks lush and gauzy at times and at others, like when we see Frank's heart and veins being formed, positively nightmarish. It shouldn't be this good - it was Clive Barker's directorial debut after seeing two of his stories, Underworld and Rawhead Rex, get made into films he didn't agree with. What kind of deal with the devil did this guy make to turn out something so perfect on his first try?The misconception that many people have of this film is that the Cenobites are the villains or the horrific part of the film. If we go to the poster for proof, it says "Demon to some. Angel to others." Pinhead and his gang are there to move the story forward and certainly look frightening, but they are bound by the rules of Hell and the Lament Configuration, the puzzle box that sets the events of the film in motion. Matter of factly, these rules aren't truly defined yet - is Pinhead a tortured soul stuck in the wheels of some hellish bureaucracy? Who created these boxes? None of this matters - "You solved the box. We came." Yes, it can be that simple. You don't need to know all of those answers right now. When Frank buys the box and Morocco and solves it, he gets the answer to limitless pleasure and the drug of all drugs - as Frank says, "I thought I'd gone to the limits. I hadn't. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits. Pain and pleasure, indivisible."That's one of the real horrors of this film: people will do anything to chase a high. That high may be drugs. It may be pain. It may be a sexual experience that makes the mundane life you're stuck in - like Julia, bored with a suburban life with a husband she never really wanted in the first place. The chance to be with Frank again, no matter if she has to seduce and kill for him, is everything. Notice that as he gains more muscle and skin with each drop of blood, she becomes more and more attractive, her skin gaining new color.The main horrors of this film are family and other people. The Cotton family had issues before the Cenobites took one step out of Hell. The most horrific part of the film comes when Frank wearing Larry's skin, stares at his niece in a moment of sexual longing and says, "Come to daddy." Sure, there are horror film trappings, but this type of morally bankrupt behavior isn't something confined to the cinema. So much of the betrayal and madness of Frank and Julia could happen. It happens every day.Hellraiser exists on the border of reality. It's fantastic, but it feels like it could happen. It's the dangerous fiction that could overwhelm your truth if you go too far. In that it's quite similar to Barker's Candyman, which posits that saying the name of its titular character three times in a mirror is all it takes for him to come for you. That seems too unrealistic, but do you want to take the chance? And much like the black leather garbed creatures in this film, Candyman must adhere to a dream logic that only comes into our reality when you allow the genie from the bottle.

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki I enjoyed this a lot more than my first viewing of it, likely fifteen years ago. A woman has to basically harvest souls for her half-zombie ex-lover, so he can feed on their life energies, and return to life, and escape a group of sadomasochistic demons sent to reclaim him, and take him back to Hell. When her second husband is claimed victim, his college-aged daughter investigates, and learns his horrifying fate. Some surprising twists, good looking lighting and colour pallet reminded me of some old giallo films, like something Mario Bava, or Michele Soavi ( one of my favourites ) might have done. Andrew Robinson is always fun to watch, and always reminds me of Scorpio, from Dirty Harry. Ashley Laurence is adorable, she makes a great contrast to the gruesome tale playing out. The house itself almost becomes a character in its own right, by the end of the film.

cinemajesty Film Review: "Hellraiser" (1987)Remarkable original in its conception of art direction on just a budget of roundabout even one million GB Pounds, produced in season 1986/1987 for a world-premiering midnight screening at Cannes Film Festival in its 40th edition, author director Clive Barker fulfills his vision on the world in a daring image system of sadomasochistic chambers in a small-town house, prepared by a mystical box puzzle, solved by Morroco-traveling main character Frank, giving in under his frenzies into an illusionary scenario of body- as mind-splitting family members under screams of daughter Julia, portrayed by actress Clare Higgins, while actor Dough Bradley as notorious character of "Pinhead" leads a group of dark pleasure demons, called the cenobites in order to fulfill the darkest dreams of Frank, the game initiator; all happening under light-shifting steamy cinematography that feels into morbid, chain-clinking sounds of high-tension atmospheres accompanied to a decisive soundtrack by composer Christopher Young, keeping the audience guessing what are stakes in the next scene to follow in a fast-forward and straight hardcore-horrors-sharing picture, which full-bodied tight grip on the spectre's senses may fascinate not genre fans only.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

gorf The scariest thing about Hellraiser isn't the part where uncle Frank is ripped to pieces and turned into a jigsaw puzzle, but that a piece of crap like Hellraiser could be popular and even get a bunch of sequels.Hellraiser isn't scary in any real sense. It's not a movie that makes you twist and turn in bed. It doesn't make you think. It's just disgusting, like finding someone's hair in your food. You're not sure if you want to finish it.I'll admit that some scenes are creepy, but it doesn't help when the rest of the movie is sadistic and perverted garbage. "But...but the cenobites are scary-looking!" Not really, but so what? If I wanted that, I could just make scary faces in the mirror and shout "boogah!!!" (To be honest, I'm not even sure if I have to make any faces)The movie also has a lot of sexual content. Why? I don't know. "Because people have sex in real life! It's natural". You know what happens more often than sex? Toilet breaks. Yet we never see Bruce Wayne pull down his pants and place his butt on the rim in any of the Batman movies. There are no graphic pee scenes in the Wolf Man. Like the gory violence, it's just pointless. It doesn't add anything to the plot. It's probably there to show how disgusting uncle Frank is. "Ewww, look at uncle Frank, he's so horny and skinless".There's a hilarious scene where uncle Frank, after having killed and skinned his brother, puts on the skin and impersonates him to fool the main character. I'm sorry, but it's impossible to take it seriously. It's like something you would see in a very violent Bugs Bunny cartoon.The cenobites aren't much better. Even back when I was a kid and saw pictures of Pinhead, I couldn't understand why he was supposed to be scary. In fact, all of the cenobites look like members of a gay club who played with matches or toothpicks. Disgusting isn't the same thing as scary. There's a reason why we don't make horror movies about dog poop...yet.The Stephen King quote can't be real. "I have seen the future of horror, and his name is Clive Barker". If that's the case, Stephen King should consider eye surgery. And Clive Barker should get a face lift. It's probably something Stephen King mumbled in his sleep when he dozed off during the making of Maximum Overdrive.If you want real horror movies, just watch classics like Nosferatu, The Wolf Man, BBC's Dracula miniseries from the 70s, Dead of Night (1945) or the original The Thing. "What's your pleasure, sir?" Using the Hellraiser DVD as a frisbee.