Movies - Hellraiser

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	Movies - Hellraiser

Hellraiser is a 1987 British horror film exploring the themes of sadomasochism, the inversion between torture and pleasure, and morality under duress and fear. It is based on the critically acclaimed novella The Hellbound Heart
by Clive Barker, who also wrote the screenplay and directed the film. It is also the first film in the Hellraiser
series of films, having seven sequels as of 2006.

The original working title for the film was Sadomasochists From Beyond the Grave.

Summary

Directed by Clive Barker. Filmed in Technicolor. The UK title for the film is Clive Barker's Hellraiser.

Hellraiser stars Sean Chapman as Frank Cotton, Andrew Robinson as Larry Cotton, Clare Higgins as Julia Cotton, and Ashley Laurence as Kirsty Cotton. It also introduces an unnamed character dubbed Pinhead by fans, so called because his head is etched out in a grid of incisions with large pins inserted at the intersections. Pinhead is the lead Cenobite in the film and was played by Doug Bradley. A large part of the movie focuses upon the tensions and moral dilemmas raised as Frank attempts to use his previous relationship with Julia to persuade her to commit murder to release him from the hell he unwittingly entered. Julia deceives strangers, her husband, and ultimately herself in her attempts to release him.

The Cenobites are presented as distorted humanoid beings, "explorers of the further regions of experience; demons to some, angels to others," from a parallel existence where death either can be suspended indefinitely or simply does not occur. Their existence is an eternal exploration of all that the body and mind can experience. Their world is a realm of endless sensuous experience, though this takes the form of endless experiments in pleasure and pain without the possibility of death as a release. The Cenobites ministrations may seem like torture to those on the outside but they exist in a world beyond such opposing notions of pleasure and pain, where all sensation is indivisible. Of the Cenobites' mission, Pinhead famously states, "We will tear your soul apart".

The beginning of the film revolves around a legendary antique puzzle box rumored to be the key to a mystical realm of unimaginable sensual pleasure. The gilded box is in fact a gateway to the Cenobites' world. When the puzzle is solved it summons the Cenobites, who seize the opener of the box and remove him to their realm of endless experience.

Frank Cotton, an impulsive and violent man who has grown weary of the many pleasures available to him on Earth, searches for the legendary box, which he has heard can lead him to pleasure beyond any that Earth can provide. But too late, he realizes that the Cenobites' idea of sensuality may not be perfectly aligned with that of mortals, and that he has instead condemned himself to an eternity of torture. The only remnant of himself in the "real" world is the residue of his blood and flesh on the floorboards in his house.

Some time after Frank's disappearance, his brother Larry and his family move into Frank's abandoned house, and a drop of blood from an accident causes Frank's body to begin regenerating from the residue in the floor boards. His heart reforms and begins beating, and the bone and organs of his body return, but he lacks skin and flesh. Julia, who was once Frank's lover before marrying the mild-mannered Larry, takes pity on him and agrees to help restore him. Tempted by the promise of having her old lover again, she seduces men in bars, lures them up to the empty attic room where Frank hides, and kills them; thus providing the blood needed for his body to regenerate and his spirit to escape from the Cenobites. Frank consumes their bodies, regenerating more of his own flesh each time.

Julia's stepdaughter Kirsty discovers what is going on. She finds out about Frank and the Cenobites too late to save her father, whose skin Frank steals and wears. Kirsty offers to lead the Cenobites to Frank in exchange for her own life and they claim that "maybe" they will spare her if she does. In a final showdown with the murderous Frank and her duplicitous step-mother, Kirsty tricks Frank into stabbing Julia and he betrays her, draining her blood. Kirsty manages to deliver Frank into their clutches of the Cenobites, although not before Julia solves the box in an attempt to get revenge on him. As the hundreds of hooks from the Cenobites' torture devices pierce and rip Frank's skin once more, Frank's last words on Earth are "Jesus wept." The Cenobites seek to take Kirsty as well, their deal having only suggesting they might leave her. Frantically manipulating the box, she discovers she can use it to send them back to their own domain as well as summon them. The Cenobites exorcised from our world, Kirsty attempts to destroy the box by burning it, but in a final show of its mysterious nature it is taken from the fire by a flying skeletal figure that disappears into the night. We last see it innocuously in the hands of the merchant who sold it to Frank, as he haggles with a new customer over the price of the box.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Hellraiser ]

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Movies - Hellraiser

Summary

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