The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy (51 page)

31

WORLD IN ACTION

Hellraiser: Hellworld
was released on DVD 6 September 2005, just three months after
Deader
. Generally speaking, the critics took this movie for what it was—completely different to what had gone before in the series, but using familiar horror tropes to cater to fans of the genre as a whole.
Arrow in the Head’s
online review said: “I entered
Hellraiser: Hellworld
ready to have an ‘okay’ time and to my big surprise ... I had a freaking blast!” The review continued: “Overall, this flick was a F*cking-A good time! It knew what it was and wasn’t ashamed of it!”

John J. Puccio of
DVD Town
drew attention to the franchise aspects of the movie: “You’ve seen the movies. You’ve read the books. You’ve even collected the action figures. Now, play the game!” He went on to talk about the more explicit nature of the material: “The sex and nudity are purely gratuitous and have nothing to do with the plot. The violence is mainly what we came for, but the filmmakers know that viewers expect sex and nudity and violence to go together, and, as I’ve said, the filmmakers are intent on providing viewers with everything they expect.”

The Cenobites are part of the mythology that
Hellworld
openly references (courtesy Gary J. Tunnicliffe).

One of the most detailed reviews came from a familiar name to any horror fan, that of writer Staci Layne Wilson, who wrote about the film for horror.com and got what the movie was really all about: “The setting, characters, and killings are all standard horror stuff on the surface, but director Rick Bota (channeling a meth-addled William Castle) and screenwriter Carl V. Dupré (doing his best Mario
Bay of Blood
Bava) brought their
A
game with inventive little twists and shocks all throughout the gory proceedings.” She was also pleased to see Henriksen in the film, saying, “The screen is owned by Henriksen as The Host (and his character is leaps and bounds better than another host he played in a 2003 disappointment called
The Invitation)
Best Host line: ‘If you need anything ... scream.’” And she was impressed by the rest of the cast, especially the feisty heroine, who follows in the best tradition of Kirsty and Joey: “Chelsea (Katheryn Winnick) is also a lot of fun to watch as she’s put through the wringer, making many narrow escapes.”

But
Deader
and
Hellworld
were not the only
Hellraiser
films to be made in recent years. There was one more, a short movie that examines what the last days of the Cenobites might be like and features Pinhead as you’ve never seen him before.

32

NO MORE SOULS

Filmed in the space of a weekend, on a small set at his Two Hours in the Dark, Inc., effects workshops in Canoga Park, California, Gary J. Tunnicliffe’s short
Hellraiser
film is certainly quite impressive. Shot for a budget of $2,400, twelve hundred of which was spent hiring a high definition camera from World Wide Broadcast Services, Inc.,
No More Souls: One Last Slice of Sensation
imagines an alternate future for Pinhead to the one shown in
Bloodline
. Here humanity has destroyed itself in a nuclear war and in one fell swoop both Heaven and Hell are filled to the brim with four billion human souls. During the first millennium the souls were processed in Hell, but of course once they had run out there were no more souls to harvest. Tunnicliffe studied the instruction manual on the camera and visited a cinematography chat room to ask questions before the shoot.

He also gathered together friends and colleagues to help with the film, which he had written himself and would produce, direct and stand in as DP and production designer. Executive producing the short were Claire-Jane Vranian and Michael Jay Regan (who would play Chatterer again for this production). Regan would also help with the set construction along with Steven Lawrence (who was playing Bound) and Blake Bolger (who doubled as the Prosthetics assistant). And when it came to putting everything together in postproduction, Tunnicliffe found assistance in the form of Kirk Morri as post production supervisor, Patrick Lussier (who edited all the
Scream
films for Dimension) and Lisa Romano as editors, with sound design from Jonathan Miller and music by
Deader
’s Henning Lohner. And there was certainly no shortage of special effects people on hand to deal with this side of the film.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of
No More Souls
’ shoot was the fact that Tunnicliffe played an old version of Pinhead, making him only the second person to appear in the famous make-up in the series’ history. In a final dedication on the film, Tunnicliffe writes: “For Doug ... For creating the wonderful character that budget decreed I mimic ... Please forgive me.” With cataracts in his eyes and a general world-weariness, this more thick-set version of Pinhead is possibly what the character would look like after centuries had passed by; no longer enjoying the sport, he simply sits on what looks like a plain wooden chair or throne, the monarch of a long dead kingdom.

The movie itself begins with a pan across scorched earth with skulls half buried in the sand. These simple images accompany the almost Shakespearian monologue that Pinhead gives us: “In the end it was just two sins that proved deadly for the world, greed and lust. And when the leading superpowers saw the end was nigh they chose to cut off the nose of humanity to spite the face of mankind.” We then descend into that earth, traveling below to Hell, which would suggest a more traditional one than we have seen before. Except we pan down to see Pinhead sitting, bored and tired amidst the hanging chains and stone walls. He continues to relate the story: “The years have passed silently, taking with them my will, and my hunger. For what is there to wait for? Another 65 million years until I can know the eternal delight of an experience where hurt and ecstasy become one. Too much time to wait for such a fleeting sensation.”

Gary as an old and weary Pinhead in
No More Souls
(courtesy Gary J. Tunnicliffe).

Believing his once loyal troops will turn on him eventually anyway, Pinhead opens the Lament Configuration and gives them one last soul to gorge upon: his own. The final scenes show Chatterer and Bound appearing in a flash of blue light and attacking Pinhead, his mouth now smeared with blood. We then cut to Chatterer nailing something onto the now-familiar Torture Pillar, and when he steps away we see it is the stretched skin of Pinhead’s face, not alive as it was at the end of
Hellbound
, but flat and lifeless.

Lasting only about five minutes in total, the film has a deep impact beyond its running time and deserves its place in the
Hellraiser
canon, simply for the audacity of the ending. For here, Pinhead not only dies, but the whole of Hell has been utterly defeated by what it coveted in the first place. Leviathan has been hoist by its own petard. But, as we will see in the final chapter Tunnicliffe wasn’t the only one planning Pinhead’s final exit.
No More Souls
appeared as part of the
Deader
package on DVD in 2005, tucked away as a hidden “Easter Egg” which could be accessed by selecting Special Features on the main menu, scrolling down to More at the bottom and selecting that, then moving down the second page, so that Play is highlighted, and pressing the down button once more on the DVD remote. Nothing appears to be highlighted now, but by pressing the Right button the Lament Configuration lights up and the film plays. A puzzle worthy of
Hellraiser
in its own right.

33

COMICS FROM HELL

In addition to the cinematic outings of the Cenobites and their puzzle box, an official graphic interpretation of the mythos appeared from 1989 to 1993 and spawned its own spin-offs and sequels, often more cerebral and ambitious than its filmic counterparts. Published by Marvel’s Epic Imprint and launched as a quarterly, Book 1 of the comic series—actually more a 64-page book with a spine than a comic—boasted an eye-catching John Bolton rendering of Pinhead on the cover, and introductions by editor Daniel Chichester and Clive Barker. In his foreword, Chichester discloses that the possibility of a horror comic from Epic had long been a possibility, but they were waiting for the right subject matter: “We were ... convinced that to use the medium to its fullest potential
today
would require us to overcome the pitfalls of so many horror comics of the recent past, the ones where the stories always ended with a clichéd ‘twist’ of ‘And she woke up the next morning to find that her husband—in the bed next to her—HAD REALLY BEEN DEAD FOR THE PAST SIX YEARS!’”
¹

He found this in
Hellraiser
, but knew that a straightforward adaptation wouldn’t do the title any justice. Hence, right from the start, the aim of the comic series was to set stories in the same universe, exploring possibilities only hinted at in the movies. Barker used his space to expound upon the curious nature of a creation becoming public property: “The little bastard movie I made’s got a life of its own. Who’d have thought it? Who’d have
ever
thought?”
²
He was to remain a consultant on the series, though, and he had final approval over everything.

As for the stories themselves, writer Erik Saltzgaber and Bolton came up with a brilliant medieval tale called “The Canons of Pain,” in which a Lament Configuration is discovered in the Holy Land and brought back to England, thus extending
Hellraiser
’s back-history even further. “Dead Man’s Hand,” written by Sholly Fisch and illustrated by Dan Spiegle, was set in another historical period, the Wild West, and centered on a Guardian gambling in a saloon with the puzzle box. By winning, the cowboy he’s playing against doesn’t get to see what’s inside. In “The Warm Red” Jan Strnad created in Maureen a character to rival Julia, wonderfully rendered by Bernie Wrightson. Out to cheat a lonely man out of his land and make herself a fortune in the process, Maureen uses her feminine charms, little realizing that the man has struck up another deal with a Cenobite. There’s a final gripping twist, however, which sees Maureen once again taking control of the situation and teaming up with the demon. Finally, “Dance of the Fetus” by Ted McKeever, was the most poignant entry in this first volume. Presented with virtually no dialogue, it told of what happened to a woman’s unborn child after she agrees to go to Hell. (“This just won’t do,” says the Cenobite to the fetus. “There are regulations. I mean, what would it be like if we could just take anyone?”)

Cover of Check Books
Best of Hellraiser
collection, volume 1 (courtesy Checker Books).

This initial collection set the tone for the volumes to come, and also introduced us to some new Cenobites, such as Face—who we later discovered was an actor before Hell took him, and who now wears the skin masks of his victims (“To Prepare a Face”
Hellraiser Book 4
, 1990). Other fan favorites would join him over the comings months, like the stick thin Hunger (introduced in a superb story called “Diver’s Hands” in Book 2 about the relationship between a patient suffering from leprosy and his caregiver) and former Vietnam vet Atkins (from “Tunnel of Love” in Book 6), weapons master in Leviathan’s ranks. And while fresh Cenobites were utilized, Pinhead and his original cohorts were far from absent in these pages. The range of ideas was also impressive in those fledgling volumes, covering everything from virtual reality torture in “The Threshold” (Book 2), to the impact of the Cenobites on 1920s Paris avant-garde in “The Blood of a Poet” (Book 3), and a link to Jack the Ripper in “Under the Knife” (Book 7). The Lament Configuration itself was ripe for reinvention, too, as we saw the various guises it could take. In “Glitter and Go” (Book 5), for example, people cast themselves from the rooftops of an office building like lemmings in the hopes they would fall through the dimensional portal, while in “Demons to Some, Angels to Others” (Book 7), it takes the form of a rod puzzle wielded by a minister. (“If thou desirest glory enough, then it shall be given unto you to solve.”)