The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy (52 page)

In its first couple of years, the title attracted some of the best writers and artists working in the industry, as well as old friends of the
Hellraiser
series. Peter Atkins penned Book 3’s standout “Songs of Metal and Flesh,” about a blind musician who eventually plays the Devil’s music to get into Hell, lavishly illustrated by Dave Dorman and Lurene Haines. Erstwhile Chatterer Nicholas Vince joined in for Volume 4 and wrote “Cenobite!” about one person’s journey to become a demon, featuring artwork by John Van Fleet. By this time, Marc McLaurin had taken over as editor and was instrumental in steering the series towards a bimonthly production schedule and introducing a longer multilayered story arc called “The Devil’s Brigade.” Speaking in an interview with
Fangoria
he said, “The anthology is firmly entrenched, and each issue will still have at least one self-contained story. But I’ve found that many of our readers appreciate a sense of continuity, so we’re aiming for stronger, more detailed storylines and stretching them from issue to issue.”
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This storyline, written in part by Chichester, saw a selection of Cenobites, including Pinhead, Atkins, Face, Abigor (a dominatrix-esque warrior Cenobite), and Balberith (Hell’s Librarian), each set a task to influence events on Earth. Their targets were a pair of police detectives, a woman on the verge of curing AIDS, a priest, a politician in an apartheid divided country, and a spokesperson for the homeless, all of whom stood at the crossroads between chaos and order at the pivotal “Time of Configuration” (an infernal equinox foretold by the Flagellum, who reads her own entrails to discover the truth before calling the Cenobites to arms). This lengthy and multifaceted tale ran over nineteen parts—including a prelude and epilogue—up until Book 16 of the series, and was definitely one of the highlights of the comic incarnation.

By the conclusion of this arc,
Hellraiser
had already started to produce its own spin-off publications. Summer, spring and Christmas specials were only to be expected, the latter displaying a Kevin (
Nemesis the Warlock
) O’Neill picture of Pinhead as Santa Claus on the cover. The last of these specials, though, in 1994 was actually written by Larry Wachowski, now famous for the
Matrix
trilogy which he co-wrote and directed with his brother. Indeed, Wachowski had contributed a story previously to Book 9 of the regular anthology called “Closets” which has some delicious hints of things to come. (A character asks in true Oracle fashion, “Would you like a candy?” and a child is found inside a cupboard with its mouth stitched up, just as Neo’s mouth is sealed over in the first
Matrix
film.) But nothing could have been as eagerly anticipated as Chichester’s two-part
Jihad
from 1991. Epic had already been running its own
Nightbreed
comic parallel to the
Hellraiser
one, which had itself been fleshing out that other Barker universe with new characters and situations. In
Jihad
these two universes spectacularly collided, positing a tantalizing theory that the Nightbreed were the chaotic yang to the Cenobites’ ordered yin.

Talking about this project to
Dread
magazine, Chichester explained: “We’re going on the theory that the Nightbreed and the Cenobites have a history, although the Nightbreed don’t necessarily know about this history. At this point in time, with the Nightbreed being released back into the world after being driven out of Midian, they are a massive chaotic force.... Hell has got to deal with this in order to get on with their war against mankind.”
⁴

In the story, the Breed’s Peloquin becomes a central character and even has to take over when Boone is killed. Pinhead finds himself stranded behind enemy lines after members of his own army turn on him, forcing him to form an uneasy alliance with the Nightbreed. The body of Boone must then join with the god Baphomet in order to defeat the rogue Cenobites. The story ends with a promise of another round of the war to come as Pinhead states: “Unity against a common threat was a necessary evil—not a pardon, but a stay.” Excellent visuals by Paul Johnson, in particular the two-panel battle scenes, helped to give this release an almost cinematic feel.

More text-based was
Clive Barker’s Book of the Damned
, a biannual companion to the comics. The first—also 1991—contained scraps of information about one man’s encounter with a “Prophet of Doom” on Michigan Avenue, who reveals to him that the events in the
Hellraiser
films are real. The contents of a canvas bag the prophet gives him include written extracts about the Guardians of the Box, the genesis of the Revelation Puzzle, extracts from
Of Hell
(written by Wachowski, which formed the basis of his Spring Special story), notes on the tarot High Priestess card based on the Female Cenobite from
Hellraiser
and
Hellbound
, the origins of Abigor, and a love story involving Pinhead: the only time he broke Leviathan’s rules. The whole book had a distinctly post modern feel to it, its self-referential flavor embodied by a mock cover of
Domination Magazine
. A showcase for the writers and for artists to do full page work, the
Book of the Damned
ran to four volumes, the third of which pre-empted
Bloodline
by giving readers the journal of Lemarchand, the maker of the puzzle box. Far from being a simple toymaker, he was presented here as being of noble birth, someone who delves into the areas of the occult and bases his plans on a box built by Albertus Magnus.

Book 17 of the
Hellraiser
anthologies (1992) marked the start of yet another serial, this one created by Barker himself. In an introduction he told readers: “Pinhead and his cohorts have wandered through these tales with the arrogant air of creatures who are wise to every trick humanity has up its sleeve ... never, that I can remember, has a soul they have taken to Leviathan’s corridors returned to the land of the living. After all, who would dare those infernal depths, policed as they are by the Cenobitical clan? The Harrowers, that’s who.”
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The Harrowers (the name of which itself comes from Dante) in question were nicely set up by a backstory in the previous issue about a goddess called Morté Mámme.

She fought the Cenobites thousands of years ago using specially trained humans, but all were captured and buried alive. “Resurrection,” written by Anna Miller, Malcolm Smith and Fred Vicarel—based on the Barker story—introduced the replacements: New York tattooist and biker Ron Ringwood; escaped convict Vera Wyshak; Winston Gage and his cat Zinc; twins Lavinia and Lucinda; Native American Marty Sevenbirds; and former professor Dublin Morse. Each were drawn to the location of the former Harrowers’ defeat, then given special weapons by the goddess to combat the Cenobites (Dublin could turn invisible, for instance, while Vera’s spittle was like acid to them) and free trapped human souls. This intriguing premise had real potential, and Alex Ross’s illustrations were breath-taking. Unfortunately, when the team moved to their own, slimmer, publication in December 1993, the plotlines deteriorated into nonsense about setting Cleopatra free and the spirit of Marc Antony taking over a stone statue and rampaging through the streets of New York. More interesting was the downfall of Dublin, who sacrificed his place with the Harrowers to make his own Faustian pact and free his twin brother from Hell.

The Harrowers were not the only characters to get their own title, though. In a shrewd move, Epic gave Leviathan’s favorite son a six part comic series which ran from Dec 1993 to May 1994. It wasn’t the first time Pinhead’s name had been on the front cover, but on the last occasion a month previously he’d had to share it with Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s superhero-hunting creation, Marshall Law, a tongue in cheek crossover which had Law and Pinhead slugging it out in the corridors of Hell. Now, in Chichester’s spotlight story, Pinhead was sent back through time to inhabit various incarnations of himself and heal a rift that threatened to destroy them all. But as an act of revenge for keeping him in Hell, Ludovico Maria Sinistrari sabotaged his time machine. The result was that Pinhead not only had to contend with The Aggregate, a creature made up from the present-day remains of Leviathan’s victims, but also the consciousness of whichever incarnation he had jumped into. While it was fun to see Pinhead as the likes of a Sioux warrior in 1879, a Monsignor from the Vatican in 1728 Paris, and a Mayan in 627 A.D., the artwork on occasion let the
Quantum Leap
-style plot down.

Its parent series went out on a high with Book 20, after McLaurin had left to oversee the spin-off Barker titles (which also included
Ectokid
and
SaintSinner
). This also coincided with a drop in page count to 48 pages. David Wohl took over as editor for this final issue, but this at least gave collectors a story from
Sandman
creator Neil Gaiman, working with his old friend Dave McKean. (The pair have recently gone on to make a film together,
MirrorMask
, 2005.) “Wordsworth” used the clever notion of a crossword puzzle as a Lament Configuration, and the experimental layout of the pages meant that this was one of the most remarkable stories they had ever published. Though
Hellraiser
should have continued much longer, its narrative influence can still be seen in the movies from the early 1990s onwards, and they are now, thankfully, being re-released in superb bumper collected “best of” books from Checker, the first of which included the classic stories such as “Like Flies to Wanton Boys,” “Dead Things Rot” and the first two tales of “The Harrowing.”

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FURTHER EXPLORATIONS

So now that we are coming to the end of our examination of the
Hellraiser
mythology in all its forms, what does the future hold for the series? A few tantalizing glimpses of new projects have been afforded us, but whether they will actually become a reality someday is yet to be seen.

Helloween

Prior to the success of
Freddy vs. Jason
(Ronny Yu, 2003) the prospect of Pinhead and Michael Myers from
Halloween
sharing the screen seemed remote. Dave Parker (
Masters of Horror
) had apparently already suggested these ideas in the mid–’90s and had been turned down on both scores: “I had pitched, unsuccessfully,
Freddy vs. Jason
to a guy named Ross Hammer at Sean Cunningham’s company around ’94 or early ’95. After that didn’t go well, I started to think about what other franchises were at other studios. It was a no-brainer to see that Dimension had both the
Halloween
and
Hellraiser
franchises, so I put together a trailer using footage from the
Halloween
movies, including
Halloween
6 which was just getting ready to come out, and the
Hellraiser
movies one through four.”
¹
He added in a later interview, “The (original) story takes place when people try to destroy the Myers house and they find the box hidden between the walls. Of course, they open it and Pinhead shows up, and it’s Halloween and it’s the Myers house, so Michael shows up because there are people there and Pinhead recognizes that Michael is Sam Hain because he can feel it, which begins this whole battle in the real world. And of course, the third act takes them all to Hell.”
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Naturally, when everybody saw that two icons of horror cinema
could
be pitted against each other and make quite a lot of money in the process,
Helloween
suddenly became a distinct possibility. Doug Bradley told the
Brownsville Herald
in late 2003: “At this point, in fact, Dimension Films are planning a Hellraiser/Halloween crossover... They are hoping to have it out by Halloween next year. That would be pretty fast, but that’s their plan.” This came not long after an “official” poll was taken on the Halloween Movies site to gauge fan reaction to the idea. Rumors started flying not long afterwards, but it appeared that Clive Barker would be writing the film and the original
Halloween
director, John Carpenter, would be at the helm.

Sadly, as we know, the movie didn’t make it to theaters in 2004. Bradley, speaking to Mike Hodge in the summer of that year, said, “It looked like a fascinating, mouth-watering prospect. And then it stopped dead in its tracks.... As far as I know, that’s where it stays. Fans at Horrorfind were showing me a recent
USA Today
which said Dimension were currently developing the movie—but that, or suggestions that it may be an animated film, is news to me.”
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It certainly would have been an interesting film, one which would have delved into the mythos of both franchises. There’s always the possibility with
any
idea that it might still be made and so all we, as students of
Hellraiser
lore, can do is watch and wait. At time of writing, though, plans for a ninth film in the
Halloween
series are going ahead, possibly with the title of
The Bloodline of Michael Myers
.
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Tortured Souls

Another movie that has stalled but could still come out in the future is
Tortured Souls
, based on a toy range that Barker developed for the ever-popular McFarlane line. While not specifically
Hellraiser
related the figures did bear an uncanny resemblance to their Cenobite cousins, but would came with their own fully fledged mythology. Launched in 2001 at the New York Toy Fair, these were then sent out to studios by Barker with a pitch for a film he would write and direct, his first feature since
Lord of Illusions
. In November
The Hollywood Reporter
and
Variety
both conveyed that Universal had bought the rights with the intentions of creating a franchise based on the toys.