HELLRAISER=good flick?????

[Bry Bry]

yo bros,i just watched the film last night and im not sure what i think of it..heres my gripes with it-

1.whats up with that puzzle box??i mean,i was hoping that the movie would explain what "pleasures" the box offered..i mean,all i see is people getting their ass ripped apart..sounds like a bundle of joy to me..i understand it opens the portal to heaven or hell,and that it invites the CENOBITES..what else is there to it??
2.stupid ass bum..why was he even in the movie??i mean,there is no explanation of who or what he is..at the end,i view him as the devil??i dont know..stupid character..
3.weak acting...the daughter wasnt the greatest and neither was the mother..
4.low budget-one of the CENOBITES looks like a mess..the fat one with the sunglasses..was he supposed to be scary or funny??i was laughing at it..the HALL MONSTER was too laughable as well...

ok,now the good things-
1.PINHEAD and his bitch co-hort CENOBITE they played their parts 100%..they were very seductive and scary at the same time..great characters..i just wished they would have went into more detail about them..how they came about and what their purpose is..
2.there was an overall feeling of dread in the movie..thats a good thing for this type of movie..

well,overall,i think the movie was OK,not near as good as i expected!!there could have been much more "explanation" for what was going on in the film..at times,i just was lost....i need more answers on what the box really does besides cut people to shreds..there has to be something positive about it??BARKER should have went into it more..it would have been much more interesting..

ALSO,how did FRANK escape the CENOBITES??why is he living under the floor of his old house??if the CENOBITES are so mighty,why cant they find him??man,theres just too many question marks about this film for me to have really liked it..

[the night watchman]

First, you have to understand the box opened a portal to "hell," or the domain where the Cenobites existed. Frank wanted to open the box and meet them because he was jaded … he thought he had experienced all the carnality the world had to offer. He thought the Cenobites would take him to a higher level, and he was right … but what he didn't anticipate was that the Cenobites' idea of pleasure and his own idea didn't quite jive.

The bum was the keeper of the box. He was the man who sold the box to Frank at the beginning, and he was the "dragon" at the end. I do agree this particular element was not handled as well as it could have been.

Butterball, the fat Cenobite, was, I think, just a manifestation of gluttony. I didn't think he was particularly funny, but to each his own. And I actually like the hall monster.

Frank escaped the Cenobites because when he was taken away he spilled blood on the floorboards of the room he was in. When his brother cuts himself, his blood connects with Franks, which opens a passage back to our world. (It's the supernatural, what more explanation do you want?) The Cenobites didn't know he had escaped out of their own arrogance, I suppose. Remember Pinhead said, "Nobody escapes us!" when Kirsty told him about Frank. They didn't know he was gone because they never thought to look to see if he was missing.

A movie like "Hellraiser" isn't supposed to be cut-and-dry. The questions it leaves you with are supposed to invigorate your imagination.

[Bry Bry]

man i guess i just didnt appreciate the supernatural quality to the movie..i like a movie that makes me think,but then again it has to have clear cut answers for the most part...this movie didnt..ill watch it again and see how i interpret it a second time..

[the night watchman]

If you read Clive Barker's novella "The Hellbound Heart," which is the basis for the movie, it all might make a little more sense. The story fills in some of the details.

[A.J. Hakari]

I liked "Hellraiser" because I got what I had expected: a gory, grim, and pretty confusing horror flick that would somehow entertain me. Need I say more?

What details would those be, Night Watchman?

[the night watchman]

Well, you might want to grab a beer and a sandwich, because this might take awhile.

The novella doesn't explain anything in concrete detail, but it does give you an intuitive understanding of the story. First, it's important to note a significant difference between the novella and the movie: in the novella Kirsty is not Larry's (his name is Rory in the novella) daughter, but instead a friend of his who is in love with him, and despises Julia because she knows how superficial the other woman is. I suspect Barker made this change to simplify the story for the screen, to make it immediately obvious to the audience why Kirsty (the daughter) should be so devoted to Larry (her father), and so concerned about his welfare. If Kirsty were not his daughter, a whole subplot would have to be introduced and explained, and Barker might have feared that that would detract from the main story.

Now, with Kirsty in the role of the spurned lover, three things become clear. First, if we judge Kirsty by her actions in the novella, we can see her as a sort of "saint"; at least compared to the other three major characters. She is the only one of them all who is not obsessed with her own wish fulfillment. She is truly in love with Larry; and puts his happiness above her own, even to going the lengths of sacrificing her own desire for him to try and help Larry work things out with Julia. Larry, Julia, and Frank, on the other hand, are all self-involved assholes. Larry wants to save his marriage Julia, to "make it work." But he's so self-involved, so obsessed with his own image of Julia, that he can't understand why she is not happy. Larry is more than happy to worship Julia; but Julia, obviously, does not want to *be * worshipped. Julia's boredom with her marriage and her husband parallels Frank's boredom with his own excesses. Just as Julia looks to Frank to rescue her from her marital ennui, Frank looked to the Cenobites to rescue him from the numbness of his own over-indulgences. What none anticipates, of course, is that the very thing they idolize will only betray them in the end.

The Cenobites, the box, the hooks and chains, then, are really only symbols of the destructive potential of self-involved desire.

However, if you really want to understand the Cenobites on their own terms, look at them this way. The realm of the Cenobites doesn't conform to physical laws as we understand them. Instead, it is a place that is structured upon the desires, or possibly the physical experiences - good or bad - of humans beings. The Cenobites' sole concern is the flesh … skin … nerve endings …. The hooked chains, the scarification and piercings, the rending of the body, is Barker's visual shorthand for the brutal sensations the Cenobites explore and inflict upon those who call upon them. Hence, their idea of "pleasure" is quite different than what Frank was looking for (they are quite literally "angels to some, demons to others.") They are creatures obsessed with carnality. Any kind of physical sensation to them is something that must be experienced. The novella never explains where they came from or how they came to be, but it doesn't really need to. In spite of how the movie was marketed, the Cenobites are really relegated to the sidelines. The story is not really about what they do or why, but what human folly *allows * them to do. They are, in a sense, repercussion.

Now that you are probably completely lost, you might want to pick up the novella and read it for yourself. It has been printed twice that I know of: the first is the anthology "Night Visions: The Hellbound Heart," published by Berkley and edited by George R. R. Martin; the second is a paperback of "The Hellbound Heart" published by Harper.