Hellraiser (Film Review)

1987 New World Pictures
Written and Directed by: Clive Barker
Starring: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 93 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 8/10

A guy visits a Middle-Eastern market, buys a strange puzzle box, opens it, and gets transported to another dimension where he is torn apart by giant fish hooks on ropes. Flash forward an indeterminate amount of time, and a man is moving with his wife from Brooklyn to some old family house in an unspecified suburb. Looks like his wife views him as an effete waste of space, and he himself simply seems to be the noise a record makes when it hits the end and keeps on spinning. The wife happens upon some lusty pictures her husband's brother left in the house, and low-and-behold, not only did the wife have an affair with the brother many years ago, but the brother is the very man who was ripped apart by fish hooks. Well, what do you know, when the goofy husband tears his hand open moving a mattress on the stairs, and drips blood all over the floor, some gruesomely gory, yet booger-like spectral form of his brother is secretly reawakened...and he wants more blood...lots of it! However, as the grotesque ghoul is discovered by the wife, who turns out to be very naughty indeed, she decides to get the blood for him. Carnage ensues...and before you know it, some strange pale fellows with needles hammered into their heads show up looking for the brother. You see, no one is supposed to escape their fish hook torments alive. Now, don't that just beat all!
Hellraiser is strange, insanely gory, and dare I say, pretty damned fun. The actors are all relishing their roles to the highest degree. As the wife, Claire Higgins gets plenty of chances to turn toward the camera and smugly sneer before she does something dastardly. Sean Chapman gets plenty of chances to say "ow" when he stubs his toe in such a hapless fashion, you kind of want his devilish wife to toss him to the rats. Then there's Ashley Laurence as his tough-as-nails daughter, the wife being only her non-caring stepmom. Someone has to look out for Chapman's dunderhead, and Laurence is up to the task. However, at the end of the day, it's Hellraiser's pure joy in putrefaction that lifts it into horror classic territory. The wicked brother, slowly growing from a mass of dense mucous, to tissue-draped skeleton, to a constantly bleeding, skinless man in a business suit is one thing, but Hellraiser fills every inch of its frames with noxious decay, even a shot of rotting food dense with maggots and cockroaches.
Yes, if you don't like gross things, you aren't going to like Hellraiser, and all the things I've mentioned here happen before the Cenobites even show up. The Cenobites, mysterious, scarified and body-altered pale beings, are this film's unique entities, though their function is mysterious, and left purposely vague, outside of the fact that if you summon them, you are in for some pain. With everything else going on, the Cenobites are like the rotting eyeball cherry on Hellraiser's exposed intestine ice cream sundae.
The film isn't just an empty creature/gore effect showcase, though, as there is a little morality play underneath, with the wages of sin definitely equaling death, and Pandora's box being a thing that should most definitely never be opened. Of course, you may not remember that when the film is done. You'll probably be thinking of the guy with all the needles in his head.