After watching Doug Bradley in Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines I had this immediate need to rewatch Hellraiser....so I did.

The first time I watched Hellraiser I was at an incredibly impressionable age, honestly, I was probably too young to see something of this nature, I couldn't have been any more than 10-years-old. The movie absolutely terrified me but at the same time caused me to have an intense curiosity about the morbid things I was already fascinated with: pain, hell, death, afterlife, etc.

For its time, Hellraiser was above and beyond what most genre-films were exploring. When Clive Barker wrote the novella The Hellbound Heart (a year before the movie was released) it was obvious he was capable of bringing…

Hoop-Tober, Film 10 of 31:

Whoa. This movie is truly insane, and bizarre, and...
Yeah, bizarre.

Seriously really bizarre.
I wasn't expecting Phantasm-level strangeness.

One of the scenes in this film is a definitely contender for the scariest scene of the 1980s, in my opinion:
i66.photobucket.com/albums/h257/drbloodsvideovault/terror/engineer.jpg

It's 4AM. I can't sleep (not sure if it's because of the film).
I can't seem to gather my thoughts,
Or think of anything worthy of including in my review.

I want to watch this again.
But no, I don't. I really don't.

G
R
O
S
S

But awesome.

The acting though, is kinda meh. The writing is kinda meh.
But the creatures. The SFX. The music. The atmosphere.
The main character shift.…

Clive Barker's "Hellraiser" is a gloomy, gory horror film full of violence, mystery, and modern-gothic atmosphere all its own. A monster movie with unique and intelligent monsters, the film is heavy with themes of temptation and self-inflicted suffering. It is an engaging, jolting, and memorably nightmarish piece of work.

Its plot revolving around a mystical puzzle box with the power to open interdimensional doorways, "Hellraiser" follows a family dealing with the effects of what comes out of and goes into those doorways. Human-like creatures wrapped in all manner of depravity who blur the lines between pleasure and pain slip back and forth, harassing those who dare open the box.

"Hellraiser" deals more with the family and its attempts to appease…

Oddly enough, I first watched (half watched) Hellraiser through covered eyes and pulled up blankets in a hotel room on a trip to Disney with my parents. They were watching it on the HBO as I pretended to be asleep and was absolutely horrified by what my what I was sneak watching, I must have been 5 or 6 and was in no way ready for that or the hopeless nightmares that would follow.

Fast forward a few more years and I was knee deep in late night vhs viewing sessions with my cooler older cousin, Richard. I’ve often mentioned my cousin in numerous reviews, as he was defiantly the spark plug in showing me horror films that were a…

Hooptober 5 #23: Hellraiser (1987)

Hellraiser holds up.

It is truly a film unlike any other, which is saying something when you consider the litany of lesser sequels, reboots, and rip offs that would follow in its wake. It has such a unique, inimitable atmosphere - the spooky old house, the eerie music, the nightmare inducing practical effects. The way no one is to be trusted. The way evil just seems to live and breathe in every frame of the picture, as if it's some tangible toxin that permeates the very air poor Kristy Cotton (Ashley Laurence) is forced to imbibe. It's one of those titles that's really more of an experience than a movie, and it's required viewing for…