|
HellraiserRating:
Release Date: 24 February, 1998 Retail Price: $24.98 OUR Price: $22.48 You SAVE: $2.50! Cast: Complete Cast (12 total) |
Hellraiser Reviews
Hellraiser has its moments
I have very mixed feelings about Hellraiser. My thoughts about this film changed around a bit after I watched it. Now I think I finally have my absolute opinion of this film. Hellraiser is considered by many to be a classic in horror film history. I don't know if I should argue with that. I've seen maybe close to twenty horror films in my life and I've only liked about six of them. Hellraiser is based on a Clive Barker novella. It's about a man named Frank who buys a strange looking contraption. It's supposed to be a configuration that opens a portal to beings of wonder called the Cenobites who offer great pleasure. Instead the Cenobite offer pleasure in a way no one understands and puts Frank in unspeakable suffering in the floor of one of the rooms of his house. Frank is later revived by his brother Larry's blood but he needs more to become a full bodied human again and this leads to a bloodbath of sadistic manner. Hellraiser can be both very suspenseful and horrific and then just turn plain boring. That's what I disliked most about this film. It wasn't certainly scary at some points but Barker seemed satisfied with frightening the viewer at one point and then decided to slow down the film some more. This made the transitions very uneven. The Cenobites were an impressive sight but they didn't do anything impressive. The acting in this film ranges from bad to good. The bad: Ashley Laurence, the good: Doug Bradley who easily steals the show with his limited appearances. I'm very surprised about a few things in this film. Hellraiser's budget was only one million dollars and it's special effects were actually quite amazing for the late eighties. Some examples are the appearance of the Cenobites, the chain scenes, and how Frank's body grew from the floor and just mended together. The film easily earned its budget amount back at the box office with 14 million. Another thing that surprised me is that this film wasn't heavily threatened with the infamous X rating at the time. The film has more blood and gore than its copy film Event Horizon. As for how Hellraiser compares with the other Clive Barker films, I would highly recommend that you watch Candyman instead. It's more frightening and stylish with less gore. Lord of Illusions is another film from Clive Barker that's not bad.
A little pain with your pleasure
15 years ago extremely gifted horror writer and author Clive Barker made his directorial debut with the original Hellraiser; a film that would re-define the horror genre, spawn many inept sequels that suffered without Barker at the helm, and introduce one of the most frightening, menacing, and unforgettable horror icons in film history: Pinhead. Based on Barker's novella The Hellbound Heart, Hellraiser was one of the few films that delivered loads of graphic violence and gore and could still be scary as hell, something that can very rarely be pulled off in the horror genre, especially today. I'm not going to go into the storyline, you can read it in the Amazon review or one of many other customer's reviews, but I will say that this new edition DVD which is remastered by Anchor Bay (also responsible for recent remastered DVD's of the Evil Dead Trilogy and Manhunter among others) is great and features some commentary from Barker himself. All in all, if you've never seen the original Hellraiser, you are sorely lacking. But be warned: if you consider the recent "teen horror thrillers" to be horror films, then this definitely isn't for you.
More Customer Reviews (19 total)
You like Hellraiser?
|
© 2004, 2005, 2006 DVD Booty | Don't Plunder Our Cache of Booty, Matey!
Hosting made possible by donations from Become Debt Free Today, Online Mortgage Help, and Credit Consolidation Info
