The character-driven drama of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser is often forgotten by those who associate it with Doug Bradley’s flagship character Pinhead.
While I love Pinhead, I feel his popularity led to more typical slasher schlock in subsequent installments – I will never get over Hellraiser III’s ludicrous CD – instead of the unique and grimly relatable themes of the first film, for which Stephen King himself praised Barker as “the future of horror.”
This convinces me that, perhaps, King and Barker should team-up on a revival that would make the Cenobite leader a more mysterious and subtle presence again, paving the way for something as painfully refreshing as the original.
The nail-faced sadist isn’t even the 1987 original’s true antagonist, but an otherwise haunting supernatural obstacle in the central plot of a collegian (Ashley Laurence) who discovers her stepmother (Clare Higgins) is going to horrifying lengths to reunite with her dead lover (Sean Chapman).