31 Days of Horror: Day 9 - Hellraiser (1987)

An important question I had before watching “Hellraiser”: which monster cereal will go better with it, Booberry or Frankenberry?  So far, the choice has been easy.  If it involves the supernatural, Booberry; if it features mad science, Frankenberry.  But what about a movie that revolves around a puzzle box that summons pale-skinned humanoids with multiple body piercings and mutilations?  Not an easy question, so I had a bowl of each.

Before tonight, it had probably been around ten years since I had seen “Hellraiser,” and it was much more disturbing than I remembered.  It’s the gory tale of what happens when Frank Cotton, seeking to test the limits of pleasure and pain, acquires a puzzle box that summons beings known as Cenobites who oblige by providing him with the extremes of both.  But the pain clearly outweighs the pleasure as his experience ends with hooks piercing his skin and ripping his body apart.  He’s later resurrected when his brother cuts his hand while moving into the family home where Frank died.  Blood from the wound seeps into the floorboards and revives the remaining bits of Frank that were left when the Cenobites destroyed his body.  When they find out that he has escaped them by returning to life, they come looking for him.

“Hellraiser” is disturbing both in its subject matter and its gore effects.  Frank is joined in his depravity by Julia, his brother’s wife, who is drawn to Frank’s hedonism and has an affair with him.  When she learns that he has returned from the dead, she aids in his recovery by seducing men and luring them to the house, beating them to death with a hammer, and leaving their corpses for Frank to eat.  As he regrows tissue, Frank is a gooey, slimy, bloody, mass of bone, nerves, and muscle.  Scenes filled with hooks piercing skin and then ripping it apart are enough to make even seasoned veterans of gory horror cringe.  Horror doesn't get much more visceral than this.