10.6.2023 Hellraiser

Paired with the story "An Incident at Hellpoint Prime" by Norris Black!

Oct 07, 2023

Film: Hellraiser (1987), dir. Clive Barker

Story: “An Incident at Hellpoint Prime” (2021) by Norris Black in Apex Magazine

For people who like their monsters WET! Hellraiser is a gooey, gorey film populated by deviant pleasure-seeking sadomasochists; pair it with “An Incident at Hellpoint Prime” if, after watching, you still want more alien skin-sloughing content.

WATCH, READ, THEN VENTURE FORWARD for spoiler-ful analyses of these texts… if you dare!!!

Hellraiser (1987)

I’ll admit that, on a purely aesthetic level, I found Hellraiser’s goo and gore to be a bit hard to look at; though writer and director Clive Barker has said numerous times that he was trying to invoke beauty and fear rather than outright disgust, there’s just something about skin-stretching and viscera that creates a little knot in my stomach. (Does that make me a #FakeHorrorFan??? MAYBE!!!) It is actually viewing Hellraiser through the lens of queer cinema that finally allowed me to understand it as a boundary-pushing, subversive text. An openly gay director (even more of a rarity in the 1980s than today) filming a movie that revels in sexual deviance and draws imagery from the queer S&M scene, Catholicism, and the British punk movement of the late 80s is a bold and provocative act of creation.

Every few years, Twitter (or, sorry, ““X””) goes through a discourse about whether sex belongs in media. Some (usually younger) people (mockingly called “puriteens”) say that media is too sexual today, and that sex should only be used in a story when it is “plot relevant” (define as you wish). Some (usually older people) then complain about how sexless today’s media is compared to the past, and then usually there’s some infighting about respectability politics, with some people saying it’s more important than ever for queer people to be on our best behavior since we’re in the midst of a moral panic, and others saying fuck that, since fascists will kill us anyways. All of this is to say, I admire Clive Barker’s vision and conviction to his work; it is not easy even today as a queer person to create work that is openly and defiantly “deviant,” daring us to see even the most vanilla heterosexual relationships (like the one between Larry and his wife, Julia) through the lens of pleasure/pain and manipulation. There is also a lot of religious imagery: saints (other examples of holy suffering), pleas to God, and kitschy Christian knick knacks littering the old house.

The fact that this film was made in 1987, at the height of the gay panic around the AIDS epidemic, and still drips with blood and bodily fluids is also a subversive statement. Plus, the opening of the movie is probably the sweatiest and most homoerotic horror one I’ve ever seen!

I came from the forest — I thought I'd gone to the limits. I hadn't. The...

One final note: some of my friends had a long text argument about whether Hellraiser is an alien movie or a demon movie. Personally, I think it toes the line between both: the cenobites are from another dimension (+1 alien), and aren’t concerned with morality (+1 alien), but, as I said, the film does use a lot of religious imagery (+1 demon), and the cenobites themselves say that they are “angels to some, demons to others” (+1 demon). Thus, in the list of movies, Hellraiser creates a bridge between a certified demon (Jennifer’s Body) and a certified alien (Alien). Ta da!

“An Incident at Hellpoint Prime” by Norris Black

Norris Black’s short story would also pair really well with The Thing (a movie that didn’t fit on this year’s list, but which I love!), but it echoes Hellraiser’s gorey aesthetics and otherworldly antics. Also, just as creepy Uncle Frank takes on his brother’s face at one point, there’s plenty of skin thievery in this story. “An Incident at Hellpoint Prime” is also an allegory for the perils of colonialism; a human settler, reflecting on the Indigenous alien species that they have driven into hiding, says, at one point, “Whatever they do to us, we deserve it.”

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?