I know almost nothing about this series besides the fact that they get joy from pain etc.
Are the movies depicting a slasher movie or something what Saw was?
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How good is Hellraiser?
The first, and lamest, fallacy is they "get pleasure from pain." Originally the whole point was you would experience feelings BEYOND what you could comprehend. This MIGHT feel painful, but it wasn't as simple as "cenobites will hurt you." Later films took this though and ran with the simple and lame concept that the labyrinth was "hell."
calm down
First two movies are good
Too dark for my taste. When I was younger and looking for edgy shit, it was right up my alley. Now that I'm almost on my way out, I don't need any more shit scaring me into thinking there's dark evil shit coming after death.
even worse: theres nothing
I don't mind if there's nothing. But the reality of this reality is that it's pretty fricking hard to explain how all this shit came from absolutely fricking nothing. That makes as littles sense as the whole god story. It's a 50/50 shot. Either all this shit just "poofed" out of fricking nowhere or god was always here and snapped it into place and is really just watching this shitshow unfold ready to frick us over yet again after we die.
it was always here
whatever you believe creates that reality, energy can never die. gays
The first couple are good, closer to a slasher film than modern torture shit like Saw but still pretty rough in parts
Better in theory. It is fun to imagine what inter-dimensional realms the Cenobites have visited. Mostly lame in the movies though since you don’t get even a glimpse of them.
not sure how to describe the first two movies but they're not slasher, nor anything close to saw (beyond a scene or two of physical torture, but the movies are not about people constantly being tortured in new and clever ways). they explore something closer to what bataille defined as a limit experience, a threshold where pain sort of loses all meaning. or at least that's what the cenobites in the film aim to do, it's not really their fault the human body can't withstand such experiences.
anyway, the first movie was directed by clive barker, and it was an adaptation of a novella he wrote. the second movie he did not direct as he was busy working on another adaptation, but he was very involved with the process (and it was directed by someone who was similarly involved with the first) so there's continuinity between those two.
after that the studio got merged with another and ever since they pump out a hellraiser sequel every few years lest they lose the rights to the ip. and their method to write each new sequel seems to be "take whatever script you last read and just write 'pinhead shows up at the end' and call it a day"
so if anything watch the first two. if you want something closer to a slasher movie, watch 3. if you want some (fanfic) explanation of where the box came from, watch 4. after that you're on your own and i take no responsability if you end up wasting your time with shitty flicks
Okay so it's like Martyrs then? Since you mentioned the "limit experience" and "threshold where pain sort of loses all meaning".
similar starting point, although martyrs seems to be much more influenced by bataille than hellraiser (down to even using the same chinese torture photograph that inspired bataille to write on the subject.) hellraiser uses the same idea but it's not the main focus of it. in martyrs the pain is used to try and unlock the secrets of eternity, in hellraiser it's just base hedonism
Absolutely terrible, watch ‘Nightbreed’ instead.
It's an interesting horror premise and the costumes are cool. The first two movies are good and very creative, BUT they were made on an extremely tight budget and that eventually shows up in the completed picture no matter how good your story and crew are. They're more fun if you're actually into BDSM.
Only the first 2 movies are good. They’re not really slashers. It’s kind of its own thing. I can’t think of comparable movies. You can’t go wrong with them, just avoid the later movies. They’re not really Hellraiser.
Hellraiser is nothing like Saw. There are some slasher-like kills, but it's not a slasher either. I'd describe it as a supernatural horror shot on an obviously tight budget. The effects that they do have are for the most part clever and they do hit home, with maybe one small exception. It's got a good, very novel, if simple story and the protagonist is a cute girl. It's a good film and worth watching.
I can't speak for the sequels, but the general consensus seems to be that 2 is acceptable and the rest are borderline fanfic tier.
It's meh. Just read the book (it's very short) and then watch the first one. The rest is even worse.
>George R.R. Martin
Huh.. looky there
Pinhead found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up, she was shitting red water. The more she drank the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew.
FRICK YOU BALTIMORE
First and fifth are the only good Hellraiser movies. 2 is good too but killed the series.
the first Hellraiser is good, and it really just juxtaposes sex and violence to make you feel uneasy. There's a great scene where characters are trying to push a mattress through a doorway, and their grunting as they try to force it through sounds a lot like sex, and then one guy cuts his hand open on a nail accidentally.
There are hints that the cenobites get off on pain, but it's more hinted at than anything. The only thing we know for sure is they like to torture people.
I liked the first 3. The space one was alright. Deader and hellworld? I think not worth a watch . I really enjoyed judgement
Oh I forgot to mention I wanna stick my breakfast sausage in Julia's English muffin
Everyone in this thread is a moron for not prepping you properly. The first Hellraiser is a twisted FAMILY DRAMA. While these tone deaf autists are fawning over how kino the lore is they're neglecting to prepare you for what Hellraiser actually is about. If these tards had their way you'd walk into Hellraiser expecting zainy demon shit and then come away bored out of your mind wondering what the frick you just watched. The first Hellraiser is a humble low budget horror movie revolving around family drama, the Cenobites play a pivotal role but they have about five minutes of screen time the entire movie, if that. Hellraiser is a great movie but temper your expectations, zoomers go into it knowing about the Cenobites and have a completely different idea of what the movie will be, then when they watch it they think it's garbage because the movie didn't conform to the preconceived notion of what they thought the movie should've been.
Hellraiser II amps things up by diving and focusing way more on the Cenobite lore. Excellent sequel but also extremely messy. Last minute budget cuts and an actor refusing to return forced script rewrites at the last second which renders the final third of the movie mostly incomprehensible, but it's still worth your time for the cool shit they were able to realize on screen.
None of the other movies capitalize or stay true to the lore. The lore is either thrown out the window by writers / directors / producers who sometimes didn't care or flat out didn't understand the lore in favor for generic stories of the Cenobites turning into literal slasher villains (Hellraiser 3) or Cenobites hellbent on world domination (Hellraiser 4). Hellraiser 5 - 10 stay somewhat true to the lore but don't explore it on worthwhile ways, mostly cashgrabs made to maintain the rights to the franchise and / or repurposed scripts they shoehorned the Cenobites into for a cameo at the end so they could call it a Hellraiser sequel.
Said better than I ever could anon. Basically this OP
>mostly incomprehensible,
I wish. It demolished the lore just established and transforms a creepy esotetic-thirsty doctor into a B-movie slasher villain.
The third movie does the same with Pinhead himself and from then it was game over.
>I wish. It demolished the lore just established and transforms a creepy esotetic-thirsty doctor into a B-movie slasher villain.
No, you're just a mongoloid who cant appreciate kino. Pinhead and co were tortured over X amount of time until they were so mindraped they were ready to be Cenobites. Leviathan deemed Channard fricked up enough to be fast tracked into a Cenobite. And for those of you who throw tantrums over Hellraiser 2 confirming the Cenobites were once human, Clive Barker already had that in mind when writing the first movie. Doug Bradley knew Pinhead was once human when playing him in Hellraiser 1, this was always the intention.
First and foremost, calm down pseud pleb.
There is nothing wrong in the cenobites being once humans. But the way they were disposed of, was anticlimatic with no relation to their background, characters and choices. Completely wasted and anticlimatic.
Channard being fast tracked also is nothing wrong. Channard being sillier than Freddy Krueger in the sequels of Nightmare is terrible.
Get some taste and nuance you autistic frick.
>But the way they were disposed of, was anticlimatic with no relation to their background, characters and choices.
They rebelled against Leviathan so they were dispatched for it. The idea is perfectly sound but Hellraiser 2's production was being raped by the currency fiasco.
>Get some taste and nuance you autistic frick.
Nuance? Says the autist who spergs out into an autistic temper tauntrum because a movie decides to get campy. Sad!
You are the only one having a meltdown anon and you aren't explaining shit.
The fact that the production had issues explains the final product but doesn't make it better.
And you didn't address Channard quipping as if he was written by Joss Whedon.
>The fact that the production had issues explains the final product but doesn't make it better.
I said the movie was messy what they were going for was great and the movie is fantastic to watch just to get a feel for what they were going for. Hellraiser 2 is a 10/10 movie, despite how messy it gets.
>And you didn't address Channard quipping as if he was written by Joss Whedon.
Yes, it got campy which was kino.
I don't hate H2. It has too many good and/or influential parts. It's just a too important movie for pop culture.
But the drop in quality is real and is in no way a 10/10.
>It's just a too important movie for pop culture
Word. No Hellraiser, no God Hand in Berserk.
That world we see is inspired by Escher but so it's the Labyrinth.
When Les Edwards asked how the Citadel would look like for Mutant Chronicles, he was told "something between Blade Runner and Hellraiser".
To address this
Evil dead did show that X could be done. Hellraiser did show HOW things could be done.
Or the Kythons in pathfinder, fiends living in a plane of shadows and almost a 1:1 transposition.
The first movie is a great horror film and the second is a great adventure film with horror elements. After that the series gets progressively worse.
>is it like Saw
No.
I love how bumbling Pinhead and his crew are
>let Frank escape somehow
>need to broker a deal with Kirsty because they can’t get Frank back themselves
>try to double cross Kirsty but she kills you with the box despite not knowing how it works
>get their shot packed in by the doctor in the second movie
they’re pretty scary designs but in universe they’re a bunch of nerds
A lot of beloved classic horrors have really weak third acts and Hellraiser is one of them, unless you want to pretend Frank being torn apart is the third act and Kirsty's escape is an epilogue, but that's just cope. Kirsty's escape from the house is really boring and unsatisfying.
I tried getting into it years ago
I think the first film is a 7/10 film and it deserves to have it's classic status
The second film is more like 4/10, it's incredibly boring and it peaks very early on when the girl sees the bloody body writing out I'm trapped in Hell or something
Stopped watching it after that because I realised the franchise is terrible
Filtered.
Channard is too cheesy. Said this, the movie falls apart only when he reappears changed so it's mostly interesting.
The hellish vision at the beginning, the crazy people, the labyrinth, leviathan etc make everything really imaginative and influential.
>Jesus Wept
>The way she finds Julia
>The way the box is retrieved
Nah it's fine. They just had to have the cenobites keep their word.
Frank's personal Hell is so well done it's almost worthy the whole movie.
The whole attachment to carnality that creates personal hells is very well done in both H1 and H2 and it also resonates very well with Christianity, Buddhism and probably others.
The Epic Comics print of Hellraiser from the mid 90s is the best thing to happen to the property. A lot of really great short stories that expand the series in a way the films couldn't
Neither.
it isn't really a horror movie, it will disappoint many fans of the genre
which is more important to history: the Hellraiser films or the Evil Dead films?
neither, movies are fricking stupid and not important at all
It’s hard to say. Pinhead is likely the bigger cultural icon between himself and Ash, but Evil Dead might be more beloved by horror fans. They seem equal to me.
Easily the Evil Dead films. A lot of horror comedies and slashers arguably wouldn't exist without Evil Dead. The first two were arguably more influential on writers and filmmakers including King and Craven.
>You always were an butthole, Gorman
Was the reference a bit too on the nose?
That's the boomer that got lit on fire in Sherlock Holmes.
>You always were an butthole, Ambassador Standish
They did it again. Fun, but it risks of becoming stale.
It sucks
Only the makeup crew should be commended
I love the part in 3 where the giant pinhead pillar head just SCHLORPs all the skin off the girl
the whole movie is very silly but hard to hate because of it
First one is amazing, Weaveworld and Imajica were somehow better, Clive Barker is God.
Would this have been any good?
It's really cool, but does't also accept the "flanderized" concept of the cenobites as simply demons instead of something beyond good and evil?
I watched the original as a kid and don't remember much about it. I remember it was boring, that someone found pandoras box, which ended up being some weird puzzle box that, once solved, unleashed the cenobites upon the earth. I remember someone goes to hell and their hell is they are in a room with the opposite sex, but cannot touch them.