So you may have heard that there is a hellraiser reboot walk on Hulu. But if you want to see the original and even better entry in the franchise, you have to scroll over to Amazon. Written and directed by Clive Barker, who adapted his own novel. the hellish heart, this 1987 movie was never just about the perverted mix of S&M torture and supernatural entities from another dimension. I mean, is that toobut Doug Bradley’s “Pinhead” character (a name Barker would come to loathe) is only in the first hellraiser for about 10 minutes.
The reason the original still works so well is that it’s a psychosexual tragedy about a doomed marriage between a wife, a husband, and the husband’s brother. Look, Julia (Clare Higgins) is still in love with Frank (Sean Chapman), the handsome younger brother of her husband Larry (Andrew Robinson). Frank and Julia even had an affair about her wedding dress the week of the wedding. Could it be said that they have a pair of hellish hearts? So when Frank returns from the dead, after seeking even greater taboo pleasures by playing with a puzzle box called the “Lament Configuration” that sent him into an interdimensional hell where flesh was slowly ripped from his bones, Julia can’t help it. , but still be attracted to him… and his need for fresh corpses to recover.
This is truly a family tragedy that is further underscored by the movie’s late ’80s girl riff: poor Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) is the one left to pick up the pieces, literally, after her uncle gives him the puzzle box. she that she summons demon-like creatures to her bedroom, demanding the pounds and pounds of flesh from her. Oh, and they have such sights to show you… – DC
House on Haunted Hill (1959)
United States and United Kingdom
The original House on Haunted Hillnot to be confused with The Curse of Hill House, is a classic camp worth seeing every October. The brainchild of the king of B movies, William Castle, it stars Vincent Price as an eccentric millionaire who offers a group of strangers $10,000 each if they can survive the night in a haunted house. Hey, $10k was way back in the day, not that any of the contestants would necessarily live to spend it.
The movie is hammy, it uses carnival barking tricks and tropes to scare the audience, and today it has become fun for all ages. Alas, modern viewers will never get the proper Castle experience from ’59, where some theaters lowered a skeleton with glowing red eyes during the film’s climax, which involves a skeleton climbing out of a vat of acid on screen. – CC