by Zooey X

Let me start with this: Happy birthday to Clive Barker, as of October 5th! I love Hellraiser. The eerie dark blue color scheme, the chains and gore, the way “Pinhead” transforms throughout the series. I could take or leave most of the later storylines, but not ever am I disappointed with Doug Bradley’s (Pinhead) performance, although as I’ll later mention, one installment doesn’t even have him to save it. The first film of the nine was written and directed by Clive Barker himself, based off of one of his short stories, The Hellbound Heart (which almost definitely would have made a better title for the film series). Barker is an artist of all kinds, writing, painting, directing, producing, he can do it all, and very well. The content of his work is almost exclusively horror-related, with themes of hidden worlds, psychological distress, extreme polar opposites, and sexuality. Despite these themes, Barker’s creativity is versatile enough that he wrote a series of books aimed towards young adults, as well as creating several lines of comic books through Marvel. I’m almost tempted to write this entire piece about Clive Barker, but goddam if I didn’t spend an entire week watching and re-watching the nine-part Hellraiser series in preparation for writing this. So let’s get down to it…