The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy (19 page)

The next most obvious forebears are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll, both characters from books that Barker read as a child. These literary inventions are perhaps the most celebrated examples of what the genre has termed mad scientists, people who tamper with nature for their own ends, creating chaos in their wake. For those not familiar with the tale, Dr. Victor Frankenstein was the eldest son of a high-class family from Switzerland, brought up with an orphan named Elizabeth. After the passing of his mother from scarlet fever, he started to take an interest in the human body and the subject of life itself, which preoccupied his studies at the university of Ingolstadt, Germany.

But his greatest obsession was to “bestow animation upon lifeless matter,” which he finally accomplished by creating a monster out of body parts from graveyards and slaughterhouses, and passing electricity through it to bring it to life. This abomination of nature seeks refuge in a country hovel where a blind man and his two children reside. There he learns to read from the books on the shelves, one of them being Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, which allows him identification with both the first man created, Adam, and the angel cast out of Heaven, Satan. When he reveals himself to the blind man’s family, though, the monster is spurned and in a rage kills Frankenstein’s brother. Frankenstein eventually finds him, and the monster demands that he build him a female companion. Frankenstein complies but when he destroys this work, the monster kills Frankenstein’s new bride, Elizabeth, in revenge. The story ends with the doctor chasing his creation across the North Pole—actually the framing device for the book—but perishing himself.

In
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, the doctor becomes a monster himself, a deformed, stooping murderer, after drinking one of his own concoctions. The two beings, Jekyll and Hyde, are at complete odds with one another. The doctor has no control over the transformations, falling to sleep as himself and waking as Hyde, and he fears Jekyll will take over and remain indefinitely. At the end the potions he uses to turn himself back fail to work and he runs out of the salt needed for the mixture, so he is forced to commit suicide in order to free both Jekyll and Hyde from their torment. In these two stories the physicians are doing what they do with the best of intentions, for the good of humanity—in Frankenstein’s case to try to prevent death, in Jekyll’s case to separate the two halves of man, good and evil. But the results of playing God in this way are the same.

Channard is both Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll at two different points in the film. His obsessive tendencies, like those of the two doctors mentioned, are evident by the set cast and crew would come to call The Obsession Room. In here we see various photographs of occult symbols, pencil drawings of faces in pain, organs in jars, extracts from Aleister Crowley on the walls,
¹
more symbols on a blackboard, puzzles, anatomical drawings of a skinless man, Egyptian markings, drawings of the pyramids, skeletons, an altar, a replica skinned body in a glass case and the Lament Configuration boxes in bell jars. Kyle also finds a scrapbook filled with related articles belaboring the point, including “The Labyrinth of the Mind,” “Children of the Vortex: Puberty and the Link with Psychic Phenomena” (giving us another reason for his interest in the young Tiffany), and “Is Death the Fourth Dimension?” There is also the sepia photograph of the human who used to be Pinhead, along with a diagram of a man’s head cut into squared segments, which Kirsty finds later. We also see a book on the side called
The Internal Inferno
with a picture of Magritte’s famous painting,
False Mirror Original
(1928), on the front cover (more eye imagery and references to mirrors). This has been Channard’s line of inquiry for some time, or as Kyle whispers, “Jesus, he must have been into this shit for years.”

Channard follows in the tradition of Dr. Jekyll, who releases the beast within.
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
still (photograph credit: Murray Close).

That patience is about to be rewarded, as he is on the verge of reanimating his own carrion, just like Frankenstein; the only difference is there’s no electricity involved this time: just blood. He “creates” Julia by letting Browning slash himself open on her mattress, but like Frankenstein he still constructs a monster, one which starts its new life by ravaging Browning. Julia is fully aware of her startling appearance, even before she sees herself in the mirror. She has only to cast her mind back to her own initial encounter with skinless Frank in the damp room at Lodovico Street. Julia is just as unpalatable to look at as Victor Frankenstein’s creation, but, unlike him, she comprehends this early and takes steps to counteract it. “Don’t be scared of me,” she tells Channard almost immediately after her “birth,” then with his help attempts to make herself more pleasing to the eye.

First, she puts on one of Channard’s white suits—which oddly makes for an alluring image. “Well?” she asks him. “Yes, yes. You look...” he answers. “Strange? Surreal? Nightmarish?” she finishes for him. The answer is all of the above, but at least she looks more human. The next stage is to wrap her in bandages to further disguise the monstrous (all you can see are her stunning blue eyes and lips), and to put on a light blue dress. Bit by bit, Julia is regaining the sexual power she once had, enough to attract Channard and encourage him to kiss her. When his hand rides up the back of her dress, the bandages there almost resemble stockings tops—the ultimate in sensual attire. “Now all we need is skin,” she tells him. In one sense she means to be fully complete, with an epidermis, but skin is also a slang word for condom—a reward for when his work is over.

But for the monster to be whole again more victims must be brought to Julia. Unsurprisingly, the first casualty is a young naked woman, which hints at the beauty Julia will soon possess again. The scene then dissolves to show multiple corpses hanging, then Julia is revealed in all her glory when the bandages are removed. Channard has achieved something the original Frankenstein could not; he has redefined his creation, redesigned her into a more acceptable shape. In actuality, it is Julia who has done this to herself—Channard has merely provided the raw materials—so she has no reason to reap any kind of revenge on him. If anything, she only gives him what he wants: to see and to know. There is also the matter that she has been born again before Channard brought her back, changed in the depths of Hell by Leviathan. And the act of revival Channard has performed on Julia will soon be his fate, too. This is where the doctor becomes Mr. Hyde.

In the Cenobitization chamber, Channard metamorphoses into a monster. Rather than a potion, it is Leviathan that is the catalyst for his change. And instead of changing from good to evil, Channard simply becomes more evil, an extension of what he was on Earth. Though his process of rebirth is similar to Julia’s, there is a crucial difference. While she goes to great pains to hide the monster behind a human façade, Channard’s internal monster becomes visible. But just like Jekyll, he is unable to control it: the beast runs rampant, given free rein, for a time, at least. And because he had little or no conscience to begin with, after an initial struggle he embraces the mutation and, indeed, revels in it. His end comes not through suicide but because he let his newfound powers go to his head.

In terms of cinematic influences, there have been countless adaptations of both
Frankenstein
and
Dr. Jekyll
we can point to. Thomas Edison’s
Frankenstein
(J. Searle Dawley, 1910), for instance, sees the doctor (Augustus Phillips) creating his monster (Charles Ogle) in a boiling pot which puts flesh on a skeleton’s bones; then the monster dissolves into a mirror at the finale, which again links with
Orpheus
. Director James Whale’s
Frankenstein
(1931) is the one most people remember, as it made a horror icon out of Boris Karloff, but it was based more on the play than the book and was set in modern times. Then, of course, there was Hammer’s reworking of the story starring Peter Cushing as the doctor and Christopher Lee as the monster in
The Curse of Frankenstein
(Terence Fisher, 1957), which took the series back to a more period setting, and came to its conclusion—appropriately—with
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell
(Fisher, 1973).

Film versions of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
have tended to emulate Thomas Russell Sullivan’s play version of 1887, which centered more on Jekyll’s suppressed sexual desires, turning Hyde more into a Jack the Ripper character. The basic premise, therefore, has been radically contorted in movies like the 1908 version of the same name, the 1931 adaptation starring Fredric March, Spencer Tracy’s incarnation (Victor Fleming, 1941), right up to Christopher Lee’s
I Monster
(Stephen Weeks, 1971) and Alexandr Feklistov in
Stannyar Isoryar Doktora Dzehila i Mistera Khaida
(Aleksandr Orlov, 1985). The story has even been flexible enough to allow for gender reversals, such as Jekyll becoming a woman in
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde
(Roy Ward Baker, 1971).

Adding to this, we must also mention those mad scientists of films like:
Island of Lost Souls
(Erle C. Kenton, 1933), an adaptation of H.G. Wells’
Island of Dr Moreau
;
The Invisible Man
(another Wells book—Whale, 1933) where once again bandages are used to mask the abnormality;
Dr. Cyclops
(Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1940);
The Man Who Could Cheat Death
(Fisher, 1959);
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
(Joseph Green, 1962); and
The Mutations
(Jack Cardiff, 1973). There are many others, of course, but one more deserves a special mention—Herbert West from Stuart Gordon’s 1985 film,
The Re-animator
. Played to perfection by Jeffrey Combs, this character—which originated in an H.P. Lovecraft tale—is a distant relative of Frankenstein, and is also concerned with bringing dead tissue back to life, this time with a fluorescent green serum he has developed. There aren’t too many parallels to be drawn from either the character itself or the performances of the “insane” doctors in
Re-animator
and
Hellbound
, but the obsession with what they are doing is what drives them both.

One more film that needs to be listed is a favorite of both Atkins and Randel.
²
Both have cited
The Bride of Frankenstein
(1935) as an influence and this is spectacularly obvious from
Hellbound
.
Bride
is the sequel to Universal’s 1931 take on Shelley’s novel, once again directed by Whale, but in actual fact utilizes elements from the book not used in the first film, such as the plotline where Frankenstein is to make his monster a mate. As the title suggests, the doctor (played once again by Colin Clive) creates a female this time, who would also become an enduring icon. As portrayed by Elsa Lanchester, the bride has a long flowing white gown, zigzag streaks in her dark hair, and bandages down her arms. In all but the hair, Julia’s look matches hers. While there is a definite homage to another Universal movie,
The Mummy
(1932), as well as the Hammer films that came after it in the same vein (hence the Egyptian markings on Channard’s walls), Julia is certainly more Bride of Frankenstein than she ever will be Mummy.

Bride of Frankenstein
French poster.

More clues can be found in the style of Channard’s dress, the cut of his suit distinctly 1930s or ’40s. Even his fondness for smoking reflects Hollywood movies of that era, with more than an indication of noir. The minimal use of color in the scenes with Channard and Julia—the exception being blood red—harks back to this era, and the lightning that strikes as Julia attacks her victims is pure Universal gothic, used in both
Frankenstein
and
The Bride of Frankenstein
during the creation sequences.