The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy (21 page)

Returning to William Blake, his illustrated
Marriage of Heaven and Hell
(1793) has images which imagine Hell as a dark place surrounded by flames. This is backed up by lines like “As I was walking among the fires of hell...” The sinners in his version of
The Last Judgment
are rising from the caves and flames, all naked and packed into tiny spaces, some praying for forgiveness. He was also responsible for illustrations such as “Dante and Virgil at the Gates of Hell,” which shows the two men at the entranceway about to walk into a burning conflagration.

Dantes Inferno: The Thieves Tortured by Serpents by Gustave Dor.

But perhaps the most significant of all was Gustave Doré’s 1861 black and white illustrations that accompany Dante’s
Divine Comedy
. These include winged creatures with pitchforks attacking Dante and Virgil, while cavernous regions and fire belch up from below. One of the most iconic images, though, has to be that of the doomed souls. These actively swayed how cinema would later portray Hell and those trapped inside.

For example, one of the earliest films to capture Hell on celluloid was
L’inferno
—a five-reel Italian epic that was directly inspired by Doré’s pictures, and was brought to the U.S. by Warner Brothers in 1911.
The Devil’s Assistant
(Harry A. Pollard, 1917) draws more on the classical myths—complete with Cerberus and Styx—but two more movies followed in 1924 and 1935 that also adapted Doré’s visions for the cinema, both entitled
Dante’s Inferno
. Although not given that much screen time—possibly because of the budget required—Hell has been glimpsed in films from that moment on, and usually as the underground, fire-ridden landscape that has seeped into our consciousness over the centuries—most recently in films like
Spawn
(Mark A.Z. Dippé, 1997) and
Constantine
(Francis Lawrence, 2005). It’s also worth noting that “access” to Hell has cropped up in various locations, including a local fair in
Carnival of Souls
(Herk Harvey, 1962)—which
Hellbound
paid homage to in its own carnival sequence—a refrigerator in
Ghost Busters
(Ivan Reitman, 1984) and at the bottom of the garden in
The Gate
(Tibor Takács, 1987).

The depiction of Hell as seen in
Hellbound
is unique among those from the worlds of religion, literature, art and film. Certainly there are elements that bear a striking resemblance to those in this sequel. Yes, there are sinners here and, yes, they are being tortured: some in ways that the Bible and other holy books pre-empted. The Pain of Sense, for instance, could very easily be describing what the victims of the Cenobites are put through. And some of the ordeals from the Buddhists’ Jigoku might prove adequate for the Cenobites to extract the maximum amount of suffering—especially when they combine the psychological with the physical. But there is one important distinction. When you die, you don’t automatically go to this Hell. It is not a punishment for all the wrongs you have done in your life. You could have lived the purest existence ever and still fall victim to this particular Hell. All you have to do is open the box. And the pain the Cenobites inflict is intermingled with pleasure.

The look of the place—for which much of the credit goes to matte artist Cliff Culley—is labyrinthine in nature, as is only to be expected. Another puzzle like the box. But it also seems to have been inspired by three distinct artists. The first is Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778). His
Prison
etchings represent only a small fraction of his total output, and were not even of central importance to the artist, but they have become his most famous works and in them we can clearly see the later mechanics of Barker and Atkins’ Hell. From stone archways to elaborate staircases and walkways, Piranesi’s Prisons so closely match those of
Hellbound
that you fully expect to see Pinhead there.

The second is Maurits Escher (1898–1972). His wood engraving of Porta Maria dell’Ospidale, Ravello 1932, depicts another archway not unlike those Kirsty and Tiffany find themselves in, but it is his other work, like his 1938 lithograph
Cycle
, 1951’s
House of Stairs
and
Relativity
(1953), which are characterized by their abnormal patterns or stairways appearing to double back on themselves with a warped perspective, that are most reminiscent of
Hellbound
’s delineation of Hell. If we now add the work of the more recent Swiss Surrealist artist H.R. Giger (the man responsible for the look of the monster in
Alien
) we are even closer to the depiction of Hell in our film. Giger’s paintings mix the organic with their surroundings, and his biomechanical vistas in shades of grays and beige wouldn’t be too out of place in
Hellbound
. What’s more, Giger’s work comes the closest in tone to what the mythos is really all about, that fine line between pleasure and pain. Between fear and enticement. Paintings such as
The Witches’ Dance
(1977) and
Vlad Tepes
(1978) are definitely Cenobitical in nature, and reveal more than a hint of that “repulsive glamour” Barker has talked about.

There are no caves in this Hell, only corridors, steps and dark storm clouds on the horizon. The captives aren’t packed into small confines, but given the space of their own personal Hells. This Hades is not the epitome of chaos, but of order. And the flames are provided not by the environment, but by Kirsty when she sets fire to Frank’s boudoir. They are not meant to be part of his punishment at all, just part of Kirsty’s escape plan. Finally, this Hell shares the view that torment should be forever. Working through your bad deeds or repenting will not earn you a way out—karma has nothing to do with it. The only means of exit is to escape, as Frank does in the first film.

History of the Devil

Just as the idea of a fire and brimstone Hell is deeply rooted in Christianity, so, too, is the Devil as a personification of all-powerful evil. The word devil itself seems to be derived from the Sanskrit,
div
, although in biblical terms it came from translating the Hebrew “Satan” (originally a tester of men, or God’s prosecution lawyer, only later turning into God’s Adversary) into the Greek “Diablos.” So two separate representations were merged into one. He was consequently used by early Church fathers to explain evil acts in human nature and to convert pagans to Christianity. This concept is far from peculiar to the Christian religion; indeed, it echoes Ahriman, the Zoroastrian epitome of destruction and lies, as well as other nature spirits and deities. However this religion is the one that made the figure their own, simultaneously incorporating and distorting it over the years.

A typical representation of the horned Devil (courtesy David A. Magitis).

The myth of Lucifer being a fallen angel also stems from The Bible. Lucifer—which in the Hebrew means “day-star”—is mentioned in the book of Isaiah: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.” This was used to demonize Lucifer as an outcast from Heaven, who was banished along with his followers for refusing to worship Adam. A subsequent connection was then made to the serpent that tempted Eve to persuade Adam to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden. The final piece of the puzzle comes in the Book of Revelation (12:9): “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out to earth, and his angels were cast out with him,” thus to begin an ageless battle with God for human souls.
⁷

This is the legend John Milton (1608–1674) utilized for his well-known poem,
Paradise Lost
(1667). Here Satan vows to corrupt God’s new creation, man, and heads off to find Adam and Eve. To warn them, God sends the angel Raphael, who tells them the circumstances in which Satan fell. One of the principal angels in Heaven, Satan refused to bow before God’s Son. He rallied angels to his cause and a three-day battle ensued, which ended in Satan retreating. God then made man to replace the void the fallen angels had left. Satan wrought his revenge on Adam and Eve accordingly, but when he returns to Hell he finds that he and his subjects are being transformed into hideous monsters, and that he himself is becoming a snake. Upon hearing Adam’s appeal for forgiveness, God decides not to abandon the human race completely to Satan, his daughter, Sin, and his son, Death, but sends his own Son as a man to sacrifice himself and defeat the evil trinity.

The Devil has adopted other names over time: Abaddon, Behemoth, Belial, Asmodeus, Beelzebub. But the classical look is rooted in early patristic writings of the fourth century, giving the pagan god Pan—characterized by a goat’s head and cloven hooves—a more human appearance. But the idea of a winged, horned creature again has more to do with illustrations like those of Doré’s, where the tiny specks of Dante and Virgil come across Satan. This traditional form can be seen in many silent movies from
La Manoir du Diable
(Georges Méliès, 1896) to
Häxan
(Benjamin Christensen, 1922), then later in such films as
The Devil Rides Out
(Terence Fisher, 1968),
The Devil’s Rain
(Robert Fuest, 1975) and
The Unholy
(Camilo Vila, 1988). The creature even made an appearance in Disney’s 1940 cartoon,
Fantasia
. More often than not, though, the Devil in cinema has been portrayed in his human guise. Typical examples include
The Devil
(James Young, 1921),
Puritan Passions
(Frank Tuttle, 1923),
Heaven Can Wait
(Ernst Lubitsch, 1943),
Bedazzled
(Stanley Donen, 1967)—in which he was played magnificently by Peter Cook—and
The Witches of Eastwick
(George Miller, 1987), where Jack Nicholson made his mark as Old Nick.

In
Hellbound
we are introduced to an entirely different kind of Devil. The name Leviathan also originates from early Christianity and Judaism. The conjunction of Judaism and Zoroastrianism in the fifth century BC resulted in quite a complex demonology, which was incorporated into the former’s religion. This was when Leviathan was given as a name to a demon of chaos. But if we consult the Bible once more—the Old Testament, to be exact—we discover that Leviathan represented a kind of malevolent creature, in the form of a serpent or crocodile, or even a huge sea beast. As with the Devil, it was customized over the centuries to become a more generic symbol of evil. More specifically, in the Ugaritic religion Leviathan is the actual name of a God of Evil, and it was ascribed to a demon of envy in medieval times. Interestingly, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) also named his most famous book
Leviathan
. In it he advocates absolute government as the only way of achieving order. He proposed a social contract under which the ruled agreed to obey the ruler if he in turn provided social peace.

Leviathan, we are told by Julia, is the “god of flesh, hunger and desire.” Everything you’d expect from the Devil, apart from one thing. Surprisingly, Leviathan is also a god of stability and order. In its Hell, there is no mayhem—everything is methodically thought out and rules are followed or anarchy may destroy Hell completely. Like the society Hobbes is proposing, Leviathan provides the much-needed immovability of this region, in exchange for complete and utter obedience: from his Cenobites and in turn from their victims, even if force must be used—and actually it might prefer this. Julia tells us that Leviathan has sent her out to find souls, but it is not interested in waging any war against the good or even corrupting humanity. In the world of
Hellraiser
, humanity is already corrupt and all Leviathan is doing is taking advantage of the fact.

This logical fixation is reflected not only in the layout of its Hell but also in the mathematical and geometrical precision of its own shape. Gone are the serpent’s features, the hooves and goat’s head, even the red skin, horns and wings which connote chaos. Leviathan’s perfect octahedral form is order personified. This is why the original interpretation of a Lovecraftian god would never have worked. H.P. Lovecraft’s Old Ones, like Cthulhu, were notable for their alien visages and slimy tentacles.