The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy (8 page)

Kirsty is introduced via a telephone conversation with her father, and the contrast between his body language with Julia and now is incredibly revealing. Larry’s face lights up; there is pure delight in his voice. Kirsty, not Julia, is the great love of his life. When she arrives to help them move in, the kiss they share is full on the lips, not a general peck on the cheek: there is not a hint of betrayal here. Larry’s jealousy of Steve is apparent at the dinner party, and then the pair have an intimate Chinese meal together to discuss Julia. It is evident that the affection he has for Kirsty is mutual. Kirsty has a severe Elektra complex (the female version of Oedipus) when it comes to her father. Her dislike of Julia stems from this love, tinged with jealousy itself. Kirsty’s own body language is responsive in the scenes she shares with Larry, and she phones him in the middle of the night just to check that he is unharmed.

The original character of Kirsty from Barker’s novella is a friend who adores Rory/Larry. Barker might have altered the character’s relationship to Larry—at New World’s suggestion, it should be stressed—but he was still writing and directing it from that standpoint, which is where the incestuous overtones creep in. The genuine feeling of love and adoration the original character of Kirsty had for Rory/Larry remains. This is not to imply that anything sexual has occurred or ever would occur between them. Theirs is a different kind of love, with Larry transferring his devotion for his late wife onto Kirsty, while Kirsty is happy to play the archetypal Freudian Daddy’s Girl.

In stark contrast, Frank’s blatantly lustful feelings for Kirsty are all too evident from their first rendezvous. After establishing he is Uncle Frank, he comments about how beautiful she’s grown. Their clinch is akin to a rape stance. Frank pins her against the wall and growls, “Some things have to be endured. And that’s what makes the pleasure so sweet.” Yes, he is referring to his time with the Cenobites, but also of the forbidden delight the pair of them could experience if only she’d stop struggling. Near the end, he stalks Kirsty through the house, holding up that most transparent of phallic symbols from many a slasher film: the knife. His aim? Penetration. For Frank, as we have seen, there is no difference between love and desire. What he sees when he looks at Kirsty is not his niece, but another potential sexual conquest.

Come to Daddy. Uncle Frank as sculpted by Ian Frost (courtesy Ian Frost).

The fascinating thing is Frank’s use of the phrase, “Come to Daddy.” This not only foreshadows Frank’s “borrowing” of his brother’s skin, providing a clue to his real identity, it also suggests that some part of him actually wants what Larry has: Julia as his partner, Kirsty as his daughter. In one scene Frank, Julia and Kirsty create the three corners of a dysfunctional family triangle, literally, in long shot. “Stay with us,” says Frank. “We can all be happy here.... Come to Daddy.” In this family unit, Kirsty would experience not the deep platonic love she shared with her father, but a more physical level of incestuous love. Little wonder she declines his offer.

Julia’s relationship with Kirsty is also intriguing. She is the archetypal evil stepmother from fairy-tale lore, and this is referenced in
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
, where Julia says, “They didn’t tell you, did they? They changed the rules of the fairy tale. I’m no longer just the wicked stepmother. Now I’m the Evil Queen.” Kirsty resents Julia for taking her own place as the woman of the household, but if we look at it from the other angle Julia has more than just one reason to hate Kirsty. She is her love rival not only for Larry’s affections—which she insists she doesn’t require anyway—but also Frank’s. Both men are attracted to Kirsty in different ways, and Julia can’t help but be resentful of her younger, apparently more attractive, adversary.

Anyone outside of this “family unit” isn’t utilized much in
Hellraiser
. This explains why Steve, as an outsider, is allowed to participate only in the very last sequence of the film. Even then he is virtually relegated to the role of spectator while Kirsty battles it out with the Engineer. Equally, the Cenobites, regardless of their undeniable screen presence, appear only very briefly, although it could be argued that they form a family unit of their own, with the lead Cenobite as father, Female Cenobite as mother, and Chatterer and Butterball as the two siblings—mirroring Frank and Larry.

Secrets and Masks

Another important motif in the film is that of masks. Gary Hoppenstand notes in his essay “The Secret Self” that Barker’s characters often hide their true natures: Mamoulian from
The Damnation Game
might appear to be all powerful, but his use of these supernatural abilities is simply a smokescreen for who he really is, weak and vulnerable; the central hero Boone from
Cabal
(and
Nightbreed
) has a dark, bloodthirsty side, which forces him to hide away and seek the town of Midian—yet he is also in his heart a leader; the ape in “New Murders in the Rue Morgue” pretends to be human,
⁸
a homage to Poe, one of Barker’s favorite authors as he was growing up. Barker has expressed a particular admiration for the stories
The Fall of the House of Usher
(1839), about another fated family cursed by evil, and
The Masque of Red Death
(1842), where a deadly plague disguised as one of the guests at a masquerade ball infiltrates a sealed off Abbey:

The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revelers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
⁹

Just as the Red Death did, most of the characters in
Hellraiser
wear masks, too. Sometimes they are corporeal, other times less so. Frank’s face is stripped from him at the beginning; in fact, it becomes a puzzle in itself that the lead Cenobite has to put together. When he returns without his skin, Frank takes the drastic measure of stealing his brother’s face. This he uses to deceive Kirsty, gain her trust, and play out the role of her father, albeit briefly. He also fools the Cenobites, who must hear from his own lips that he is Frank. When he confesses, they strip this second mask away from him accordingly.

The mask Julia wears at the beginning is the face of a happily married woman. She wears another mask when she preys on her female victims, sexually alluring and available, with sunglasses to cover her eyes. The more she kills, the more she turns into a Lady Macbeth figure who can wash the blood off her hands but carries the mark of it nonetheless. Julia is able to conceal these crimes from her husband behind a façade of innocence, but her half-smile as she remembers the murders betrays her.

Larry wears the mask of a man who fundamentally believes—or should that be hopes?—Julia still loves him, but has his doubts. His nice guy act also cloaks a subconscious undercurrent of rampant emotion which he can release only by watching boxing on television. He would love to be in the ring himself, but unlike his brother he has repressed these feelings to the point where he is a pale shadow of a man. The scene between Larry and Julia when they are watching the boxing match is therefore laced with ironic black comedy. When Larry comments that she used to hate this kind of thing and asks if it’s upsetting her, Julia replies coolly, “I’ve seen worse.” Both are hiding their secret selves from each other, but, in fine theatrical tradition, Barker has revealed them to the audience for their fullest effect.

Kirsty barely disguises her feelings about Julia, so her one true mask is that of vulnerability she displays with Steve. She allows him to dominate the relationship at first, hiding, or even subduing, her true fiery nature—which forces him to become more like her father, and thus more attractive in her eyes. It isn’t long afterwards that her true character surfaces, more in keeping with a horror heroine who doesn’t need a man to fight on her behalf.

Lastly, the box and its keeper wear their own masks. Camouflaged as a trinket, the Lament Configuration is really a doorway to another very dangerous dimension, just as the carpet in
Weaveworld
(1987), the dream sea Quiddity in
The Great and Secret Show
(1989) and the lighthouse in
Abarat
(2002) are portals to other places. Essentially, though, it is more than that. It is Pandora’s Box by any other name.

There are various versions of the Pandora legend. One Greek version says that Pandora was created by the gods and taken as a wife by the titan Epimetheus. Pandora had a sealed vase, which Epimetheus opened, causing all the troubles, weariness and illnesses of mankind to escape. In a Roman retelling it was Pandora herself who opened the box—brought by Mercury—and once all the evils had escaped the only thing left inside was hope. In the first, we can exchange Epimetheus for Frank, while in the second, Pandora herself becomes Kirsty. But one thing remains a constant: the disguise of the innocent-looking vessel.

The keeper in
Hellraiser
(Frank Baker), who initially appears as a derelict, is also much more than he seems. He goes from being a character who seemingly has no power, except that of unnerving people when he eats bugs or stares at them, to one who obviously has a great deal. At the end, he is the one who retrieves the box from the flames, simultaneously transforming into a winged skeletal creature. Beyond the human flesh, he is obviously a demon himself. Crucially, he is the “person” who returns the box so it can be purchased by the next Frank Cotton who comes along, literally completing the circular narrative. Without him, there would be no
Hellraiser
story.

Heaven or Hell

To conclude, we have the religious aspects of the movie. Though not particularly religious himself, Barker has always said that, “The Bible is a source of inspiration constantly for me and remains a significant source of inspiration ... biblical stories have a kind of ... primal quality to them.”
¹⁰
This has been especially true when constructing his own mythologies, including
Hellraiser
’s, as we shall see later on, but also when considering the eternal struggle of good versus evil.

Filmically, in this respect
Hellraiser
shares its roots with movies like
The Exorcist
and
The Omen
(Richard Donner, 1976), which also address this question through the device of demonic interjection. But the lines between notions of good and evil in
Hellraiser
are far less distinct. In
The Exorcist
the evil is quite obviously the demon that has taken control of the child Regan, while at the other end of the scale are the priests attempting to free her soul. Karras may well be losing his faith but there is no question as to his intentions, nor which side he fights on. Likewise, Damien has—indirectly—committed murders, manipulated events and positioned himself to take over the empire of his “father.” Gregory Peck’s politician Thorn and David Warner’s photographer Jennings may not be the most religious people, but during the course of the film they seek out those who are—like the monks in Italy, or Leo McKern’s Exorcist. The polarization between good and evil, between who should win and who should lose, is extremely clear-cut; and in religious terms it comes down to the simple conflict between God and the Devil.

The cover of Clive Barkers
Abarat
, featuring Barkers own artwork ( HarperCollins and Clive Barker, used by permission).

At the outset of
Hellraiser
Kirsty might appear to be on the side of Heaven as she occupies a contrary position to the Cenobites. The first time we see her, she is virtually in soft focus, her face bathed in light like an angel. During the Argentoesque dream sequence, too, with white feathers floating around her, Kirsty resembles the Madonna from a painting by an Italian master. Even her name is Christ-like. Kirsty also wears a white T-shirt throughout the film, in line with the basic iconographic symbolism of color clothing schemes.
¹¹
This follows if we also examine Julia’s choice of outfits: she begins with white blouses, then switches to orange, then finally to dark blue, thus reflecting her journey through passion to the dark side.