Hellraiser

Hellraiser (1987)

Timing: 1:34 (94 min)

6.876/10
2792

7.042/10
42636

6.9/10
153000

All about film

Video 5

Photo 138

Actors and characters

Release date

1987-09-11

Country

United Kingdom, United States, Serbia

Production

New World Pictures, Film Futures, Cinemarque Entertainment, Rivdel Films, New World

Genre

Horror, Thriller, Fantasy

Budget

$1 000 000

Revenue

$14 564 027

Website

Director

Clive Barker

Actors

Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Sean Chapman, Robert Hines, Ashley Laurence, Oliver Smith, Anthony Allen, Leon Davis, Michael Cassidy, Frank Baker
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Clive Barker

Producer

Christopher Figg, David Saunders, Mark Armstrong, Christopher Webster

Operator

Robin Vidgeon

Composer

Christopher Young

Artist

Audition

Sheila Trezise

Editing

Richard Marden, Tony Randel
All team (66)

• The original title of the painting was “Sadomasochists From Beyond The Grave.”
• Doug Bradley, who played the Cenobite, spent six hours in makeup before appearing on set, with hundreds of pins affixed to his head.
• Before filming, Doug Bradley was offered a choice of two minor roles – a furniture mover or the “pinhead” Cenobite. The budding actor thought it was, of course, more important for a young actor to have his face on screen, but he still chose the role of the Cenobite. And he didn't regret it.
• The role of Larry Cotton was initially offered to Lance Henriksen, but he declined.
• This was Clive Barker’s directorial debut. His book “The Hellbound Heart,” on which the film is based, consists of only 60 pages.
• Frank Cotton in his human form and Frank as the "resurrected" are played by different actors.
• Doug Bradley is a friend and classmate of Clive Barker.
• Several comics were released based on the film, and plastic models of the Cenobites were produced.
• It should be noted that there was no Pinhead in the original literary source; his functions were performed by a creature called "The Engineer" – a strange being with a human body and a cluster of light instead of a head. However, at the very beginning of the novella, there is a description of several Cenobites, and one of them – a woman – looks like this: "Every inch of the head was tattooed with a complex pattern, at each intersection of horizontal and vertical lines a pin with a precious stone gleamed, piercing the bone through and through."
• Initially, the film's soundtrack was recorded by the well-known English industrial band Coil, but despite protests from Clive Barker, a long-time acquaintance of the band, the producers at New Line Cinema did not accept their compositions for their own reasons.
• There are two versions of the film — a full and an abridged one. Especially bloody scenes were cut and shortened in it.
• Hell in the film is represented as a network of corridors and labyrinths.
• Cenobite is a church term, denoting a resident of a monastic community. The word is of Greek origin. Barker describes the Cenobites as 'theologians of the Order of the Flesh or the Cutters.' Cenobites can only penetrate our reality through a special spatio-temporal rift – a 'schism' – which can be opened and closed using special devices. The Puzzle Box is such a device for creating a 'rift,' first made by a toy maker named Philip Lemarchand in 1784 at the behest and design of the Duke de Lille (an aristocrat practicing dark magic).
• Barker revised the original screenplay under the influence of Tony Randel and Peter Atkins, who were filming the sequel. This concerns the scene in which Kirsty takes the Puzzle Box from Julia, killed by the Cenobites' hooks. It was necessary to introduce an element connecting the series – a mattress with Julia's blood.