The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy (18 page)

There is a scene that has only recently been restored to the film, where Kirsty finds a replica in Hell of her old home, comforting and bathed in warm yellows. There are photographs on the sideboard, including a black and white one of Kirsty as a young girl with her real mother. Blood then pours out from under the photographs, covering the sideboard and filling up the picture she’s holding, which has turned into a photograph of Julia. Kirsty drops the picture, shattering the glass and frame, cockroaches spill from the drawers and the sideboard falls over in an outpouring of blood. Some might say it is an unnecessary scene, but it is a powerful one nevertheless, and Ashley Laurence’s acting rams home the destruction and heartache Julia—and by extension Frank—has caused.

It also aptly parallels the scene a little later when Kirsty walks through a copy of the front door at Lodovico Street. This time she finds herself in Frank’s Hell, filled with the obligatory candles which first guided him here when he solved the puzzle box. From arched openings, ghost women emerge on stone slabs beneath see-through material to tease and titillate, disappearing once the sheets are lifted. Frank appears, again wielding his phallic flick-knife, in an attempt to pick things up where they left off. He is still announcing himself as Uncle Frank, still desiring the forbidden. “That’s why I sent for you, Kirsty.”

This actually works better than in the second draft scene where Larry and Frank cohabit the same body. Here, instead of Larry taking his revenge by lifting his brother onto a wall of his own knives, thus giving him a taste of his own medicine and metaphorically raping him, Kirsty
must
take revenge for herself and for her father. It is vital that she do so, because only then will she have come of age. In both the wedding flashback and the photograph with her mother, Kirsty is shown as a little girl—vulnerable and ripe for Frank to abuse: “Don’t be naughty, Kirsty, or I’ll have to punish you first.” But her journey into Hell and third confrontation with Frank enables her to shed the trappings of childhood completely. “Grow up,” Frank barks at her, but she has already done that. The fact that she teases him herself, then turns the tables by setting the sheets and Frank on fire, shows that she now has the maturity to best him without having to rely on brute force.

This rites of passage theme is a momentous one and affects not just Kirsty, but Tiffany. Their relationship changes as the movie progresses. To begin with, Kirsty sees someone who is alone and subject to the evil forces at work: she basically sees herself. The pair could be sisters, and indeed they do mirror each other at times, especially when they both cry out for “Mommy” (Tiffany during the flashback sequence in the hall of mirrors, Kirsty while looking at the old photographs). In addition, they have both been the target of mistreatment, Kirsty by her uncle and Tiffany at the hands of Channard, another false patriarch with only manipulation in mind. However, the age difference between the girls makes a huge difference. Even though Tiffany is her guide in Hell, Kirsty is able to take on the mantle of big sister to keep Tiffany safe, at certain points even becoming the mother figure—not unlike Ripley and Newt in
Aliens
—particularly when Julia is around.

Paradoxically, Julia’s relationship with Kirsty has been a volatile one. Julia never had the nurturing instinct, preferring instead to gratify her sexual needs with Frank. This is why any attempt she makes to adopt the mother persona always fails. When she takes Kyle into the slaughter room, she says, “Oh you poor boy, you look awful. Come here, come to mother.” But it is meant more as a parody than a real inclination to comfort: signification that she has become a female version of Frank. This is borne out just minutes later when she betrays and kills Kyle with a kiss, as Frank did with her. When Kirsty confronts her in the ensuing scene, she describes her role as “the wicked stepmother.” So when Kirsty, Tiffany and Julia are all together, the former feels obliged to take on a parental role to fill the void. Naturally Julia challenges this and attempts to undermine what she is doing: “You never could hold on to anything for very long, could you Kirsty?”

Julia does all she can to confuse Tiffany when the three of them are in the wind tunnel. But in the end the young girl realizes that Kirsty’s warnings not to trust her were correct. It is how she is able to recognize Kirsty in Julia’s skin at the denouement: Julia would never perform such a selfless act to save her. So Tiffany heeds the parental advice of Kirsty, rather than Julia. If more evidence were needed of this mother-daughter role-play, it comes when Kirsty breaks down and cries because she could not help her father. Tiffany hugs and consoles her, as a daughter might, which gives her new “mother” strength—“Tiffany, we’re getting out of here!”

It isn’t until Tiffany comes of age herself, learning to speak again and facing not only the Channard Cenobite—which she inadvertently defeats—but also Leviathan itself (consequently ridding herself of the obsession with puzzles) that the pair of them slip back into their sister roles once more. More than that, she has earned the right to become Kirsty’s true equal, encapsulated by the look they give each other at the end before walking down the path—both dressed in black, both mourning their loved ones, and their loss of innocence.

The other parental role in the film is adopted by Leviathan. It remade Julia as a Queen of Hell, and transformed the Cenobites into their present form. Like they are naughty children it punishes them when they misbehave—pitting the newly-minted Channard Cenobite against the others when they start to remember who they are, and finally destroying its new son when he puts his own needs before his creator’s. And how does it do this? By means of the umbilical cord still attached to Channard, the giant fleshy tentacle drilled into the top of his head immediately after he comes out of the Cenobitization chamber. Leviathan is the supreme parent, an all-seeing and all knowing father (or mother?) who is not scared to castigate its children if it sees fit.

Lastly, no reunion would be complete without mention of Frank and Julia’s swan song. This comes just after Kirsty has seared the flesh from him, and it promises Julia her long awaited vengeance. With echoes of those mock wedding vows from
Hellraiser
, Frank says, “Julia, I knew you’d come. You’re a girl who always keeps her promises.” “Oh, I do.... I do....” she replies. Frank then seals his own fate by demanding that she kiss him, the means by which he betrayed her in the first film, and how she betrayed both Channard and Kyle. He is asking for trouble. The demand enabling her to get close, she uses this ruse to rip out his heart—taking back what she once gave to him—and then delivers her coup de grace: Frank’s last words to her, “Nothing personal, babe.” Thus concludes her metamorphosis into him. She has learned well from her teacher, seducing Channard and using him, knowing full well that he was never meant to be a part of this family. When she tells the doctor, “I’m cold,” she means it in more ways than one. As Julia watches Frank’s heart burn, there is blood on her lips; she scorns not only what she and Frank once had together, but also Kirsty’s inability to find and rescue her father.

Fairy Tales

One final theme we must mention is that of Fairy Tales. Barker has commented in past interviews that the first imaginative stories he ever read were fairy tales: “I had several volumes as a kid, and found in their darkest corners images and ideas I never tired of examining. Back and back I’d go to keep company with cannibal witches and lunatic queens, dragons and phantoms and malignant spirits, passing over the simpery stuff ... to get to the business of the wild wood.”
⁴
Obviously much of this can be detected in fantasy novels such as
Weaveworld
,
The Great and Secret Show
,
Cabal
and others. Anyone who has read the original stories of the Brothers Grimm can understand the horror potential therein, so it is hardly surprising that these should be an influence, and it was something Peter Atkins definitely picked up on when writing the sequel.

The first reference comes from the main protagonist herself. When Detective Ronson is questioning her at the very start he says, “Would you talk to me, and please, this time no demon fairy tales,” to which Kirsty retorts, “Fairy tales, fairy tales. My father didn’t believe in fairy tales either. Some of them come true, Mr. Ronson. Even the bad ones.” Inevitably, Ronson tells her, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Once again it points to Kirsty’s childlike qualities at the beginning; the tantrum she throws with Ronson only emphasizes this, and the way she watches the rain trickling down the window like a bored kid on a wet Saturday afternoon. She believes in the fairy tales because she is still connected to her youth, whereas Ronson is an adult, and has closed off his imagination. This is why he cannot possibly help with this investigation, let alone solve it.

The next time fairy tales are mentioned is when Julia and Kirsty meet again at Channard’s house. Julia, as we have seen, claims not just to be the wicked stepmother but also now the Wicked Queen—“So come on, take your best shot, Snow White!”—which is yet another reason Julia couldn’t stand to look at herself in the mirror until she could claim to be “the fairest in the land” once more. Like Snow White, Kirsty has been the victim of a foul plot against her; but instead of being tricked into taking the poison apple, she has been tricked into entering Hell, none of which was Julia’s doing, it has to be said.

But the allusion here does remind us of the jealousy aspect between these two women. Again, Kirsty has a good-looking man at her beck and call—another reason Julia had to kill him—and she probably fears that Channard might be interested as well. Just like Larry and Frank. “Kirsty, you have surprisingly good taste in men,” Julia tells her. Not simply black humor with a double meaning (Julia has literally just
tasted
Kirsty’s man), but also a sign of envy, as the Evil Queen envies Snow White.

One could also compare Kirsty to the character of Little Red Riding Hood. She enters the dangerous forest to help a relative—in this instance her father, not grandmother—then arrives at the house only to find the Wolf has disguised himself as that relative: Frank pretending to be Larry. And though it might be stretching the reading slightly, Tiffany is very much like Sleeping Beauty. She may not physically be asleep, but she still needs to wake in order to come to terms with what has happened to both her and her mother. It is not a Prince who comes to the castle to do this now, but Kirsty. And it is not with a kiss that she wakes her—for in the main these signify danger in the
Hellraiser
mythos—but with love and an embrace.

There is also referencing evident in the way the narrative and imagery draws on the Rule of Three. This is where patterns of three are apparent in the text, and fairy tales were riddled with them. As explained in Ansen Dibell’s book,
Plot
, “One is an incident. Two is a pattern. Three breaks it. One tells us what the risk is. Two confirms what wrong behaviour is. At three, we know the rules, and so can appreciate what the smart third person is doing differently, to break the unsuccessful pattern and win.”
⁵
It forms the basis of stories like
Cinderella
,
The Three Pigs
,
The Three Bears
....

In
Hellbound
there are two major patterns like this. The first involves Kirsty and Tiffany’s encounters with the Channard Cenobite. The first time they meet is in the fake hospital on the wards. “The doctor is in,” he bellows, before killing the patients in their beds with his tentacles. The second time, he appears behind Tiffany saying, “Tiffany, come. I’m your doctor, I’m here to help you.” They are able to escape because of the other Cenobites’ distraction, but we see the result if anyone tries to defy him: all the Cenobites die, slashed or stabbed by his tentacles. The third and final engagement occurs within sight of Leviathan, but Tiffany now knows how Channard kills—she has seen him do it twice now—and so avoids his tentacles when he attacks her, which leads to his own death. A perfect example of the rule of three.

The second key illustration of this is Tiffany’s solving of the puzzles. The first time we see her she is putting together a wooden box, which allows Frank to send his message to Kirsty. The second time is when she solves the Lament Configuration, and it opens the door to Hell; the box is then reconstructed into a representation of Leviathan by Pinhead. The third time, she realizes that if she can turn the puzzle back into a box she can seal the rift and make the escape from Hell a permanent one.

In addition to these we can also identify the specific use of threes in the movie for dramatic and visual effect. There are three puzzle boxes in bell jars in Channard’s home, for example. When Tiffany opens the gateway to Hell, three doors appear, two behind her in Channard’s Obsession Room, and one behind Channard and Julia in their secret niche. When Kirsty and Tiffany pause after walking through the corridors of Hell, there is a pan from left to right which shows three different corridors they could choose. It is also at this point that Kirsty says, “We have to help each other. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah?” Repeating the question three times (although Atkins has joked that it is a homage to those other famous Liverpudlian exports, The Beatles).

The Channard Cenobite has three tentacles on the palm of each of his hands. There are three main villains in the shape of Julia, Channard and Frank, which balance quite nicely against the three main heroes: Kirsty, Kyle and Tiffany, except that the Cenobites upset this by appearing this time in long shot as a grouping of four, but we do encounter them three times during the entirety of the movie.

8

THE DOCTOR IS IN

As a character, Dr. Channard follows a long line of evil doctors in both literature and the cinema. Though perhaps misguided rather than wholly villainous, the first one that should concern us is the inspiration for
Hellraiser
in the first place: Dr. Faustus. However, Marlowe’s tragic subject must be acknowledged as the direct ancestor of Channard if only because they both share a common goal—to uncover secret information. If anything, it is Channard rather than Frank who more closely embodies the ideas of this story, for he seeks knowledge instead of carnal desire. Any contact of this nature—such as his relationship with Julia—is purely a by-product of his search for answers.