Hellraiser is a beautifully macabre adaptation of the Clive Barker novella The Hellbound Heart, and even all these years after its release it still packs a punch.
I first saw hellraiser when I was around thirteen and was getting into horror more and more. The hellraiser films were being shown on television late at night, and being the only person in the house that could fully work the vcr, I set it to record them without parental consent (what a rebel!). Flash forward to the next day when my brother and I sat down to watch it. We didn't know how to take it, we'd never seen anything like it and admittedly said that we didn't like it upon first viewing. Of course, this is because it was so far removed from anything in the genre that we'd seen up to this point. We were used to slashers and comedy horror in the early stages of our horror journey, and the sheer audacity of Hellraiser had left us stunned.
We could have left it there, but it played on our minds and we had to soon revisit it and delve further into the labyrinth with Hellbound: Hellraiser 2. This is when we fell in love!
Hellraiser was such a unique experience, with it's originality and melodramatic flair that it is a joy to experience every time I revisit it, finding new things to marvel at each time. Uncle Frank may be the monstrous antagonist of the film, but Julia is a truly magnificent villain and she will go down in history as a wicked step mother not to be trifled with.
Getting the opportunity to see Hellraiser on the big screen made me fall in love with it all over again, and it was an entirely immersive experience letting the Christopher Young score wash over me from the title screen until the end of the credits roll.
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