Hellraiser (1987)

Clive Barker himself is openly gay.

Clare Higgins is not your stand-in, OP.

And the cube is not nihilistic homosexuality.

Also, you’re not a strong, black woman.

I get it, we are all Frank. Not sure about the black woman thing, though, please advise.

It's certainly possible. You do wonder where Barker got the idea. Had he been in a repressed relationship with boring sex and longed for a more passionate past lover to return, get rid of the new lover, and fuck him until their dying days? He writes it so well that I'd have to bet on it.

His fabulous monsters are always less insidious than his human psychopaths. Plus, his work doesn’t hide sexuality - even in the 80s.

Clive Baker is gay and Hellraiser has a lot of camp tropes, the bitchy, chain-smoking, whore stepmother being the most obvious one.

Barker is into S&M. Hellraiser is about dark sexual desire but it isn't necessarily about gay men as a hole.

I tend to agree with R7, although I do wonder about a gay man making such a blood-drenched movie in the middle of the AIDS crisis.

[quote] "but it isn't necessarily about gay men as a hole."

It's DEFINITELY not about this!

[quote]I do wonder about a gay man making such a blood-drenched movie in the middle of the AIDS crisis.

Give it a rest.

Perhaps you're teasing us.

Are you teasing us?

[quote]R7:... about gay men as a hole.

Oh, Dear.

Found this movie to be boring as hell. Is part 2 better?

Part 2 is so righteously bad it’s awesome. The budget is much bigger and the effects are, well, effects...

What's your analysis, then, R10?

Or are we just supposed to not think at all?

Hellbound is my all time fave horror film.

"But this is what you wanted. Wanted to see. Wanted to know. And now you know. And I wanted EVERYTHING. And now we're both happy. Good bye, Doctor."

"....and to think I hesitated..."

Hellbound is more fun. It's like a horror version of Labyrinth. Great effects and some of the nastiest gore effects you'll ever see.

I hear a lot of people talking about how the first one is boring, but I've always found it fascinating. It's rough around the edges, but you can't really say you've ever seen anything else like it. I found the family drama/love triangle stuff much more interesting than the Cenobites, but judging by the sequels, I must have been in the minority there, because Julia, Kirsty, Frank, etc. are thrown out after part 2 except for two Kirsty cameos in parts 3 and 6.

[quote]a queer movie

A what movie?

Julia was supposed to have continued as the Queen of Hell but she wanted no part of it. She was the best character, too.

Shame she never had any scenes with the Cenobites.

Would much prefer to see his books filmed, (Weaveworld, especially), than the endless fucking King adaptations and remakes and reboots and sequels and....

If you mean that behind a banal suburban existence there is a realm of horror and desire? then yes

"Kirsty... you have surprisingly good taste in men. They didn't tell you, did they? They've changed the rules of the fairy tale. I'm no longer just the wicked stepmother. Now I'm the evil queen. So come on! Take your best shot, Snow White!"

R21, he posted on a reddit AMA in October that there’s a lot more money flowing for productions via Amazon Originals as well as Netflix and cable these days. I don’t think made any confirmations on anything, though.

He has jumped from project to project for the last 25 years, so I don’t depend on promised sequels. Every time I think I’ll see a third Book of The Art, he puts out an Aborat or an art book or an ode.

R24 Really liked The Great and Secret Show and sequel. Stuck in the first nuclear blast forever, very cool idea.

"GET THEM OFF OF ME!!!!!!"

Queer, R19. Not gay, because S&M isn't just gay.

R27 Oh cunt off.

What word do you prefer? Kinky?

Sorry, the whole point was that I read a bunch of random gay web site reviews that called it a queer movie, and wanted opinions. Cunt off is pretty weak.

The first movie was great, the second one sucked because Claire Higgins is only in it for like one minute.

If I really wanted to piss DL off I suppose I could call it a bisexual movie. What's Frank doing with those dudes? DON'T WATCH ME!

Queer means straight with purple hair. It has not a single fucking thing to do Barker or his writing.

And monkey boy living in the women's body is not tranny.

I think these random gay web reviews are considering S&M to be queer. It is generally accepted that queer means more than purple hair.

It also means "weird".

Gay also means "happy".

Watched it again. I don't get why AIDS should have anything to do with this or what kind of obligation the writer/director is supposed to have because "some people have AIDS".

It's a horror movie not a political movie. Standard horror fare.

Everything is political.

R37. I somehow had the idea that Barker himself is HIV+, which might inform the blood:AIDS connection. Anyone know that is his status or is it just speculation?

He is positive (there was a lawsuit about him supposedly knowingly infecting someone). Who knows when it happened though.

I liked the part of the story about the horrific skinless lover in the attic but the Cenobite stuff's too Doctor Who for me.

Clive Barker had a vogue during the horror boom of the 1980s but I don't think his writings have stood the test of time. M. R. James is still the king of gay horror.

At the time of release, Barker thought the original Hellraiser was a bit crap, but a little later, he saw it as good for that era.

Weren’t the demons inspired by people he saw at an s&m club?

I find Pinhead really sexy

Frank (and/or the guy that plays him) isn't necessarily straight. He's a sex and power addict. He likely was only hate fucking his brother's wife because it's a way to backstab and score points against his more conventionally successful sibling.

One can imagine a character like Frank being super ironic and internally laughing about it when interacting with both later and having zero intentions to pull Julia out of the marriage. Then he rolled on to stranger fare.

Julia, however took the thing seriously and it marred the entire rest of her marriage. In fact, she may have only stayed with Larry hoping Frank would come back and save her from such drudgery. She was addicted to the dicking Frank gave her.

When Frank shows up again, he wants her to lure numerous men to his attic for him to feed on and reconstruct himself.

All this is catered to by near sexless S&M demons from the underworld.

This is one of my favourite movies, but I would never have considered it a gay film.

Nightmare on Elm Street 2 on the other hand ....

This movie is fucking brilliant IMO. I never saw it as a gay film per se, other than the fact that Clive Barker is a big queen (and Pinhead is oddly sexy). I feel like people tend to forget that the plot mostly centers around a femme fatale however and that the monsters kind of take a back seat, compared to the sequels anyway.

There's a really cool documentary about the making of hellraiser called 'Leviathan'. I torrented it but surely it's floating around somewhere. It wasn't the 4 hour one i just found on youtube.

Frank is a user, rough trade. Using his penis to get what he wants or needs.

He'd fuck anyone for any reason at all. Mostly to get shit out of them while laughing at rocking their boring world. He was ultimately done in by that very lust Itch he couldn't scratch in any other way than playing with the box. Notice his experiences in the box are pure sex and violence of every debauched kind, not "straight heteros screwing".

Julia was a cold fish turning into a psychopath. Partway through the film, she was getting off on the blood and gore itself.

Julia is a brilliant character.

I love these quotes: "We're demons to some. Angels to others." and "No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering."

The movie is like a super gory, fucked up soap opera.

Frank and Pinhead are husband material!

Hellraiser II has a real Nightmare on Elm Street 3 vibe.