The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy

by Kane, Paul

  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.

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  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.

  The next most obvious forebears are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll, both characters from books that Barker read as a child. These literary inventions are perhaps the most celebrated examples of what the genre has termed mad scientists, people who tamper with nature for their own ends, creating chaos in their wake. For those not familiar with the tale, Dr. Victor Frankenstein was the eldest son of a high-class family from Switzerland, brought up with an orphan named Elizabeth. After the passing of his mother from scarlet fever, he started to take an interest in the human body and the subject of life itself, which preoccupied his studies at the university of Ingolstadt, Germany.

  But his greatest obsession was to “bestow animation upon lifeless matter,” which he finally accomplished by creating a monster out of body parts from graveyards and slaughterhouses, and passing electricity through it to bring it to life. This abomination of nature seeks refuge in a country hovel where a blind man and his two children reside. There he learns to read from the books on the shelves, one of them being Milton’s Paradise Lost, which allows him identification with both the first man created, Adam, and the angel cast out of Heaven, Satan. When he reveals himself to the blind man’s family, though, the monster is spurned and in a rage kills Frankenstein’s brother. Frankenstein eventually finds him, and the monster demands that he build him a female companion. Frankenstein complies but when he destroys this work, the monster kills Frankenstein’s new bride, Elizabeth, in revenge. The story ends with the doctor chasing his creation across the North Pole—actually the framing device for the book—but perishing himself.

  In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the doctor becomes a monster himself, a deformed, stooping murderer, after drinking one of his own concoctions. The two beings, Jekyll and Hyde, are at complete odds with one another. The doctor has no control over the transformations, falling to sleep as himself and waking as Hyde, and he fears Jekyll will take over and remain indefinitely. At the end the potions he uses to turn himself back fail to work and he runs out of the salt needed for the mixture, so he is forced to commit suicide in order to free both Jekyll and Hyde from their torment. In these two stories the physicians are doing what they do with the best of intentions, for the good of humanity—in Frankenstein’s case to try to prevent death, in Jekyll’s case to separate the two halves of man, good and evil. But the results of playing God in this way are the same.

  Channard is both Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll at two different points in the film. His obsessive tendencies, like those of the two doctors mentioned, are evident by the set cast and crew would come to call The Obsession Room. In here we see various photographs of occult symbols, pencil drawings of faces in pain, organs in jars, extracts from Aleister Crowley on the walls,1 more symbols on a blackboard, puzzles, anatomical drawings of a skinless man, Egyptian markings, drawings of the pyramids, skeletons, an altar, a replica skinned body in a glass case and the Lament Configuration boxes in bell jars. Kyle also finds a scrapbook filled with related articles belaboring the point, including “The Labyrinth of the Mind,” “Children of the Vortex: Puberty and the Link with Psychic Phenomena” (giving us another reason for his interest in the young Tiffany), and “Is Death the Fourth Dimension?” There is also the sepia photograph of the human who used to be Pinhead, along with a diagram of a man’s head cut into squared segments, which Kirsty finds later. We also see a book on the side called The Internal Inferno with a picture of Magritte’s famous painting, False Mirror Original (1928), on the front cover (more eye imagery and references to mirrors). This has been Channard’s line of inquiry for some time, or as Kyle whispers, “Jesus, he must have been into this shit for years.”

  Channard follows in the tradition of Dr. Jekyll, who releases the beast within. Hellbound: Hellraiser II still (photograph credit: Murray Close).

  That patience is about to be rewarded, as he is on the verge of reanimating his own carrion, just like Frankenstein; the only difference is there’s no electricity involved this time: just blood. He “creates” Julia by letting Browning slash himself open on her mattress, but like Frankenstein he still constructs a monster, one which starts its new life by ravaging Browning. Julia is fully aware of her startling appearance, even before she sees herself in the mirror. She has only to cast her mind back to her own initial encounter with skinless Frank in the damp room at Lodovico Street. Julia is just as unpalatable to look at as Victor Frankenstein’s creation, but, unlike him, she comprehends this early and takes steps to counteract it. “Don’t be scared of me,” she tells Channard almost immediately after her “birth,” then with his help attempts to make herself more pleasing to the eye.

  First, she puts on one of Channard’s white suits—which oddly makes for an alluring image. “Well?” she asks him. “Yes, yes. You look...” he answers. “Strange? Surreal? Nightmarish?” she finishes for him. The answer is all of the above, but at least she looks more human. The next stage is to wrap her in bandages to further disguise the monstrous (all you can see are her stunning blue eyes and lips), and to put on a light blue dress. Bit by bit, Julia is regaining the sexual power she once had, enough to attract Channard and encourage him to kiss her. When his hand rides up the back of her dress, the bandages there almost resemble stockings tops—the ultimate in sensual attire. “Now all we need is skin,” she tells him. In one sense she means to be fully complete, with an epidermis, but skin is also a slang word for condom—a reward for when his work is over.

  But for the monster to be whole again more victims must be brought to Julia. Unsurprisingly, the first casualty is a young naked woman, which hints at the beauty Julia will soon possess again. The scene then dissolves to show multiple corpses hanging, then Julia is revealed in all her glory when the bandages are removed. Channard has achieved something the original Frankenstein could not; he has redefined his creation, redesigned her into a more acceptable shape. In actuality, it is Julia who has done this to herself—Channard has merely provided the raw materials—so she has no reason to reap any kind of revenge on him. If anything, she only gives him what he wants: to see and to know. There is also the matter that she has been born again before Channard brought her back, changed in the depths of Hell by Leviathan. And the act of revival Channard has performed on Julia will soon be his fate, too. This is where the doctor becomes Mr. Hyde.

  In the Cenobitization chamber, Channard metamorphoses into a monster. Rather than a potion, it is Leviathan that is the catalyst for his change. And instead of changing from good to evil, Channard simply becomes more evil, an extension of what he was on Earth. Though his process of rebirth is similar to Julia’s, there is a crucial difference. While she goes to great pains to hide the monster behind a human façade, Channard’s internal monster becomes visible. But just like Jekyll, he is unable to control it: the beast runs rampant, given free rein, for a time, at least. And because he had little or no conscience to begin with, after an initial struggle he embr
aces the mutation and, indeed, revels in it. His end comes not through suicide but because he let his newfound powers go to his head.

  In terms of cinematic influences, there have been countless adaptations of both Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll we can point to. Thomas Edison’s Frankenstein (J. Searle Dawley, 1910), for instance, sees the doctor (Augustus Phillips) creating his monster (Charles Ogle) in a boiling pot which puts flesh on a skeleton’s bones; then the monster dissolves into a mirror at the finale, which again links with Orpheus. Director James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) is the one most people remember, as it made a horror icon out of Boris Karloff, but it was based more on the play than the book and was set in modern times. Then, of course, there was Hammer’s reworking of the story starring Peter Cushing as the doctor and Christopher Lee as the monster in The Curse of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher, 1957), which took the series back to a more period setting, and came to its conclusion—appropriately—with Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (Fisher, 1973).

  Film versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have tended to emulate Thomas Russell Sullivan’s play version of 1887, which centered more on Jekyll’s suppressed sexual desires, turning Hyde more into a Jack the Ripper character. The basic premise, therefore, has been radically contorted in movies like the 1908 version of the same name, the 1931 adaptation starring Fredric March, Spencer Tracy’s incarnation (Victor Fleming, 1941), right up to Christopher Lee’s I Monster (Stephen Weeks, 1971) and Alexandr Feklistov in Stannyar Isoryar Doktora Dzehila i Mistera Khaida (Aleksandr Orlov, 1985). The story has even been flexible enough to allow for gender reversals, such as Jekyll becoming a woman in Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (Roy Ward Baker, 1971).

  Adding to this, we must also mention those mad scientists of films like: Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1933), an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ Island of Dr Moreau; The Invisible Man (another Wells book—Whale, 1933) where once again bandages are used to mask the abnormality; Dr. Cyclops (Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1940); The Man Who Could Cheat Death (Fisher, 1959); The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (Joseph Green, 1962); and The Mutations (Jack Cardiff, 1973). There are many others, of course, but one more deserves a special mention—Herbert West from Stuart Gordon’s 1985 film, The Re-animator. Played to perfection by Jeffrey Combs, this character—which originated in an H.P. Lovecraft tale—is a distant relative of Frankenstein, and is also concerned with bringing dead tissue back to life, this time with a fluorescent green serum he has developed. There aren’t too many parallels to be drawn from either the character itself or the performances of the “insane” doctors in Re-animator and Hellbound, but the obsession with what they are doing is what drives them both.

  One more film that needs to be listed is a favorite of both Atkins and Randel.2 Both have cited The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) as an influence and this is spectacularly obvious from Hellbound. Bride is the sequel to Universal’s 1931 take on Shelley’s novel, once again directed by Whale, but in actual fact utilizes elements from the book not used in the first film, such as the plotline where Frankenstein is to make his monster a mate. As the title suggests, the doctor (played once again by Colin Clive) creates a female this time, who would also become an enduring icon. As portrayed by Elsa Lanchester, the bride has a long flowing white gown, zigzag streaks in her dark hair, and bandages down her arms. In all but the hair, Julia’s look matches hers. While there is a definite homage to another Universal movie, The Mummy (1932), as well as the Hammer films that came after it in the same vein (hence the Egyptian markings on Channard’s walls), Julia is certainly more Bride of Frankenstein than she ever will be Mummy.

  Bride of Frankenstein French poster.

  More clues can be found in the style of Channard’s dress, the cut of his suit distinctly 1930s or ’40s. Even his fondness for smoking reflects Hollywood movies of that era, with more than an indication of noir. The minimal use of color in the scenes with Channard and Julia—the exception being blood red—harks back to this era, and the lightning that strikes as Julia attacks her victims is pure Universal gothic, used in both Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein during the creation sequences.

  We’ve talked about the literary and filmic lineage that Channard has inherited, but there is more to his role as a doctor than facilitating Hellbound’s eligibility for this subgenre. Channard also embodies our fear of medicine, surgery and doctors generally, not just culturally. The first time we meet Channard he is performing one of the most horrendous operations one could possibly imagine. With his mask and gown on, he already appears something other than human—a prophetic indication of his later guise, and foundation for the aborted Pinhead-surgical scene—but what he is doing is enough to make even the strongest person cringe. Randel has spoken about the effect the Ben Casey TV series had on him as a boy. “This imagery comes from something that scared the crap out of me when I was young, with Vince Edwards doing surgery on somebody who was awake. I always thought, ‘That’s nasty.’”3 And he’s correct. (It was so nasty, in fact, that it was used again in Hellraiser: Hellseeker some years later.) The metallic implements on either side of the woman’s head, gripping her face and nose, the cranium open with flaps of skin pulled tight, the scalpel hovering over the brain itself, and then the application of the drill, with the added touch of smoke rising as it connects with the gray matter, is extremely uncomfortable to watch. Even the nurses on hand and Kyle, observing his mentor, appear shocked. Channard, conversely, remains calm throughout. He doesn’t really care about the patient, doesn’t see her as a person: all that concerns him is what her brain can tell him. It is an apathy that—rightly or wrongly—many of us associate with the medical profession.

  This is amplified only moments later when Channard walks down a corridor and discusses Kirsty with Kyle. “Now this case, Kyle, interesting but delicate.” This is what she represents to him, another case to crack. “A speculative mind,” he continues, “is an invaluable asset to the analytic man, but all diagnosis begins with...” “Examination,” ventures Kyle. “Precisely. You must win from them their trust, draw from them their story, and take from them their pain.” Channard has a plan all worked out before he even meets with Kirsty. It doesn’t matter to him either way whether he cures her or not (the patients on his wards seem to have been there forever). What’s important is quenching his professional thirst. The main factor in this equation, and the thing that terrifies us most, is that doctors are in a position of power. We are at our most vulnerable when sick, so the idea that someone could be using that to their own advantage is what scares us the most.

  Later, of course, when Channard is placed in an even greater position of power, he becomes yet more frightening. As a Cenobite he no longer needs the medical equipment in that operating theater; it is all—quite literally—to hand. Scalpels spring from his tentacles, sharp enough to cut through chains, and perform an emergency tracheotomy on Pinhead. This makes his throwaway lines (“I recommend amputation”) even more relevant and chilling.

  But if Channard is the universal embodiment of our fears about medicine, his work with Julia more specifically focuses on one area: plastic surgery. In the 1980s, this kind of treatment was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today. Now, it is the norm to have face lifts, liposuction, breast enhancements, collagen injections; it has even become a fashion trend. There was much more anxiety attached to these procedures when Hellbound was made. The public was not as familiar with plastic surgery then, which meant it was a choice subject to tap into. What other explanation can there be for the resemblance of the bandaged Julia to Edith Scob in Georges Franju’s seminal postwar European horror film, Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face, 1959). This, too, trades on apprehension about bodily and facial disfigurement and plastic surgery, complete with uncompromising operating theater scenes which owe much to documentary shorts Franju made in the aftermath of the Second World War.

  As she first appears to us, Julia is uncomfortable to look at: skinless, oozing slime. She may well tread that fine line betwe
en disgusting and hideously resplendent, but there can be no denying that she looked much better before her death. She has lost her natural beauty and is reliant on Channard to restore it, which he does by bringing her “food.” The unwrapping of her bandages to reveal the face we all know is comparable to many a film or TV show (usually soap operas of the ’80s like Dynasty when an actor was replaced) where surgery has been performed on the features. But somehow Julia’s look has changed between films. She has grown even more beautiful, her hairstyle has changed, all of which supports the claim that villainy does indeed become this woman. A few final nips and tucks are needed, though, which Julia sees to herself. The tear at her back, where the new skin has been grafted on, is soon sealed by absorbing Kyle’s life force when she kisses him.

  On the face of it, Julia is better than ever before now: more stunning and attractive. But this is only a temporary thing. In the wind tunnel when she is trying to deceive Tiffany, this new membrane is ripped off at the arm. Julia disappears, leaving a pile of skin on the stone floor. The “operations” she has been through may have given her transient beauty, but with one tug it is lost. In this way Julia personifies fears about whether plastic surgery will actually work, whether a facelift will somehow rip or tear, whether a nose will cave in after rhinoplasty. What brings this into even sharper relief is Hellbound’s accent on the fact that Kirsty doesn’t need to undergo any of these procedures. She is shown in the shower, skin perfect, close-ups of her face emphasizing she has no wrinkles. Her youth is pitted against Julia’s maturity. And in one final snub, Kirsty uses the skin Julia has left behind to fool Channard and liberate Tiffany. She dons this fake bodysuit, but she doesn’t need it, which is why she peels it off with such glee once the rescue has been performed. Where Julia has been forced to put the skin on to retain her looks, Kirsty only has need of it to perform her heroics during the finale. After that, she can disregard it and all it represents. But as we have seen, Kirsty has matured herself during the film, developing fully into a woman. And when Kirsty is a little older herself, might Julia not have her supreme revenge?