He keeps it tight while still producing moments of lyrical beauty as well as hair-raising horror. Barker doesn’t overexplain the plot or get lost in paragraphs of purple prose. The opening chapter is simply stunning in how much it pulls you in and whets your appetite for what is to follow. I’d forgotten how good Clive Barker’s early writing is. I was surprised by how well The Hellbound Heart holds up. Watching the film made me want to revisit Clive Barker’s original novella, so I picked up a copy. Chains ripping skin and flesh are back and look to be impressive practical FX, not CGI thank goodness. I’ll just say that I liked the new Cenobite designs and was quite surprised by how gory it is. I enjoyed it, but I’m not going to go into it here. As far as I remember, many of the stories in Books of Blood are very good examples of the genre I must get around to re-reading them.Īll these years later, a new film version of Hellraiser has recently been released. There are some good ideas in the book, but I found it to be too meandering and it kind of lost me in its weaving narrative. I recommend the Books of Blood but Weaveworld left me cold.
I quickly went on to read his excellent Books of Blood stories and his 1987 dark fantasy novel Weaveworld. I didn’t know Barker was already a published writer when he made Hellraiser. “Do you even know who we are?” it asked.”Īfter learning that writer/director Clive Barker based the film on his novella The Hellbound Heart, I saught it out. Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy-the voice of an excited girl. The hell priest who became known as “Pinhead” didn’t scare me, I just thought he was cool. What are Cenobites? They are demonic beings that will “tear your soul apart” if you summon them. I thought it was such a unique idea for a horror movie and can still remember being freaked out by the Cenobites, especially the teeth-gnashing one. I watched the original Hellraiser movie (1987) back in the late 1980s.
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