Hellraiser (1987)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hello, and welcome to the All Eighties Movies Podcast, the
podcast where we talk about the blockbusters, stuff loops, and
everything in between. One of the freshest decades for movies,
the nineteen eighties. I'm your host Bill Bant Long with
me on this journey revisiting eighties movies is by co
host Jason Massek.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hello, Jason, I want to hear him confess himself. Then
maybe maybe, But if you cheat us, we'll tear your
soul apart.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
That's right, listeners, we're discussing with spoilers of plenty the
nineteen eighty seven supernatural horror movie hell Raiser, who was
produced by Film Futures and distributed by Entertainment Film distribut
The movie stars Andrew Robinson, Claire Higgins, Ashley Lawrence, and
Doug Bradley. Written directed by Clive Barker, this movie is

(01:08):
rated R with the running time of one hour and
thirty four minutes. It is based on Barker's nineteen eighty
six novella The hell Bound Heart. So what is this
movie about? What's on the box if you grew up
in the nineteen eighties, and what's your local video store
to rent this movie? You would find this description on
the back of the VHS box. It is what's on
the box. Take it away, Jason.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
From beyond the outer darkness, from the blackest corners of
a family's past, from the nightmarish realm of the imagination,
comes Hell Raiser. An old family home holds untold mysteries
and horrors for Larry Cotton and his wife Julia. Floorboards
that rattle, rooms that absorb blood, the heavy and haunting

(01:49):
air of things long past and better left forgotten, all
fueled by the fugitive spirit of Larry's brother Frank, who
hovers halfway between this world and the next, between extreme
pleasure and excres cruciating pain, and between family devotion and
a deadly instinct for survival. Slowly, the old family home
begins to swallow the Cottons, and there is no escape

(02:10):
for Secret alliances and murderous deductions have been made which
will propel the Cotton family into the horrifying and shocking
conclusion of.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Hell razor Hell Raiser. So that was what's on the box.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Sorry to cut you off, I just wanted to have
a little commentary on that. I thought that was a
pretty awful synopsis, to be honest, makes it sound like
this is a haunted house movie does and it really
doesn't tap into the actual story whatever it might be.
You know, it's it was a really weird one. Like,
it sounds good, it's not poorly written, it's hard to read,

(02:44):
but doesn't do this movie service. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, quick,
what's on the box commentary?

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Let's move on to our eighty snapshot as we highlight
some of the creative forces from this movie. Jason, who
do you have?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
I have our writer director klaw Wife Barker Mister Barker
was born in Liverpool, England. He is an English writer, director,
and visual artists, best known for his works in the
genres of horror and dark fantasy. In the early days
of his artistic career, he supported himself by working as
a male prostitute. In nineteen seventy eight, he co founded

(03:19):
a theater group called The Dog Company, among whose members
was Doug Bradley, who later went on to star in
Barker's hell Raiser movie series. As we Know. He came
to prominence in the nineteen eighties, this being Clyde Barker
with a series of short stories collectively named The Books
of Blood which established him as a leading horror author.

(03:39):
So here's his eighties snapshot. In nineteen eighty five, he
published his debut novel, The Damnation Game, and the same
year he wrote his first feature movie scripts Underworld from
nineteen eighty five and Rawhead Rex from nineteen eighty six.
The end effect of these two movies disappointed Barker so
much that he decided to adapt his prose into a
movie he would direct himself, leading to the creation of

(04:02):
hell Raiser in nineteen eighty seven, which is based on
his novella, as Bill mentioned, The hell Bound Heart. Then
he moves on to the sequel, hell Bound hell Raiser two,
where he gets a based on a story by credit,
And that's in nineteen eighty eight, and that's pretty much
his eighties highlights. Of course, all the hell Raiser sequels

(04:23):
that would follow, he would also get the quote unquote
based on characters by credit. Moving on, in nineteen ninety
he directs and writes the screenplay for one of my
cult favorites, Night Breed, which was based on his novel Cabal.
Then in ninety two, Candyman Comes Out, and that was
based on The Forbidden which was one of the books

(04:44):
of Blood short stories written by Barker. In ninety five,
Lord of Illusions comes out, which he directed and wrote
the screenplay for, and that was also based on one
of his stories, The Last Illusion He Gets that based
on characters by credit for some of the Candyman sequels.
Beyond that, he's done some writing for various video games,
TV episodes, and at one point he actually lost control

(05:06):
of the Hell Raiser franchise, but regained it in twenty
twenty and then there was a remake of Hell Razer
in twenty twenty two, for which he has an executive
producer credit. Clive Barker primarily known as an author for
the Books of Blood short story series, also those works
such as the Damnation game, We've World Cabal, the Hell
Raiser series, Books of the Art series, and the Books

(05:29):
of Abarat series. Clive Barker man of many talents.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
All Right, so I went with Ashley Lawrence. So. Ashley
Lawrence is an American actress best known for her role
as Kirsty Cotton in Hell Raser. She began her career
on television with her curring role on the CBS soap
opera Capitol. In guest appearances on shows like Highway to
Heaven and Hunter. Her breakout role came with hell Raiser,

(05:55):
a role she reprised in hell Bound hell Raser two,
earning her a lasting play and horror history. Throughout the
late eighties and nineties, Lawrence continued to take on genre roles,
appearing in the horror anthology Monsters, the Lovecraft inspired Lurking Fear,
and the supernatural thriller Warlock three The End of Innocence.
She also took on dramatic and genre bending roles in

(06:19):
projects like Er Hercules, The Legendary Journeys Beyond Belief, Fact
or Fiction, and the indie film Lightning Bug. In addition
to her live action work, Lawrence expanded into voice acting
with her debut as Missy Carter in the atmospheric video
game The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. She returned to voice
work in twenty twenty for adult swims twisted animated comedy

(06:42):
JJ Villard's Fairy Tales at California Native Ashley Lawrence continues
to be a cult favorite in the horror community and
a versatile painter and artist. So actress Ashley Lawrence.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
I'm glad you picked her, Bill Bantt, because she's good.
She's good in this and I immediate is when you
chose her? I had to go of course, and just
doing general research look at her filmography and what and
I'm glad she continues to work because I thought she
was quick. Goodness.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yes, she's definitely highlighted this one. So this leads us
to our earliest memories of the movie, Jason, why don't
you start us off?

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah? Absolutely. For me, the earliest memories are, well, my
fascination with the mind and or worlds created by Clive
Barker and this just strange, weird, wild darkness of the
images provided by this film, Hell Raiser. I don't recall
when or where with whom I saw this film, but
I didn't see it in the theater, but it had

(07:38):
some pull or allure for me, so I saw it
on cable, probably a few years after it came out,
so I know I saw it, but I couldn't recollect
much of the story beats. All I could remember was
the quote what's your pleasure, mister Cotton, and we'll tell
your soul. The pollards, of course, the puzzle box itself.
I remembered the lead Cenobite, which is just a character

(08:01):
that's indelible, you can never forget. And he would, of
course then in the sequels come to be known as Pinhead.
That's the great Doug Bradley portraying the lead cenobite in this,
and I mean his voice, his presence, all the paraphernalia
in this. There's just the hooks, the chains, the bodies
being tortured and torn apart. Those are early memories, just
these images, right. I just recall that the tone of

(08:24):
this was so different from other horror films of the time,
this supernatural blend that was rooted in sato masochism and
sex and torture, and this vision of hell or some
sort of hellish in between underworld. I found it all
very intriguing and disturbing. So it was the look, the field,
the gore, the gross out factor and who is this

(08:45):
Clive Barker guy that thought this up? This is just
what grabbed me as a kid, I remember a teenager.
After this. I would then watch hell Bound hell Raiser
too often on cable. That was a big cable watch
for me. I watched that repeatedly, and now I think
back and I'm like, wait, did I see the sequel first?
Before the original I would soon then thereafter become a
fan of Night Breed, as I mentioned, and it's just

(09:08):
these dark worlds or other worlds that Barker creates that
contain these creatures of wonderfully disturbed designs, and I immediately
want to know their origins and their backstories, and the
worlds have such a visceral connection to a human's like
base instincts of pain and pleasure and violence. I recall
being at the library and finding a copy of Cabal,
which Night Breed is based on, and reading some passages

(09:30):
and just got a feel for Barker's writing, which is wonderful.
I mentioned doing the same when we were doing our
Dead Zone podcast with the Stephen King novel. I just
had this morbid curiosity. These stories sparked my imagination because
of that supernatural, fantastical aspect, but they made me feel
something on a primal level. So this is just different
from a Friday the thirteenth or typical eighty slasher that

(09:53):
I was always too scared to watch, or a summer
camp teen murder movie. This was just a different type
of creative that appealed to me. That these ideas just
had a certain type of ingenuity, and I'll never forget
later on in the mid nineties reading Barker's The Thief
of Always, which I think is from ninety two, which
I still reference to this day, especially the holiday House

(10:15):
aspect of that book and the character of Rictus. It's wild,
creepy stuff and it feels original and it's very seductive
in a strange way. And anyway, that's my memories of
connection to the Clyde Barker universe in specific regard to
hell Raiser. One other early memory connection to this Hell
Raiser universe is that I was a fan of Christopher
Young's score for hell Raiser two specifically, and used some

(10:40):
of that for my um that is University in Miami
Student film the Audition. Love me some Hell Raiser, great stuff.
Those are some of my early memories. Bill Bant, what
say you yeah? For me?

Speaker 1 (10:50):
I'm not sure if I saw these in order either,
because I do remember seeing Hell Raiser available to rent,
and I was just always passing that one because I'd
find something else. And then I started watching them on
late night cable, and I'll be honest, probably the one
I would watch the most was hell Razer three, just

(11:10):
because it had Terry Ferrell in it, and Paula Marshall,
who had the hugest crush on and people are like,
who the Hell's Paula Marshall. She really wasn't in a lot,
but I was a big fan, so I think finally,
when I was living in Florida and I was a
member of the Dolphins, I had two roommates who happened
to be Dolphins cheerleaders, so they knew I was the
movie guy, and they're like, hey, Bill, go rent some

(11:31):
horror movies. We'll do like a horror movie night. And
I rented Hell Razer and Evil Dead, and according to them,
I went over too. They didn't care for either, but
I think I was arguing more with my roommates over
Evil Dead. I was like, how can you not like
Evil Dead? Then with Hell Razer they didn't like either
of those. I think they wanted more jump scary stuff.

(11:54):
That was really the first time I watched Hell Razor
all the way from beginning to end. I think I
was always watching bits and pieces, and I don't think
I ever got beyond Hell Raiser three. And it was
kind of funny because watching it for this episode, I
was watching it on two b and then it would
just jump into another film in the series, and I

(12:15):
think I would watch like ten minutes and go yeah, no, thanks.
So this is definitely the one of the ones that
I did like that I've seen all the way through.
That's great, So shout out to Laurie and Nicole.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Good stuff, man, I that's funny that you chose those two.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
All right, let's get into initial thoughts. What are initial
thoughts of Hell Raiser all this time later?

Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, indeed, Well we get a nice running time here,
Bill band of an hour and thirty three minutes. Not
too bad.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Best thing about horror movies.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
They're short and sweet, absolutely so no problem sitting through
the opening credits of this one for me because of
that score by Christopher Young. I love the music for this, agreed.
It's haunting awesome. It is awesome, and it's got a
triumphant sort of reoccurring theme loud horns and such and
very big and bombastic. So and it captures that sort

(13:07):
of fantastical quality of the well done Christopher Young and
Bill Bann, I'm gonna want your thoughts on this because
it's just a real interesting introduction of these characters in
this film. We just really don't know anything about them.
But the question is does it matter? So I'm going
to go into this introduction here for those that either
have or haven't seen this movie, or you haven't seen

(13:30):
the movie in a long time. We only know and
understand the relationships here in this beginning of the movie.
So Frank Cotton, we see him in the beginning of
this movie in some foreign country, at least it feels
that way. We don't know where he is, but he's
buying some sort of mysterious puzzle box and he seems
actually somewhat desperate to have it. He pays a lot
of money for it. We know nothing about who he is,

(13:52):
or what he does, or where he's from. We just
know here's a dude, he wants a box. Then all
of a sudden cuts to him in a different room,
which it feels like an attic or something with just
floorboards and paneled walls, and he opens the box and
the sparks fly. It's a puzzle box he manages to open,
and that all of a sudden, these chains start flying

(14:12):
out of the box with hooks on the end, and
they come out and it pierced his skin and they're
starting to tear them apart, and then it's another hard cut,
basically to the house. I skipped one part with the
centobites appearing, and they're putting Frank back together again. This
moves very quickly in the beginning, and it cuts to
then the house, which now we has no Frank in it,

(14:35):
but we can see that he may have been squatting
there for some time. And we were introduced to the
characters of Larry and Julia Cotton, and they have now
entered the house, and we learned that apparently this house
belonged to Larry's mother, it was in their family, and
now they're going to move into this house, but we
don't know where it's located. I don't know bill is

(14:55):
it in the suburbs of New York State. There's a
mention of Brooklyn. Julia says, well, at least it's not Brooklyn.
We don't know who these people are outside the fact
that Larry says he's making a lot of money and
supposedly this is Julia's old stomping ground or something there's
an allusion to. But we know they're married and Julia
isn't too keen on the condition of this house. They're

(15:16):
about to move into. And then we get introduced to
Christy played by Ashley Lawrence, who is Larry's daughter. She
comes into town and she's rented a room. I don't
know where this room is or whatnot, but it's nearby
this house where we don't know where that is, and
we know she doesn't want to stay at the house
because she has some weird relationship with Julia. But anyway,
we don't know where Christy came from, or where the

(15:38):
room is she's staying in now, or where she's why
she's decided to visit at this time. But she's in
town to visit her dad, so is she there to
help them move in or I don't know. We learn
that Christy's birth mother actually had died, and obviously now
we know that Larry remarried to Julia, So okay, maybe

(15:58):
a bit of a difficult relationship between Christy and Julia.
We get that. And now we find out that Frank,
the guy with the box from the beginning, has been
squatting in the house and that he's actually Larry's brother,
And through flashbacks, we learned that Julia had an affair
with Frank just before she wed Larry, and she had
an intense sexual obsession with Frank. It was one that
was filled with either S and M or some violent aspects,

(16:20):
and Frank flamed out in this affair he was having
with Julia before she married Larry, and Frank goes off
in a pursuit to discover some further source of intense
and heightened form of pleasure, which we can assume led
him to hearing about the puzzle box. So that's it.
We don't know anything about these people really at all.
It's just wild shit starts to happen in this house

(16:41):
and we kind of just have to go with it.
We accept it. My question is then, to you, Bill,
does that work for you? The way the beginning kind
of just rolls along and these people show up. We
understand their relationship to one another, but we don't know
anything else about them at all.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
You know, it's funny. I was gonna mention that this time.
I actually like that it does, and we need to
find out, along with everybody else, what is going on.
It's literally he gets a box the table. It's like
a thirty second scene and then boom, next thing you know,
he's on the floor in some room surrounded by candles,
so you just go, okay, this is kind of a

(17:18):
cult thing. He opens a box and he gets tripped apart,
and you're like, whoa, what the hell's going on? And
all these crazy creatures show up. Well, I guess we'll
just figure this out as the movie goes along. And
I was okay with it. Yeah, Yeah, And sometimes I
would say, no, I don't like that. I don't know
what the hell's going on, what any of this means.
But for this movie, it did work for me, okay,

(17:42):
because there is just so bizarre that I wanted to
find out over the course of the movie. I don't
think I want it spelled out for me from the beginning.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah, and I think it's a good writing lesson too.
When you're watching it, we really don't need all that information,
And we don't need to know what Larry Cotton's job
is specifically, or what Julia's job is, or what there
pass is, where did Frank come from, why did he
end up in Morocco or China wherever he was to
purchase the box. We don't need to know all that.
We just need to know that it happened, and then

(18:10):
we're on with our story.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah. I like that the Asia man didn't give him
any kind of warning, just kind of that oh it
was always yours right. Normally that would happen, you know,
there'd be some kind of warning like are you sure
you want to delve into this world? And nope, we
don't get that. He gets the box and next thing
you know, he's trying to open.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
It and all hell breaks loose. Cool cool, all right. Well,
you know, I was thinking back to our previous horror film,
Child's Play, and again with this one. For me, the
star of the movie really is the makeup and costume
design and a lot of the visual effects here. I
know you'll have something to say about this, Bill Bant.
The effects here are pretty awesome in spots. There are

(18:50):
some weaker spots as well, where it looks a little cheaper,
and we may get into the trivia as far as
there were some budgetary restraints on this film, but overall,
there's some crazy crasy effects and some disturbing costume designs,
and it is very very sato masochistic. There's just a

(19:11):
lot of close ups of hooks piercing the flesh. There's
huge creature which we'd later find out in Trivia. I
heard was called the Engineer that's chasing Christy down the hallway,
which is a monster I felt wasn't even necessary in
this film. I don't know, what did you think of
the effects and the makeup and costume design of this
crazy movie.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
I thought they were amazing. This movie and I'll get
into it later, only had a budget of a million
dollars and what they were able to put on screen.
Granted its eighties million dollars might go a little bit
further than today, but still what they were able to
do was really impressive. Yeah, the Engineer was probably the

(19:52):
weakest thing outside of when Kirsty banishes all the centabytes
at the end. That's explained because they literally at that
point had zero money and they were kind of doing
that on their own.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, there's, I mean, so much to talk about when
it comes to the costumes. Eye I'm not going to
get into it here. We will talk about it in
Trivia somewhat. But the Cenobites themselves, they're costuming the where
their look are extremely memorable. We've got Frank Cotton himself,
which is he goes through quite a transformation, and I'm
going to let Bill talk about that I'll talk about

(20:25):
it a little bit too, probably in our favorite scenes.
I think I'll step on my own complaint here. There
was just sometimes when the hooks were they would do
these close ups of the hooks piercing the flesh, like
the cheeks and the body part that is clearly like latex.
You could really see it didn't look like actual flesh.
But I forgive that because of the budgetary restraints, but

(20:49):
also because it's more of the idea it puts in
your head because it just looks so awful. I mean,
it's this body horror, it's this mutilation that's happening to
these characters. Like that idea and that sort of that
pain kind of grabs you in your mind, so you
kind of gloss over the effect that the effect isn't
totally effective. So moving along with more initial thoughts. Besides

(21:14):
the standout of the effects and the makeup and costume design,
I felt the actresses actually in this film where the
standouts for me upon this rewatch as an adult. So
shout out to both Claire Higgins, who portrays Julia Cotton,
Larry's wife, and Ashley Lawrence who Bill mentioned, who plays
Kirsty Cotton. It is Kirsty, not Christy, Kirsty Cotton. Claire

(21:34):
Higgins as Julie, I thought she just really plays the
sexuality and obsession with Frank Cotton extremely well. We have
to believe she'll commit murder for this ghoulish character, and
she does, although she is hesitant at first, but she
plays the levels. I was only a little thrown off
by her British accent, which seemed to kind of come

(21:55):
and go, because there's a whole thing about that with
using versus American actors in this film. But I thought
she was quite good. I thought Ashley Lawrence really strong
quote unquote final girl, if you will in this and
I was yeah, like I said earlier, immediately asking did
she go on to do anything else bigger and better?
But she continually worked so good for Ashley Lawrence. The

(22:17):
other actors in this bill banp for me were just fine.
We have Andrew Robinson as Larry Cotton. He's pretty good.
A shout out, of course, to Doug Bradley, who plays
the iconic pinhead or he's only known as the lead
Cenobite in this original film because Doug Bradley man, he's
just got that low voice that dark, commanding, resounding quality,
So he's impressive. Didn't know if you have any comments

(22:40):
on the actors in this film.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
It's funny. My big complaint is Claire Higgins. I thought
she was miscast. Really, yes, My issue was your point
is right where you have to be convinced that she'll
do this for Frank, and that part I do believe.
But what I don't believe is that her and Larry

(23:05):
would ever be a couple. To me, she seems like
the poor woman's Meg Foster. I kept looking at her.
I'm like, Wow, I'd rather have Meg Foster in this,
because you know how much I not hate Meg Foster,
but I hate the role she always plays because she
always plays someone so mean. And I'm like, oh, she'd
be perfect for this.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
That's a good call, and that's a great call. I
hate to go.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
The looks were oute, but I didn't find clear that attractive.
I understand why Frank would have an affair with Julia,
because Frank would sleep with anything, didn't matter that he
just had an obsession for that kind of behavior. But
if I saw Julia sitting alone at a bar, I'm
not going up to her.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Okay, Hey, you're just being honest and she just doesn't
specific taste. Okay, I found her. I'm on the opposite
end with this.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah, and I just think she's so cold. I don't
see what Larry sees in her at all. I don't
see it. And I still understand how Larry so oblivious
to it too.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Hmm, Okay, fair enough, we accept your opinion here. Yeah,
I'm on the opposite end. I thought thought it worked
because she was so kind of cold toward Larry and
the fact that then when you see the flashbacks with
her and Frank, you see how completely taken she is
with him being the sort of right sexually aggressive bad

(24:23):
book don't get married. Yeah, they it's a good point.
There's no she should definitely the married Frank's brother right
after their affair. Yeah, okay, Well, moving along in regards
to this budgetary restant, It's interesting that this film, which
feels so huge on a fantastical level, the fantasy and

(24:46):
the dark world aspect of it, the film's really contained.
I mean, we barely go outside of the house, and
when we do, it's really weird the choice of shots
and sequences they choose to show us. But we barely
go outside the house. There's really only two or three locations,
like the hospital, the house.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
The pet store.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
The pet store. Right, But here's one thought I had,
Bill ban. One would think that the hell Raiser House
might have become iconic after this, but this it's not
really known as one of those classic houses from horror movies,
is it not?

Speaker 1 (25:19):
To my knowledge? But again, they shot this over seas, right,
That was going to be in my next comment. Yeah,
so maybe that's why we don't see a lot of
people posting about it. I don't even know where they
shot it.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
I didn't come across that either. It's in England though somewhere.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, but I have no idea even what part.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
So that adds to the creepiness for me, Bill Bank,
This film just feels strange overall. It's very off putting
and upsetting, but in a good weird way for horror film,
because there's just an overall strangers it just it doesn't
have any big name actors in it. It's shot in England.
It feels like a foreign horror film a little bit.
And yeah, just kind of added into that whole creep

(25:58):
factor for me, and even adding more and more to
the creep factors that they wanted to have the actors
be American for some reason, and so there's some really
strange adr like overdubbing for Frank Cotton's character because it
was an English actor. And I know I'm stepping on
some trivia here, but that was just an initial thought.
I'm watching this, this is weird. This one character is

(26:20):
clearly being dubbed, and so when he was talking, that
just threw me off. So this whole movie just gave
me some creepy feelings. So I'll say right now, this
film still works for me on that dark fantasy level.
It still manages to creep into the dark corners of
my mind and make me intrigue just to want to
know what this world is, what the fuck is happening

(26:42):
within it. But watching it as an adult, you can
see some limitations because of the budget. But there's just
a couple of sequences in here that are outstanding and
you're like, how the hell did they do it? We'll
get into it. I won't get into too much detail
right now, but the design of the puzzle box itself
the deeper I just want to go into this whole

(27:02):
world and go into all the fandom wiki stuff and
if you wanted to do a deep dive into the
puzzle box, that's a lot of fun because that's got
a whole history that they came up with a fiction
behind it. I did have some issues with the fiction
of this film story because it was the case of weight,
did I miss something, there's some or there's some deleted
scenes scenes. It was kind of the reminder we have

(27:24):
Child's Play, which we just did Bill Bandt. There's some
questions and holes in this and character choices that are
confounding are questionable, and then we get to the end
and the shit hits the fan, but it feels like
it's just chaos for the sake of chaos, and that
didn't quite work for me, and we'll talk about it.
So it was a mixed bag for me on the
first rewatch. However, ultimately, when I was watching it again

(27:45):
to do notes and find our favorite scenes and moms,
I come out in favor of this big time. It's imagination.
It's singular, it's separate from the rest of the pack
and the eighties horror films. For me, it may not
hold together completely, but these ideas still get under my skin.
I'm still captured by this concept. Those are just some
of my initial thoughts. Did you want to add on

(28:06):
to that, Yeah, if you have a.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Weak stomach, I would not recommend Hell Razor if you've
not seen it before. I don't know why. The first
time I tried to watch it, I had made some nachos.
I was like, Eh, this is not a good choice
right now. But this movie is definitely gory. The special
effects are impressive, and I agree with you to all
the skin stuff. Yeah, that didn't work too great either.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
I like that it is.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
An original mythology, and you know, we meet all these
Cinnabite characters and they're interdimensional beings obsessed with pain and pleasure,
and you don't know where they're really from. Are they
from one of the levels of hell? Where they come from?
Are are they their own thing? I don't know. The

(28:53):
Cinnabytes themselves are cool. You have Pinhead, the lead Lady Cinnabyte,
the chatterbox guy, the bet Sky with the cool glasses,
butter Ball. Yes. I was really a fan of Ashley
Lawrence in this. I feel like she does kind of
ground the film. She is the one character to me
that that really works, and because of her, that's why

(29:16):
I enjoyed the movie. There's just a lot of weird stuff.
There's just so many things about this that are different
from typical horror movies that we cover. It's usually just
hack and slash, and this really gets into the exploration
of obsession, the power of compulsion, temptation, what the cost
is of seeking a forbidden experience. And I found this

(29:40):
one line that I thought was great. It goes curiosity
doesn't always lead to answers, Sometimes it opens doors. You
can't close this this movie to a t right. It's
definitely something unique and the fact that it just kind
of scratches to the surface of the mythology makes you
want to know more. And unfortunately, I know the other

(30:02):
movies went in such weird directions that didn't capture what
this base. The foundation that this movie sets, you were
to only to watch this one and know of none
of the others. I think it does what it needs
to do overall as a horror movie. Mm hm, So
that's my initial thoughts. All right, let's get in two

(30:24):
favorite scenes or moments. What are some of our favorite
scenes of moments from Hell Raiser.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Let's talk about it, Bill Bandon, I should tell our
audience I've wanted to do this film for a long time.
I think I've always brought it up on our lists
when we're figuring out our schedules. So I thank you
Bill for coming around too. And it's not that you
didn't want to do this, but I'm glad we are
finally doing it. I finally relent it because I have
my own obsession with this film. But yeah, it's interesting

(30:52):
because I was just thinking upon our initial thoughts combined,
and I'm glad you brought up the Centabites a little bit,
because if there's people listening to this I haven't seen
this film for any reason, they'd be like, I still
have no idea what this movie is about. What are
they talking about? There's no concrete foundation, like real thing
to hold on to. What are cenobites? What is this
puzzle box? What is happening in this movie? Well we'll

(31:13):
get into it a little bit here with our favorite
scenes and moments, But my first favorite scene is the
reincarnation of Frank Cotton, or in the research, I believe
they call it the birthing scene. So up to this point,
we do know that Frank Cotton went to a foreign
country to seek the ultimate forms of pleasure and in

(31:34):
any way he could find it, and somehow his search
or research led him to this merchant who sold him
this puzzle box. So when we see in the open
that Frank Cotton plays with this puzzle box a little
bit manages to open it and unleashes an basically other
world which could be described as hell. We're not sure,

(31:56):
but what has happened is he had gone to his
home or I should say his mother's home where he
was squatting, went into a room, opened the box and
opened up this whole other world of sato masochistic pain
and pleasure, and he gets torn apart literally And what
ends up happening is that his guts are actually basically

(32:19):
attached underneath the floorboards of this room because when his
destruction occurred, one of the cenobytes that had appeared and
we do get to see the cenobytes near the beginning
of the film. They don't speak, but we have the
lead cenobite, we have the female cetabite, we have the chatterer,
and we have Butterball. And these are four very specific looking,

(32:42):
crazy looking cenobites that are basically the protectors or guardians
of this realm, and they enforce this pain and pleasure
upon the victims that decide to enter this world. And
they are putting together the pieces of Frank Cotton after
they just him, and we see the lead cenobite put

(33:02):
the puzzle box like back together, and then all of
a sudden, this otherworldly, hellish landscape disappears, and now the
room which Frank Cotton was in in his mother's house
returns to normal, is just a bare room. It's completely empty.
Now cut to Larry Cotton, Frank's brother, and Larry's wife,
Julia Cotton, are going to move into this house. And

(33:26):
when they're moving in, Larry manages to cut his hand
on a rusty nail that's protruding from a column somewhere,
and he goes up to Julia into this room where
Frank had performed as ritual with the box previous, and
he shows his hand to Julia, and at this point

(33:47):
Julia is just standing there and it's like, I'll help you,
which she does, but it doesn't prevent the fact that
his blood is dripping all over these floorboards in this room.
And after Larry and Julia exit, we see that the
floorboards in this room start to absorb the blood, and

(34:07):
the camera lores beneath the floorboards and we see what
we can assume are again these literal guts of Frank
sticking to the boards underneath. And when these guts, particularly
that the heart I assume is what we're looking at,
absorbs this blood from Larry, it begins to inflate and deflate. Now, meanwhile,
Larry's daughter Kirsty played by Ashley Lawrence, takes her dad

(34:29):
to the hospital for stitches in his hand that he
tore apart with that nail. And it cuts back to
this what I'm just calling the hell room. And now
the floorboards are starting to shake. Bubbles of goo are forming,
and suddenly two separate bones shoot upward through this goo,
through the floorboards, and we soon see that they are arms.

(34:52):
They're arms of a bone, and they bend at the elbows,
and what we're watching is a human skeletal form emerging
from the floor. This is an insane sequence. The effects
in the makeup are wonderful. We see the formation of
this person's hands. There's some flesh forming, it's blood mixed
with the goo. We see a human brain taking formation,

(35:15):
the brain stem connects to the brain. It's all intercut
with these rats up in this room, cowering and climbing
over one another, and we finally see this human skeleton
covered in goo push itself upward and it emits this
horrible scream, And because we know what had happened previous,
we can assume that this is Frank Cotton's body coming

(35:37):
back to life. And this all happens backed by the
great score of Christopher Young. The music is outstanding as
this is happening, and it's not a long sequence, and
I've watched it several times now. It's like watching a
train wreck. You can't keep your eyes off of it
because of how it's shot. A lot of it and
I won't step on too much trivia here, but how

(35:57):
this particular skeleton, in the flesh and the goo we'll
come together literally out of the floor, is pretty wild.
What do you think about this whole sequence? Bill Oh?

Speaker 1 (36:08):
I had this down as one of my favorites also,
and I like how it's set up where Larry cuts
himself and he's screamings about blood, so of course he's
got to find Julia and he's bleeding out and dripping
all over the floor and they're inner cutting with the
blood literally being seaked into the wood m h. And

(36:29):
then all of a sudden, like you said, the scoo
starts pulling out and you're like, what the hell is
going on? And it takes a while for you to
figure out, Oh, this is Frank being brought back from
wherever he was right and watching it some of the stuff,
I could figure out how they could do it, you know,
some of it has stopped motion, some of it's puppetry,

(36:50):
but there is a couple of those shots. I'm like,
I don't know how they figured this out with eighties
special effects. It's a wild sequence. You can't keep your
eyes off that. If you're a horror fan, you just
keep watching over and over because I'm like, all right,
how did they do this? It's really disgusting. I need
to put my nachos down and just see what happens next.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yeah, it'll turn your stomach for sure. It made me
think of the wonderful transformation sequence from American were Wolf
in London, because that's just one of the classic all
time transformation sequences. But this is not even a transformation.
This is more of a reincarnation, Like this is a berth.
So it's good. From nothing to everything. We just watch

(37:35):
and it appears that it's a lot of it was
shot in reverse, but you're watching flesh come to life
and cover parts of the body, or the brain forming
and the bones starting to come together, and you see
his rib cage and then there's sort of like guts
inside of it and covered in goo and he's dripping,
and then all of a sudden, the final shot is
just like the upper half of his torso rib cage,

(37:57):
his bony arms and skull just screaming out in anguish
or pain, and it's a horrific sequence, and the music
is building and you're just like, what the fuck is
happening this week?

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Because at first you think it's a creature, Yeah, exactly,
And then it takes you a while like, oh wait,
that's a person, and oh that's probably Frank so I
like that too. That not sure what is happening at first,
and then oh, okay, all right, I think I got it. Now.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
It's a lot of fun to watch. If you have
a strong stomach, Yes, if.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
You have a strong sum you and I have the
same three scenes.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah, I was gonna let you take this next one.
Or whatever you like.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
I would even say in scenes just monster Frank in general.
So after that initial I called the Frank's Resurrection scene
just the Frank effects makeup effects itself. I love every
phase of it. So Julie comes back up to the
attic at some point because you're having a dinner party,

(38:58):
and she kind of excused herself. She goes upstairs and
she goes into the attic, and then that's when she
sees Frank for the first time since the affair, thinking
he's somewhere else, and we see a there's enough of
Frank where he has the full body, but he doesn't
have enough use of his legs, and he surprises Julia,
and Julia tries to run, and he gets to the

(39:20):
door before her and reveals himself and says, hey, I
need some help. You promised me back when we're having
to the fair that you would do anything for me,
and he basically says he needs blood in order to
finish this transformation and back to normal Frank. And of
course he isn't shocked, but just that look they have
him at that point, maybe he's sixty percent finished. So

(39:43):
the more blood he gets, the more he's transforming. Close
to his regular self. But every incarnation of Frank, I
loved it because then there's the next one where he's
basically skinless, and then it's just funny because then he
starts wearing clothes, but he's bleeding all over his clothes,
like sometimes clothes are literally soaked in his blood. So
just every incarnation of what they referred to as monster Frank,

(40:06):
he looks awesome.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
I couldn't agree with you more. Regarding the transformation, I'm
glad you called the birthing scene the resurrection. I think
I said reincarnation. Resurrection is the correct word to describe
that initial scene when Frank comes back to life. So
if people are wondering what the hell this movie is about,
this is kind of the major through line through the
bulk of the movie. Frank had opened the puzzle box

(40:30):
and went to this hellish other world ruled by these cenobites,
and we think, well, he's trapped there forever. But what
ended up happening was some remainder of his guts were
still under the floorboards. Larry's blood triggered this resurrection. Now
Frank's coming back to life and he needs more blood

(40:50):
to become fully formed. As a human being again, and
he is recruiting his ex lover Julia to help him
with this, and Julia throughout the film then has to
bring him sacrifice these sacrificial men, which then she will
kill for him, or at least knock unconscious, and Frank

(41:12):
will then take their life force, their blood and continue
to grow and become more human. And that's kind of
the through line through this, just to explain for the
listeners in case.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
Frank is obsessed with sensual pleasure, that's what it is,
to the point where sex is not enough for him,
and that's why he seeks out this box because opening
the box is supposed to take him to this realm
of extreme pleasure, but that's not really what it is.
It's pleasure and pain, interdimensional pleasure and pain. So he
gets trapped in this dimension and the blood is almost

(41:44):
like a key to get him out.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
Correct he does say, yeah, pain and pleasure indivisible is
what he discovered in this other realm. So what the
scene I was going to go over briefly was what
I just called the first kill because what he said
when he first reveals himself to Julia, the blood on
the floor, it brought me back, and she's like, back
from where And he's like, you can't leave me like this.

(42:06):
The blood brought me this far. I need more. You
have to heal me. So she agrees to help him,
and Julia goes to a bar she pretends to be single.
We assume this is during the day when Larry's off
to work. While she's at the bar being her single
version of herself. A gentleman notices she brings him back
to the house. She has some trepidation because she's never

(42:28):
done this before. She's about to sacrifice this guy to
this monster Frank, and so she eventually takes him upstairs
to the attic room. This is confusing to me, Bill,
Is it an attic or is it just a room?
It's one of the rooms on the upstairs level, right,
but it looks like an attic. It's hard to describe.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
It's almost like an attic that's separated into three different rooms,
which I've never seen before.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah, it's a strange configuration. Regardless, she's she's taken this
poor sap who's really drunk, up to this room and
she's going to have sex with him on the floor.
But he says he's got to use the bathroom first,
and then she goes for a hammer that she has
prepared hanging off on the wall to the side hidden,

(43:13):
and she decides to basically beat him to near death.
And she goes to town on this guy and smacks him,
and there's some great bloody effects. This guy's face is
all messed up. And now this is the first victim.
This will be the first the feeding for Frank. And
there's a great shot. Actually, the shots of Monster Frank

(43:33):
before he's formed his legs, when he's just slithering across
the floor is really creepy. And before Frank's about to
go to town on this victim, you hear him say
to Julia, don't look at me, because it's going to
be awful what he's about to do to this guy.
So she goes to exit the attic room and you
just see this quick shot of the slithering half body
of Frank going to the injured victim to suck his

(43:56):
life force out, and you just hear these gross some
good sound as in this too, these gross like sound
effects of him just eating this guy. So I thought
Claire Higgins as Julia was really good in this scene.
She's freaking out she's had to commit murder here basically
for Frank, and she leaves this attic room. She goes

(44:16):
to clean herself up. She's got blood all over herself.
Larry comes home in the middle of all this, but
afterward she goes back into the attic room and she
has to take the guy's body out and she puts
it in a different room. Frank is standing before her.
Now his legs are formed, and he says, see, it's
making me whole again. Every drop of blood puts more

(44:37):
flesh on my bones. And we both want that, don't
we come here? I want to touch you. Come to
daddy so creepy, but he looks fantastic. Just to say,
I'm just agreeing what Bill is saying. The makeup effects
on skinless Frank look fantastic. He takes her hand. There's
goo dripping everywhere this whole time. You see partial bones
on his head. It just looks so cool because there's

(44:58):
just a dude standing here. It's like, have you ever
been to the body exhibit? It's like that. I mean,
he's just got no skin, but it looks real. I
don't know if there's anything, but it's just that that
first kill sequence is pretty impactful, and I thought Claire
Higgins acting was great.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Now I think I would have to agree with you
also with her acting in that scene, because at first,
here's Frank asking her to kill and she doesn't want
to do it, but at the same time, she's obsessed
with him, and this is what obsessions, calling her to
kill someone. And then in the middle of the kill
you can see she's getting pleasure out of it. So

(45:35):
she's done a one to eighty. Yep. I think how
those themes come about in that scene are great. And
there's that one shot when the guy falls and his
mouth open and you can see that she knocked out
like three of his teeth with the hammer on the
second hit, that's what hits him in the back of
the head and then smacks him across the face. It's
some gory shit, man, it's really violent. It's super violent,

(45:56):
and it's just scary of the fact that she can
bring herself to do that almost so easily, because then
she keeps doving it over and over again. So yeah,
I do like her in that scene.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
You're absolutely right, she's playing a lot of levels here
because she's going back and forth as to there's obviously
dealing with some morality of the situation. But when then
after she murders that guy, you can see she's taking
some pleasure in it. Then when she goes into the
bathroom and she's wiping blood off of her face, she
is in shock, and it's great. But then when she

(46:26):
goes back to see Frank, and Frank is getting better
and more fully formed, and he's standing on two legs now,
and they have this conversation and Frank is just a
dirty bastard and he's saying these things like come to daddy.
He's touching her with his sinewy, goopy like hands and
she takes his hand and this is a callback to

(46:49):
one of the flashbacks early in the film, and puts
his finger on her lips. She caresses her lips with
his gross, skinless finger, and basically that sums up this movie.
That's like, what are we doing here? What is this?
Because there's these sexual overtones and it's real horror, it's
body horror, it's all of it combined, and she's playing

(47:09):
the levels and anyway, that's what I'm talking about. That's
why the scene is I think.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Very effective, agreed, And last, what do we conclude with
that we both like.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
What are we talking about here? I believe Bill and
I share our last favorite scene, which would be Kirsty
makes a deal with the cenobites at the hospital.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Yeah. So Kirsty is following Julia and sees that Julia
is bringing the man to the house and she goes
upstairs to see what's going on and finds this man
partially dead because Julia's tried to kill him. Frank's been
sucking the essence out and then what monster. Frank reveals
himself to Kirsty as her uncle, and then he almost

(47:53):
tries to you know, I'm just gonna say rape. He
just tries to rape her, and she tries to escape.
She finds the puzzle box. She sees Frank's very upset
that she picked it up, and she throws it out
the window and then runs out of the house and
picks it up and passes out. Wakes up in the hospital,
no idea what's going on. The nurse or the doctor

(48:14):
comes in and leaves her.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
The box, which is a wild thing.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
It's such a weird So she's in the room but
nothing else to do, so she starts playing with the
puzzle box. And whoops. She accidentally figures it out and
opens it, and strange things start happening. Wall opens into
her room and she goes through this hallway and that's
when we see the engineer, and the engineer chases her

(48:38):
out of the hallway and she runs back into the
hospital room and she turns around and the wall is closed,
but she can hear that creature on the other side
of the wall. And then one of my favorite shots
is we see one of the walls of the hospital
room and it turns black with this yellow glow behind it,
and then we got the fog rolling in and then
all this crazy symbolism with the TV going on and

(49:02):
off with a blooming flower and Ivy is reverse flowing
with blood and all of a sudden, I think, is
it the chatter Cinnabyte Yes basically backs her into her
corner and sticks its fingers in our mouth, and then
we meet the rest of the Cinnabytes and they basically
told her, well, you open the box, you're coming with us,

(49:23):
and she's like, uh no, I had no intention to
open this box, and they're like, well, you open it,
you got to come with us, and that's when she
puts one on one together and realizes Frank had opened
this box and she says, I can take it to
Frank because Frank's escaped her world, and they don't believe
her at first, but they decide to make a deal.

(49:45):
If you can prove to us that Frank has escaped,
we will take him instead of you maybe, and at
that point they let her go. But yeah, this is
the first time we really get to see all the
cinnabytes and they get the talk. Just the scene when
she's in the hospital and all these weird things start happening.
I just thought that was really cool. But you can

(50:06):
do a little budget sometimes impresses me, and that's definitely
one of these moments.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
For sure, it's really cool. I'm a little hot and
cold on the engineer that we'd monster chasing her down
the hallway in the sequence. It's still kind of cool,
like it looks cool, but you're watching it by today's
standards too, So as an adult, I'm watching and go, Okay,
that's a little cheesy, but cool design of the creature. Regardless,
it's for me. When after that first sequence and she's

(50:35):
back in the hospital room and the walls then turn
to black and you have the glow emitting from behind
is really cool. It's when the cenobytes appear and that
chatterer is really cool. But like, you nailed it, you
said it. This is really the meaty scene for the cenobytes,
when we get to see them in all their glory.
We see them clearer and we get dialogue between them

(51:00):
and Kirsty and we understand a little bit more what
they're about because the lead cenobyte says, the box you
opened it, we came, and she says, who are you?
And he responds explorers in the further regions of experience,
demons to some angels, to others, and she's like, go
to hell, and the female cenobite says, we can't not alone,

(51:21):
and then lead cenebite replies, you solved the box. We came.
Now you must come with us taste our pleasures. And
it's just like these lines and the way that Doug
Bradley delivers them, And of course at the end, Kirsty says, hey,
Frank Cotton escaped you guys, and they're like, well, so,
what what does it have to do with you? And

(51:42):
she says, I can lead you to him and you
can take him back instead of me. So she's making
that deal and that's when that big quote comes in
from the top, when we'll tear your soul apart right there.
So it's amazing if you don't. It's like I'm trying
to describe some of these cenebytes for the audience a
little bit like there severely goth. They're wrapped tightly with

(52:02):
these black leather costumes. The lead cenobite has what looks
like a priest's skirt. They're all bald with very pale makeup.
Lead cenobite of course has the pins or are they
thin nails sticking out of his face all over the place,
with like a grid of nails on his face and
his head, black eye contacts. They have bloody open gashes,

(52:23):
wounds on their chests, their bodies. The chatterer's lips are
pulled way back almost over his head to expose his
jaws that are clattering and chattering the whole time. It's
pretty awesome, and it's like who thought this up?

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Seriously, It's like Tim Burton designs when r X ray
it actually, hmm, good call. There's some freaky stuff. Okay.
Trying to move on to Swiss cheese and complaint department,
And why don't we call Swiss cheese.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Because although this movie is delicious, it does have hook
piercing skin holes.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Yes, it doesn't have those hook piercing skin hooles. We
just file with the complaints apartment. So, Jason, would you
have four cheese or complaints?

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Well, I'm kind of I think cutting to that first
kill sequence actually, because I just have some logistical questions.
I guess here, when Julia is killing these men, she
where she's bringing these sacrificial men to Frank so he
can suck their blood or eat their flat, whatever it
is he needs to do to reform. Where's she putting

(53:26):
these dead bodies? We see her pick up one and
like stash the body in one of the side rooms
of the attic, and I'm like, she's just gonna put
the body in there. They just moved into this house
and they're still unpacking and going through things. I wouldn't
think that's a great place to stash a dead body
that's been mutilated.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
I'm with you one hundred percent. That's what I had too. Okay,
when they eventually start smelling, when you wonder why you
had like eight thousand flies in your house.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
M I didn't get that either. Yeah, it's weird because
we then have to assume she eventually, I mean, there's
events three bodies in that room. But so yeah, I
had that, and that also when Kirsty you were talking
about this, when Kirsty comes home in the middle of
Julia taking one of the guys, luring one of the
guys up to the room to have Frank kill eat

(54:17):
this guy whatever it is. Eventually Kirsty goes up to
the room, Frank reveals himself to her, tries to rape her.
She gets the box throws out all of that the
first time Kirsty sees Frank, because what happens in the
sequence is Kirsty goes upstairs to the attic area and
Julia has gone and hidden in another room. I don't

(54:37):
know why Julia is hiding at this point, but the
not the that we think the one guy that she
Julia just lured into the room for Frank, he's not
totally dead. He kind of leans out of the attic
room all gray faced and bloody, and he's reaching towards Kirsty,
who's freaking out like what the hell's happening, saying help

(54:58):
me help me, and eventually Frank has to expose himself
to Kirsty. He comes out and grabs the dead guy
and kills him off. And if you are Kirsty and
you see the skinless person in front of you, because
it's Frank, He's just colored in blood without any skin,
I would freak the f out. She just simply goes no, no,

(55:20):
And then Frank starts talking to her and says, I'm Frank,
and oh, you've grown up, Kirsty, You're beautiful. But her
reaction was confounding to me. To seeing Frank for the
first time, you would lose your mind and run the
hell out of the house, right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
I would never hear him saying that he was uncle Frank,
or might have caught that while I was running out
the front door going to the police.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Yeah, but it's a weird reaction she has to seeing
him for the first time, because it's as if she
recognizes him as Frank, because she just looks at him
and goes no, no. And I was like, what are
you talking? You don't even know who that is.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Yeah, got to move the story, I guess.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Yeah, Yeah, so I have another I got some other
things to say. Go ahead, man, what do you got here?

Speaker 1 (56:05):
All right? This house is disgusting. And we have where
Larry and Julie are downstairs and they're watching boxing match
and Larry hears something. He's like, oh, let me go
upstairs and investigate, and of course Julia is all worried
about it. Goes up to the attic, wow, and he
sees rats, rats in his attic, and he doesn't seem

(56:28):
at all worried about that. I'm like, rats, they can
spread disease. I'd be sending up an exterminator and then
we'd have the exterminator scene where he gets killed by Frank.
But how you not at all phased that you have
rats in your house?

Speaker 2 (56:44):
It's gross.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
Let alone just the house itself is in disrepair and
they don't seem to be doing anything about it. Everything
in this movie is disgusting. Even there's that makeout scene
with Kirstine and our boyfriend in the front of this
wall that looks like it's like fece smeared on it,
and I'm like, oh, I would not be kissing there.
I'm sure police.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Kiss Yeah, all valid complaints and uh, it's very curious,
but I agree. You see rats in the house that's
a real problem. There has to be some reaction there. Yeah,
you just don't say, oh, you know, that's normal just
to have rats in Yeah, probably not good. But you're
right this whole like you when you point out these details,

(57:23):
the whole movie is really gross. It's very unsettling.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Oh yeah, maggots, cockroaches, disgusting.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Yeah, it's almost like you can smell it through the
TV screen. Yes, you know, this ties into the scene
I was just complaining about where I was like, why
isn't Kirsty reacting in a different way to seeing Frank
for the first time as this skinless person, because that's horrific.
But after that sequence, because they then Bill described they

(57:51):
go into the room and they tussle a little bit
over the box, and basically Frank all that Frank says
is give me the box, and she says you want it,
well you can have it, and throws it out the
window and that's it. Then she goes out, she run
finally runs out, grabs the box, and then she ends
up in the hospital. So later on, when she unlocks

(58:13):
the box, the puzzle box in the hospital room and
the center, the cenobytes are summoned. She makes this deal
with him. But I'm like, how would you even have
any knowledge of the fact that Frank had escaped them?
She doesn't know any of that, right, she doesn't have
any knowledge. So we quickly put that together. So all
of a sudden, now she's making a deal with the cenobytes, going,

(58:33):
do you know Frank Cotton? Frank Cotton got away from you.
She doesn't know who the Cenobytes are, who, what this
world is? That Frank Cotton had been there and was
destroyed by them initially and then was resurrected. She doesn't
have any of that knowledge. But now she's making a
deal saying, Frank Cotton escaped you. I'll give you Frank
and you let me go. How would you even know

(58:54):
any of that? There's a hole there.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
Right, Yeah. It was kind of funny, like does Senatebites
even know he's Frank Cotton? Yeah, let me check my rolodex,
right right, right, that's that could be a problem.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Yeah, uh for me.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
When Ashley does come back to the house after her
stay at the hospital, cannot figure out there's something off
with her father, That's what I had. Next, That's exactly
what I had, Because we find out that Larry is
a little queasy when it comes to blood, and you
could tell he's got blood in his collar, you could
tell that he's got blood on his forehead and he's

(59:31):
acting normal. No way in hell, how do you not
see that? It's so obvious. I get you're in a
frantic state, but you would still know something is off
with your dad if he looked like that, like why,
you know, why? Why is their blood? And then if
you looked down on it and didn't seem at all
phased by it, then you're like, oh, wait, you're not

(59:52):
my dad. I gotta get the hell out of here.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
Thousand percent. So here at this point in the story,
Kirsty has now come back to the house with the
puzzle box, which is another complaint I have because it
actually disappears it's in her possession, and then it disappears
halfway through this whole sequence. This whole ending has a
lot of problems, but the one being obviously she would
know something's up with her dad since he's got blood

(01:00:15):
all surrounding the outside of his face, because we know
as an audience that that's not her dad, that's actually Frank.
Frank had killed a father, which they skip, we don't
get to see that. I understand kind of why they
did that because we're supposed to think that Larry is Larry,
but then find the reveal is Larry actually is Frank.
Frank just took Larry's skin. Frank is actually wearing Larry's skin.

(01:00:39):
So Kirsty thinks Larry's Larry that she's talking, but no,
it's obvious he's got blood everywhere. So I agree with
you on that. Do you want to get into this
ending sequence? Did you have any other complaints because I
had just commented ending. Yeah. So now Kirsty, she had
the box and then the Box of the Spirit, well
it ended up in the death grip of Julie at
one point. To get the puzzle box back, and now

(01:01:03):
what she's going to do is vanquish each cenobyte throughout
because the cenobytes, although they made this deal with Kirsty
that if they got Frank Cotton back, she would be
allowed to live, well, they go back on their deal
and they're coming after her for some reason. So she
gets ahold of the puzzle box once again starts reconfiguring

(01:01:25):
it to basically send each cenebyte one at a time
back to this hellish realm, and so we watch this
happen as the whole house is falling apart around Kersey.
So she's going through the house as the cenobytes are
chasing her, and you get to see her like tweak

(01:01:46):
the box and all of a sudden, lead cenebite disappears
and tweak it now female cenobite disappears, and at one
point she goes up against Butterball, but instead of making
him disappear, the house falls down on him. The structure,
the falling debris falls on top of him, and I'm like,
that's it. She never actually vanquishes him and sends him

(01:02:09):
back to the hellish realm. So I was like, does
that correct Bill? Did I see that correctly? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
I don't think that would really affect him. But I
think if they had more of a budget, we would
have saw that happen. I think they're like, all right,
he's indisposed, and probably when all the other ones disappeared,
he disappeared too.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
Okay, Yeah, the ending is just a little rough because
then they find it's basically Kirsty and her boyfriend Steve too.
We haven't talked about at all here that's.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
A known reason too. Yeah, if he wasn't in the movie,
what it made a difference? Not it does nothing, But
they escaped the house. As it's a very like Poltergeist
ending where we are to assume I guess the house
just burns to the ground. Then there's another character, this vagrant,
this homeless guy that appears throughout the movie that doesn't
make any sense either, appears at the end. Basically, Kirsty's

(01:02:58):
gonna let go of this Box's done with the puzzle box.
But this vagrant we saw earlier in the film shows
up at the end after the house is burnt to
the ground and is going to now take the puzzle
box for himself, when all of a sudden, he transforms
into this winged, skeletal creature and flies away with the
puzzle box. And I'm like, what the hell just happened?

(01:03:20):
But then I have to admit, there's like a good bookend.
We're back in Morocco with this merchant selling the box
once again, but to someone new. So I like that bookend,
But everything that led up to that and this ending
of this film was nonsense. Yeah. I love how Steve
wasn't fazed by the wiggle demon either just kind of like, oh,
there it goes just flying off.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
That's a running thing. You nailed it, Bill, That's a
running through throughout the film. There's just some wild reactions
from characters like going, what, Yeah, how are you not
reacting to this? Or that just doesn't make any logical
sense you wouldn't react, or you overreact. I don't know.
It's very confusing. So those are some complaints.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
I forgot how the movie and it because I'm thinking
to myself, you got to destroy the box, and then
when they're at the beach and they're burning it, I'm like, oh, okay,
she's trying to destroy it, so what the hell happens?
And then I forgot about the vagrant turning into a
winged demon flying off and like totally, oh all right,
that was kind of neat, but that was also really

(01:04:20):
fucking weird.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Yeah, just out of the blue. So is that where
they were at the beach with the box then with
those that's what I'm guessing. Okay, so the house didn't
well I mean the house.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Was destroyed though, right, I think so, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
Because it was falling apart the whole time, So it's
just yeah, okay, all right, weird ending, but they didn't
have a lot of money to work with, so it
just kind of literally winged it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Try to be forgiving.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
What that's you're right? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
All right? I tried to go on to hey, it's
that actor.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
Oh right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
So this segment we spotlight a character actor you have
seen in many other films, an actor making their big
screen debut, or an actor that makes an uncredited cameo.
Is that actor? Who do we choose this week? Jason?
Because I think there's like ten people in this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Yeah, this was a little bit of a tough one.
So we'd like to choose an actor that we deem familiar,
but we just can't quite play them, or we don't
they're not a household name. So I decided to go
with one of our lead actors, Andrew Robinson, who portrays
Larry Cotton, Kirsty's father, Frank Cotton's brother, Julia's husband, Andrew Robinson.

(01:05:28):
He is an American actor from New York City. Throughout
the sixties and seventies, Robinson performed a wide variety of theater,
movie and television roles. These included the infamous scorpio killer
in Dirty Harry Way, back in seventy one. And then
this is funny on IMDb it says he did a
stint on Ryan's Hope, the soap opera show from nineteen

(01:05:53):
seventy five, but he actually did one hundred and sixty
nine episodes. I think that's a little more than a stint,
but that actually earned him an Emmy nomination. So there
you go. Moving on to his eighties snapshot if you will,
he does a bunch of TV episodes, everything from The
Dukes of Hazard to The eighteen to Cagney and Lacy
to Moonlighting. Between all of that, he was in the

(01:06:14):
film Mask from eighty five. He plays a detective named
Detective Monty from Cobra in eighty six. He's in This
hell Raiser in eighty seven. He's also in Shoot to
Kill in nineteen eighty eight, which we covered on this
very podcast, and I was like, ah, of course, that's
definitely something I recognize him from, because isn't he one

(01:06:34):
of the group of like hikers that goes with that
Clancy Brown joins up with and yeah. He also then
goes on to play Liberachi in the TV movie Liberachi
in nineteen eighty eight. After that, he was in Child's Play, three,
does a bunch more TV, and then he lands the
role of Elim Garak for thirty seven episodes of Star

(01:06:56):
Trek Deep Space nine, a show that you've become familiar
with just recently, Bill Bant.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
I'm going back and watching that show. I missed it
the first time out, and he's been on it once
so far. Okay, so I still got what twenty twenty
nine more times to see him? Thirty six apparently, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
Ok, I still have to see him thirty five.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
Yeah, so he's gonna pop up thirty five more times
a million season one right now.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
But I do recall him from the show. I was
a fan of Deep Space nine. He's great, and he
yes portrays Elan Garic, an exiled spy from the Cardassian
Union that was from nineteen ninety three to nineteen ninety nine.
He goes on to do more TV, primarily, and in
twenty twenty four loaned his voice to play Garak once
again in an episode of the animated series Star Trek.

(01:07:42):
Lower decks a little trivia. We know that you know?
He portrayed the Scorpio killer in Dirty Harry, which led
to him receiving serious death threats via telephone after the
film's release, which is crazy. He wrote a novel about
the star Trek Deep Space nine character he played, which
is entitled A Stitch in Time. You know, he almost

(01:08:02):
got the part of Odo on Deep Space nine after
reading for the part, but was chosen for the recurring
role of Garic instead. Pretty cool, Andrew Robinson or hey
it's that actor this week?

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
Yeah, I would say I probably know most from Jerdi Harry.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
For sure, as soon as I saw those photos. Oh well, yep, yep,
of course. Yeah, he's the he's the main battie.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Time to move on to facts and trivia. What are
some facts in trivia we have about hell.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Raiser, the Chatterer, and Butterball. Cenobites had dialogue in the
original script, However, when their makeup made coherent speech impossible,
their lines were given to the female cenobyte and especially
the lead cenebite, Pinhead, which helped to cement his reputation
as the film's trademark character.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
Yeah, so I think in the book Pinhead is not
the lead character. He's also known as Priests. He's not
known as Pitthead. That was something the crew came up with,
so I didn't know this. So there was a sequel
to the book, and it was called The Scarlet Gospels,
and in that book, Clivee Barker kills off the Pinhead character,

(01:09:08):
which obviously does not happen in the movies because he's
in I think there's eleven movies, so he's in all those.
So surprised about that. I think Clyte Barker didn't like
the fact that Pinhead was called Pinhead and decided, you
know what, off of my books.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
Yeah, yeah, this film takes a lot of liberties with
the actual novel.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
Clivee Barker insisted that quote unquote, Pinhead's personality be more
evocative of Christopher Lee's portrayal of Count Dracula. Quote. Part
of the chill of Dracula surely lies in the fact
that he's very clearly and articulately aware of what he
is doing. You feel that this is a penetrating intelligence.
And I don't find dumb things terribly scary. I find
intelligence scary, particularly twisted intelligence. It's one of the reasons

(01:09:54):
why Hannibal Lecter is scary, isn't it. It's because you
always feel that he's going to be three jumps ahead
of you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
So, as we mentioned a bunch of times, the production
basically had no budget and director Clive Barker had to
find creative methods of dealing with issues. Shooting in a
house with only a single camera to spare, Barker was
forced to rely on overhead and zoom shots due to
shooting and straints in limited areas to move in. So
the house was an actual house that they were shooting inside.

(01:10:21):
The only time I think they were on stage was
for the attic room. So several of the effects, including
Larry's blood being sucked into the floor in Frank's rebirth,
were either reshot due to looking unconvincing, or required additional
funding from New World Pictures to complete because of cost overruns.
Barker himself has said that the dodgy nature of the

(01:10:44):
FX can be traced to him completing the majority of
the work over a single weekend while getting drunk with
a Greek animator after filming rafts. So at the end,
when all the citabites are disappearing with that yellow, that's
Clive Barker and I guess animator were literally drawing on
the cells to make that happen.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
That's great, and that just led into my I have
the same trivia here, and it was just Barker had
commented that he thinks the FX turned out pretty well
considering the amount of alcohol the too consumed that weekend
while working. YEP, I love this little bit. When Clive
Barker first showed the film to his mother, she cried
tears of joy upon seeing her son's name in the
opening credits. He leaned over and whispered that that would

(01:11:29):
be the happiest she would be for the next two hours.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
Yeah, it'd be interesting to hear what her take was.
Actor was all said and done. I mean, no matter what,
she's proud that her son made the movie. But what
the hell is this?

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
So? The concept of a cube being used as a
portal to hell has its basis in the urban legend
of the Devil's Toy Box, which concerns a six sided
cube constructed of inward facing mirrors. According to legend, individuals
who enter the structure and then close it will undergo surreal,

(01:12:02):
disturbing phenomenon that will simultaneously grant them a revelatory experience
and permanently warp their mind. This is crazy built the
Devil's Toy Box most commonly refers to an urban legend
about a room with mirrored walls, floors, and ceiling that
is said to drive people to madness and is sometimes
linked to the Hell Raiser movies. It is also the

(01:12:22):
title of a twenty seventeen horror movie in a nonfiction
book about Prometheus technology threats, and has appeared in other media.
But the urban legend originated in northern Louisiana, where a
real life Halloween attraction with this name, The Devil's Toy Box,
was reportedly shut down after only a week due to
the severe reactions of people who entered. Here's the incident.

(01:12:44):
The attraction was shut down by the city council after
just one week because visitors experienced extreme reactions, including one
man who lasted four minutes and thirty seven seconds before
becoming mute and wide eyed, and another woman who had
a heart attack. Jesus, I just had to conclude that
it's a little bit of a tangent, but that's wild man,

(01:13:04):
because just this is all in free where this idea
of like a box that unleash's hell comes from and
has now been associated with Hell Raiser. The Devil's Toy Box.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
And if we mentioned that the puzzle box itself is
known as the Lament configuration. I never knew that going
into this. I just always thought it was a puzzle box.
I don't even know if they mentioned that in any
of the other movies.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
That's how I came about the Devil's Toy Box. Information
was looking up the box and you go to the
hell Raiser fandom wiki and it starts giving you all
this background lore and stuff, and I'm like, whoa, this
is some crazy stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
This I found funny. So Pinhead, who was played by
Doug Bradley, he was actually given a choice when filming
to either play the Cinnabyte or a mover, and Bradley
considered doing the mover part because he wouldn't have makeup
and people would actually see him. I think he made
the right choice. YEP.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
I had mentioned it was off putting in the beginning
of this film when we see the actor portraying Frank
Cotton because his dialogue was dubbed. It was entirely dubbed
by actor Bob Sessions, and Sessions would later appear in
Barker's Night Breed in a supporting role. But one last
little bit too, which I thought was interesting character actor
one of our favorites, Bill Bank. Lance Hendrickson was offered

(01:14:24):
the role of Frank Cotton by New World Pictures, but
he turned it down, fearing that if successful, he would
have to appear in a series of sequels, which he
wasn't keen on. But Lance Henrickson would later go on
to appear in one of the Hell Raiser sequels, Hell
Raiser Hell World in two thousand and five.

Speaker 1 (01:14:38):
I haven't seen that one.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
No, I missed that one.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
All right, Jason, we got some additional titles, Yes, diginal
titles for Hell Raiser. All right, here we go. Croatia
Lords of Hell, France and Uruguay the Pact in India
Son of the Devil, Mexico Door to Hell, Portugal is
Cursed Fire, Serbia was Lord of Hell. Taiwan is raised

(01:15:06):
Ghosts and eat People. Argentina was Hell Raiser, the Pact.
Brazil was Hell Raiser, Reborn from Hell. Germany was Hell Raiser,
The Gate to Hell, Italy Hell Raiser. There are no
limits Netherlands. Hell Raiser won the original. Okay, I guess

(01:15:27):
they knew there was going to be a sequel, right
Poland Hell Raiser Hell's Messenger and Spain Hell Raiser, those
who bring hell.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
Okay, that's a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
Yeah, I appreciate.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
I always appreciate these, But yeah I have I think
I still gotta go with what is it raise ghosts
and Eat People.

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
Eat People from Taiwan?

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
Yes, I just like the ones that are so random
and have nothing to like. What was the there was
something like create fire something? What was the cursed fire?
Cursed fire?

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
Yes, okay fire.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
Yeah, Well, I'm going to add on a little bit
because you're talking about alternate titles. The film was originally
supposed to be called The hell Bound Heart, after the
novels upon which it was based, but the studio decided
the title sounded too much like a romance and asked
Clive Barker to change it. Barker offered the title Sato
Masochists from Beyond the Grave, which was rejected for the
overtly as sexual content. He ultimately opened the floor to

(01:16:23):
the production team to offer up their own suggestions, prompting
a sixty year old female crew member to offer up
the title what a Woman Will Do for a good fuck.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
She's not lying, right, I mean that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Would be a more appropriate title for this film than
Cursed Fire.

Speaker 1 (01:16:40):
Yeah, I think I would agree with that also, Okay,
move it on to box office. So Hell Razor was
released on September eighteenth, nineteen eighty seven, and one ninety
seven theaters, with an estimated buzzet of just one million dollars.
Hell Raiser pulled in fourteen point six million dollars domestically
and added another thirty million dollars internationally. The film debuted

(01:17:02):
number four in its opening weekend, behind the debuts of
Fatal Attraction, The Principal, and The Pickup Artist, but the
next week it would move up to number three and
would stay in the top ten for just another week,
and by the end of its run, Hellraiser ranked as
the sixty seventh highest grossing film of the year in
the US, just ahead of Superman four The Quest for Peace.

(01:17:25):
So moving on to reviews. When growing up in the eighties,
we would watch at the Movies with Gene Cisco and
Roger Ebert to hear their reviews and watch clips of
upcoming movies. Unfortunately, the movie was not reviewed on the show,
but I did find Roger Ebert review and was not kind.
He gave it half a star, stating there are no

(01:17:46):
surprises in Hell Raiser, only a dreary series of scenes
that repeat each other. What fun is it watching the
movie mark time until the characters discover the obvious? This
is a movie without wit, style or reason. Leonard Moulton
was a little bit kinder, giving it two and a
half out of four stars, stating grizzly but stylist directorial

(01:18:09):
debut by famed horror novelist Clive Barker ugly fun all
the way. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Tomatometer score of
seventy one percent, with a Popcorn Meter score of seventy
three percent, and also has an IMDb rating of six
point seven. So it takes us to additional thoughts or questions,

(01:18:30):
or some additional thoughts or questions you have about Hell Raiser?

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
Well, an additional thought is that Ebert but a little
rough on the review there? Yeah, didn't think I thought
it was. Yeah, maybe this movie didn't have much reason,
but it certainly had style. What was he talking about?
I don't know anyway? Why did Kirsty exactly why did
she end up in the hospital after she ran out
of the house. Was it just exhaustion?

Speaker 1 (01:18:55):
Yeah? I think so? Okay, but why the police have
to you know, I don't understand that. You know, I
found interesting watching this, like who really is the villain
in this movie?

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
Hmmm?

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
And Kingdom realize it really is Frank Cotton. Like the cinebytes,
they're bad, but they're not bad, if that makes sense.
That's yeah, you open the realm. We figure if you
want to come in, so right, you asked for it,
come on in.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
I like that observation, just to think about that, because
it's just a cursory glance and you look at the
VHS box, you would just think, yeah, oh god, Centobyites bad.
They're they're the villains, and I mean that's just not
really the case. Like you said, they're just the wardens
for the Prison of Hell as described in the research.

(01:19:40):
That's all. They're just doing their job. So it's your choice.
Do you want to you want to enter? Do you
want to summon this world? As Pinhead would say, then
that's on you. And that is I mean there's a
real gross grosso factor with Frank Cotton in this. I
mean every time he says come to Daddy in this
you're just like, yeah, he's definitely the villain. So I

(01:20:01):
think it's a good call, Bill Sleeves. The only thing
I was just gonna ask, is hell Raiser to a
better movie? But you said your favorites hell Raiser three.
And I've caught bits and pieces of other sequels just
out of you know, my morbid curiosity, I suppose, or
just to see because I think the Centa bites are
really cool. I'm like, well, what are these storylines going
to be? And is there going to be any real

(01:20:24):
resolution to what happens with the puzzle box and or
this other realm. I didn't know if you had any
more thoughts on the sequels.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
Well, I think last night when I was watching it again,
like I said, to be just kicks into another movie
and they went into Yeah it was hell Raiser judgment.
I don't know what number it is in the Spanish sequels,
and I'm watching the first ten minutes going wait did
this cut into the middle of the movie? Is this

(01:20:51):
really how the movie begins? I had no idea what
the hell was going on. It was bizarre.

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
I was like, you know what, I don't need to
watch this any further. I'm just gonna shut.

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):
Off right now. There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
Yeah, I'm not even saying three is the best one.
I just watched it over and over against because of
who was Okay, not necessarily because it was a good movie.
That's how much my obsession was of Paula Marshall at
the time and understood Yeah, yeah, I uh now who
just happens to be in DS nine, So I watch
every that's Terry Ferrell man for an episode. Yeah, yeah,

(01:21:25):
I'm curious to go back to visit Hell Raiser two
Hell Bounds, just to wonder how much will come back
to me and if it is a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:21:33):
More polished or feels that it had, you know, a
little better a little bigger budget to work with on
that one, and the effects are maybe even better. I
don't see.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
They turn it around really fast, so we'll see. So yeah,
I think I need to go at least back and
watch that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
One, and then the twenty twenty two remake I was
curious to see. I still haven't seen it though.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
But I mean, anytime you read stuff online, I mean,
people crush all these they're just so disappointed that they
really screwed up this whole franchise.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
But the fact they were still able to churn out
eleven now and I think that includes the remake That's nuts.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
Yeah, that's a lot. I mean, that's wild, It's this
is a huge franchise.

Speaker 1 (01:22:13):
But I think half of them were direct a video.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
I think the question I really should ask you is,
if you were a cenobite, which one would you be?

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
Oh yeah, I gotta be Pinhead. Chatter is pretty cool,
Cheddar is pretty cool, can't be Butterball.

Speaker 2 (01:22:28):
But I heard for the.

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
First one they had the poor actor I'm not sure
if the same one for was having a drooling problem
with that chatter thing in his mouth all the time.
So I'm like, ah, yeah, I don't think i'd want
to I want to be doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
Did they have to attend to him with one of
those dentists like suction things the whole time? Probably they
said they fix it. For the second one.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
If I'm just standing on set and you're just like
seeing drool like pouring, now, no thing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
They probably were like, oh no, that's just part of
the effects. It looks great. Yeah, a lot of drooling.

Speaker 1 (01:23:00):
Trying to move on to our ratings. So, on a
scale of one to five puzzle boxes, what would you
give hell Racer?

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
I'm given this three and a half puzzle Boxes, A
confident three and a half puzzle boxes, Bill ban because
considering that this was Barker's directorial debut, that it was
on a limited budget, that it spawned a lasting franchise,
pretty damn good. Thought. The performances were solid. Got we
should have done this probably in trivia, But shout out

(01:23:30):
to Bob Keene who was in charge of the makeup,
effects and such, because the makeup, the effects, costume design.
Predit to all of those that put work into that,
because they're all great. Some of those effects and sequences
are just really wild and disturbing stuff I just had
never seen before in my life, especially now when I
was a kid. The cenobytes hold up for me. But yeah, overall,

(01:23:52):
the selling point is the mind of Clive Barker. It's
this freaky world. It only asks questions and sparks curiosity
into the cult or like you said, obsession. This sato masochism,
the sexual aspect of it. There's a real abyss to
this that you can kind of fall into. And what
is hell? What our taps into our deepest, darkest, most

(01:24:15):
visceral desires and secrets of the flesh. Barker's got a
hell of an imagination and an ingenuity behind his ideas
that can take hold of your mind and take you
to some dark places. So it's impressed and impactful for me.
So this one still has an effect for sure. So
I give it three and a half puzzle boxes.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
Yeah, I'm giving it three myself. The effects would be
number one. The mythology number two. Music number three, that'd
be my pros. My big con is Claire Higgins as
Julia Cotton. I just don't find her believable as Larry's wife,
and that causes some issues. And then just the ending itself,

(01:24:59):
it just kind of just becomes like a monster chase.
It kind of gets away from the whole mythology. So
a little bit disappointing, and the fact that, like I said, overall,
it's just disgusting. Like I said, you do not want
to eat anything while you're watching this movie. And shout
out to Ashley Lawrence for her film debut. She did

(01:25:19):
a pretty good job with this also. And of course
Douc Bradley is Pinhead or leads Cinnabite or in the
book it's priest agreed. Yeah, I would, yeah, I would
certainly recommend it. And if you look at it online,
maybe watch the second one and then after that just
pretend the other ones never happened. Maybe I don't know.
I think I've heard some decent things about the remake,
but I'll have to check that one out myself. Okay,

(01:25:41):
So that about wraps it up for this week's episode.
As always, we appreciate you tuning in. Don't forget the
balls on your favorite streaming platform, leave it rating, and
drop us a review, hopefully a positive one. Want to
know more about the show, of course you do. Head
over to All Insmovies podcast dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
All the latest details.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
We help join us next time as we dive into
another classic from the greatest movie decade ever teen eighties.
Until then, stay cool, stay retro, and have an excellent
day everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:26:12):
Oh no tears please, it's a waste of good suffering.
Thanks for staying up with us. Good night world, for

(01:26:37):
secret alliances and murderous seductions have been made, which will
permit My god, I hate the way this is written.

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