May 8, 2025 • 58 mins
321 CRYPTICON 2025!
The gang talks Hellraiser at Crypticon Seattle, 2025!
*LIVE AUDIO*
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:10):
Oh, I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?
Somewhere between science andsuperstition, show
such sights to show you,strange eons. All right, welcome
(00:35):
to strangeeons radio. That isEric over there, hello. That is
Vanessa over there. I am Kelly,and we are recording live at
cryptocon 2025 which means youguys have to make some noise.
Very nice, excellent, very nice.
(00:56):
I know one person has been hereto one of our live shows before.
Has anybody else done this? Wow.
Hey. Thanks for coming back.
Mean to sound so surprised,as bad as I remember, I'm not
even find out.
You guys even remember last yearthe whole concert happening
behindmusic stuff going on, absolutely
in honor of the Hellraiser minireunion going on this year, we
(01:22):
have decided that today'sepisode is going to be about the
hell raiser franchise, andspecifically the first three
Hellraiser film.
Yes, because who wants to go toofar beyond,
okay, I've watched them also,kind of, I can't talk,
yeah, yeah. I think we've allwatched them all. That's why we
(01:43):
chose the first three. Yep, Iwill start this off, if you guys
don't mind. Sure,sure. Okay, so we want to do
some Doug Bradley, oh, right,Vanessa,
were you going to tell us alittle bit about Doug Bradley,
no, okay, then Doug'sa neat guy. He's got a great
voice, and whenever he's notplaying pinhead, it really
glows. I know he wantsguaranteed he looked
(02:06):
like, Yeah, that guy who lookedlike a little baby, child, yeah.
Let's hope he's not listening.
He's not. Let's play the odds.
Is that okay? Dive in. Then Iwill dive in. So back in the
1980s when horror novels werethe thing, a young Liverpudlian
(02:28):
playwright shook up the genrewith his short story
collections, the books of blood.
Clive Barker weaved tales ofgore sex and sadomasochism, and
they sold like hot cakes whenone of the stories raw head Rex,
and another original screenplaythat he wrote, underworld, not
that underworld, were turnedinto pretty lousy films, I think
(02:50):
we can all agree, Barker decidedthat he would try directing
himself. The problem was that hewanted to put something out
there that he knew could be madeon the cheap to get studio
money. And so with this in mind,he linked up with first time
producer, Christopher fig and heset about crafting a story that
he could hopefully get a milliondollars for to ensure the story
(03:13):
worked. He wrote it as a novellafirst which also completed a
prior commitment. He had toAmerican publishers, dark
harvest for a 30,000 wordnovella to appear in their night
visions three anthology. And sointo the world came the hell
bound heart. The hell boundheart. Has anybody read the
(03:34):
novella that this is based on?
Okay, so the hell bound heartstarts with Rory and Julia
moving into rory's deceasedgrandmother's house. He
desperately wants to save theirmarriage, but doesn't realize
she wants his missing brother,Frank, with whom she had an
affair shortly before marryingRory. And neither of them know
(03:55):
that Frank died in that housethe previous year after solving
Lamar Shannon's puzzle box andopening a gate to hell. So what
we've got here in the novella isRory, a nice guy. He's married
to Julia, who's a bit coldtowards him, and also he doesn't
know that his best friend,somehow, Kirsty, has a crush on
him. Julia herself is actuallymore tortured in the books than
(04:19):
the people who opened the puzzlebox since her affair with Frank,
she sees how unfulfilling herlife has become, and technically
in the book, if you remember, itis Julia, who is a protagonist,
which gives the book a muchdarker tone. Frank Roy's older
brother lives for selfgratification. This guy loves
pleasure, and then Kirsty hassecretly loved her best friend
(04:42):
for years. So despite knowingthat Julia is bad news, she
tries to help her best friendsave his marriage. Kirsty, I
suppose, is the closest the bookhas to a heroine with Frank
being the antagonist, and well,more the antagonist than the
Cenobites Barker described.
Short story as romance ratherthan horror, and that the hell
(05:03):
bound heart of the title belongsto Julia. We're all aware of the
Cenobites. This is the big partof the story that we all love.
No one love. How much theychange over the course of the
franchise, but they have alreadychanged a lot just from novella
to the first film in thenovella, their summoning has a
very overt religiousconnotation. They they require
(05:24):
an offering of a jug of urineand a plate of doves heads. And
when they show up, Frank is evengiven the chance the option to
back out twice. And when he doesnot do that, then that results
in all of his senses beingheightened, preparing him for
(05:44):
what follows. So I reread thisbook not too long ago because I
am currently working on a novelthat I thought I wanted to sound
like the hell down heart. Whenwas the last time you guys read
this?
My niece, yeah, I have not readthis work.
It is not his typical writing isvery dreamy. It's almost poetic.
(06:08):
A lot of the conversations aredescribed in paragraphs as a
conversation these two peoplehad about this, instead of the
actual lines of dialog of theconversation. And I realized I
can't even pretend to write likethis. It was so strange. The
other thing that I thought wasreally interesting about it is
that Barker hints of these othercharts that can lead you to the
(06:31):
Cenobites. There is a codedtheological work locked away in
the Vatican, and an origamisculpture once owned by the
Marquis de Sade. And then thepuzzle box, which personally I
would have loved to have seenexamined in the sequels. I will
say I think the franchise hasleaned too heavily on pinhead
and the box itself. So if theyhad kind of widened it, we might
(06:53):
have gotten some moreinteresting films. Anyway, this
novella just a dry run to getthe movie going. I will talk
about Hellraiser, the movie,excellent, all right, you.
(07:25):
I was bored. I'd gone to thelimit. There was nothing else I
wanted.
A box,not just any box. It opens
doors, doors to the places ofHeaven or Hell. Do anything you
(07:46):
want, anything you gave me anexperience beyond the limits you
(08:09):
give me that box. Give me thatbox. We have such sites to show
you.
Hellraiser, there are no limits,a film by Clive Barker, new
(08:33):
world, based on this story hehas written that hasn't even
been published, gives him$900,000 to make the movie. He's
a first time director. He's madea couple of short films. They
just adding upalready. Yeah, haven't
seen the short films too. Yeah,they're crazy. They are wild.
So he wrote the screenplay, andafter a title change to
(08:54):
Hellraiser, which I will get toat the end, he only begins in
London in September of 86 themovie version of Julia is a more
sympathetic character. We'reactually kind of on her side. On
the first death she's repulsedand horrified by what's going
on, but she kind of quickly getscaught up in all of it. And the
(09:16):
thing that I love about themovie is she gets more beautiful
every time she kills somebody,so you see her also filling out
as a human. Rory is now calledLarry, changed from British to
American to help us sales. AndKirsty is also American now
because her character has beenchanged from a best friend who's
(09:37):
in love with him to Larry'sdaughter from a previous
marriage. The change is sosmart, it works so much better,
and it allows movie Piercy to bemore of a proactive heroine, and
introduces kind of a fairy taleelement, if you think about it,
with the innocent daughter, thegullible father and the wicked
stepmother. Yeah.
(10:01):
When you hear the toneturn the page.
The original franchise planswere to focus on Julia, but
Claire Higgins plays Julia leftafter hellbound Hellraiser too.
Not a fan of horror movies, anddidn't like it when the first
movie came out. She was like,oh, no, this is way scarier than
I thought. Another character whobarely features was about to
(10:27):
become its figurehead. Pinhead,elegant, eloquent, terrifying.
And if you remember, in thefirst movie, listed in the
credit says, yeah, yeah. Now,not pinhead. Unfortunately, the
studio didn't like the way hewas written in the script, and
(10:49):
so they were just like, Wait,this is what's happening.
Nightmare on Elm Street. LostBoys, evil, dead movies. They
wanted some kind of comedy mixedin with their horror. So they
sent production executive TonyRandall to fix honestly what was
not broken, including pinhead.
They wanted him to be eithercompletely silent, oh my god, oh
(11:12):
my god, or Jason or whitetracking was like, Absolutely
not. Fred cooker, he gets Barkerwas like, Absolutely not. And
somehow he gets you're doingtoo, Tony Randall, he gets Tony
Randall to side with him, andthat's super important, because
(11:33):
Tony Randall ends up directing,directing Hellraiser too, yeah.
If you watched the movierecently and read the novella
recently, you're going to seethat the movie improves on the
story in every way, butespecially in Kirsty, in an
extended finale that is so muchbetter than the book, it's
(11:54):
almost shocking it wasn't in thebook. She defeats the cenophites
by reversing the moves of thebox, which is like, Oh yeah,
and and then she closes the gateto hell. And then somehow the
the box is returned to theperson who originally sells it.
(12:15):
And we just get this reallylovely bookend and an opening
for sequels that is not in theoriginal novella
with, you know, little sketchyeffects, but a cool ending. My
God,the book opens in september 1987
who saw this in the theater whenit opened? Damn right. Yeah, I
was I was young. Oh, you werevery young. Yeah.
(12:46):
I was alive. I said in thetheater, I
remember loving it, and it wastoo dark,
too dark. The the film print,oh, so I couldn't really see
what was going on. Um, itgrosses anywhere from 14 and a
half million to $20 milliondepending on various reports,
it's the most successful foreignfilm in many territories. And
(13:07):
remember, $900,000 budget, 14point 5 million. Not too shabby.
The sequel is already greenlitby new world based on what they
have seen. So before it evendoes any kind of box office,
they're like, Yeah, this iscool. We're gonna put it out for
me. I think that the book worksbetter with the world it
(13:28):
creates, especially with theother modes of summoning. The
Cenobites, the Vatican code issuper interesting to me, and I
really would have loved that,because Barker describes the
Cenobites is kind of like thepopes of hell. And so I was just
like, I really want to see wherethis might have gone. But the
(13:50):
film clearly benefits from thebook, kind of road testing the
premise, and it allowed Barkerto smooth over the wrinkles so
frank in the book is not giventhe option to back out by the
Cenobites, but Christie, in thebook is not given the benefit
either. They just kind of lether go for some reason. And if
(14:10):
you read it and it's a shortnovel, you're you're confused,
it makes no sense. So the waythat that he figures out this
ending is it's a much betterpayoff. It makes more sense, she
actually gets to fight for herlife, freedom and everything,
and it's just way moresatisfying. I have some trivia
on this movie. You guys, you'regoing to be shocked and
(14:33):
surprised, unless you also haveWikipedia.
So we know the Cenobites bytheir names that were given to
them over the years. They werejust called Lead Cenobite, stuff
like that female son by so butyou'll all know that the
(14:55):
chatter, the guy with the teethand butterball Cenobites, they
actually had dialog. In theoriginal script, once their
makeup was applied, it wasimpossible for them to say their
dialog, and so their lines weregiven to the lead, Cenobite and
the female Cenobite, which iswhy suddenly pin had become such
an important figure in thisthose lines were all supposed to
(15:18):
be spread out throughout all ofthem. Clyde Barker has explained
that Eric, due to a very limitedbudget, there was no money left
to have the special effects doneprofessionally after the primary
filming. Instead, Barker and aGreek guy animated the finale
(15:38):
scenes by hand over a singleweekend yellow electricity that
flows over the Cenobites bodiesas they are sent back to hell.
Barker says that he thinks theFX turned out really well
considering the amount ofalcohol the two of them. Wow.
(15:58):
Clive shows this movie to hismom before anybody else. He says
she cried tears of joy uponseeing her son's name in the
opening credits. And he leansover and says, This will be the
happiest you'll be for the nexttwo hours. The film was
(16:19):
originally titled The hell boundheart. The studio decided the
title sounded too much like aromance, and asked why change
it. He offered sadomasochistsfrom beyond the grave, which was
immediately rejected. He openedthe floor to the production team
to offer up their ownsuggestions, prompting a six
year old female crew membersays, suggest what a woman will
(16:43):
do for a good fuck.
The hell riser title comes fromChristopher fig
Eric, did you know because Iknow you were a Christopher
Young fan, yes. Did you knowthat industrial band coil
originally did the soundtrack. Ididn't. There's a full
soundtrack for this film byCoyle. The studio ultimately
(17:06):
decided to have the film rescored by a house musician that
would not have to be paidroyalties, fucking Hollywood.
And the house musician wasChristopher Young, and his score
is amazing you want to do, allright, yeah, yeah. The score
that Coyle recorded, a total ofnine tracks, can be found on
(17:27):
their compilation, CD, unnaturalhistory, two smiling the face of
perversity, and on anotheralbum, the unreleased themes for
Hellraiser, which I guess areapparently both quite rare, very
hard to find. So,yes, I won't worry about it
then, yeah, but it doessound like something you want to
track down. Yeah.
(17:51):
Oh, somebody has it nice.
Doug Bradley, who playedpinhead, he revealed that he and
Clive decided early on thatpinhead was formerly human.
Quote, a line from one ofClive's plays, swam into my
mind. I am in mourning for myhumanity at this point. There
(18:13):
was no backstory for thecharacter, but I discussed this
with Clive, and we had agreedthat he had once been human, but
whether this was yesterday, lastweek, last year, 10 100 1000
years ago, I didn't know aperpetual, unconscious grieving
for the man he had once been fora life and a face he couldn't
even remember, and a frozengrief I feel now the Pinhead
(18:35):
exists. Existed in an emotionallimbo where neither pain nor
pleasure could touch him, apretty good definition of hell
for me, damn, yeah, this way youhire these kind of actors,
right?
They come into this with allthis amazing backstory.
And then finally, according tothe crew, the backbone of
(18:57):
special effects was, in fact,lube and condoms. Well, you
know, given the nature of thefilm, but fitting the crew,
actively sought out condomsbecause they were made out of
latex. Lube made things look wetand stay wet under the camera
lights. And according to thecrew, they were mortified
(19:17):
whenever they'd have to make arun to a shop to load up
on what surely looked like,as for the birthing sequence,
the special effects gangactually used a step up from
lube. They used, oh boy, methylcellulose, the food thickener
mainstay. We would pump upmethyl cellulose by the gallon.
(19:39):
Riddles keen, who is the specialeffects supervisor? You can see
the pump in early action earlyin the sequence as pools of
clear goop ooze up from thefloorboards, the thick snot like
strands coding Frank's inprogress. Body are also likely
methyl cellulose. When Frank'sarm stumps erupt from the pools
(20:00):
of booze. Those are twoanimatronics. He says that they
built lots and lots of puppetrigs. The forming flesh effect
itself, where bone muscle andtendons reconstitute, was
accomplished with wax andreverse photography. And then
they constructed models of bodyparts out of different waxes
with different melting points,layering them as needed, so they
(20:22):
would be burned and then filmedin reverse, and then that is the
effect of the reforming fleshthat we see in that amazing
sequence. Required a multitudeof stages, as well as close up
appliances to show the growth ofFrank's hands and organs. The
crew also used color coloredthread for Frank's veins, which,
when pulled and played inreverse, looks like conscious
(20:44):
slime mold likes in you. Andthat's pretty much all of my
notes here. I want everybody tokind of remember that and then
go watch that scene again,because it is something else,
thread and burning wax andreverse photography. It's just
really lovely, great. That is mywrite up on the first Hellraiser
(21:07):
movie. Ido interject something on what
you said indirectly, and we'resitting in a small room or
convention. Talk about a superrare album and two people, well
done. This isalso Wikipedia. As far as I
know, this is all available onYouTube.
(21:31):
Vanessa, you watch the nextmovie, yeah,
you know, I had memories of whatthis film was, and then I
watched it, and it was like,fuck. Is happening right now?
Yeah, so hell bound, Hellraisertwo from 1988
(21:56):
the vision is renewed. IThe power is re awakened,
the fear is reborn, because theyhave returned. Time
(22:25):
to play hell bound Hellraisertwo, brace yourself
for terror you have neverimagined, and your suffering
will be legendary, even in helland
others you can never escape, andyou wanted to
(22:53):
know now, you know, last year,they Brought hell to Earth. Now
they'll take you through hell.
They'll take you throughhell, hell bound, Hellraiser,
(23:19):
two time to play abudget of 3 million gross, they
think I don't know. I had tocheck a lot of internet sources,
and they seemed very sketchy. Solet's just say 3 million
grossed.
(23:42):
Crazy. I know Google's AI waslike, we got you
3 million grossed, 12 milliondirected, of course, by Tony
Randall, who actually is mostlyan editor. He had 31 editing
credits, but 23 directingcredits. This included children
of the night, Amityville, 1992it's about time. Fist of the
(24:03):
North Star, 10 episodes ofbeyond belief, fact or fiction.
And of course, written by CliveBarker, who we've just talked
about so you know everything youneed to know about him, and
Peter Atkins, who, of course, isbehind hell raiser and wish
master as well. Have you heavilyinvolved? So starring, of
(24:26):
course, Doug Bradley, pinhead,85 credits. Pinhead was his
first feature film role, andthen did night breed. He did a
lot of TV walk on roles and tonsof voice work, including Star
Wars, Old Republic video game.
And he's also an invincible.
Ashley Lawrence, who playsChristy, has 45 credits,
(24:46):
including creep show Gentle Benand a lot of TV walk on work.
This is going to be familiar.
Then we also have Imogen Borman,who played Tiffany 14 role.
Else, dream, child, coronation,street, casualty, the tripod. So
she must be British. KennethCranham, who plays chan Dr
(25:07):
channard, 207 credits. You haveseen him many, many times, but I
sure was like, I don't know. Helooks fakely familiar. He's
like, kind of heavier whitedude, and that's what he be.
He's in layer cake, Oliver andagain, lots of British TV. We
also have Claire Higgins, whoreturns as Julia. She has 84
(25:27):
credits, including lots of leadTV roles. Finally, a lead she
was also in the worst witchtrying East Enders, the soap
opera, Kitty and Pride andPrejudice, the TV series so
close to my heart. And ofcourse, we have the returning
Sean Chapman as Frank. Who arewe missing? Andrew Robinson.
(25:48):
We'll come back to that later.
So the plot, we start with a bigold recap of the first film. And
I was like, man, they must havesaved some money. Why am I
watching this film again? Andthen, as you watch the film, you
will continue to get full seedsof Hellraiser, such a joy,
(26:13):
mostly, though, the recap doesnot tell you the story. It just
shows you all the cool specialeffects, so you are not prepared
for the plot at all. We thenjump into a British military
officer who looks very much likepinhead, toying with a box,
opening it and becoming becominga Cenobite. Then we jump into
(26:35):
Kirsty's story. Now we are goingto start immediately after the
happenings of the firstHellraiser movie, but it's going
to be very weird, because herboyfriend and her were sent to a
mental facility for some reason,not like a, you know, like an
actual police station orsomewhere where they're like,
man, there's a lot of deadbodies. I guess we'll send you
(26:57):
to the mental institute. But herboyfriend was released because
his story checks out, but hersdoes not, because she sounds
crazy. She doesn't help mattersby being hysterical and flailing
around a lot. So there's thatum, Dr chanard is the lead
doctor at the facility. He'svery interested in, uh, opening
up his patients and messingaround with their insides,
(27:19):
mostly their brains. He's alsointerested in Kirsty's story,
and as it turns out, has beenobsessed with the box for years.
So it's just lucky that sheturned up here. He even has
copies of the box in his house.
He has three, at least, I didn'tknow there were this many boxes.
So they allkind of love that they've
(27:39):
widened this out.
Yeah, you could just stumble onthese guys, I guess. I mean,
they're just everywhere. He alsohas lots of sketches and is
clearly obsessed with thisuniverse. His assistant, Kyle,
feels sus when he hears that. Hewants this bloody mattress
delivered directly to his home,and so he sneaks over there
(28:00):
wants to see what Chandra is upto, and witnesses him sacrifice
a mental patient to the mattressand a skinless Julia crawls on
out. He's like, That's not cool,and goes back to the institute
to burst bust Kirsty out, butshe insists that they need to go
to Chandler's house because shebelieves her father is trapped
(28:22):
in hell and she needs to savehim.
So they returned to Janos house.
Immediately, Kyle dies, so don'tworry about him. He's fine.
Tiffany, who is a young,beautiful, by the way, mute,
patient and a wizard puzzles. Ithas also been carted over there
(28:46):
to the house to help open thebox. The Cenobites return.
Channard and Julia go into hellthe labyrinth, excited to check
things out. Tiffany and Christyfollow for some reason, and in
the second part of the film,Channon gets everything he could
dream of by becoming a Cenobitehimself. Julia proclaims herself
the queen of hell. Percy flilsaround a bunch confronting her
(29:09):
uncle, Frank for reasons, andTiffany finds the way out. So
thoughts I just so the plot isreally strange. It's extremely
disjointed. It's hard toremember this film because
there's so many pieces thatdon't really truly intersect in
(29:30):
a way that makes sense. They'recool scenes. Sorry. It's a
puzzle missing like 80 pieces,and you're like, I'm there's a
Bunny's nose somewhere in thispile. I know it there is not it
is just, it doesn't make a lotof sense. But again, we'll get
to that in the trivia. I don'tfully understand the story with
(29:55):
Julia, especially because shekeeps leaving hell, but she
likes hell. No, but she has toleave hell to get like people to
sacrifice. But then at the end,she's like, Aha, I'm gonna leave
again, and I'm gonna get thesemoving guys who are with my
mattress. And why is themattress through a way of
getting into the anyways, it'sfine. Everyone is losing their
skin all the time. Christy isinsufferable. She just screams
(30:21):
and runs around confused or mador in extreme emotions the
entire time, and it's reallyfrustrating and very hard to
watch. However, she does do onecool scene where she dresses up
in Julia's skin to save Tiffany,and that's really nice. So
although, of course, if youthink about it, that means the
actress playing Julia was theone who played one good scene.
It's fine. Also, they have ascene in the end where they
(30:45):
escape, and there's a sort ofclosing wall situation, and it
closes and a screaming facegoes, and it fades to the it is
stupid as fuck. And that is likethe ending finale to this film.
I'm like, I mean, they couldhave ended it in any other also,
(31:06):
you can die in hell. Who knewthat? I am still confused by a
great deal. And also, Chand as,like, a set of A is kind of OP,
like, he's way overpowered forjust, I don't know, just
becoming a brand for justbecoming a brand new dude. He's
like, Haha, I can float and doeverything, and I can kill other
Cenobites, and I can kill allthese people in the real world,
(31:28):
and I can come back, and I don'tneed anything to get me between
places. So. But he also has theeasiest way to die ever, which
is just, if he spits and hitsand hits the ground and
struggles. You can kill himeasy, and he's dead. So it's
basically signs this movie. Alittle bit of trivia for you.
(31:51):
Julia Claire Higgins wasoriginally supposed to rise from
the mattress as the Queen ofhell at the end of the movie,
The theory being that she wouldbe the series continuing
character. But once Hellraiseropened, pinhead proved to be the
most popular character among thepublic, so it was rewritten.
Andrew Robinson refused toreprise his role as Larry
cotton, forcing hasty scriptrewrites. This partially
(32:15):
accounts for the muddled storystructure of the final film. So
basically it was supposed to bea lot more with him. The
original script, which featuredLarry cotton as the major
character, was essentially thesame as the final film produced,
except that Larry was the shame.
Larry was in the chamber withFrank, which is she goes down to
hell to find her father andnever finds him. Where they were
attached to each other, so frankand Larry are attached to each
(32:38):
other like Siamese twins, untilFrank attacks Kirsty, at which
point Larry cuts them apart andbegins to fight until Julie
arrives. Later, Larry escapeswith Tiffany and Kirsty from
hell, and it was him, notKirsty, that kills Julie, but he
promptly has a heart attack andis ushered away when they return
to the hospital. This seguesinto a notorious deleted scene
(33:00):
with pinhead in or scrubs, wherehe informs Kirsty that Larry
will die in an in an invitationof a doctor. However, Larry
returns at the end, still alive,and it is him, not Tiffany, that
Christy leaves the hospitalwith. I think it's a little
different, Also fun fact, thehorn inside the Leviathan is
(33:21):
actually doing Morse code forthe word God, and that's what I
got. Oh,I think you're gonna find some
pushback here for America. And Iwho think this is probably the
strongest film,I think it's really good. I
think it's visually stunning,like, there's so much cool shit
happening. It just doesn't,like, there's just too many
question marks and not enoughlike reasons for it. Like, why
(33:45):
does Kirsty know? Like, she'sscreaming about the mattress
from the start, like she doesn'tknow any of that. She wasn't
there. She doesn't she doesn'tknow that. How that works, you
know? So there's just a lot oflike, wait, what? Like,
robots destroy hermaking sense, but I do enjoy the
second one quite a bit. Yeah, Ithink I still lean to the first
(34:06):
one, just conceptually, but Ithink the second one's a fairly
strong film. It's reallydisturbing.
It's really disturbing,especially the mental patient
stuff. Yeah,I don't know if I feel like
everyone is surprised when Itell them this the the Queens
Reich song, silent luciditysamples dialog from Hellraiser
(34:27):
too. When, when you hear thatstuff in the in the middle of
the song, that's Dr Shinartalking to his patients. So
yeah,but the and they prefer to a
while since I watch, I guess.
But the when she opens the box,they don't go for her, because
(34:47):
it's supposed to be desires, notcause that's not what hands.
That wasreally cool. That was such a
good moment. Because you'relike, Oh no, Tiffany, don't get
sucked in with the Cenobites.
You're just a mute girl. Andinstead, they're like, she's
not. Why we are here,I will return to and I love that
that they've got a just, it justkind of fits that there is a
(35:10):
mute girl who is just soinvolved in puzzles, and then
this doctor who's got this weirdthing, and then Kirsty shows up,
and all of it starts to work. Imean, it feels like a Clive
Barker story thatis probably like, have you read
a lot of Barker? That could bewhy we appreciate it? Yeah, in a
different way, because read itwith that. Have you seen the
(35:38):
covers of the original books ofblood? Yes, most people would
not read them. Yeah, I justdon't have time. Ridiculous,
no, no. I mean it like it's oneof those things that's on my
bucket list. But yeah, goodfor the adder and Jack. He's a
nice, simpleAll right, so hell raiser three
(35:59):
in Hellraiser one. Clive Barkershowed you his vision of a
private hell. In Hellraiser two,he took you on a journey inside
the inferno now the terrorreturns in mankind's final
(36:22):
confrontation with evil, andthis time is going to be hell
on earth. Great club. I reallylove it here. It's a great club.
(36:51):
Jesus Christ, not quite you.
Just give me the box ready foryour close up. You.
(37:33):
We're going to hell, ladies,first baby, this
is better than sex.
It's so good to be back. CliveBarker presents Hellraiser
three, hell on earth,at least in 1992 kind of wanted.
(38:01):
I'm a Hellraiser nut. I haveseen all of them as most we
have. I actually, like, got thisweird box sets. I own all of
them. Why do you own all ofthem? So this one is directed by
Anthony Hickox, who is bestknown for his worst works with
wax work one and two. And he diddo the warlock and the song I
(38:29):
enjoy greatly from this, hedirected the video for
motorheads version A Hellraisersong. All right. This is writing
credit Peter Atkins, who's gotcredits for five of the hell
raiser movies, two, threebloodline and two shorts
actually not features. Wishmaster one through four fifths
of the North Star, the liveaction movies
(38:51):
selling you on this guy, aren'tI?
And Tony Randle and Clyde Barkerget story by credits for obvious
reasons. This is, of course,Doug Bradley as pinhead. Jump
forward for trivia on this. Thisis the first film where he is
actually referred to as panhead.
Terry Farrell is the lead inthis. You might know her from
(39:12):
148 episodes of Deep Space Ninebonfire the vanities, where she
played a party guest, a bunch ofother stuff. Kevin Bernhardt,
who 376 episodes of GeneralHospital and dynasty. So you
know what he looks like. Verynice and interesting. You
(39:34):
mentioned Christopher Young, mynote, first note when this movie
starts out and that ChristopherYoung movie music is still
awesome. Yeah, the they have putand I'm glad I was right, but
I'm going watching the beautythis movie. I do not remember
Hellraiser two with him beingentered into a giant piece of
(39:55):
art. No, like, Why is he in agiant piece of. Art spinning in
this galley, galley, galleygallery. It is kind of cool
looking. I mean, it's aninteresting art piece. Oh, he
does well, it does. It kind oflike, yeah, this column there's
(40:15):
Yeah. It's really weird. It'swhen the mattress guys come by
to, like, pick it up. Like, theyYeah, they get eaten by the mat.
One of them gets eaten by themattress, and then it the pillar
comes out and spins, and you seea really bad looking
Yeah, no, no, yeah, yeah.
But Terry plays a small timereporter, and she's looking for
(40:38):
a story because she doesn't wantto, you know, cover the fluff
pieces anymore. She's in themorgue and disappointed, because
there's no good stories, andsuddenly a man gets pushed down
there with chains cut into hishand scratching down the the
hallway. So it's like, oh, thisseems like it might be a story.
He gets torn asunder veryquickly, honestly, not the
(41:02):
greatest effect it. It lackedblood for a Hellraiser moment
like that, compared to what'sbeen done in the last two films.
So she starts to investigate, tofind out what's going on.
There's a young woman that comesin with her and says, I have
nothing to do with this guy. Idon't know him. I was just at
(41:22):
the boiler room with him. So shegoes, Oh, boiler room. What's
that? It's a weird, crazy assnightclub, one half metal bands.
I mean, it's armored tint, Oh,wow. And then the other half,
like, Oh, see through wall. Awayis a five star looking
restaurant with classical musicplaying like that. Is some
(41:45):
badass soundproofing installedin that wall, so it's kind of
weird. And the guy who boughtthe art piece is a fuck boy frat
from word go, and really just anasty little character. He was
less, even less redeeming than Iremembered him the for some
(42:09):
reason, I really don't know whythe younger lady did decide she
needs to talk to the reporter.
Maybe because she showed up atthe boiler room with, Oh, that's
cool, okay, I don't know. And,holy shit, you know, if you get
paid to cover on our weddingsand bar mitzvahs and you can
afford this apartment, do thelate it's like two floors,
(42:32):
gourmet kitchen, spiralstaircase, lovely view like
frenzing. I'm not on this shit,man. The music in the clubs, it
comes back and forth, is a funmash of, like, early 90s music,
not quite consistent enough fora club, but that's okay.
(42:57):
Then that doesn't come in for awhile, but
I know it would have beencheesy. I know it would have
been ridiculous, but I stillwould have loved him come back
and say, We have such sites toshow you. I just would have
loved that. But he apparently,in the spinning thing when Doug
finally has to speak, washorrible, and so he said it's
(43:17):
one of the worst things he'sever had to do on screen was get
into that makeup and and speakfor whatever reason, it looks
fine. Wouldn't look like it wasthat bad. But apparently it was
just not good. First half ofthis film I'm going, Why did I
have a problem with this? Man?
This is fairly decent. It's notgreat. And then, well, there's
(43:38):
First, there's the veryentertaining scene of Hellraiser
showing up at the boiler room.
And it is a combination of goreand laugh out loud, funny, weird
shit going on. So I don't quiteknow what he was going for as a
director, because, I mean,there's goof shit, like the guy
(43:59):
who's got two pool balls stuckin his mouth and really violent,
tearing some people apart. Soit's, it's a weird scene that is
a lot of fun to watch.
The they they do something thatreally bugs me. My one of my
favorite aspects of the firsttwo Hellraiser movies is that
(44:22):
these Cenobites are not killers,they're not Ed gates, they're
not Jasons. They are a veryspecific breed of demon from
hell that has to be summoned andhas to have a reason. This
movie, they signed up 10 headsbroken away from hell, and now
he's a free agent. Can dowhatever the hell he wants to.
(44:42):
Hell he wants to, and I'dforgotten that happened in this
movie, and I was, like, reallydisappointed to hear that,
because that's always been mybiggest problem, that they got
away from it, but I guess atleast they explained it at some
point. But it really, reallyhurts the the. The lure of the
Cenobites and pinhead to turnhim from somebody that has a
(45:05):
weird, weird but present moralcode to just another crazy,
badass serial killer. So I waslike, okay, all right, whatever
the ending is strange,for some reason, he creates a
but load of new Cenobites,partially because they're free
from hell too. You do whateverthey want to, except they just
(45:28):
do whatever he wants them to do.
And the what works so well inthe first Hellraiser with those
Cenobites is they're weird.
They're unrecognizable, sort of,they're not human things.
They're strange creations. Well,this one's got a cameraman who's
now got a camera in his headwhose zoom lens kills people, a
(45:49):
DJ who shoots CDs to killpeople. So by the end, I
remember, Oh, this is why Idon't like how extra three,
yeah. But the first 45 minutes,how our show the moon is
actually fairly good. It's notgreat, but it's, it's a lot
stronger than I remember, and itdefinitely has the 80s and 90s
(46:13):
trope of, hey, we're going tohave to end the movie in the
construction site, which doesn'tsound that trophy, until you
really start to think about it,you go, hold on the lethal
weapon noise damn near everyaction buddy top movie, but, and
it's fine, the ending is veryforgettable, and it's just and
it's got pointless Turns wherethe young lady that stays with
(46:39):
her, get here's a message on thephone. Just flips out what you
lied to me and runs away, andjust your relationship is so
good. By now you should havemaybe said you're moving. Is
this true? Which wasn't true, ofcourse. Anyways, Randall was
attached to direct, but theproducer removed him for the
(47:02):
way, wrong reason that they wereworried he was going to make it
too bleak.
Oh no, it's Hellraiser movie,please.
This is oneof the few movies that should
just be bleak.
The scene with, well that'smentioned with a Hellraiser and
(47:22):
him not liking it. Penn hadfound, or Doug Bradley found,
watching this, that they had touse a stunt double to play him
at one point, and he becamejealously protective, okay? And
like, I don't like somebody elseplaying him. He has volunteered
now to come back to meet the newpinhead. Maybe that was in the
(47:47):
last movie, and work with her.
I'm going Sure. Why not? I don'tknow. We'll see. But the one
time Doug did not playHellraiser was not
let's see. Peter Jackson wasasked to direct this film,
and his his reason for decliningis perfect is I don't make these
(48:12):
kind of films. I'd beimmediately starting to think of
funny gags and weird stuff Icould do with pen head getting
his head stuck in a wall, randomshit like that. So he passed on
it, but just that a curiosityfactor that would have been
wild, especially considering thekind of movies he was making
(48:34):
then, or bad taste and anyways,probably would have ended with a
giant preacher falling apart,and preachers fall dead, alive,
dead, alive and bad chase for usin the same way, although
probably Barker was technicallyan executive producer on the
film, he was largely uninvolvedbecause He recently had had the
(48:59):
problems with night buddy, yeah,where they really messed with
the editing. He was notinterested in working with
students a studio at the time.
However, the movie grossedalmost $13 million Wow. So it
was a pretty big success on atwo to $3 million budget. So I
don't know why they didn'tdecide to keep going with mid
(49:22):
budget levels and decide justpush it off a cliff and give the
next guy like five bucks todirect it. Right? Because from
three the drop off in quality offilms is strong. I mean,
there's a couple that are fun.
But,you know, the the construction
(49:42):
of the Cenobites in this that Ithink what makes them so cool in
the first two movies is they'retimeless, even Dr Chouinard
doesn't have anything that tieshim to his present.
You see CD guys. I know. Well,that's just it. You know, that
kind of stuff, then is like,you've now immediately dated
(50:05):
this film. You've gota DJ spinning CDs, literally,
right? So, you know, that's, Iknow. Yeah, that's a bummer. Um,
what do you guys think of thethe next few movies? I've got a
list here.
There's one that'sa game. Oh, well, actually,
bloodline is the next one, whichis, I think you talked about, or
(50:26):
what do you guys talked about inan actual episode, and that's
the one that's that goes throughtime, yes, and the spaceship and
all that. That one's amazing.
Almost good.
It's almost good. It's actuallyonly same with, like, yeah, I
feel like three is good, if youdon't think about one and two at
(50:48):
all, like, it's at least funny.
It's always really funny,because it does, I mean, the
scene in the club is solidlyentertaining. It's so,
yeah, it's so entertaining, andlike the the Cenobites are
genuinely pretty hilarious. Thatone's
directed by Kevin Yeager, yeah,so that's there's a little bit
(51:11):
of quality there. The next oneis Inferno that's directed by
Scott Erickson. Erickson who hasdone the Exorcism of Emily Rose
The Day the Earth is still andDr, strange.
Oh, sureyou're like, what? Somewhere?
(51:34):
Well done.
The list continues afterbloodline, Inferno, hell,
seeker, debtor, hell world,Revelations, judgment. And then
this latest one on Hulu, whichwas just called Hellraiser
again, kind of a reboot, and Iwas fine with it. It
(51:56):
mostly worked for me. I thoughtit was an interesting way to
approachI love that they tried. Yeah,
that was all I really wanted. Iwas like, ah, as
opposed to, like, cared one ofthe Hell Raisers, one of the
films that random scripts wouldcome in and they go, Hey, Put
pan ahead and call itHellraiser. We'll make your
movie, right? So that's why somany of them are so weirdly
(52:19):
completely unconnected. Becausethey're completely unconnected,
right?
Well. But I also want to kind ofpoint out that this last
Hellraiser, which was a Huluoriginal that was three years
ago already, and I kind ofthought, with the buzz that had
happened around that, that wemight have gotten something
else, and in fact, that therewas supposed to be a Clyde
Barker produced Hellraiserthat has gone away his
(52:44):
TV series. I can't find anyinformation
on anything that's actually inproduction anymore. So
anymore, I think after what'shappened with Chucky, they're
probably all gonna well, maybethere'll be a Hellraiser movie,
amen. Maybe there'll be a JasonTV series. Maybe they'll be
right that did so well, yeah,for sure, but he, you know, you
can always get in more recenttimes by playing Dead by
(53:05):
Daylight, because he comes as anenemy.
Oh, nice add on pack. I knowthere was a time, I think, down
at the Lovecraft Film Festivalwhen we were talking to Doug
Bradley, and he had said that heand Clive had imagined some kind
of sequel where pinhead was nowan old, fat ruler of hell, a
(53:29):
demon that ruled hell, and thatthey would continue on with him,
kind of as an overseer. And Ithought that sounded amazing.
Yeah, very interesting. Butthat's off the table now too. So
there seems that there's nothinggoing on with the franchise
coming soon. King Kona.
We've got a couple of minuteshere. Let's open it up to the
(53:50):
floor, if anyone wants todiscuss anything
or not. Oh yes. Have any of youread the sequel, Scarlet gospel?
So the question is, Has anybodyread the sequel Scarlet gospels?
I read that, which was a nicecontinuation of the Pinhead
character, never called pinhead,right? I can't remember what he
(54:11):
was called, Thehell priest, the help John, when
you were saying about how, yeah,yeah.
And I thought that was actuallyreally good, but a little slow,
you, Eric, I don't think I did.
It's interesting. All right,yeah,
Vanessa doesn't read, so I reada lot of comics.
(54:34):
I read so many comics. Comicbook series had some that had
some interesting, pretty damngood stuff, stories, okay, heart
was always prettycool. Have any of you seen the
trailer that came out wereundone Hellraiser early 20
teens. There was a conversationabout doing a Hellraiser movie
in hell. Bites. You know,conquering hell. Becoming the
(54:59):
Oh, I know the trailer came outas like, a teaser trailer they
could centralize. It lookedamazing.
Wow. Was this just a fan thing,or was this somebody, at least,
to my knowledge, this was a realteaser trailer they put out to
try to get interest about itearly, too.
Oh, yeah, well, I will have tolook that up. That sounds
(55:20):
yeah, there's some neat there'sa lot of neat
fan films, hard to say, becausesome are made very
professionally, but there's someinteresting Hellraiser shorts
that are out there. You can Imute most of them on YouTube and
stuff. But so if you're reallyinto it, it's worth checking
those out, because a lot of themare neater ideas than the movie,
the later movies well. Andyou know, jumping on one of the
(55:40):
things you said in the 90s,Marvel Comics had their epic
line, and they had a Hellraiserseries. And very rarely did any
of the Cenobites from the movieshow up. It was all new
Cenobites, and it was reallyinteresting. And I think that
was probably the way the filmsshould have gone, yeah,
(56:02):
that would have been a lot fun.
But, you know, we can sellpinhead. You can sell that's
true random. Imean, if you're going to rewrite
starting from the second one, tomake sure that you feature
pinhead then. But I think Juliaas, like a, you know, a bad guy
as the Queen of hell, would havebeen pretty interesting too,
because she was a reallycompelling character, absolutely
(56:24):
and arguably the best actor inthe bunch. I mean, in a series,
the first two movies of prettydecent actors, yeah, she really
shownYeah. She was very like, not
only was she watchable, but shesold some really incredibly
difficult concepts. Soyeah, and there's a tonal
change. I forgot to mention thatHellraiser three was the first
(56:46):
one shot in the US. So that'skind of why it's got a tone
change.
That's why it's so like it'sjust a surge commercial.
It's all adding up. Now,you know, that sounds like a
great time to wrap thisthat mine has it actually is any
last comments by anybody here,then I will make the last
(57:11):
comment, the last couple ofcomments, which is to say that
our show comes out every week.
Every Thursday. It's calledstrangeeons radio. We really
appreciate everybody who's outthere listening, who's donating,
who's calling in, saying reallylovely things. And this one will
be showing up live shortly. Sofingers crossed. If you want
(57:33):
your Yeah, this stuff works. Youwant your voice heard, you got
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Well. Well, then thankseverybody. I hope everybody has
a great con, and thank you somuch for showing up
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(57:54):
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(58:15):
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that's why it's so like it'sjust a surge commercial. I.
Oh, I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?
Somewhere between science andsuperstition, show
such sights to show you,strange eons. All right, welcome
(00:35):
to strangeeons radio. That isEric over there, hello. That is
Vanessa over there. I am Kelly,and we are recording live at
cryptocon 2025 which means youguys have to make some noise.
Very nice, excellent, very nice.
(00:56):
I know one person has been hereto one of our live shows before.
Has anybody else done this? Wow.
Hey. Thanks for coming back.
Mean to sound so surprised,as bad as I remember, I'm not
even find out.
You guys even remember last yearthe whole concert happening
behindmusic stuff going on, absolutely
in honor of the Hellraiser minireunion going on this year, we
(01:22):
have decided that today'sepisode is going to be about the
hell raiser franchise, andspecifically the first three
Hellraiser film.
Yes, because who wants to go toofar beyond,
okay, I've watched them also,kind of, I can't talk,
yeah, yeah. I think we've allwatched them all. That's why we
(01:43):
chose the first three. Yep, Iwill start this off, if you guys
don't mind. Sure,sure. Okay, so we want to do
some Doug Bradley, oh, right,Vanessa,
were you going to tell us alittle bit about Doug Bradley,
no, okay, then Doug'sa neat guy. He's got a great
voice, and whenever he's notplaying pinhead, it really
glows. I know he wantsguaranteed he looked
(02:06):
like, Yeah, that guy who lookedlike a little baby, child, yeah.
Let's hope he's not listening.
He's not. Let's play the odds.
Is that okay? Dive in. Then Iwill dive in. So back in the
1980s when horror novels werethe thing, a young Liverpudlian
(02:28):
playwright shook up the genrewith his short story
collections, the books of blood.
Clive Barker weaved tales ofgore sex and sadomasochism, and
they sold like hot cakes whenone of the stories raw head Rex,
and another original screenplaythat he wrote, underworld, not
that underworld, were turnedinto pretty lousy films, I think
(02:50):
we can all agree, Barker decidedthat he would try directing
himself. The problem was that hewanted to put something out
there that he knew could be madeon the cheap to get studio
money. And so with this in mind,he linked up with first time
producer, Christopher fig and heset about crafting a story that
he could hopefully get a milliondollars for to ensure the story
(03:13):
worked. He wrote it as a novellafirst which also completed a
prior commitment. He had toAmerican publishers, dark
harvest for a 30,000 wordnovella to appear in their night
visions three anthology. And sointo the world came the hell
bound heart. The hell boundheart. Has anybody read the
(03:34):
novella that this is based on?
Okay, so the hell bound heartstarts with Rory and Julia
moving into rory's deceasedgrandmother's house. He
desperately wants to save theirmarriage, but doesn't realize
she wants his missing brother,Frank, with whom she had an
affair shortly before marryingRory. And neither of them know
(03:55):
that Frank died in that housethe previous year after solving
Lamar Shannon's puzzle box andopening a gate to hell. So what
we've got here in the novella isRory, a nice guy. He's married
to Julia, who's a bit coldtowards him, and also he doesn't
know that his best friend,somehow, Kirsty, has a crush on
him. Julia herself is actuallymore tortured in the books than
(04:19):
the people who opened the puzzlebox since her affair with Frank,
she sees how unfulfilling herlife has become, and technically
in the book, if you remember, itis Julia, who is a protagonist,
which gives the book a muchdarker tone. Frank Roy's older
brother lives for selfgratification. This guy loves
pleasure, and then Kirsty hassecretly loved her best friend
(04:42):
for years. So despite knowingthat Julia is bad news, she
tries to help her best friendsave his marriage. Kirsty, I
suppose, is the closest the bookhas to a heroine with Frank
being the antagonist, and well,more the antagonist than the
Cenobites Barker described.
Short story as romance ratherthan horror, and that the hell
(05:03):
bound heart of the title belongsto Julia. We're all aware of the
Cenobites. This is the big partof the story that we all love.
No one love. How much theychange over the course of the
franchise, but they have alreadychanged a lot just from novella
to the first film in thenovella, their summoning has a
very overt religiousconnotation. They they require
(05:24):
an offering of a jug of urineand a plate of doves heads. And
when they show up, Frank is evengiven the chance the option to
back out twice. And when he doesnot do that, then that results
in all of his senses beingheightened, preparing him for
(05:44):
what follows. So I reread thisbook not too long ago because I
am currently working on a novelthat I thought I wanted to sound
like the hell down heart. Whenwas the last time you guys read
this?
My niece, yeah, I have not readthis work.
It is not his typical writing isvery dreamy. It's almost poetic.
(06:08):
A lot of the conversations aredescribed in paragraphs as a
conversation these two peoplehad about this, instead of the
actual lines of dialog of theconversation. And I realized I
can't even pretend to write likethis. It was so strange. The
other thing that I thought wasreally interesting about it is
that Barker hints of these othercharts that can lead you to the
(06:31):
Cenobites. There is a codedtheological work locked away in
the Vatican, and an origamisculpture once owned by the
Marquis de Sade. And then thepuzzle box, which personally I
would have loved to have seenexamined in the sequels. I will
say I think the franchise hasleaned too heavily on pinhead
and the box itself. So if theyhad kind of widened it, we might
(06:53):
have gotten some moreinteresting films. Anyway, this
novella just a dry run to getthe movie going. I will talk
about Hellraiser, the movie,excellent, all right, you.
(07:25):
I was bored. I'd gone to thelimit. There was nothing else I
wanted.
A box,not just any box. It opens
doors, doors to the places ofHeaven or Hell. Do anything you
(07:46):
want, anything you gave me anexperience beyond the limits you
(08:09):
give me that box. Give me thatbox. We have such sites to show
you.
Hellraiser, there are no limits,a film by Clive Barker, new
(08:33):
world, based on this story hehas written that hasn't even
been published, gives him$900,000 to make the movie. He's
a first time director. He's madea couple of short films. They
just adding upalready. Yeah, haven't
seen the short films too. Yeah,they're crazy. They are wild.
So he wrote the screenplay, andafter a title change to
(08:54):
Hellraiser, which I will get toat the end, he only begins in
London in September of 86 themovie version of Julia is a more
sympathetic character. We'reactually kind of on her side. On
the first death she's repulsedand horrified by what's going
on, but she kind of quickly getscaught up in all of it. And the
(09:16):
thing that I love about themovie is she gets more beautiful
every time she kills somebody,so you see her also filling out
as a human. Rory is now calledLarry, changed from British to
American to help us sales. AndKirsty is also American now
because her character has beenchanged from a best friend who's
(09:37):
in love with him to Larry'sdaughter from a previous
marriage. The change is sosmart, it works so much better,
and it allows movie Piercy to bemore of a proactive heroine, and
introduces kind of a fairy taleelement, if you think about it,
with the innocent daughter, thegullible father and the wicked
stepmother. Yeah.
(10:01):
When you hear the toneturn the page.
The original franchise planswere to focus on Julia, but
Claire Higgins plays Julia leftafter hellbound Hellraiser too.
Not a fan of horror movies, anddidn't like it when the first
movie came out. She was like,oh, no, this is way scarier than
I thought. Another character whobarely features was about to
(10:27):
become its figurehead. Pinhead,elegant, eloquent, terrifying.
And if you remember, in thefirst movie, listed in the
credit says, yeah, yeah. Now,not pinhead. Unfortunately, the
studio didn't like the way hewas written in the script, and
(10:49):
so they were just like, Wait,this is what's happening.
Nightmare on Elm Street. LostBoys, evil, dead movies. They
wanted some kind of comedy mixedin with their horror. So they
sent production executive TonyRandall to fix honestly what was
not broken, including pinhead.
They wanted him to be eithercompletely silent, oh my god, oh
(11:12):
my god, or Jason or whitetracking was like, Absolutely
not. Fred cooker, he gets Barkerwas like, Absolutely not. And
somehow he gets you're doingtoo, Tony Randall, he gets Tony
Randall to side with him, andthat's super important, because
(11:33):
Tony Randall ends up directing,directing Hellraiser too, yeah.
If you watched the movierecently and read the novella
recently, you're going to seethat the movie improves on the
story in every way, butespecially in Kirsty, in an
extended finale that is so muchbetter than the book, it's
(11:54):
almost shocking it wasn't in thebook. She defeats the cenophites
by reversing the moves of thebox, which is like, Oh yeah,
and and then she closes the gateto hell. And then somehow the
the box is returned to theperson who originally sells it.
(12:15):
And we just get this reallylovely bookend and an opening
for sequels that is not in theoriginal novella
with, you know, little sketchyeffects, but a cool ending. My
God,the book opens in september 1987
who saw this in the theater whenit opened? Damn right. Yeah, I
was I was young. Oh, you werevery young. Yeah.
(12:46):
I was alive. I said in thetheater, I
remember loving it, and it wastoo dark,
too dark. The the film print,oh, so I couldn't really see
what was going on. Um, itgrosses anywhere from 14 and a
half million to $20 milliondepending on various reports,
it's the most successful foreignfilm in many territories. And
(13:07):
remember, $900,000 budget, 14point 5 million. Not too shabby.
The sequel is already greenlitby new world based on what they
have seen. So before it evendoes any kind of box office,
they're like, Yeah, this iscool. We're gonna put it out for
me. I think that the book worksbetter with the world it
(13:28):
creates, especially with theother modes of summoning. The
Cenobites, the Vatican code issuper interesting to me, and I
really would have loved that,because Barker describes the
Cenobites is kind of like thepopes of hell. And so I was just
like, I really want to see wherethis might have gone. But the
(13:50):
film clearly benefits from thebook, kind of road testing the
premise, and it allowed Barkerto smooth over the wrinkles so
frank in the book is not giventhe option to back out by the
Cenobites, but Christie, in thebook is not given the benefit
either. They just kind of lether go for some reason. And if
(14:10):
you read it and it's a shortnovel, you're you're confused,
it makes no sense. So the waythat that he figures out this
ending is it's a much betterpayoff. It makes more sense, she
actually gets to fight for herlife, freedom and everything,
and it's just way moresatisfying. I have some trivia
on this movie. You guys, you'regoing to be shocked and
(14:33):
surprised, unless you also haveWikipedia.
So we know the Cenobites bytheir names that were given to
them over the years. They werejust called Lead Cenobite, stuff
like that female son by so butyou'll all know that the
(14:55):
chatter, the guy with the teethand butterball Cenobites, they
actually had dialog. In theoriginal script, once their
makeup was applied, it wasimpossible for them to say their
dialog, and so their lines weregiven to the lead, Cenobite and
the female Cenobite, which iswhy suddenly pin had become such
an important figure in thisthose lines were all supposed to
(15:18):
be spread out throughout all ofthem. Clyde Barker has explained
that Eric, due to a very limitedbudget, there was no money left
to have the special effects doneprofessionally after the primary
filming. Instead, Barker and aGreek guy animated the finale
(15:38):
scenes by hand over a singleweekend yellow electricity that
flows over the Cenobites bodiesas they are sent back to hell.
Barker says that he thinks theFX turned out really well
considering the amount ofalcohol the two of them. Wow.
(15:58):
Clive shows this movie to hismom before anybody else. He says
she cried tears of joy uponseeing her son's name in the
opening credits. And he leansover and says, This will be the
happiest you'll be for the nexttwo hours. The film was
(16:19):
originally titled The hell boundheart. The studio decided the
title sounded too much like aromance, and asked why change
it. He offered sadomasochistsfrom beyond the grave, which was
immediately rejected. He openedthe floor to the production team
to offer up their ownsuggestions, prompting a six
year old female crew membersays, suggest what a woman will
(16:43):
do for a good fuck.
The hell riser title comes fromChristopher fig
Eric, did you know because Iknow you were a Christopher
Young fan, yes. Did you knowthat industrial band coil
originally did the soundtrack. Ididn't. There's a full
soundtrack for this film byCoyle. The studio ultimately
(17:06):
decided to have the film rescored by a house musician that
would not have to be paidroyalties, fucking Hollywood.
And the house musician wasChristopher Young, and his score
is amazing you want to do, allright, yeah, yeah. The score
that Coyle recorded, a total ofnine tracks, can be found on
(17:27):
their compilation, CD, unnaturalhistory, two smiling the face of
perversity, and on anotheralbum, the unreleased themes for
Hellraiser, which I guess areapparently both quite rare, very
hard to find. So,yes, I won't worry about it
then, yeah, but it doessound like something you want to
track down. Yeah.
(17:51):
Oh, somebody has it nice.
Doug Bradley, who playedpinhead, he revealed that he and
Clive decided early on thatpinhead was formerly human.
Quote, a line from one ofClive's plays, swam into my
mind. I am in mourning for myhumanity at this point. There
(18:13):
was no backstory for thecharacter, but I discussed this
with Clive, and we had agreedthat he had once been human, but
whether this was yesterday, lastweek, last year, 10 100 1000
years ago, I didn't know aperpetual, unconscious grieving
for the man he had once been fora life and a face he couldn't
even remember, and a frozengrief I feel now the Pinhead
(18:35):
exists. Existed in an emotionallimbo where neither pain nor
pleasure could touch him, apretty good definition of hell
for me, damn, yeah, this way youhire these kind of actors,
right?
They come into this with allthis amazing backstory.
And then finally, according tothe crew, the backbone of
(18:57):
special effects was, in fact,lube and condoms. Well, you
know, given the nature of thefilm, but fitting the crew,
actively sought out condomsbecause they were made out of
latex. Lube made things look wetand stay wet under the camera
lights. And according to thecrew, they were mortified
(19:17):
whenever they'd have to make arun to a shop to load up
on what surely looked like,as for the birthing sequence,
the special effects gangactually used a step up from
lube. They used, oh boy, methylcellulose, the food thickener
mainstay. We would pump upmethyl cellulose by the gallon.
(19:39):
Riddles keen, who is the specialeffects supervisor? You can see
the pump in early action earlyin the sequence as pools of
clear goop ooze up from thefloorboards, the thick snot like
strands coding Frank's inprogress. Body are also likely
methyl cellulose. When Frank'sarm stumps erupt from the pools
(20:00):
of booze. Those are twoanimatronics. He says that they
built lots and lots of puppetrigs. The forming flesh effect
itself, where bone muscle andtendons reconstitute, was
accomplished with wax andreverse photography. And then
they constructed models of bodyparts out of different waxes
with different melting points,layering them as needed, so they
(20:22):
would be burned and then filmedin reverse, and then that is the
effect of the reforming fleshthat we see in that amazing
sequence. Required a multitudeof stages, as well as close up
appliances to show the growth ofFrank's hands and organs. The
crew also used color coloredthread for Frank's veins, which,
when pulled and played inreverse, looks like conscious
(20:44):
slime mold likes in you. Andthat's pretty much all of my
notes here. I want everybody tokind of remember that and then
go watch that scene again,because it is something else,
thread and burning wax andreverse photography. It's just
really lovely, great. That is mywrite up on the first Hellraiser
(21:07):
movie. Ido interject something on what
you said indirectly, and we'resitting in a small room or
convention. Talk about a superrare album and two people, well
done. This isalso Wikipedia. As far as I
know, this is all available onYouTube.
(21:31):
Vanessa, you watch the nextmovie, yeah,
you know, I had memories of whatthis film was, and then I
watched it, and it was like,fuck. Is happening right now?
Yeah, so hell bound, Hellraisertwo from 1988
(21:56):
the vision is renewed. IThe power is re awakened,
the fear is reborn, because theyhave returned. Time
(22:25):
to play hell bound Hellraisertwo, brace yourself
for terror you have neverimagined, and your suffering
will be legendary, even in helland
others you can never escape, andyou wanted to
(22:53):
know now, you know, last year,they Brought hell to Earth. Now
they'll take you through hell.
They'll take you throughhell, hell bound, Hellraiser,
(23:19):
two time to play abudget of 3 million gross, they
think I don't know. I had tocheck a lot of internet sources,
and they seemed very sketchy. Solet's just say 3 million
grossed.
(23:42):
Crazy. I know Google's AI waslike, we got you
3 million grossed, 12 milliondirected, of course, by Tony
Randall, who actually is mostlyan editor. He had 31 editing
credits, but 23 directingcredits. This included children
of the night, Amityville, 1992it's about time. Fist of the
(24:03):
North Star, 10 episodes ofbeyond belief, fact or fiction.
And of course, written by CliveBarker, who we've just talked
about so you know everything youneed to know about him, and
Peter Atkins, who, of course, isbehind hell raiser and wish
master as well. Have you heavilyinvolved? So starring, of
(24:26):
course, Doug Bradley, pinhead,85 credits. Pinhead was his
first feature film role, andthen did night breed. He did a
lot of TV walk on roles and tonsof voice work, including Star
Wars, Old Republic video game.
And he's also an invincible.
Ashley Lawrence, who playsChristy, has 45 credits,
(24:46):
including creep show Gentle Benand a lot of TV walk on work.
This is going to be familiar.
Then we also have Imogen Borman,who played Tiffany 14 role.
Else, dream, child, coronation,street, casualty, the tripod. So
she must be British. KennethCranham, who plays chan Dr
(25:07):
channard, 207 credits. You haveseen him many, many times, but I
sure was like, I don't know. Helooks fakely familiar. He's
like, kind of heavier whitedude, and that's what he be.
He's in layer cake, Oliver andagain, lots of British TV. We
also have Claire Higgins, whoreturns as Julia. She has 84
(25:27):
credits, including lots of leadTV roles. Finally, a lead she
was also in the worst witchtrying East Enders, the soap
opera, Kitty and Pride andPrejudice, the TV series so
close to my heart. And ofcourse, we have the returning
Sean Chapman as Frank. Who arewe missing? Andrew Robinson.
(25:48):
We'll come back to that later.
So the plot, we start with a bigold recap of the first film. And
I was like, man, they must havesaved some money. Why am I
watching this film again? Andthen, as you watch the film, you
will continue to get full seedsof Hellraiser, such a joy,
(26:13):
mostly, though, the recap doesnot tell you the story. It just
shows you all the cool specialeffects, so you are not prepared
for the plot at all. We thenjump into a British military
officer who looks very much likepinhead, toying with a box,
opening it and becoming becominga Cenobite. Then we jump into
(26:35):
Kirsty's story. Now we are goingto start immediately after the
happenings of the firstHellraiser movie, but it's going
to be very weird, because herboyfriend and her were sent to a
mental facility for some reason,not like a, you know, like an
actual police station orsomewhere where they're like,
man, there's a lot of deadbodies. I guess we'll send you
(26:57):
to the mental institute. But herboyfriend was released because
his story checks out, but hersdoes not, because she sounds
crazy. She doesn't help mattersby being hysterical and flailing
around a lot. So there's thatum, Dr chanard is the lead
doctor at the facility. He'svery interested in, uh, opening
up his patients and messingaround with their insides,
(27:19):
mostly their brains. He's alsointerested in Kirsty's story,
and as it turns out, has beenobsessed with the box for years.
So it's just lucky that sheturned up here. He even has
copies of the box in his house.
He has three, at least, I didn'tknow there were this many boxes.
So they allkind of love that they've
(27:39):
widened this out.
Yeah, you could just stumble onthese guys, I guess. I mean,
they're just everywhere. He alsohas lots of sketches and is
clearly obsessed with thisuniverse. His assistant, Kyle,
feels sus when he hears that. Hewants this bloody mattress
delivered directly to his home,and so he sneaks over there
(28:00):
wants to see what Chandra is upto, and witnesses him sacrifice
a mental patient to the mattressand a skinless Julia crawls on
out. He's like, That's not cool,and goes back to the institute
to burst bust Kirsty out, butshe insists that they need to go
to Chandler's house because shebelieves her father is trapped
(28:22):
in hell and she needs to savehim.
So they returned to Janos house.
Immediately, Kyle dies, so don'tworry about him. He's fine.
Tiffany, who is a young,beautiful, by the way, mute,
patient and a wizard puzzles. Ithas also been carted over there
(28:46):
to the house to help open thebox. The Cenobites return.
Channard and Julia go into hellthe labyrinth, excited to check
things out. Tiffany and Christyfollow for some reason, and in
the second part of the film,Channon gets everything he could
dream of by becoming a Cenobitehimself. Julia proclaims herself
the queen of hell. Percy flilsaround a bunch confronting her
(29:09):
uncle, Frank for reasons, andTiffany finds the way out. So
thoughts I just so the plot isreally strange. It's extremely
disjointed. It's hard toremember this film because
there's so many pieces thatdon't really truly intersect in
(29:30):
a way that makes sense. They'recool scenes. Sorry. It's a
puzzle missing like 80 pieces,and you're like, I'm there's a
Bunny's nose somewhere in thispile. I know it there is not it
is just, it doesn't make a lotof sense. But again, we'll get
to that in the trivia. I don'tfully understand the story with
(29:55):
Julia, especially because shekeeps leaving hell, but she
likes hell. No, but she has toleave hell to get like people to
sacrifice. But then at the end,she's like, Aha, I'm gonna leave
again, and I'm gonna get thesemoving guys who are with my
mattress. And why is themattress through a way of
getting into the anyways, it'sfine. Everyone is losing their
skin all the time. Christy isinsufferable. She just screams
(30:21):
and runs around confused or mador in extreme emotions the
entire time, and it's reallyfrustrating and very hard to
watch. However, she does do onecool scene where she dresses up
in Julia's skin to save Tiffany,and that's really nice. So
although, of course, if youthink about it, that means the
actress playing Julia was theone who played one good scene.
It's fine. Also, they have ascene in the end where they
(30:45):
escape, and there's a sort ofclosing wall situation, and it
closes and a screaming facegoes, and it fades to the it is
stupid as fuck. And that is likethe ending finale to this film.
I'm like, I mean, they couldhave ended it in any other also,
(31:06):
you can die in hell. Who knewthat? I am still confused by a
great deal. And also, Chand as,like, a set of A is kind of OP,
like, he's way overpowered forjust, I don't know, just
becoming a brand for justbecoming a brand new dude. He's
like, Haha, I can float and doeverything, and I can kill other
Cenobites, and I can kill allthese people in the real world,
(31:28):
and I can come back, and I don'tneed anything to get me between
places. So. But he also has theeasiest way to die ever, which
is just, if he spits and hitsand hits the ground and
struggles. You can kill himeasy, and he's dead. So it's
basically signs this movie. Alittle bit of trivia for you.
(31:51):
Julia Claire Higgins wasoriginally supposed to rise from
the mattress as the Queen ofhell at the end of the movie,
The theory being that she wouldbe the series continuing
character. But once Hellraiseropened, pinhead proved to be the
most popular character among thepublic, so it was rewritten.
Andrew Robinson refused toreprise his role as Larry
cotton, forcing hasty scriptrewrites. This partially
(32:15):
accounts for the muddled storystructure of the final film. So
basically it was supposed to bea lot more with him. The
original script, which featuredLarry cotton as the major
character, was essentially thesame as the final film produced,
except that Larry was the shame.
Larry was in the chamber withFrank, which is she goes down to
hell to find her father andnever finds him. Where they were
attached to each other, so frankand Larry are attached to each
(32:38):
other like Siamese twins, untilFrank attacks Kirsty, at which
point Larry cuts them apart andbegins to fight until Julie
arrives. Later, Larry escapeswith Tiffany and Kirsty from
hell, and it was him, notKirsty, that kills Julie, but he
promptly has a heart attack andis ushered away when they return
to the hospital. This seguesinto a notorious deleted scene
(33:00):
with pinhead in or scrubs, wherehe informs Kirsty that Larry
will die in an in an invitationof a doctor. However, Larry
returns at the end, still alive,and it is him, not Tiffany, that
Christy leaves the hospitalwith. I think it's a little
different, Also fun fact, thehorn inside the Leviathan is
(33:21):
actually doing Morse code forthe word God, and that's what I
got. Oh,I think you're gonna find some
pushback here for America. And Iwho think this is probably the
strongest film,I think it's really good. I
think it's visually stunning,like, there's so much cool shit
happening. It just doesn't,like, there's just too many
question marks and not enoughlike reasons for it. Like, why
(33:45):
does Kirsty know? Like, she'sscreaming about the mattress
from the start, like she doesn'tknow any of that. She wasn't
there. She doesn't she doesn'tknow that. How that works, you
know? So there's just a lot oflike, wait, what? Like,
robots destroy hermaking sense, but I do enjoy the
second one quite a bit. Yeah, Ithink I still lean to the first
(34:06):
one, just conceptually, but Ithink the second one's a fairly
strong film. It's reallydisturbing.
It's really disturbing,especially the mental patient
stuff. Yeah,I don't know if I feel like
everyone is surprised when Itell them this the the Queens
Reich song, silent luciditysamples dialog from Hellraiser
(34:27):
too. When, when you hear thatstuff in the in the middle of
the song, that's Dr Shinartalking to his patients. So
yeah,but the and they prefer to a
while since I watch, I guess.
But the when she opens the box,they don't go for her, because
(34:47):
it's supposed to be desires, notcause that's not what hands.
That wasreally cool. That was such a
good moment. Because you'relike, Oh no, Tiffany, don't get
sucked in with the Cenobites.
You're just a mute girl. Andinstead, they're like, she's
not. Why we are here,I will return to and I love that
that they've got a just, it justkind of fits that there is a
(35:10):
mute girl who is just soinvolved in puzzles, and then
this doctor who's got this weirdthing, and then Kirsty shows up,
and all of it starts to work. Imean, it feels like a Clive
Barker story thatis probably like, have you read
a lot of Barker? That could bewhy we appreciate it? Yeah, in a
different way, because read itwith that. Have you seen the
(35:38):
covers of the original books ofblood? Yes, most people would
not read them. Yeah, I justdon't have time. Ridiculous,
no, no. I mean it like it's oneof those things that's on my
bucket list. But yeah, goodfor the adder and Jack. He's a
nice, simpleAll right, so hell raiser three
(35:59):
in Hellraiser one. Clive Barkershowed you his vision of a
private hell. In Hellraiser two,he took you on a journey inside
the inferno now the terrorreturns in mankind's final
(36:22):
confrontation with evil, andthis time is going to be hell
on earth. Great club. I reallylove it here. It's a great club.
(36:51):
Jesus Christ, not quite you.
Just give me the box ready foryour close up. You.
(37:33):
We're going to hell, ladies,first baby, this
is better than sex.
It's so good to be back. CliveBarker presents Hellraiser
three, hell on earth,at least in 1992 kind of wanted.
(38:01):
I'm a Hellraiser nut. I haveseen all of them as most we
have. I actually, like, got thisweird box sets. I own all of
them. Why do you own all ofthem? So this one is directed by
Anthony Hickox, who is bestknown for his worst works with
wax work one and two. And he diddo the warlock and the song I
(38:29):
enjoy greatly from this, hedirected the video for
motorheads version A Hellraisersong. All right. This is writing
credit Peter Atkins, who's gotcredits for five of the hell
raiser movies, two, threebloodline and two shorts
actually not features. Wishmaster one through four fifths
of the North Star, the liveaction movies
(38:51):
selling you on this guy, aren'tI?
And Tony Randle and Clyde Barkerget story by credits for obvious
reasons. This is, of course,Doug Bradley as pinhead. Jump
forward for trivia on this. Thisis the first film where he is
actually referred to as panhead.
Terry Farrell is the lead inthis. You might know her from
(39:12):
148 episodes of Deep Space Ninebonfire the vanities, where she
played a party guest, a bunch ofother stuff. Kevin Bernhardt,
who 376 episodes of GeneralHospital and dynasty. So you
know what he looks like. Verynice and interesting. You
(39:34):
mentioned Christopher Young, mynote, first note when this movie
starts out and that ChristopherYoung movie music is still
awesome. Yeah, the they have putand I'm glad I was right, but
I'm going watching the beautythis movie. I do not remember
Hellraiser two with him beingentered into a giant piece of
(39:55):
art. No, like, Why is he in agiant piece of. Art spinning in
this galley, galley, galleygallery. It is kind of cool
looking. I mean, it's aninteresting art piece. Oh, he
does well, it does. It kind oflike, yeah, this column there's
(40:15):
Yeah. It's really weird. It'swhen the mattress guys come by
to, like, pick it up. Like, theyYeah, they get eaten by the mat.
One of them gets eaten by themattress, and then it the pillar
comes out and spins, and you seea really bad looking
Yeah, no, no, yeah, yeah.
But Terry plays a small timereporter, and she's looking for
(40:38):
a story because she doesn't wantto, you know, cover the fluff
pieces anymore. She's in themorgue and disappointed, because
there's no good stories, andsuddenly a man gets pushed down
there with chains cut into hishand scratching down the the
hallway. So it's like, oh, thisseems like it might be a story.
He gets torn asunder veryquickly, honestly, not the
(41:02):
greatest effect it. It lackedblood for a Hellraiser moment
like that, compared to what'sbeen done in the last two films.
So she starts to investigate, tofind out what's going on.
There's a young woman that comesin with her and says, I have
nothing to do with this guy. Idon't know him. I was just at
(41:22):
the boiler room with him. So shegoes, Oh, boiler room. What's
that? It's a weird, crazy assnightclub, one half metal bands.
I mean, it's armored tint, Oh,wow. And then the other half,
like, Oh, see through wall. Awayis a five star looking
restaurant with classical musicplaying like that. Is some
(41:45):
badass soundproofing installedin that wall, so it's kind of
weird. And the guy who boughtthe art piece is a fuck boy frat
from word go, and really just anasty little character. He was
less, even less redeeming than Iremembered him the for some
(42:09):
reason, I really don't know whythe younger lady did decide she
needs to talk to the reporter.
Maybe because she showed up atthe boiler room with, Oh, that's
cool, okay, I don't know. And,holy shit, you know, if you get
paid to cover on our weddingsand bar mitzvahs and you can
afford this apartment, do thelate it's like two floors,
(42:32):
gourmet kitchen, spiralstaircase, lovely view like
frenzing. I'm not on this shit,man. The music in the clubs, it
comes back and forth, is a funmash of, like, early 90s music,
not quite consistent enough fora club, but that's okay.
(42:57):
Then that doesn't come in for awhile, but
I know it would have beencheesy. I know it would have
been ridiculous, but I stillwould have loved him come back
and say, We have such sites toshow you. I just would have
loved that. But he apparently,in the spinning thing when Doug
finally has to speak, washorrible, and so he said it's
(43:17):
one of the worst things he'sever had to do on screen was get
into that makeup and and speakfor whatever reason, it looks
fine. Wouldn't look like it wasthat bad. But apparently it was
just not good. First half ofthis film I'm going, Why did I
have a problem with this? Man?
This is fairly decent. It's notgreat. And then, well, there's
(43:38):
First, there's the veryentertaining scene of Hellraiser
showing up at the boiler room.
And it is a combination of goreand laugh out loud, funny, weird
shit going on. So I don't quiteknow what he was going for as a
director, because, I mean,there's goof shit, like the guy
(43:59):
who's got two pool balls stuckin his mouth and really violent,
tearing some people apart. Soit's, it's a weird scene that is
a lot of fun to watch.
The they they do something thatreally bugs me. My one of my
favorite aspects of the firsttwo Hellraiser movies is that
(44:22):
these Cenobites are not killers,they're not Ed gates, they're
not Jasons. They are a veryspecific breed of demon from
hell that has to be summoned andhas to have a reason. This
movie, they signed up 10 headsbroken away from hell, and now
he's a free agent. Can dowhatever the hell he wants to.
(44:42):
Hell he wants to, and I'dforgotten that happened in this
movie, and I was, like, reallydisappointed to hear that,
because that's always been mybiggest problem, that they got
away from it, but I guess atleast they explained it at some
point. But it really, reallyhurts the the. The lure of the
Cenobites and pinhead to turnhim from somebody that has a
(45:05):
weird, weird but present moralcode to just another crazy,
badass serial killer. So I waslike, okay, all right, whatever
the ending is strange,for some reason, he creates a
but load of new Cenobites,partially because they're free
from hell too. You do whateverthey want to, except they just
(45:28):
do whatever he wants them to do.
And the what works so well inthe first Hellraiser with those
Cenobites is they're weird.
They're unrecognizable, sort of,they're not human things.
They're strange creations. Well,this one's got a cameraman who's
now got a camera in his headwhose zoom lens kills people, a
(45:49):
DJ who shoots CDs to killpeople. So by the end, I
remember, Oh, this is why Idon't like how extra three,
yeah. But the first 45 minutes,how our show the moon is
actually fairly good. It's notgreat, but it's, it's a lot
stronger than I remember, and itdefinitely has the 80s and 90s
(46:13):
trope of, hey, we're going tohave to end the movie in the
construction site, which doesn'tsound that trophy, until you
really start to think about it,you go, hold on the lethal
weapon noise damn near everyaction buddy top movie, but, and
it's fine, the ending is veryforgettable, and it's just and
it's got pointless Turns wherethe young lady that stays with
(46:39):
her, get here's a message on thephone. Just flips out what you
lied to me and runs away, andjust your relationship is so
good. By now you should havemaybe said you're moving. Is
this true? Which wasn't true, ofcourse. Anyways, Randall was
attached to direct, but theproducer removed him for the
(47:02):
way, wrong reason that they wereworried he was going to make it
too bleak.
Oh no, it's Hellraiser movie,please.
This is oneof the few movies that should
just be bleak.
The scene with, well that'smentioned with a Hellraiser and
(47:22):
him not liking it. Penn hadfound, or Doug Bradley found,
watching this, that they had touse a stunt double to play him
at one point, and he becamejealously protective, okay? And
like, I don't like somebody elseplaying him. He has volunteered
now to come back to meet the newpinhead. Maybe that was in the
(47:47):
last movie, and work with her.
I'm going Sure. Why not? I don'tknow. We'll see. But the one
time Doug did not playHellraiser was not
let's see. Peter Jackson wasasked to direct this film,
and his his reason for decliningis perfect is I don't make these
(48:12):
kind of films. I'd beimmediately starting to think of
funny gags and weird stuff Icould do with pen head getting
his head stuck in a wall, randomshit like that. So he passed on
it, but just that a curiosityfactor that would have been
wild, especially considering thekind of movies he was making
(48:34):
then, or bad taste and anyways,probably would have ended with a
giant preacher falling apart,and preachers fall dead, alive,
dead, alive and bad chase for usin the same way, although
probably Barker was technicallyan executive producer on the
film, he was largely uninvolvedbecause He recently had had the
(48:59):
problems with night buddy, yeah,where they really messed with
the editing. He was notinterested in working with
students a studio at the time.
However, the movie grossedalmost $13 million Wow. So it
was a pretty big success on atwo to $3 million budget. So I
don't know why they didn'tdecide to keep going with mid
(49:22):
budget levels and decide justpush it off a cliff and give the
next guy like five bucks todirect it. Right? Because from
three the drop off in quality offilms is strong. I mean,
there's a couple that are fun.
But,you know, the the construction
(49:42):
of the Cenobites in this that Ithink what makes them so cool in
the first two movies is they'retimeless, even Dr Chouinard
doesn't have anything that tieshim to his present.
You see CD guys. I know. Well,that's just it. You know, that
kind of stuff, then is like,you've now immediately dated
(50:05):
this film. You've gota DJ spinning CDs, literally,
right? So, you know, that's, Iknow. Yeah, that's a bummer. Um,
what do you guys think of thethe next few movies? I've got a
list here.
There's one that'sa game. Oh, well, actually,
bloodline is the next one, whichis, I think you talked about, or
(50:26):
what do you guys talked about inan actual episode, and that's
the one that's that goes throughtime, yes, and the spaceship and
all that. That one's amazing.
Almost good.
It's almost good. It's actuallyonly same with, like, yeah, I
feel like three is good, if youdon't think about one and two at
(50:48):
all, like, it's at least funny.
It's always really funny,because it does, I mean, the
scene in the club is solidlyentertaining. It's so,
yeah, it's so entertaining, andlike the the Cenobites are
genuinely pretty hilarious. Thatone's
directed by Kevin Yeager, yeah,so that's there's a little bit
(51:11):
of quality there. The next oneis Inferno that's directed by
Scott Erickson. Erickson who hasdone the Exorcism of Emily Rose
The Day the Earth is still andDr, strange.
Oh, sureyou're like, what? Somewhere?
(51:34):
Well done.
The list continues afterbloodline, Inferno, hell,
seeker, debtor, hell world,Revelations, judgment. And then
this latest one on Hulu, whichwas just called Hellraiser
again, kind of a reboot, and Iwas fine with it. It
(51:56):
mostly worked for me. I thoughtit was an interesting way to
approachI love that they tried. Yeah,
that was all I really wanted. Iwas like, ah, as
opposed to, like, cared one ofthe Hell Raisers, one of the
films that random scripts wouldcome in and they go, Hey, Put
pan ahead and call itHellraiser. We'll make your
movie, right? So that's why somany of them are so weirdly
(52:19):
completely unconnected. Becausethey're completely unconnected,
right?
Well. But I also want to kind ofpoint out that this last
Hellraiser, which was a Huluoriginal that was three years
ago already, and I kind ofthought, with the buzz that had
happened around that, that wemight have gotten something
else, and in fact, that therewas supposed to be a Clyde
Barker produced Hellraiserthat has gone away his
(52:44):
TV series. I can't find anyinformation
on anything that's actually inproduction anymore. So
anymore, I think after what'shappened with Chucky, they're
probably all gonna well, maybethere'll be a Hellraiser movie,
amen. Maybe there'll be a JasonTV series. Maybe they'll be
right that did so well, yeah,for sure, but he, you know, you
can always get in more recenttimes by playing Dead by
(53:05):
Daylight, because he comes as anenemy.
Oh, nice add on pack. I knowthere was a time, I think, down
at the Lovecraft Film Festivalwhen we were talking to Doug
Bradley, and he had said that heand Clive had imagined some kind
of sequel where pinhead was nowan old, fat ruler of hell, a
(53:29):
demon that ruled hell, and thatthey would continue on with him,
kind of as an overseer. And Ithought that sounded amazing.
Yeah, very interesting. Butthat's off the table now too. So
there seems that there's nothinggoing on with the franchise
coming soon. King Kona.
We've got a couple of minuteshere. Let's open it up to the
(53:50):
floor, if anyone wants todiscuss anything
or not. Oh yes. Have any of youread the sequel, Scarlet gospel?
So the question is, Has anybodyread the sequel Scarlet gospels?
I read that, which was a nicecontinuation of the Pinhead
character, never called pinhead,right? I can't remember what he
(54:11):
was called, Thehell priest, the help John, when
you were saying about how, yeah,yeah.
And I thought that was actuallyreally good, but a little slow,
you, Eric, I don't think I did.
It's interesting. All right,yeah,
Vanessa doesn't read, so I reada lot of comics.
(54:34):
I read so many comics. Comicbook series had some that had
some interesting, pretty damngood stuff, stories, okay, heart
was always prettycool. Have any of you seen the
trailer that came out wereundone Hellraiser early 20
teens. There was a conversationabout doing a Hellraiser movie
in hell. Bites. You know,conquering hell. Becoming the
(54:59):
Oh, I know the trailer came outas like, a teaser trailer they
could centralize. It lookedamazing.
Wow. Was this just a fan thing,or was this somebody, at least,
to my knowledge, this was a realteaser trailer they put out to
try to get interest about itearly, too.
Oh, yeah, well, I will have tolook that up. That sounds
(55:20):
yeah, there's some neat there'sa lot of neat
fan films, hard to say, becausesome are made very
professionally, but there's someinteresting Hellraiser shorts
that are out there. You can Imute most of them on YouTube and
stuff. But so if you're reallyinto it, it's worth checking
those out, because a lot of themare neater ideas than the movie,
the later movies well. Andyou know, jumping on one of the
(55:40):
things you said in the 90s,Marvel Comics had their epic
line, and they had a Hellraiserseries. And very rarely did any
of the Cenobites from the movieshow up. It was all new
Cenobites, and it was reallyinteresting. And I think that
was probably the way the filmsshould have gone, yeah,
(56:02):
that would have been a lot fun.
But, you know, we can sellpinhead. You can sell that's
true random. Imean, if you're going to rewrite
starting from the second one, tomake sure that you feature
pinhead then. But I think Juliaas, like a, you know, a bad guy
as the Queen of hell, would havebeen pretty interesting too,
because she was a reallycompelling character, absolutely
(56:24):
and arguably the best actor inthe bunch. I mean, in a series,
the first two movies of prettydecent actors, yeah, she really
shownYeah. She was very like, not
only was she watchable, but shesold some really incredibly
difficult concepts. Soyeah, and there's a tonal
change. I forgot to mention thatHellraiser three was the first
(56:46):
one shot in the US. So that'skind of why it's got a tone
change.
That's why it's so like it'sjust a surge commercial.
It's all adding up. Now,you know, that sounds like a
great time to wrap thisthat mine has it actually is any
last comments by anybody here,then I will make the last
(57:11):
comment, the last couple ofcomments, which is to say that
our show comes out every week.
Every Thursday. It's calledstrangeeons radio. We really
appreciate everybody who's outthere listening, who's donating,
who's calling in, saying reallylovely things. And this one will
be showing up live shortly. Sofingers crossed. If you want
(57:33):
your Yeah, this stuff works. Youwant your voice heard, you got
to yell something now. Nothing.
Well. Well, then thankseverybody. I hope everybody has
a great con, and thank you somuch for showing up
transportation and otherconsiderations for strange eons,
(57:54):
radio produced by Pan Amairlines. When you think of
traveling, think of pan and youcan't beat the experience. Guest
of strange eons radio stay atecono Lodge. Everett. It's an
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Strangeeons radio is recordedlive in front of a studio
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(58:15):
us a positive review on yourfavorite podcast. Sit Ubu. Sit
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