31 Days of Halloween: Hellraiser - Revelations
Hellraiser: Revelations isn’t a bad movie. Wait. No wait. I know. I Kno— SHUT THE FUCK UP! I KNOW! I KNOW! I KNOW! You know what I’m just going to wait until you all stop bellowing Doug Bradley’s name at the top of your lungs. If that’s your only metric for judging a movie then, I’m sorry, you’re not really good at critiquing a movie. For the rest of you, let me explain those frenzied shrieks you may be hearing as the horror community shrivels into a ball of rage. See, the Hellraiser franchise, up until 2011, starred Doug Bradley in the role of “Pinhead” (or, if you actually read Clive Barker, the Hell Priest) Since 1996’s Hellraiser: Bloodlines, the franchise has found its home at Dimension Films.
Dimension Films, for whatever reasons, had maintained an iron grip on the franchise and made continued installments of Hellraiser films in order to maintain those rights. There have been some absolutely garbage Hellraiser films since a lot of them started off as unrelated screenplays that suddenly had the Hellraiser properties rammed into them. Doug Bradley endured them all until his final role as the character in 2005’s Hellworld, a movie about people being killed in a video game. By this point, Bradley had enough, and rightly so, after that piece of shit.
Then came Hellraiser: Revelations in 2011, a film that was rushed to production and was completed in a matter of weeks. It had a shoestring budget and, most scandalously, Doug Bradley passed on being involved and Clive Baker famously trashed it on Twitter.
But here we are, looking back at Revelations almost a decade later to ask the question: Was this movie really that bad?
I would argue that it was not. In fact, I am willing to argue that it is probably one of the best films since 1988’s Hellbound: Hellraiser II. Yeah, that’s right, I fucking said it. Let me explain.
Revelations follow two dude-bros who go on a trip to Mexico where they end up getting possession of the Lament Configuration. As these things tend to go, someone becomes hook bait for a Cenobite. The family of the victims meet a year later and go over the evidence and learn about the Lament Configuration. One of the missing boys turns out and in an incredible twist he’s not all he seems to be.
This movie has some obvious blemishes. Through no fault of his own, actor Stephan Smith Collins was not a good choice for Pinhead. Fans have joked that he’s a little too plump to be the titular character and I’d say that is probably more the fault of the make-up effects which indeed look rushed.
However, I would argue that — at it’s core — Revelations is more faithful to the source material than all of the other Hellraiser sequels combined. It follows the same basic formula as The Hellbound Heart, the Clive Barker novella that inspired Hellraiser. The writer of this film, Gary Tunnicliffe, has had experience with the franchise before, having done the special effects on Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. The guy at least had the smarts to go back to the source material and work from there. Here’s the thing: Pinhead was never front and center in the original story. In fact, the Cenobites aren’t really the central part of the story. Instead, it’s about Frank’s escape from Hell and how he seduces his brother’s new wife to help him get the flesh he needs to regrow his body.
This was a concept that was the bedrock of the first two Hellraiser films and then forgotten and ignored in the subsequent sequels as they became more centrally focused on the Cenobites, the history of the puzzle box, or whatever nonsense was being touted in a given sequel. Revelations is the better film because it remains faithful to the source material in more ways than any of the past sequels.
People complaining about the film’s small scope and small budget also seem to forget that the original Hellraiser was made for a minuscule budget of a million dollars when it was made in 1987. I can’t find an actual budget for Revelations, an unconfirmed source on IMDB states it was $350 thousand dollars, but I don’t fully buy that. Still, even on a micro-budget, they still put together a pretty decent film, Cenobites notwithstanding. Speaking of, they hardly appear in the film, which is on par with the original Hellraiser. They aren’t the central focus of the story and dismissing an entire film based on this relatively small screen time is less a criticism of the film and more an indictment of an obtuse viewer.
It by no means the best Hellraiser movie, but if you remove the Doug Bradley argument can you really say it is worse than all of the sequels the predicated it? If you’d argue that Hellworld, a movie that is both a waste of Doug Bradley and Lance Henriksen, is somehow better than this movie I don’t think you are even capable of intelligent discourse so maybe trying to convince you is a lost cause. So how about I go back to liking Revelations for being decent if imperfect Hellraiser movie and you go back to yelling at people about how women ruined Star Wars or whatever it is you people do when you’re not sending me angry e-mails about Mortal Kombat, deal?
Tomorrow….
An eye-gouging good time.
