I recently had a birthday, the big three four as no one says. My lovely wife got me a rented out theater for myself and her, and a group of our closest friends to come watch a movie of my choosing. For myself, choosing a film to watch is no easy task, so for this I made a couple rules, and the theater had some rules as well. First, I wanted it to be something I had seen before, no roles of the dice in this experiment, a solid stone cold banger had to be called upon. Second, the theater couldn’t just pull any movie out of a hat, I had to own a physical copy of it. Of course, I rightly believe that physical media is the way of the future so I had a plethora to choose from. And finally, I knew that subjected my friends to a artsy Awards play, potentially foreign film was probably not the way to go. (Although I did at one point try to get Julia Ducournau’s Palm d’or winning masterpiece Titane across the plate and thought better of it).

So after setting up a ballot between five of my very favorite movies, the short, sweet, bloody, hook based, body horror romp Hellraiser was victorious. What can someone say about Hellraiser in the year of our Lord 2024? Plenty honestly, but what stood out to me more than the film itself was the experience of seeing it on the big screen. I occasionally worry, as do many others that theaters are going out of vogue. There are occasional wins, while I personally revile Deadpool & Wolverine it’s hard to argue with it’s popularity. My local cinema is certainly making some cash off of popcorn on those screenings. And while Hellraiser may not be what I would refer to as ‘a film for adults’ with it’s delightfully named Cenobites; Pinhead, Deep Throat, Chatterer, and Butterball, it’s got a craft to it that has to be appreciated.

The skeleton coming out of the floorboards in the first act as Uncle Frank recongeals himself is one of the best looking practical effects of this or any decade. It’s up there with the Xenomorph in Alien and the Doof Warrior’s flaming guitar in Fury Road. Just craft the way we love to see it. Clive Barker had a vision, and through the hard work of many other people he managed to get that vision onto the big screen, and sparked one of the best horror films of the 80s. It’s a master stroke because as we learn as the movie unspools itself, the monstrous Cenobites are barely the monsters, the humans of the film are the monsters, and their greed and lust is what destroys them and the lives of those around them.

It was at least a little ground breaking in 1987 to have a monster movie where the monster is on screen for all of 10 minutes. But those ten minutes? We go right back to a love of visual effects as the Cenobites reveal themselves, dripping and oozing, terrifying our female heroine as she tries to understand what’s happening. But this again is not the scariest part of the movie, the scariest part is when the heroine stares her father in the eyes looking for help and he says the words that her perverse uncle had just said to her, “Come to Daddy”.

Absolutely utterly terrifying, grosser than any ooze or slime or skinless corpse could possibly ever be. A stroke of brilliance from Director Barker, and the franchise would grow off of this success to a series spanning ten films and a successful book career for Clive Barker.

More than watching Hellraiser though (thought you should watch Hellraiser, preferably in a movie theater on your birthday with a group of friends), I want to encourage you to go see films in theaters. Grab your seat, turn you phone off, buy your popcorn if that’s your poison, smuggle in a beer if you like, they’re not gonna check, just try to crack it open at a noisy part and immerse yourself in the screen. It really does hit different in a way you might not expect. When those production logos drop and the chatter dies down? That feeling has never really gone away for me, and I hope you too can find it again.

5/5