| | | He'll Tear Your Soul Apart.
Features: DVD, THX, Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 1.85:1, Pan and Scan (TV Format), Dolby Digital (5.1), Trailers
In a place between pleasure and pain, there is a sensual experience beyond limits. And in a world between paradise and purgatory, there is a horror that feeds the souls of evil. Welcome to the singular vision of Clive Barker and his landmark horror opus, Hellraiser.Now for the first time ever, experience this horror classic in an all-new version, fully re-mastered in state-of-the-art Dolby Digital 5.1 supervised by THX and packed with extras personally compiled by writer/director Clive Barker, this is Hellraiser as you've never seen or heard it before. Now there truly are no limits.
"Clive Barker is the new prince of horror." Time Magazine
"Not for the faint-hearted." Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever
"Ugly fun all the way..." Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide
"I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker." Stephen King
"An imaginative, frightening debut from Clive Barker. A landmark horror film." Blake Davis, KFOR Channel 4 News
"Full of both weighty philosophical concepts and fun, over the top gore, it's got something guaranteed to please almost any genre fan." Mike Bracken, Mike Bracken's Horror Films
"...a dark, frequently disturbing and occasionally terrifying film..." Richard Harrington, The Washington Post
"Cinematic Barker at its most clever and disturbed." Widgett Walls, NeedCoffee.com
Editor's Note
Clive Barker's feature directing debut graphically depicts the tale of a man and wife who move into an old house and discover a hideous creature--the man's half-brother, who is also the woman's former lover--hiding upstairs. Having lost his earthly body to a trio of S&M demons called the Cenobites, he is brought back into existence by a drop of blood on the floor. He soon forces his former mistress to bring him human sacrifices to complete his body... but the Cenobites won't be happy about this. One of the best horror films of the 1980s, HELLRAISER is based on Barker's novel THE HELLBOUND HEART and was followed by three sequels.
Plot Summary
Always seeking greater pleasures and greater thrills, an explorer uncovers a key to another dimension of unlimited pleasure. The dimension is hell and after he is satiated the demons known as Cenobites rip the flesh from his bones. After his death, he haunts his lover, his brother's wife. She re-animates the adventurer through numerous murders. The key opens creating a hell on earth that consumes the family.
| Features | Still Gallery | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Access | | Audio Commentary With Writer/Director Clive Barker And Star Ashley Laurence, Moderated By Writer Pete Atkins | | Resurrection Featurette Produced By Clive Barker | | Theatrical Trailer | | Widescreen Version Enhanced For 16x9 TVs & Full Screen Version | | THX Mastered | | Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround |
| Entertainment Reviews
 | Hellraiser - DVD Review By: Christopher Null - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 4/10/2009 5:36 PM | |
One of the unsung titans of the horror industry, Hellraiser got its start in modest fashion that certainly didn't seem headed for sequel city. To date, eight Hellraiser films have been released (four direct to video). A remake is planned for 2008. Today, the plotline has been largely forgotten as side characters -- essentially, demons from Hell called Cenobites -- are the what have settled in people's minds and which have become increasingly the basis for the following films. But the original Hellraiser really isn't about Pinhead and his ilk. In fact, it's almost a love story....read the full review |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Anchor Bay |
| Release Date: 6/25/2002 |
| Running Time: 93 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1987 | | Catalog ID: 11232 | | UPC: 00013131123296 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English [CC], English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen/Standard 1.85:1/1.33:1 [4:3] |
| Cast & Crew
| Memorable Quotes| "We're going to tear your soul apart!" ---- Pinhead (DOUG BRADLEY). | | "Demon to some. Angel to others." ---- ad tagline for the film |
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| | Professional Reviews | Variety
"...[The film] has several twists for the devotees of gore to delight in...[It] is well made, well acted, and the visual effects are generally handled with skill..." 05/20/1987Los Angeles Times
"...One of the more original and memorable horror movies of the year: a genuinely scary, but also nearly stomach-turning experience by a genre specialist....HELLRAISER is intelligent and brutally imaginative..." 09/18/1987 p.C18 Sight and Sound
"Barker' original remains distinctive for its disturbing seriousness..." 12/01/2004 p.77 Reel.com 9 of 10
Far from the tongue-in-cheek shocks of Scream and its brethren lies Clive Barker's Hellraiser. Barker's first feature-length film, which subsequently spawned a series of middling-to-awful sequels, is gory, suspenseful, quite well-acted, and very imaginative...Hellraiser was one of the first movies to explore sadomasochism within a horror context. Other films that have tried something similar (like the god-awful StrangeLand) have failed miserably because they present S&M as a freakshow, but Barker wisely presents the world with an unabashed eroticism...There's a lot of plot to get through in Hellraiser, and though the director frets in his commentary about how much explication there is, his film is never dull. The shocking opening shows us a bad boy named Frank (Sean Chapman) purchasing an ancient puzzle box that contains terrible and unmentionable torments. After he unleashes the demons contained therein, who flay his flesh spectacularly, the film then takes a sunnier turn, and shows a handsome family moving into their new home. There's a not-so-happy married couple named Larry (Andrew Robinson) and Julia (the wonderful Clare Higgins) Cotton, and a pretty lass named Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), Larry's feisty daughter from a previous marriage...Hellraiser offers more than the usual thrills and chills with its cast of three-dimensional characters and a perverse subtext that could keep semioticians busy for days. Though the sequels focus more on the Cenobites, the original is a far more interesting film because of the way it grapples with the dark sides of human sexuality. Like David Cronenberg or David Lynch, Clive Barker has a greater interest in worming under your skin than in making you jump out of your seat, and this quality is one of the main reasons why his first feature is a modern horror classic. - Rod Armstrong
Chicago Sun-Times 5 of 10
"I have seen the future of the horror genre, and his name is Clive Barker." - Stephen King...Now there's a blurb Stephen King should have written under one of his pen names. He may have seen the future of the horror genre, but he has almost certainly not seen "Hellraiser," which is as dreary a piece of goods as has masqueraded as horror in many a long, cold night. This is one of those movies you sit through with mounting dread, as the fear grows inside of you that it will indeed turn out to be feature length...The story begins with the plight of Frank, a hapless explorer into unknown realms of existence, who buys a magic box from a magician. After the sides of the box are manipulated just so, Frank is hurtled into the sphere of the Cenobites, strange creatures who introduce him to unbearable pleasure and unspeakable pain. Then Frank apparently is reduced to some kind of residue in the flooring of an old house...The house is purchased by the Cottons, Larry and Julia, who move in with their daughter, Kirsty. This is some house. The kitchen sink is full of maggots devouring rotting flesh. Isn't the real estate agent supposed to tidy up details like that?...It is not such a large house that a whole room could easily be forgotten, especially when it contains a flesh-devouring incubus, but I have seen the future of implausible plotting, and his name is Clive Barker...Who goes to see movies like this? What do they get out of them? I like good horror movies because I enjoy being surprised (and sometimes even moved), but there are no surprises in "Hellraiser," only a dreary series of scenes that repeat each other. What fun is it watching the movie mark time until the characters discover the obvious? This is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination. Maybe Stephen King was thinking of a different Clive Barker. - Roger Ebert
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