So join me today on a tour of the erotic nastiness of one of horror’s most foundationally queer texts. For something so often labeled “the one with the S&M demons,” what is actually at play is more monstrous, more surreal, and more connected to a queer cultural history than any genre titan. Hellraiser is grotesque, ugly, messy, and, beyond everything else, queer. Despite its nine sequels, solo comics, spin-off novels, and remake pitches, Hellraiser has maintained a status as one of the lesser, or at the very least lesser-known, horror franchises to emerge out of the genre’s golden age there is-in my mind-a very clear reason for that. It exploded onto the stage of 1980s splatter with a startlingly baroque aesthetic and levels of nuance and viscerality challenged only by the best of its time.Īnd yet, despite this, contemporaneous criticism of the film was-perhaps equally shockingly-tepid. Since its release in 1987, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser has steadily been making its mark across the horror genre. With a new film on the way and the shock appearance of Pinhead/The Lead Cenobite in Behaviour Interactive’s Dead By Daylight, Clive Barker’s body horror magnum opus is as significant in mainstream culture as it has ever been. Hellraiser: if you don’t know it now, then you may never have.
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