114 : Hellraiser Screw Sleep!

1. Hero on 13 March, 2016 at 03:38

   I don’t like how the cenobites have been transformed from “explorers of the further regions of experience” to plain old fire-and-brimstone punishers of sinners. Their previous motivation was so much more mind-bending and intriguing. It made you think. What they are now is better suited for a Chick Tract and scaring people into becoming Christians.

   It sounds like through adapting Judgement into a Hellraiser script, that this time-honored tradition of getting the cenobites totally wrong will continue.

   • Ryan Danhauser on 13 March, 2016 at 09:44

     Hero, I have the same fear about this one. Prior evidence and a description of the story point to that likely being the case with these cenobites, but I suppose we won’t know 100% until we see the movie.

     • Hero on 13 March, 2016 at 12:27

       And what bugs me more than anything is it seems like Clive Barker himself endorses that vision of Hellraiser, started by the very movie he trashed(Inferno). Here’s a quote from Brandon Seifert, writer of The Dark Watch.

       “Brandon Seifert : “The whole ‘Hell is a metaphysical prison for sinners and the Cenobites are the prison guards’ thing isn’t my idea, or my interpretation of Hellraiser – it was revealed as the reason the Cenobites exist in the current Hellraiser ongoing series by Clive Barker and his collaborators. I’m just going with what Clive established.”

       It makes me wonder why Clive hated Inferno so much if it supposedly was right on the money about the purpose of the cenobites.

       • Rob Ridenour on 14 March, 2016 at 02:07

         Clive had never endorsed Inferno. He loathes it.

         Here’s a quote from his official site Revelations where he talks about it:

         “[Hellraiser : Inferno] is terrible. It pains me to say things like that because nobody sets out in the morning to make a bad movie but you know these guys sent me a script and I said if you want me involved ask me let’s do a deal and get into business, but I really don’t think this works right now (talking about the script). They said we really don’t want your opinion on it we are going to make the movie. So they went and made the movie, and it is just an abomination. I want to actively go on record as saying I warn people away from the movie. It’s really terrible and it’s shockingly bad, and should never have been made.
         “So I want to give Pinhead a good send-off. I want to do it right. If we are going to get rid of the old guy, let’s do it with some style. So my whole idea was if I do it with Harry I can bring in two characters at the same time and sort of weave their stories together.
         “You can never kill a monster off completely. What it will do for me is kill him in my mythological range. Others may wish to pick the story up and do something else with him, but as far as I’m concerned once I’ve told the story, it’s the last of the guy.
         “What I’m trying to do is give the guy a decent dignified send-off. It’s really important to me, and I think he’s a great monster. I really hate the way he’s been treated in this film. I depressed me. It upset me on behalf of Doug, on behalf of myself, on behalf of the people who love these movies. I thought it was disrespectful and I felt as though he’d been tagged on just because they wanted to call it a Hellraiser movie. But it didn’t feel like a Hellraiser movie. It felt opportunistic to me. And I want to do something respectful to a character who has been very good to me. And this [short story] will be the way to do it.”

         Confessions

         By [Craig Fohr], Lost Souls Newsletter, September / December 2000 (note – interview took place 25 August 2000)

         • Hero on 21 March, 2016 at 17:22

           I know, I meant that Clive endorses the interpretation of the cenobites as purveyors of moral punishment(as in the Boom comic series) rather than purveyors of otherworldly experiences, and this is an interpretation that matches Inferno’s.

           I’ve heard the excuse that some random writer came in and bastardized the Hellraiser mythos, but from what I’ve seen, most of the people creatively involved in the Boom comics are friends/associates of Clive.

           I’m not trying to bash Clive but either he has had a very different interpretation of the cenobites and Hellraiser than I have from the time he wrote the Hellbound Heart, or he quietly re-imagined them at some point. All I know is the early Hellraiser movies and the Hellbound Heart never imply that the cenobites are out to judge and punish people for their sins.

           Ironically, considering I’m not a huge fan of Hellraiser III, one of my favorite Pinhead lines is “There is no good, Monroe, there is no evil, there is only flesh, and the patterns to which we submit it”. That said it all.

       • Ryan Danhauser on 14 March, 2016 at 13:32

         Hey Hero, I see what you mean. I think my answer to that would be that

         1) there were more writers of the Hellraiser comic than just Brandon Seifert, and he loves to be able to collaborate with them and share their ideas. This may also include Hellraiser 2, where maybe the labyrinth and Leviathan weren’t his ideas, but they were cool, and he was interested to see what they did.

         2) The Scarlet Gospels has Clive’s new vision of the Hell of the Cenobites, and it is a lot different than any of us imagined. It does explain the birds and the church bell. I’m willing to revise my idea of the World of the Cenobites if it comes from Clive Barker. 🙂

2. Rob Ridenour on 21 March, 2016 at 18:01

   To Hero,

   Oh I haven’t read the early Boom Comics. So I can’t comment on those. You’re talking about the ones with Kirsty as a cenobite, right? If they were portray the cenobites in a fashion that’s against the earlier films then I would agree with you. The cenobites aren’t moralists in the slightest.

   • Hero on 21 March, 2016 at 20:10

     I think it’s like six or seven issues into the series, after Kirsty becomes Pinhead. She shows Tiffany an area of Hell called “the Pit” which she says is where bad people go when they die. Later, in the Dark Watch series, she says that she came to realize that Hell wasn’t such a bad place after all, because it punished bad people who escaped justice when they were alive, a point which the Female Cenobite later reiterated to her at the end of the arc. There’s also a comic from Boom where a man(who cheats on his wife with his secretary) catches his wife in bed with another man and murders them both with a shotgun. He’s found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity and then commit suicide, and ends up in Hell.

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