Clare Higgins

  • Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

    Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2021) While most people associate the Hellraiser series with the grotesque Cenobites (including the pinheaded series icon), the first film doesn’t have them on-screen for long—it’s mostly about the teenage protagonist’s creepy uncle being resurrected from the dead by blood sacrifice. Sequel Hellbound tries to have more of the Cenobites and develop the series’ hellish mythology without losing track of the first film’s overall plot. Here, our teenage protagonist (Clare Higgins, as cute as in the first film) does her best to reunite with her dead father, and gets the means to literally go to (a) hell in order to pursue him, despite the efforts of her murderous stepmother, reborn through the series’ usual blood sacrifices. In trying to play with a mythology invented by someone else (Clive Baker only being peripherally involved in this instalment), director Tony Randel manages to deliver a thoroughly average horror film—while there are a few effective moments, especially in the first half of the film when the evil stepmother makes a skinless entrance, Hellbound is watchable without being particularly compelling… which counts as a failure given the fascinating untapped possibility of its premise. The moment-to-moment cohesion of the film is also frequently dodgy, given how it seems to skip from one visual set piece to another. Compared to other late-1980s horror movies, Hellbound is not bad—but the expansive nature of its premise means that the special effects limitations of the time do prevent the film from reaching its fullest potential. There are at least half a dozen supernatural horror movies of that era that are simply better in every respect. Although, after watching the subsequent instalment in the series, I’m surprised to note how much material introduced in Hellbound pays off in the next movie.

  • Hellraiser (1987)

    Hellraiser (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, May 2001) As with many horror film, Hellraiser‘s potential exceeds its actual execution and leaves us wanting a better film. The characters are drawn in a realistic, rather than iconic fashion, but unfortunately they come across as unsympathetic, not authentic. The featured creatures are uniquely designed and their origin hint at some wild cosmology, but unfortunately, they’re used in the context of a more ordinary story that does the job without actually reaching its full potential. The early-eighties special effects are showing their age. Of more interest to horror fans and scholars, but not worth the while for everyone else.

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, June 2019) It was time for a rewatch, after nearly two decades’ worth of additional experience in horror movie-watching. (If I recall correctly, my first viewing was affected by a very bad VHS copy that visibly degraded as I was watching it.)  It’s not that I completely dislike Hellraiser — it’s that the film never quite manages to reach a good chunk of its potential. It’s got good iconic villains, an intriguingly baroque moral system, a wonderfully perverse attitude, some truly stylish visuals, and better-than-average writing from Clive Barker. It’s also quite a bit more unpredictable than most horror films, either then or now. But despite those sizable assets, Hellraiser never fulfills its potential — it spends too much time in less-interesting subplots, doesn’t fully dig into its mythology, and doesn’t quite know what to do. The disappointment is all the more striking in that the sequels never measure up to it either. Maybe a remake will get it right some day.

    (Third Viewing, On Cable TV, February 2020) Given how I managed to get all of the first four Hellraiser movies onto my DVR, the next step was to revisit the first film once more.  In rewatch, Hellraiser is both more and less what I expected. On the upside, it’s significantly more original than most horror movies of the time. The supernatural component is always more interesting than some psycho with a knife, and this one benefits from imaginative creature design, as well as taking inspiration from extreme S&M rather than more prosaic true-crime horrors. Much is left to the imagination, which is where the film becomes lesser than remembered: not much background is given to the creatures except for a few cursory lines. Much of Hellraiser in fact, is dedicated to another plotline entirely, with a victim of the puzzle box being regenerated from the blood of his lover’s victims. The cenobites themselves are there for a few minutes—the rest is perverse family horror. I quite liked Ashley Laurence as the heroine trying to discover the strange shenanigans in her father’s attic, although that may just be my preference for curly-haired brunettes. Opposite her, Clare Higgins impresses with a deliciously evil role. But the stars of the show are the Cenobites and their barely sketched presence—no wonder the film led to a number of sequels.