Photos from Hellbound Hearts

On Friday we held our special event Hellbound Hearts: The Influence of Clive Barker on 21st Century Horror. Despite contending with some decidedly un-spooky weather, it being a gloriously sunny day outside, you arrived in your droves to hear readings from Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane and Mark Morris. The authors were then joined by Twisted Tales stalwart Ramsey Campbell and the quartet discussed the influence of Clive Barker, their favourite moments of his career and some of the issues raised by his work. Particularly wonderful to hear were the anecdotes Ramsey was able to offer as someone who was present at the emergence of Clive as a figure in the Horror community, and who played a role in his development as an author (albeit one downplayed with some modesty by Ramsey who insisted that he just happened to be a writer who was there, and thus showed a young Clive that "it can be done").

The event also doubled as the UK book launch for the Hellbound Hearts anthology and we were glad to sell a good number of copies of this wonderful collection of stories inspired by the Hellraiser mythology written by such horror luminaries as Conrad Williams, Neil Gaiman, Karen Armstrong, Tim Lebbon, Christopher Golden and others. If you didn't pick up a copy on the night (you missed the opportunity to get it signed by both editors Paul and Marie, as well as a contributor in the form of Mark) you can pick it up from all good stockists.

Here are the photos from the event, we'd love to hear your thoughts so please comment below, send us an e-mail, facebook message, or tweet. 

(I apologise for the darkness of some of these photos, as I've already mentioned it was very sunny outside and positioning our readers in front of a glass wall may have confused my camera...)

Marie O'Regan reading her story 'The Real Me' to our audience

Paul Kane takes to the podium to read his story 'Strobe'

Paul Kane reading with Mark and Marie looking on

Mark reading his story 'Salad Days'

Ramsey Campbell regales the audience with Clive Barker anecdotes.

Four horror authors discussing the work of Clive Barker

There are plenty more Twisted Tales events in the pipeline so keep checking back for the latest news, in the meantime we'll have plenty of weekly content in the form of reviews, interviews and features.

‘The Hellbound Heart: Death of Ego, Birth of the Shadow’ by Suzanne J. Barbieri

 In this special article, Suzanne J. Barbieri analyses some of the themes and central myths of Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart.

The novella that spawned the film Hellraiser marries the themes of Pandora’s Box and Doctor Faustus. Frank Cotton is the ultimate egoist; a waster with an unquenchable hunger for sensation, he sees everything in terms of his own gratification. Frank is the Faustian central character who will go to any lengths for experience. Frank purchases Lemarchand’s configuration, a puzzlebox promised to conceal wonders; but a box represents a coffin, and therefore death, and Frank cannot be transformed without first experiencing the death of his old self.

Frank works at the box for hours. There seems to be no way into it, no hint on its smooth sides of a solution to the riddle. It is quite by accident that his fingers find the pressure points that disengage one section of the box from another and lead him into a world of sights, sensations and exquisite agony, presided over by the Cenobites. 

But every dream has its nightmare, and no one has a ruder awakening to this than Frank. When he summons the Cenobites with offerings of petals and doves’ heads, he is expecting them to come bearing gifts of perfumed women, hungry for him. Instead all he gets are the Cenobites themselves; corpse-cold, scarred and flagellant:

“A fitful phosphorescence came with them, like the glow of deep-sea fishes: blue, cold; charmless... he saw nothing of joy, or even humanity, in their maimed faces.”

And the pleasures they offer are of a wholly different kind to what Frank has been expecting.

Frank’s senses are heightened to such a degree that the slightest odour is sickening, every sight and sound a devastating revelation, and the reel of memories that unspool inside his head more than enough to render him helpless. And just as he thinks it is all over, the trip begins in earnest with the unveiling of the fourth Cenobite, a Kali-esque figure who:

“... sat on a pile of rotting human heads...their tongues – twenty or more – laid out in ranks on her oiled thighs... She stood up. The tongues fell to the floor, like a rain of slugs.

‘“Now we can begin,’ she said.”

Frank’s physical body is destroyed, but his spirit remains in the room until, awakened by the blood of his brother Rory, his Shadow (the dark, uncivilised side of a person) emerges, twisted and skinless. Frank has shed his skin, and with it his façade of humanity. He is now a dark primeval creature whose primary motivation is his own survival, and for this he must have blood. The sustenance he requires is brought to him by his brother’s wife, Julia. Driven by her obsessive desire for Frank, she lures men back to the house and murders them so that he may use their blood to grow himself a new skin.

Frank thinks he has outwitted the Cenobites, but he sold his soul in return for experience, and must keep his side of the bargain. Like Doctor Faustus, Frank has entered a Hell of his own making, and the Cenobites, once freed, can never be truly banished. The puzzlebox is only a rudimentary jail whose locks can be easily picked. The experiences offered by the puzzlebox Hell are of the Unconscious and Frank’s mistake is in trying to allow his Shadow self to exist in the physical world. He has been transformed so that he may experience the dark dream world, and there is no turning back. Finally when he is tricked, like Rumpelstiltskin, into saying his own name, the Cenobites home in on him and return to take him back to where he now belongs.

The Hellbound Heart represents the first stage of the individuation process. The old self dies, the outmoded ideals are shed, and the Shadow is dragged raw and kicking into the world of inner experience. That Frank’s Shadow is skinless illustrates the vulnerability of the untutored primal soul, and emphasises that the journey to completeness will be far from painless. Experience is the best teacher, and the first lesson is that there is no gain without sacrifice.

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Copyright © Suzanne J. Barbieri - First published in Clive Barker, Mythmaker for the Millennium

Clive Barker interviewed by Paul Kane

Clive Barker's fiction came to international attention with the publication of his Books of Blood in the mid 1980s. His status was considerably enhanced when he adapted his novella The Hellbound Heart into the film Hellraiser, which conquered the world in 1987 and went on to spawn many sequels, as well as a series of comics that explored its mythology. Clive also directed cult film classics Nightbreed (1990) and Lord of Illusions (1995). He designed the creatures and wrote the stories for two successful computer games: Undying (2001) and Jericho (2007) and is the author of many novels, including Weaveworld (1987) and Imajica (1991). Clive is currently working on his popular Abarat series, a new comic book series within the Hellraiser universe and has several other major projects underway. For more information, please visit http://www.clivebarker.info.

PK: As a creative person did you set out consciously to explore every kind of medium or was that something that just happened along the way?

CB: No, I think you certainly look at things and say, well, could I have a crack at that? And you ask yourself, could I be an ice dancer? No. Could I have written Phantom of the Opera? Thank God, no. But there are things along the way... I’ve obviously looked at illustrated stories a lot, whether they come in the form of Blake’s mythical writings which are so gloriously combined with pictures – I don’t think illustrated is the right term because he produced such beautiful pictures, the images and the words have equal value, which I hope is true of the Abarat books as well. Which is obviously the fruit of that kind of study. So I look at something along the way. I’ve looked at some poetry once in a while, thought I’d have a crack at writing some of that. I’ve done that a little bit, and will hopefully write some more. I’d certainly like to write a play or two more before I shuffle off this mortal coil. And I’d like to write another movie or two, it’s just a question of finding time. 

PK: I once saw something where you said that the creative marks you make on the page help when you write?

CB: I do little doodles sometimes in the margins, how a creature might look or how a street might be arranged or how a world might be arranged, which I need to go back to and reference later on. Or I’ll play through particularly inventive variations of invented names. I really try and do that. I do like the fact that on this page that I’ve almost finished there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve…thirteen smaller scribblings and one entire line scribbled out. And the nicest thing about that is I can still see what’s beneath it, which is useful because when I come to do the final polish it will have been typed out, and I’ll have this by my side – I’ll tend to go back to the handwritten draft and peer through the scribbling. And sometimes I’ll find that the first decision, the first choice I made was the better of the two.

PK: How do you keep track of everything, all the different names and the places?

CB: I tend to be very good with that. The only part of my mind that’s organised is the part related to the fiction. Everything else is fucking chaos. But I know where the book is. At any given time I know where a book is. I know what problems there are, where I’ve got to go next and how I’ve got to get there. And if I don’t know how I’m going to get there I know that my problem between now and tomorrow morning when I put the book down, which will be perhaps six o’clock at night to go painting, and by 8:39 the following morning when I pick it up again I need to have solved a problem related to geography, or a problem related to motivation before I pick up the pen again. You can’t dither, you can’t be insecure. You just have to trust in your own madness…I like that phrase actually. I’ve never thought of that before, you’ve dragged that out of me (laughs)

PK: It’s quotable (both laugh).

CB: It is, it’s quite quotable. Barker trusts in his own madness. It’s so horribly true, that’s the thing (both laugh). It’s all true…

PK: You’ve called it – the creative process – dreaming with your eyes open, but have you ever included anything from an actual dream you’ve had?

CB: Oh God yes. Lots.

Pinhead

PK: Any examples?

CB: Pinhead.

PK: He came from a dream?

CB: Yeah, yeah.

PK: Speaking of which, what do you attribute the success and the popularity and the staying power of Hellraiser to?

CB: I think a look… I think a lot of things, but a look, it caught a moment. Fetishism, in film form. We came along with a movie when the whole body modification thing was really starting to rock. And that was powerful, it spoke to that appetite that people have, the fascination, obsession. Back then one of the first interviews I did during the course of the publicity was for Skin 2, it was a really very stylish S&M magazine. And I did an interview for them, and it was sort of breaking new ground really for a director, going to a sexual area which addressed tastes of his own sexual fascination and say, hey, yes, I am very interested, y’know? This is part of my life. And I think that more than anything…I mean, I wasn’t doing it consciously; I was just saying what was going on in my life, in my imagination. It’s always been my style, well, you know this too, to say what’s on my mind. And I respect people who don’t bugger around, who don’t think about the how and the why, but actually get on and say well, yeah, actually, I love tying my girlfriend up, I love tying my boyfriend up. Yeah, yeah, I do whip him, really hard. And I think the fact is that we all really came out of the dark, if you will, and it was all part of the debate – and it just happened to be luck that I was making a movie that was part of the debate.

PK: How does it feel to have created so many mythologies which are going to live on for years to come?

CB: Well, I think it’s a lovely thing when something you make moves people enough that they want to do something with it for themselves. And I’ve never understood people bitching about, “Oh you must be pissed off about what he did with this, or what she did with that.” No. I mean to me, once you put the thing out there, it becomes part of the texture. There was a wonderful piece of academic writing done a few years ago about the influence of the Candyman mythos on the people of Cabrini-Green in Chicago, except that the academic in this case did not know that the story had been entirely invented. And she wrote the whole thing as though there really was an original myth. And I though that was perfect; that was the whole thing coming full circle. That was the myth becoming reality for a bunch of people. And when Tony Todd goes... and I actually witnessed this, it doesn’t need to be in Cabrini Green; I’ve seen it in Toronto, with a bunch of black kids going, “Candyman, Candyman!” They do it. Tony just gives them a dark look, you know. It’s great. What I like about it is I used to have a dentist’s assistant and she was this wonderful woman, she had lots of kids. And she said, “You know how I get them to go to sleep at night?” I said, “No.” She said, “I go to the mirror and say, ‘Candyman, Candyman…’ And by number three they’ve all gone!” (both laugh)

PK: There’s no greater legacy than that.

CB: Oh no - that’s tip top, isn’t it?

PK: It is. Just one final question, which gives you the most pleasure: writing or painting?

CB: When I’m painting, it’s writing… (both laugh). You can finish that yourself.

With thanks to Clive Barker (parts of this interview first appeared in the FantasyCon Souvenir Booklet).

"Nightbreed" by Clive Barker

Movies change; and change; and change. The images that first play on the screen in the inside of your skull as you set pen to paper are subject to constant reconfiguration. First you cast the faces to go with the characters, and costume them, and make them up; then the actors have their own embellishments to the dialogue, and the lighting cameraman has his contribution, and the set dresser his, and so on and so forth. But that’s only the beginning. The image, though fixed on celluloid, is still malleable in countless ways. The editor, placing one action beside another, can change the significance of each; can re-order dialogue, making new sense of old ideas. The optical effects men may create paintings that will put cities where there were none before, and just as magically remove them. The labs can make noon into twilight, or vice versa. Then, sound: another world of significance, transforming the way we perceive the picture on the screen; and music, to signal our responses.

What at first may seem the most immutable of media is in fact a world of possibilities, capable of being transformed at dozens of stages on its way from screenplay to screen. 

As both a writer and a director I am involved in the full spectrum of these processes. Inevitably, during the long, long trail from word to premiere, spirits soar and dive, ideas one day seeming God-given and the next rejected as hellish; decisions becoming badges of honour or yokes.

Somewhere half-way through this journey I’m setting these words on paper. Maybe the profoundest doubts about this project are past, and I’m finally on safe ground, believing we’ve made a good movie: but I’m laying no bets. We’ve still got another two weeks of shooting to do, much of it special effects related; that material has then to be cut into the picture. Mattes have yet to be painted, cells animated, titles created, music composed...

So much still to do. So many decisions still to make, and every one with its consequence. Still it’s time – publishing schedules being what they are – for me to pen the introduction to the book of the film.

What I will try to offer is a glimpse of the story behind the story. To try and describe how this first chapter of the Breed’s epic came into my head, and what narrative trails spread from it.

For me, one of the great attractions of the interlocked and interdependent collection of genres that constitute the fantastique – horror fiction, speculative or science fiction, sword or sorcery fiction – is the clarity with which they run from their present manifestations back to mythological and folkloric roots. The ghost story, the prophetic vision, the chronicle of imagined travels, imagined worlds, imagined condi-tions – all of these are as vital today, and as popular, as they ever were. Their tradition is honourable, and scattered everywhere with master¬pieces. Their current interpreters – in prose and celluloid – are, at their best, producing works that dive head first into the dream pool we all swim around in during our sleeping lives. Twenty-five years of our projected seventy-five will be spent in that pool. It’s important that we learn the strokes.

Perhaps the story-form that fascinates me most is that of the lost or wandering tribe. I treated it first in Weaveworld, a book about the Seerkind, who still possessed a holy magic in a secular and rationalist world. Now, in Nightbreed, I’m creating another tribe, but a very different one. The Kind was an essentially benign species. The Breed are not. They’re the monstrous flip side of the coin; a collection of transformers, cannibals and freaks. Their story, as set down in Cabal, and now re-envisioned in Nightbreed, is in a long tradition of night-quests; a visit by members of our species into the haunted underground to confront buried mysteries. Those mysteries bite. Several of the Breed have an appetite for human meat. Some are more bestial than human; others have a touch of the Devil in them, and are proud of the fact. To set foot in their domain is to risk death at their hands. But it is also a chance to see the lives of Naturals like ourselves from another perspective. The workings of the world seem a little more preposterous through the eyes of monsters. The Breed have been persecuted in the name of loving God; nearly exterminated by people who have envy in their hearts as much as hatred. As Rachel, one of the characters in the film, tells Lori:

“To be able to fly? To be smoke, or a wolf; to know the night, and live in it forever? That’s not so bad. You call us monsters. But when you dream it’s of flying, and changing, and living with¬out death.”

That’s one of the perspectives that makes the story of the Breed so intriguing to me. The adventure of Nightbreed is as much psychic as physical; or rather the two in one. A descent into a darkness that may illuminate.

Another is less conceptual. It’s to do with the challenge of making the insolid solid, and here the business of cinema and the business of fantasy offer interesting parallels.

I use the word business advisedly, because however much I may like to pretend otherwise (and I do) the making of motion pictures is as much commerce as art. That may not be true of more modestly scaled pictures, but a fantasy movie like Nightbreed, with countless action sequences, elaborate special effects, and a sizeable cast, costs too much of somebody else’s money for me lo be left to run creatively riot. Producers watch, accountants account; questions are asked hourly: “How many more shots to finish this sequence?”; “Do you really need three stuntmen?”; “Can’t we do without the tame pig?” Compromises are beaten out and agreed upon. Small furies come and go.

So the problem is: how do I make the dream real? How do I juggle the possibilities, knowing that visions cost hard cash and I can’t have all of dreamland? Clawing something valid from the maelstrom has repeatedly come close to defeating me, but working with the fantastique toughens the grip. It is perhaps the very nature of both genre and medium that it try and slip away, and it’s certainly my nature to attempt to pin it down for a little time, and keep its company.

One of the great pleasures of working in the area of dream-film (if that isn’t tautological) is the certainty that its true significance lies as much inside the head of the audience after it’s seen the picture as with what I actually put on screen. Much has been written about the way the rise and rise of the craft of special effects has changed the dynamic of such films. The creatures that in earlier years might have been kept discreetly in shadow, allowed only the briefest screen-time, are now often centre stage. In Nightbreed I’ve taken full advantage of this facil¬ity, seeking to put on screen more than a few tantalizing glimpses of the creatures. We’ve created a city for them, a religion, a whole way of life. They are as real, as rounded, as the human characters; in some cases perhaps more so. It’s my hope that audiences will take these creations to heart as they did (much against my expectations) with the Cenobites in Hellraiser, demanding to know more about their origins and powers, happy to embrace them despite (or perhaps because) they are on the side of darkness.

A movie is a two hour experience, but if an image or a character touches some nerve in the audience its effect may last a good deal longer. Some sixty years after they were made King Kong and Bride of Frankenstein – two of my favourite dark fantasy films, both focussed as much on their fantastical stars as on the human – exercise considerable fascination for audiences. Karloff and Kong are recognizable images the world over, despite the fact that the films in which they appeared are technically far inferior to those of today. It would be overweening of me to claim (or even hope) that our Breed will join that elevated league of icons, but I’d like to think we’re producing images that will at least remain in the audience’s head longer than a few hours.

Sooner or later the mask maker, much preoccupied with the art of haunting his audience, becomes haunted himself. How could he not, surrounded day in day out by the faces of his creations? I am, I confess, now so possessed by the Breed that they seem as real to me as the people walking up and down the street outside. I’ve lived with them like soul-mates, and their story has become a chapter in my own life. If the film communicates even a taste of that reality I’ll be well satisfied.

In both the film and the book the head honcho of Midian, Lylesburg, is much preoccupied with the fact that the Breed must remain hidden. What’s below remains below, he keeps insisting. But fantasy is a kind of archaeology; the digging up of buried images from the psyche; the bringing to light of hidden wonders. The movement of this story is indeed into the underground, but then – inevitably – we rise again, with new companions by our side. I hope they haunt you a little.

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First published in Clive Barker’s Nightbreed: The Making of the Film - 

© Clive Barker. Reprinted with permission of the author.

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(For this post, thanks to Clive Barker, Robb Humphreys, Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane)

Remember, you can attend an evening of horror devoted to the influence of Clive Barker's work at our Hellbound Hearts event.

"To Hell With You...." an article by Paul Kane

It’s almost twenty-five years since the world witnessed the birth of a very special genre mythology. Hellraiser, though only a small budget movie, would forever change the landscape of modern horror, flying in the face of the stalk and slasher movies so prevalent at the time and giving us characters the likes of which we’d never seen before. And it all started in the imagination of one man, a dreamer named Clive Barker; now, of course, a household name as a bestselling author, film-maker, producer and artist.

The seeds of the original film were sown when Barker was very small. For instance, his grandfather was a ship’s cook and would bring him back exotic presents from his voyages – one of which just happened to be a puzzle box from the Far East...Barker was also fascinated by a book on anatomy called De Humani Corporis Fabrica by the artist Andreas Vesalius (1543). This showed skinless figures in classical and relaxed poses, a definite inspiration for the way a certain skinless Frank would look in Hellraiser.

At Quarry Bank School in Liverpool, Barker met collaborators that would be pivotal to the series later on: Doug Bradley and Peter Atkins. But it was his talent for writing and directing plays that would bring such like-minded people together and eventually culminate in the Dog Company, a theatre group who put on plays like Dog, Nightlives and The History of the Devil – the latter again displaying his penchant for all things Hellish, as well as his love for the tradition of Grand Guignol theatre.

It was around this time that he also wrote short stories to amuse his friends in the company; tales that would end up collected in print as Clive Barker’s Books of Blood (the first three volumes of which were published by Sphere in England in 1984). Here there were also hints of what was to come in Hellraiser, particularly in stories like ‘Hell’s Event’ (demons competing for human souls) and ‘The Inhuman Condition’ (a character solves a knot puzzle and summons demonic forces). If that wasn’t enough, the writer’s inaugural book, The Damnation Game, was a take on his favourite version of the Faust myth by Christopher Marlowe. All these would end up in the melting pot when it came to penning the novella on which Hellraiser would be based.

Published in an anthology called Night Visions, alongside old friend Ramsey Campbell and Lisa Tuttle, Barker’s ‘The Hellbound Heart’ was the perfect genesis for the mythology, revolving around the Cotton family: hedonistic Frank, who solves a puzzle box he thinks will bring him the ultimate high, only to come face-to-face with demons who equate pain with pleasure; brother Rory – changed to Larry in the film; his wife Julia, who had once slept with Frank and will now do anything for him; and family friend Kirsty, changed to Larry’s daughter in Hellraiser. After film-maker George Pavlou made such disappointing adaptations of his work for Underworld (aka Transmutations) and Rawhead Rex, and with two short art-house films under his belt – Salome and The Forbidden (the latter also featuring hooded monks and a skinned man) – and with the aid of producer Christopher Figg, Barker set about finding finance for his own cinematic version of ‘The Hellbound Heart’.

Funding came in the shape of Roger Corman’s New World company, to the tune of $4.2 million, while actors attached to the project were Shakespearian thesp Clare Higgins (Julia), Sean Chapman (Frank) and heavyweight American actor Andrew Robinson from Dirty Harry (Larry). ‘Larry’s character is interesting. The way I’m approaching this is to also play the evil brother in a manner of speaking,’ said Robinson at the time. ‘For me they are one character and the way I’m playing the role is that there are seeds of Frank in Larry, even if Larry is a decent man.’ Fresh-faced US actress Ashley Laurence (Kirsty) also came on board after impressing Barker and Figg during a reading: ‘Clive tried to explain one scene to me, “Your uncle is in your father’s skin…” It seemed really weird but I just went with it. I always wanted to play a part that would allow me to explore raw emotions, not just being pretty or witty.’

To play the ‘Cenobites’, the demons that come when the Lament Configuration is solved, Barker drew on the talents of former Dog Company members Simon Bamford (Butterball), Nick Vince (Chatterer) and Doug Bradley (as ‘lead Cenobite’), who was actually given a choice of this character or removal man – which went in the end to another Dog Company member, Oliver Parker. ‘It seems odd to me now,’ said Bradley later, ‘but I very nearly settled for the latter. This was going to be my first movie, so why would I want to be buried in latex?’ Finally, for the imposing Female Cenobite, Barker employed his cousin, Grace Kirby.

In the technical stakes, make-up effects were in the safe hands of Bob Keen, who had worked on Return of the Jedi and Highlander, with stand-outs being not only Frank’s skin suits (sported by Oliver Smith), but his lengthy resurrection sequence and the Cenobite make-up. Cinematography was handled by veteran Robin Vidgeon and music by Christopher Young, who delivered a masterful score (originally the music was to have been provided by rock band Coil). And so the film was shot in London – at a reputedly haunted house in Dollis Hill, and a soundstage not far away.

‘With Hellraiser, we’re delving into the dark side of desire,’ promised Barker. ‘This is an extremely dark story, but there’s visual grace and elegance present…The imagery we’re employing is, as far as the creatures from hell are concerned, something that hasn’t been done before. They’re like sadomasochists from beyond the grave,’ coincidentally the working title of the piece. He didn’t disappoint, and upon its release Hellraiser recouped its production costs in just three short days.

Audiences were thrilled, not only by the visceral and outlandish content, but the relationships at the core of the movie and – out of all proportion to their screen time – the Cenobites. In particular Doug’s ‘Pinhead’, as they were now calling him, was singled out as a more eloquent horror icon. Unsurprisingly, plans were already afoot for a sequel. ‘Hellraiser was designed to be a showreel, and that showreel became a big success,’ said Barker, and although he still wanted to be around as executive producer he had no wish to actually write or direct a follow-up. This would be the territory of two men. Peter Atkins was an old school friend of Barker’s who had shown him some of his fiction and who Barker was convinced could come up with a great screenplay, in spite of having no experience in this field. ‘I spent an evening with Clive and he told me the story. I borrowed the previous Hellraiser script. I had no idea what scripts looked like, but I knew the rhythm of movies, and two and a half weeks later I had a first draft,’ admitted Atkins.

Tony Randel worked for New World and visited the set of the first movie – even helping out to such extent that he was given a ‘thank you’ in the end credits. ‘I wanted to bring something new to the sequel,’ said Randel. ‘I knew it would feel contextually the same because Clive and I have a similarity of styles to start with, but I wanted to enlarge the scope of the picture. It eventually encompasses the entirety of hell itself, which creates a kind of inverse claustrophobia: you’re in this vast open space where anything can happen, which can be more oppressive than being in a closed, inescapable place.’

Set in a psychiatric hospital just hours after the events in the first film, this brought back Kirsty – now on an Orpheus-like trek to rescue her father from Hell. Little does she realise, however, that the head Doctor Malahide (changed to Channard for the film, and played to perfection by British actor Kenneth Cranham) wants to visit Hell too; so much so that he brings a skinless Julia back using a mattress from the house and a very disturbed patient obsessed with self harm. Support came from the characters of young puzzle-solving mute Tiffany (Imogen Boorman) and junior doctor Kyle (William Hope from Aliens). The Cenobites were also back with a bit more time on screen, and with a new Female Cenobite (Barbie Wilde) in tow. Not only that, we got to meet their dark god, Leviathan.

Opinion was divided over Hellbound: Hellraiser II when it came out in 1988, with a strictly hate it or love it response from many. The main bone of contention appeared to be the ease with which the demon version of Channard defeated the other Cenobites, including Pinhead (a lack of time and money for a decent scrap). In fact, Pinhead’s popularity was growing by the month – so much so that plans were scrapped to make Julia the recurring villain of the franchise. ‘Clive’s original wish was that Julia…would be the Freddy Krueger of the series,’ Atkins explained. ‘What happened, of course, was the public got in the way. They fell in love with Pinhead.’ Nevertheless, it would be a few years until another sequel would come about.

When New World disintegrated, it left the question of who owned the rights to the Hellraiser series in doubt. Eventually, Lawrence Kuppin – erstwhile New World co-chairman – along with Harry Evans Sloan and Bob Bennett, set up Trans Atlantic Pictures and planned to bring out a number of horror sequels, including Hell on Earth (1992). A number of ideas had been batted around in the interim, such as an Egyptian Hellraiser and one where Pinhead would become a kind of Jason slasher figure tormenting teens. In the end Atkins came up with a Pinhead-focussed movie that explored the origins of the character, hinted at in the preliminary scenes of Hellbound. The demon’s human alter-ego, a British Captain called Elliott Spencer, attempts to stop the monster breaking free from the Pillar of Souls and causing chaos on Earth. The only person who can stop him this time is TV reporter Joey Summerskill (Terry Farrell).

Set and shot completely in the US, and with an America crew, the choice of director was, oddly, UK-born film-maker Anthony Hickox, after Randel had a disagreement with the producers. With only the horror comedies Waxwork, Waxwork II and Sundown: Vampire in Retreat to his credit, Hickox was also a controversial choice. But his fast-paced style and action-orientated set-pieces did reinvigorate the series, helping it do well at the box office. ‘Hell On Earth is exactly what I was looking for,’ said Hickox in his defence, ‘a serious horror movie… In this story Pinhead becomes a central character and the audience learns about his history. I think this film really ties up the other two. It completes the trilogy and helps fill in gaps in the entire story.’ Barker returned to help out in post-production, also promoting the movie alongside Candyman.

At a wrap party one of the cast uncannily predicted what might happen in the next film by suggesting, ‘They should send Pinhead into space!’ While this wasn’t the major impetus for Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), the storyline – which covered three different timelines and three incarnations of Lemarchand, designer of the box (all played by Bruce Ramsey) – did have a framing sequence set on a space station. The most troubled shoot in Hellraiser’s history, it was hampered by lack of money to realise Peter Atkins’ ambitious script – especially an extended version of the 18th Century section – a change in directors when effects man Kevin Yagher quit, to be replaced by Joe (Curse of Michael Myers) Chappelle, earning the film the notorious Alan Smithee moniker, various other crew changes, a fire, a strike and a case of chickenpox. ‘Essentially, I wanted to make a story about the box and be true to the fans by detailing the history of where it came from. My whole idea was that I didn’t want to do a Hellraiser IV where Pinhead slaughters a bunch of people,’ said Yagher admirably. ‘It was less painful for me to walk away than to sit there and watch it day to day. Then I could just see the final thing and say, “Well, they did this and they did that to it.” But I didn’t have to see every step. It’s like pulling butt hairs out...’

A couple of things the movie had going for it, though, were Gary Tunnicliffe’s make-ups (Gary had joined the crew for Hell on Earth and did such a great job, he’s still working on them today) and Valentina Vargas as sexy new Cenobite Angelique. ‘For the first time in my career, I’m playing a villainess in a horror movie, and I’m really loving it,’ she gushed. ‘In the third story, Angelique is a Cenobite because she’s surrendered to Pinhead, but in the first two tales, she’s like a serpent because she’ll trick, seduce and manipulate people. They’ll think they’re in Heaven until she turns around and backstabs them.’

Bloodline received only a limited theatrical release, yet it’s a testament to the Hellraiser fanbase that it did as well as it did, paving the way for another potential sequel. In spite of some excellent pitches for Hellraiser V, one of which – by the award-winning duo writer/editor and Hellraiser I-III unit publicist Stephen Jones and author Michael Marshall Smith – would have seen a return to London and to the heyday of the mythos, producers at Miramax who now owned the franchise plumped for the creative team of Scott Derrickson (writer/director) and Paul Harris Boardman (co-writer). Left to their own devices they came up with the straight to video Hellraiser: Inferno (2000), which followed the mental disintegration of policeman Thorne (Craig Sheffer) who is investigating a death linked to the box. Fans of the series were less than pleased when Pinhead only featured for a few minutes at the end of this one. Doug Bradley was also put out: ‘Dimension…sent me the screenplay and they clearly wanted my opinion and I had two opinions, one was that I didn’t think it was good enough, and the second was that I was surprised that I was in it so little.’ Derrickson’s response to criticism, which also came from Barker himself, was an open letter to Esplatter in which he stated, ‘The Hellraiser franchise had (in my opinion) travelled too far in one direction and had quite simply run out of steam. The only interesting path to take in creating another sequel seemed to be the path of total reinvention.’

Hope came in the shape of a director willing to listen more to the fans. Rick Bota set about trying to take the elements of the mythos and weave them into a worthy sequel, with the help of screenwriters Carl V. Dupre and Tim Day, who were also admirers of the earlier movies. Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002) also promised one of the most mouth-watering reunions of all time. Yes, Kirsty would be back to confront Pinhead once more! ‘I got a call from Doug Bradley at home,’ said Ashley Laurence, ‘and kind of out of the blue he said that he was doing Hellraiser and that the director was talking about the fact that he would love to bring back the Kirsty character in a cameo. And [Doug] thought he would take matters into his own hands and call me at home to see if I was interested...’

Given the popularity of her character, however, it seems now that an opportunity to expand the storyline was wasted; and even the dramatic meet-up between the two was shortened (you can see the full version in the DVD extras). In spite of being underused, Kirsty’s presence is felt in every frame, as we follow the trials and tribulations of her husband, Trevor (Dean Winters), to their ultimate and satisfactory conclusion.

So enamoured with the Hellraiser universe was Bota that he stayed on to direct the subsequent two sequels, shot back-to-back in Romania. Hellraiser: Deader was based on a Neal Marshall Stevens original script and had the mythos elements grafted, often quite clumsily, onto it. Said Stevens, ‘In addition [to] the script being changed to incorporate the Hellraiser mythology, it was also changed in locale from the lower East Side of Manhattan to London and Romania. Most painfully of all, the second writer [Day] felt the need to “sex up” my scare sequences with “boo” moments that they did not previously possess because I think such moments suck.’ Thankfully, Eight Legged Freaks’s Kari Wuhrer turned in an excellent performance as newspaper reporter Amy Klein, exploring the use of the box in underground culture but becoming entangled in the mythos herself. ‘I love, love, love Rick Bota,’ Wuhrer said of the director. ‘He is the most fun, hard working, creative, and energetic person I can say I had the pleasure of working with. He made us all laugh, he made me feel creative and strong and important, like what I had to say mattered.’

Hellraiser: Hellworld, conversely, was set once more in America and concentrated on a fansite that was offering invites to a Hellraiser party hosted by Lance Henriksen – supposedly the most ardent fan of the series ever. But when the teens who arrive are killed off in various ways, and the Cenobites show up, the boundaries between fantasy and reality look set to break down. Speaking about the project, effects man Gary Tunnicliffe offered: ‘There’s lots and lots of gore…and there will be an appearance by Chatterer. Doug is coming back to do Pinhead again.’

Right now, interest in Hellraiser is at an all-time high, and not just because of the 25th Anniversary. A ninth film in the series – Hellraiser: Revelations – was filmed at the end of 2010, a brand new imagining of the franchise is on the cards in the future from Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer, BOOM! studios have just begun releasing new Hellraiser comics material penned by Clive himself – and all that’s before we get to the Hellraiser story he has written for his next collection, and of course the long-awaited Scarlet Gospels which pits the Prince of Pain against another Barker favourite, detective Harry D’Amour from Lord of Illusions...

Whatever the future of Hellraiser is there can be no doubting its huge impact on the genre: giving us one of the most enduring franchises of all time and a true horror ‘hall of fame’ icon in the form or Pinhead. I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip to Hell as much as I have, but no tears please – you know as well as I do it’s just a waste of good suffering…

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For an even more detailed study of all the Hellraiser movies, Paul Kane’s hardback book The Hellraiser Films and their Legacy, introduced by Doug Bradley with behind the scenes photos and Clive Barker sketches, is available now from McFarland books www.mcfarlandpub.com (as well as Waterstones.com, Amazon.co.uk, Tesco.com, W.H.Smith.co.uk and others). Visit Paul’s website at www.shadow-writer.co.uk for more details.

© Paul Kane 2011.

Revised from an article first published in Scars magazine.

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To hear Paul Kane read from his own fiction as well as discuss the influence of Clive Barker be sure to come to our Twisted Tales event on August 5th: Hellbound Hearts.

Mark Morris interviewed by David McWilliam

Mark Morris became a full-time writer in 1988 on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, and a year later saw the release of his first novel, Toady. He has since published a further sixteen novels, among which are Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Fiddleback, The Deluge and four books in the popular Doctor Who range. His short stories, novellas, articles and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he is editor of the highly-acclaimed Cinema Macabre, a book of fifty horror movie essays by genre luminaries, for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award. His most recently published or forthcoming work includes a novella entitled It Sustains for Earthling Publications, a Torchwood novel entitled Bay of the Dead, several Doctor Who audios for Big Finish Productions, a follow-up volume to Cinema Macabre entitled Cinema Futura and a new short story collection, Long Shadows, Nightmare Light. For more information, visit Mark’s website at www.markmorriswriter.com.

DM: What were your formative influences as a horror reader?

MM: As a reader I guess I started almost exclusively with anthologies ― first the Armada Ghost and Monster and Sci-Fi collections, and then the annual Pan and Fontana Horror and Ghost story collections, which I devoured from the age of 11 or 12 onwards. Being a child of the 70s, James Herbert and Stephen King were the first horror novelists I read that I remember making a real impact on me ― to the extent that I would actively seek out their work. I wasn't that discerning in my teens, I have to say, and would basically just hoover up anything that looked scary. Because of that I read a lot of dross, along with the good stuff ― lots of ten-a-penny novels in the wake of Herbert's The Rats about killer crocodiles and killer spiders and suchlike, and also lots of stuff about haunted houses and demonic possession in the wake of The Exorcist, The Omen and The Amityville Horror.

DM: What was your first introduction to Clive Barker's work? How did it affect you and how did it alter your perceptions of what horror fiction is?

MM: I first came across the first three Sphere paperback volumes of The Books of Blood in a second-hand bookshop in Huddersfield around, I guess, 1985. I'd only discovered Ramsey Campbell's work a year or so earlier, thanks to reading Stephen King's Danse Macabre, and his skewed, disturbing vision of the world had absolutely blown me away. I suspect I was probably looking for more of Ramsey's books (some of them were hard to track down back then) and picked up Clive's stuff because the books looked interesting, and because the first volume contained an effusive introduction by Ramsey. I read the first three volumes one after the other over the next couple of weeks, and, as with Ramsey's stuff, was utterly blown away by Clive's audacious ideas and imagery, and by what seemed to me a totally original and fresh approach to many of the familiar tropes of horror fiction. Although I'd been reading horror stories since my teens, those couple of years (84-85) were like an epiphany to me. Suddenly, through reading Ramsey's and Clive's work, the boundaries of the genre seemed to expand, to become limitless. Horror, to me, suddenly became about far more than just scaring people; it became about subverting expectations, exploring the imagination, trying to push the parameters as far as they would go. I found it incredibly exciting and inspirational.

DM: In what ways do you consider yourself to be influenced by Clive's work as a writer of horror fiction?

MM: I think my first couple of novels, in particular, were hugely influenced by both Clive's and Ramsey's work. As I said above, it was all about exploring the limits of my imagination, pushing the boundaries as far as they would go. Both books are fairly traditional in structure, in that they're set in small communities which are besieged and corrupted by something from outside, something terrible and evil, but within that traditional structure are wildly surreal, phantasmagorical set-pieces.

DM: Were you attracted to Clive’s evocative body horror or to the huge, cosmic scope of his mythologies (or both)?

MM: I’d say probably both. It was the whole package. I loved Clive’s vision, but the sheer inventiveness of his body horror I also found startling. I love The Books of Blood and Clive’s first two novels – The Damnation Game and Weaveworld. I love the way he almost mythologises the body, sees flesh – and more particularly, what can be done to the flesh – as a way of gaining enlightenment or status or of transporting oneself to a different realm. With the Cenobites, for instance, there was a sense that by torturing their bodies (or having them tortured), and by embracing that pain, they had broken through some kind of barrier, achieved a state of ‘otherness’. Clive embraced that whole sado-masochistic idea of the exquisiteness and attraction of pain with a relish and an inventiveness I had never encountered before, and I found the audaciousness of that both original and thrilling.

DM: What do you think of the numerous adaptations of Clive's works in various different media?

MM: I'm only aware of the Hellraiser movies and the Nightbreed movie and some of the early comic book adaptations of his Books of Blood stories. I love the first Hellraiser movie, because it is wholly Clive’s vision, and captures that atmosphere of both beauty and degradation which go hand-in-hand in his work. After that the franchise (like so many before it) subscribes to the law of diminishing returns. Because of Clive’s involvement the second film has some interesting and wonderfully inventive ideas, but the later films, in which he is only minimally involved, lose that sense of particular menace and dread and reduce Pinhead and his cohorts to the roles of bog-standard (and sometimes wise-cracking) demonic entities.  As for other adaptations, I loved the novella, Cabal, again for its sheer inventiveness, and thought that the Nightbreed movie captured the imagery beautifully (in fact, I remember buying a book of all the different creature creations and poring over it, entranced by the ideas). Having said that, the actual film itself, I must admit, didn't make a huge impression on me – though perhaps I ought to re-watch it and re-assess it, as I haven’t seen it for many years. The comic books are fine ― and contain some great artwork from the likes of Les Edwards and John Bolton ― but I'm not really a comics fan, and so would always rather read the original stories.

DM: A lot of your writing over the past few years has been devoted to Torchwood and Doctor Who novels. Do you see this as a continuation of your earlier horror work or as a new direction? What are the appeals of writing within a pre-existing fictional world?

MM: In some ways Doctor Who felt a little bit like coming home to me. It was the first genre material – by which I mean book, movie or TV show – I remember being frightened by. I was four and saw a story called "The Abominable Snowmen" which contained robotic Yeti, which terrified me. Over the next few years I was also terrified by the Cybermen, the Autons and the Silurians… but in such a way that every week I was eager to go back for more. My love for Doctor Who has never diminished, but in my adolescence the programme also became a springboard to a plethora of other scary genre delights – the Pan and Fontana anthologies, as I’ve already mentioned, Hammer and Amicus movies, and other TV shows such as Brian Clemens’ Thriller and Nigel Kneale’s Beasts.

So yes, I see my Doctor Who and Torchwood work as very much a continuation of my earlier work. And in fact I intertwine the two – I certainly haven’t left the horror genre behind. It’s harder to get horror novels published these days, as the prose fiction side of the genre is in the doldrums and has been for a long time. But I have a novel out there doing the rounds at the moment, which is a strange combination of horror, crime and sf, a new horror novella due out soon from Earthling Publications in the US called It Sustains, and a new collection of my short horror fiction due out from PS Publishing in September called Long Shadows, Nightmare Light. Aside from this I have stories either recently out, or upcoming, in various anthologies – one of which, ‘Fallen Boys’, which appeared in the Solaris anthology, The End of the Line, having the rare distinction of being picked up both by Ellen Datlow for The Best Horror of the Year Vol 3 and Steve Jones for Best New Horror 22.

And also my Doctor Who and Torchwood work continues apace, and hopefully will continue to do so. But these aren’t the only ‘franchises’ I’ve worked within. I’ve also written a Hellboy novel and a Sherlock Holmes story, and I have one or two other projects connected to existing franchises in the pipeline. The appeal of working within these existing boundaries is the challenge of adding to the mythos (if you want to call it that) and of wrapping yourself so completely in the world that you know it inside out. With Doctor Who and Torchwood it’s easy – both shows are ingrained into my DNA – but with other things it’s a case of immersing myself in the fiction, getting a feel for the characters, the tone, the style, the kinds of stories they tell.

DM: Speaking of which, how did you come to be involved with the Hellbound Hearts anthology? What was it like to go back to one of your formative influences and work with his most famous creation?

MM: I’ve known Paul and Marie [Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan, editors of the volume] for a long time, and they simply approached me and asked if I’d be interested. As I say, I love the Hellraiser movies – particularly the first one – and the whole atmosphere of mystique which surrounds the Cenobites, that hellish culture of dread and pain. And what appealed particularly was that there was huge scope to do something new – to create a new Cenobite, a new set of rules, a new part of the mythos. It was great fun to do, to let my imagination fly, to push the boundaries, to be perhaps more graphic and out there than I would normally be in my fiction. Sometimes themed anthologies can seem a little restrictive, a little samey, but that wasn’t the case here. The parameters were so wide that I think most of the stories in the anthology can be seen both as Cenobite stories, but also as stand-alone stories in their own right.

NEW EVENT: Hellbound Hearts: The Influence of Clive Barker on 21st Century Horror

It is our pleasure to be able to announce the next Twisted Tales event!

On Friday 5th August at 6pm we are proud to be presenting...

Hellbound Hearts:

The Influence of Clive Barker on 21st Century Horror

Aside from Twisted Tales' resident legendary writer, RamseyCampbell, Liverpool has also produced another great master of horror: Clive Barker. Barker's fiction came to international attention with the publication of his Books of Blood in the mid 1980s. His status was considerably enhanced when he adapted his novella The Hellbound Heart into the film Hellraiser, which conquered the world in 1987 and went on to spawn many sequels, as well as a series of comics that explored its mythology. Clive also directed cult film classics Nightbreed (1990) and Lord of Illusions (1995). He designed the creatures and wrote the stories for two successful computer games: Undying (2001) and Jericho (2007) and is the author of many novels, including Weaveworld (1987) and Imajica (1991).

Join Twisted Tales for an evening celebrating and discussing Barker's enduring legacy at the UK's official launch of the Hellbound Hearts anthology- a collection of stories from some of the top names in contemporary horror that explore the Hellraiser mythology. Featuring readings by:

Mark Morris: Award-winning and bestselling author of The Immaculate, Torchwood: Bay of the Dead and contributor to Hellbound Hearts.

Paul Kane: Co-editor of Hellbound Hearts and award-winning author of The Hellraiser Films and their Legacy and the bestselling Arrowhead trilogy.

Marie O'Regan: Co-editor of Hellbound Hearts and award-nominated author of Mirror Mere.

Followed by a Q&A with the authors, who will be joined by Ramsey Campbell to discuss the influence of Barker's work on 21st century horror.

There will then be a signing session with all four authors.

Hellbound Hearts:

The Influence of Clive Barker on 21st Century Horror

Waterstone’s Liverpool One

6-8pm, Friday August 5th

Tickets £2*

*redeemable against any horror bought on the night.
To book tickets please visit the Waterstone's store or call (0151) 709 98 20

Link to Official Facebook Event.