“What’s your pleasure, Mr. Cotton?”
The box is back and do you dare open the DVD case to see if chains and hooks will fly out and bind you to your DVD player?
This version does offer you some new special features but also ports over some of the older features. Name your pleasure sir.
Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) is in the orient and buys a mysterious puzzle box. He takes it back to his house in England and opens it. What he finds inside is quite a shock to him and he goes to pieces over it in a room upstairs. Some time later his brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his wife Julia (Claire Higgins) move into the house. Larry’s daughter Kristy (Ashley Laurence) is also in town but chooses not to stay in the house with her stepmother, who she doesn’t like.
Larry smashes his hand with a hammer accidentally and drips blood on the floor in the room where Frank went to pieces. Frank is revived and reanimates as a skinless, bloody monster (now played by Oliver Smith). Frank had a relationship with Julia and he now convinces her that she should help him get fully regenerated. She brings horny businessmen back to the house, but it’s Frank that makes a meal of them.
Kristy walks in on one of Frank’s feasts and barely escapes, but when she does run she grabs the puzzle box. She accidentally activates it and the creatures within, led by Pinhead (Doug Bradley), are about to give her the same treatment that they gave Frank. She tells them that Frank has escaped their clutches and can lead them to him. So now she has to get them Frank without anyone else being harmed, but Frank has other plans.
Hellraiser is the film that put Clive Barker on the map. He adapted it from his short story the Hellbound Heart. Hellraiser is another film that has been sequeled enough that we might forget how good the original was. It is quite the film. It was something that really was new at the time with its S&M themes and Barker’s new creation – the Cenobites.
Doug Bradley would be forever be sitting in makeup chairs to have those pins applied since this film is one that is widely remembered for that image. It was so successful that sequels were in order; the problem is that they got progressively worse. Now a remake is said to be in the works and one wonders if it will be pain or pleasure?
Hellraiser is a classic 80s horror film, perhaps THE 80s horror film. It’s really an icon and the Cenobites have also become icons themselves. Barker’s film was made on the cheap and made a lot more money that was put into it. Barker has tired of talking about the film, so it’s really no surprise that he doesn’t show up here in any new interviews. However, they do talk to other participants and port over some special features from the previous release.
Hellraiser is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include a commentary by writer/director Clive Barker, Ashley Laurence, and screenwriter Peter Atkins. This commentary is ported over from the previous edition.
The other item that comes from that disc is the 24 minute “Hellraiser: Resurrection” which interviews Barker, Laurence, Doug Bradley, composer Christopher Young, makeup men Steve Johnson and Bob Keen, costume designer Jane Wildgoose, Simon Bamford (“Butterball cenobite”), Nicholas Vince (“Chatterer cenobite”), Oliver Smith, Puncture (a group of performance artists who use chains and hooks), and Bill Condon (writer/director of Gods and Monsters).
New to this disc are some new interview segments. The first is the 16-minute “Mr. Cotton, I presume?” which sits down with Andrew Robinson. The 12-minute “Actress from Hell” is an interview with Ashley Laurence. The 18-minute “Hellcomposer” is with composer Christopher Young. The 12-minute “Under the Skin” is an interview with Doug Bradley, although it is from 2004 it is new to this disc. Two versions of the script, a first and a final draft, are available as PDFs on the DVD-ROM side of things.
Hellraiser is a classic, but fans will have to decide if the new features on this 20th Anniversary edition are worth picking up. Those that don’t have it in their collection shouldn’t have any qualms about adding it to their collection.
Hellraiser: 20th Anniversary Edition is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for this version of the DVD in the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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