Hellraiser: The Scarlet Box/Quartet of Torment

[domino harvey]

When increasing the print run to 10X the original, "Limited" has never meant less

[swo17]

Although how much bigger is the market here? I bet it sells out in a year or two.

[Cronenfly]

There already seem to be people bitching about the $125 MSRP on Arrow's Facebook, though; makes me wonder if they should have gone with about 5000 of the limited edition, followed by a run of the slimmed down, presumably cheaper set that's currently available in the UK. I'm sure this will sell well no matter what, however, so the current print run of 10000 of the pricier set prior to an economy edition seems an equally legitimate strategy.

[dwk]

When increasing the print run to 10X the original, "Limited" has never meant less

I thought the UK set was 5,000 copies and sold out well before its release date. In any event, Scream Factory's Nightbreed limited edition set was 10,000 copies and sold out relatively quickly and I suspect that this will too.

[MichaelB]

It was indeed 5,000 copies, and they could easily have sold more. 10,000 seems sensible.

[TMDaines]

When increasing the print run to 10X the original, "Limited" has never meant less

Limited editions are just good for flipping for a profit. I don't feel any sympathy to anyone buying them to feel a sense of exclusivity or superiority to others, who are coming to the party later and looking at greatly inflated prices.

It's good that art is available as widely as possible for all to enjoy.

[MichaelB]

I have one of a "limited edition" of 100,000 copies of The Wicker Man from the early 2000s, which may give some insight into how the physical-media market has dramatically contracted over the last decade.

[tenia]

When increasing the print run to 10X the original, "Limited" has never meant less

Limited editions are just good for flipping for a profit. I don't feel any sympathy to anyone buying them to feel a sense of exclusivity or superiority to others, who are coming to the party later and looking at greatly inflated prices.

It's good that art is available as widely as possible for all to enjoy.

I bought them only because I usually like the added exclusive content. It's even more the case with Arrow's LE because I've grown to like printed material content, and their LE tends to emphasise this kind of extras. In the case of Hellraiser though, I was quite disappointed by the book. There isn't a lot of interesting stuff in it, and the press kit for the 3 movies massively repeat the content of each other.

[domino harvey]

I did get the initial run of the UK box wrong, so thank you all for the correction. It does still feel a bit like cheating to replicate a limited edition in whole by doubling the run (effectively tripling the total of boxes out there), but all it really hurts is the second hand market-- which, to be fair, is why I blind buy so many Arrow titles. At least with Arrow US releases, I can reliably 100% recoup my costs-- they have eclipsed Criterion and TT on eBay for guaranteed sales, which allows me to take more risks on Arrow titles

[TMDaines]

I don't disagree, but most limited home video releases, after an initial price spike, became less valuable sooner rather than later anyway as they are replaced by technically superior or a more definitive release. This is why I'd buy limited titles before they go OOP or not at all to avoid a toxic investment for a viewing or two of a film.

[tenia]

I'm not especially surprised they would double the print run to accomodate a quickly sold out set to a probably bigger market. Plus, the UK set was for the UK, and import / export market shares being what they are, if you're UK based, your box won't lose a lot of value (you will likely lose customers rather than value).

[David M.]

if you're UK based, your box won't lose a lot of value (you will likely lose customers rather than value).

The currency used to purchase it, on the other hand...

(Sobs quietly to self)

[nolanoe]

Nice one, David.

I might grab one around Xmas, if my funds allow it.

[colinr0380]

It has been very strange to watch Hellraiser for the first time since seeing Under The Skin. The section of man-luring into decrepit attic spaces (which itself is a space that holds hidden dangers) feels very anticipatory of the later film, so much so that I wonder if Under The Skin was making a conscious allusion to it!

Something that I really like about this first film is the geographical space of the main setting, with the film making full and evocative use of such a tiny house environment. Some of the extra features joke a little about worries that it would just be seen as a film taking place entirely on a flight of stairs, but I always find it very impressive that such a claustrophobic environment can be used so expertly, and keep revealing hidden elements. The way that the different floors of the house are regularly used for a move into a different mental space, or from public to private, is perfectly done too. The creature in the attic is the literalisation of that, but I think the film is at its best with Julia's extended reminiscences starting just with a slightly clouded expression of recognition before building into more and more intrusive and full-blooded flashbacks, until she eventually retreats from the dinner party to be alone with her thoughts in the attic, where she finds Frank. I've always felt the first film was Julia's story (and tragedy, which is why I find the discarding of her character for the 'action climax' the most problematic part of the film), and the end of those flashback scenes with the discovery of Frank almost feels as if Julia herself has brought him back by pure force of will.

That almost adds to the fairy tale aspects of the (anti-) white knight realising the error of his ways and coming to save the girl from a stultifying life of boredom after initially rejecting her. No wonder he's worth killing for! The aspect I find so powerful about that relationship is that I do feel as if I understand why Julia does what she does - she's getting an impossible second chance that she seizes upon. Its just that she is perhaps blinded to Frank only being interested in using her before discarding her all over again. Or perhaps the danger and inevitable betrayal was worth it for recapturing a moment of illicit pleasure?

Also I hadn't really thought about it too much before watching some of the extra features, but Frank is always shown as dripping or covered in some sort of goo! He's covered with sweat in the vaguely defined Middle Eastern bazaar opening and soaking wet in the rain in the flashback sequence, even before he's slick with blood and eventually a viscera dripping skinned body! Perhaps it makes sense that he turns out to be a pretty slimy character!

By the way, despite now having the film on Blu-ray I'm still keeping my recorded from television copy of this from when it was first shown in Channel 4's Cinema Extreme season back in 1997, as I thought the advert breaks were magnificently timed to almost make the film even more powerful, or at least provide the audience with a couple of minutes to mull over the implications of what they had just seen! The first advert break came at the climax of Frank's resurrection scene, but just as good was the second advert break of Julia's full, fateful commitment to her relationship with Frank voicing that despite the Cenobites (and Larry) "they'll never find us in the...whole...wide...world!"

[M Sanderson]

Great to response to the film, Colin. Really like the first half of HELLRAISER, the dark love triangle, the aspects of chamber drama. Julia really is the film's dark heart and what distinguishes the film is to see desire from the woman's point of view. It's an exciting film, to see how far she will go to realise her passion with Frank. Clare Higgins and Sean Chapman - astonishing in Alan Clarke's Contact - are wonderful in this film. What a shame Chapman was dubbed over in "Amerenglish". And how sad for Julia, whose point of view we've shared so intensively, to be killed pretty much as an afterthought.

By contrast all the business with Kirsty is tedious, at least to me. It doesn't take long for the Cenobites, brilliantly designed as they are, to use silly one liners. The horror set pieces are mostly badly paced. Indeed the Cenobites are integrated pretty feebly into the action, always giving Kirsty enough time to solve it and zap them away. Butterball creeping up behind Kirsty's boyfriend, only for the ceiling to fall on him...obviously all that stuff helps to sell them film. It's just such a shame Hellbound, a terrible, terrible movie, didn't return to, and develop on, the dark stuff between Frank and Julia. In which they became basically cartoon monsters, travesties of their roles in the original.

I felt Hell on Earth was a worthy successor, using far superior pacing in its set pieces. We even see Cenobites using their power, in public. The club massacre. Flexing their demonic muscles outdoors: the live electric cables, charging the water flowing from the broken fire hydrant, chasing Joey. A set piece with movement, cinematic momentum, sustained. And some literate scripting, as noted by Kim Newman at the time of release. Pinhead's rhetoric, pushing the buttons of the shallow and immature Monroe, was a joy to listen to and lovely work by Peter Atkins. Brilliant edit, graphic matching the climax of Joey burying the Box in wet concrete foundations of a building, to... the image of a wet sidewalk, leading to a building whose design has been influenced by the Box itself. There should have been a sequel in the cutthroat, corrupt, dog eat dog world of executives, CEOs, big business.

[colinr0380]

Yes, that final sequence is problematic although the one aspect I like about the climax is the beginning of the collapse of the house which sort of literalises the final collapse of the family home, though I agree that the ceiling falling down is really just used as a zinger to knock out a monster from Hell rather than to suggest a total metaphorical obliteration! There would need to be much more Poltergeist-style literal home destruction for that sense of wiping the slate clean to come across stronger, perhaps impossible on a low budget!

I think a lot of the problems with Hellraiser's climax is that it feels like a hasty attempt to provide some sort of physical cinematic showdown that feels improvised during production, and that rushed attempt kind of muddles up the ending a bit. I'd always highly recommend reading Barker's simultaneous novella The Hellbound Heart together with seeing Hellraiser, as it has a final act that is much more in keeping with the rest of the film. It has been a few years since I last read it but Kirsty is much more 'drawn in to the action' there and calculating in her attempts to make Frank confess himself in the presence of the Cenobites compared to her naive innocence seemingly getting played up more in the film - in the film I guess it was all the better to betray her and make her into a more conventional action heroine (though the one moment of the action climax that I always find amusing is Kirsty angrily pushing the feckless boyfriend out of the way when he tries to help her with the box!).

In the novella Kirsty is much more on a conscious mission to deliver Frank back to the Cenobites and, perhaps more importantly, the Cenobites keep their promise to leave Kirsty alone once they have Frank back rather than (rather rudely!) continuing to attack Kirsty after they have what they want. That gives the Cenobites a weirdly powerful sense of being bound by a moral code and their word which gets rather lost in the film by their betrayal. Its one of the areas that the Hellraiser films have always seemed to struggle with, seemingly torn between Pinhead and pals being malicious pranksters, able to twist human desires to fulfil their own bloodlusts in blackly comic and ironic ways (moving more towards something like the Wishmaster or Leprechaun films) and the Cenobites being emissaries of Hell, slaves to their own desires and unable to do anything more than lay down the inescapable rules for entry to anyone hapless, or desperate, enough to encounter them.

I've always thought the second approach was more evocative and frightening in some ways! And it makes Hell seem even more like a club (nightclub, social club, church social, etc!) that seems exciting to explore but turns out to have its own restrictive rules and rituals for membership on a par with those of the church! Its not so easy to sever ties from the organisation once you have commited and pledged yourself (or been pledged) to it, especially when governed by slightly bored characters who know the ins and outs of all the arcane rules and regulations to the nth degree!

It is much more of a problem in the later sequels (I quite like Hellbound, though I agree to some extent on Frank and Julia being minor characters this time around that the sequel is not particularly interested in any more. Hellbound really is the film that revolves around Kirsty after she was more peripheral in the first film. Maybe its the equivalent of the more bombastic Aliens to the first film's claustrophically contained Alien! Especially with its own PTSD afflicted heroine needing to re-confront her fears to exorcise them, as well as fight against the somewhat callous authority figures unleashing the horror all over again!) but that's one of the things lost when the worldview and lore of key characters are being interpreted on the fly from film to film by different filmmakers more interested in 'putting a different spin' on material. I guess though that loss of any, arguably crucial, original underlying philosophical thread underpinning character motivations is always something that happens to any long running franchise to some extent, especially one that goes through so many different hands.

[colinr0380]

Hellbound is a kind of disappointing film if you are looking for another tightly wound suburban chamber piece but absolutely fascinating for the attempt to expand and build up a unique wider world for its characters. I find it flawed in a number of areas but it contains so many sequences that have stuck with me over the years. Its also entirely within that mid 80s trend towards phantasmagorical, bigger scaled, special effect laden sequels to tighter, more compact and focused originals (Poltergeist II: The Other Side is the film that most exemplifies this, and makes for a good companion piece to Hellbound)

These days I watch it less for the story than to enjoy some fantastic moments all over again: the Eraserhead-esque nightmare of a character appearing through the smoke of a steaming radiator; the superior/distasteful foot shove that Channard does of the bloody mattress to motion for the newly resurrected Julia to drag herself back onto it (and really the whole of that resurrection sequence: “I’m cold”) which kicks off the fantastic sub-dom power games between Channard and Julia; Channard’s coldly desirable house; and the regular side on view of characters highlighted against the blank canvas (or negative image!) sky of the centre of Hell’s labyrinth. There’s so much I like about this film that it overrides my general agreement that tonally it is a bit all over the place. I like all the darker stuff, but even the carnival-esque elements and the Channard cenobite at the end are not too jarring, as they’re still dealing with horrible and fantastical subject matter! (I like to think that it is about the goofier humans corrupting the ‘purity’ of hell with their silliness and wacky desires!)

I think the film is at its best in that whole opening the box scene with Tiffany’s curious box probing being watched from behind the magic one-way mirror by the evil stepmother and her friend! (Literalising even more the Snow White nod from Julia in the previous punch up scene with Kirsty!) and then the first entry into the corridors of Hell. We had a brief discussion in the horror list project thread a while ago about Dr Channard here doing the same thing that the cabal in the later film Martyrs are doing: wanting to explore but using a proxy for their own desires rather than fully committing to their choice themselves, at least until that decision is taken out of his hands by Julia.

Basically, even though she is much more fully the main villain character here (and enjoying that role as much as Channard eventually does), anything involving Julia is where the film is at its best! I find that even that otherwise disappointing Frank sequence is entirely worthwhile for the chance to see Julia get her own back following the betrayal from the first film! And the issues around Clare Higgins not wanting to be typecast as the new horror film franchise baddie also explains the whole problem with the ending coda. If only she could have stuck around to make it a Julia-centric trilogy!

Also it seems that the way that the filmmakers found to ‘toughen’ Kirsty up in this second film into an action heroine is to have her swearing constantly! As I presume anyone would in such a situation! But this was something I had not really noticed before but feels very obvious now! Though that makes it even more amusing when the otherwise mute Tiffany breaks her silence to utter an expletive at the appearance of the Channard cenobite in the final section!

[M Sanderson]

So in the last year and a half, and in lieu of Arrow's growth and expansion - has anything changed in terms of rights issues, that we might see Arrow release any of the movies from 4 onward, in either UK or US territories? I'm not banking on it, but I know things fluctuate and change, things expire, etc.

I'm intrigued by Hellraiser V: Inferno, given Derrickson's subsequent success, notably Sinister which had enough straight chills and chilling subtext about being willing to put one's family in danger. I even saw some praise for Inferno in Sight & Sound, unexpectedly.

Considering buying a fairly recent Blu ray of Inferno by Studio Canal in Germany. Released late last year, I think. I'm hoping it's a different master used for the Limited Edition mediabooks from the year before, from a different company (there was a White Edition, a Black Edition and something else, I think) but they were terrible releases nicely packaged. Looked not like full 1080p. More like a DVD, in fact.

[kidc85]

I'm intrigued by Hellraiser V: Inferno, given Derrickson's subsequent success, notably Sinister which had enough straight chills and chilling subtext about being willing to put one's family in danger. I even saw some praise for Inferno in Sight & Sound, unexpectedly.

I watched Inferno after cdnchris mentioned it being an effective film. Even without knowing that it didn't start as a Hellraiser script, it feels quite obvious. Some of the ways it expands the mythos are interesting, but also contradictory. Under the conditions of being DTV it's better than you would expect, but it's a considerable distance from the first two films.

[M Sanderson]

I couldn't sit through it as it looked like 720 or 1080i quality transfer.

It seemed barely to e a Hellraiser movie and to have surreal and striking moments.

I'm wondering if the recent Studio Canal release in Germany is a safe bet -or just another terrible release.

[domino harvey]

Bizarre 5+ minute commercial from the original VHS of the first movie for "Watch and Wear" Hellraiser-branded attire and accessories. Features clothing draped over assorted bloody body parts!

[colinr0380]

Here's Barry Norman being appalled and disgusted by Hellraiser on Film '87

[domino harvey]

I love how fast he's reading his script, as if either he wanted to get it over with or needed to get in another barb or two in the time allotted!

[colinr0380]

Surprisingly he is a bit more positive about Hellraiser III!

[MichaelB]

Bazza could be surprisingly unpredictable. When I worked on the release of Man Bites Dog at the turn of 1992/3, I remember wondering why we were wasting money setting up a private screening for him... only to eat humble pie because he really liked it.