The Hellbound Heart by Clive BarkerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
One of my favorite horror films ever was based on a short story by Clive Barker. So I was interested from the get go. Later I found out that not only had he directed the film Hellraiser but he had also written the novella it was based upon.
There's a simple elegance to his writing that goes so well with its grotesque elements. When I watched Hellraiser I loved how the horror elements were truly a backdrop for this story about the fatal attraction between Julia and Frank. There's a tendency in horror to exaggerate, to call everything a forbidden secret, an unnamable horro, to overuse the lovecraftian style of suggesting the monsters rather than just describing them.
I loved that Clive Barker described them, and that his descriptions weren't just a boring list of gross adjectives. The initial scene is unsettling, but what truly makes it unsettling is the very human attraction that Julia has for Frank. You get the scene introducing the Cenobites, you get this man, so desperate for sensation that he calls upon them and then all these details come into fruition when you realize this is the man Julia has fallen in love with, this is the sort of man who would have an affair with his brother's bride on the eve of their wedding and then discard her.
It's poignant and it's immediate.
Everything just sort of fell into place. Julia's desperation to escape her marriage so perfectly echoed Frank's desire for a different sort of sensation. And it made such a perfect sense that it was Kristy who escaped the nightmare because she did not want a re-awakening or an alternative to her routine, what she wanted was the man the the other two characters had continuously despised.
Everyone makes such a fuss over Pinhead and the other Cenobites, because they have such a striking looks, but really, what makes this story so great are the human relations in it.
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