Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

 "It's not hands that summon us. It's desire."

I write this on 23rd December, 2022. What film could so well instil the Christmas spirit?

This is one of those sequels which challenges the original for top billing. It's that good. It's also fascinating, if at btimres rather gory in a pleasingly latex, stop motion, pre-CGI manner.

The themes, more blatant to me than in the first film are... yeah, kinky is far too soft a word. The underlying, horrific theme here is a sexual fetish for the eteernal torments of Hell, which, well, more tea, vicar? It's a deeply disturbing premise. This is, of course, no bad thing.

This is, really, the perfect horror sequel, building upon and deepening the horrors of the first film. Kenneth Cranham is superb as the occult-obsessed doctor who, desapite his earlier uplifting monlolougue as a brain surgeon, has a massive thing for Cenobite lore.

And the Cenobites are existentially terrifying, distilling the very concept of flesh-ripping torture as they are wont to do. The effects are evilly sublime. And, of course. Ashley Laurence as the star is faultless. Clare Higgins, desapite the odd accent slip, deserves similar praise.

I hope the forthcoming sequels are as good as thois. I have my doubts. But this was superb.

Hellraiser (1987)

"Come to Daddy!”

I've never, aside from the Motorhead song, had any previous experience of the Hellraiser franchise. I haven’t read the novels, nothing. I’ve been missing out; this is right up there with the best horror films of the decade.

One big surprise is how good the camerawork is, the film being not only written but also directed- very well indeed- by Clive Barker himself. And the S&M torture demon aesthetic is very visual, translating well to film and effectively realised. It reminds me of a cross between Nurgle and Slaanesh in Warhammer, a contemporary phenomenon. What was in the zeitgeist on 1987?

And the very Eightiesness of not only the hair and clothes but also the choice of shots has aged in a good way; this is a horror film shot like a Siouxie and the Banshees video.

The performances are generally very good, as they needed to be, but I’d single out Andrew Robinson in particular (later Garak in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) for a subtle and nuanced performance. The characterisation is both unusually strong and unusually central for a horror film. It’s a film, I think, about sex, pain and the terrors of temptation. Our two adulterers both face bad ends, although Frank’s is as hellish as his initial stop motion awakening. And all because of a kind of Rubik’s Cube. Why did it take me so long to discover this film?

K-9 and Company: A Girl's Best Friend

“Oh Doctor, you didn’t forget!”

Wow. Surely that’s the greatest theme tune / title sequence combo in all of recorded history? Classy, sophisticated, and in no way tacky or dated. Good to see that Sarah (great to see her again!) is a fellow Grauniad reader, although sadly she prefers the white stuff to a nice glass of red.

We have a new writer, Terence Dudley, and as per usual for the marathon I’ll try my best to pretend I’ve never encountered anything of his, before! I haven’t seen K9 and Company before, though, and it’s the last story in the whole marathon to be a first viewing. I have now seen everything. Exciting, innit?

We get a string of clichés to begin with; a coven of stock pagan human-sacrificing bad guys, we know the drill. Unfortunately anyone who’s seen The Wicker Man is going to suspect the whole village of being in on it, so there’s little in the way of surprising plot twists all the way through. So we get such vaguely familiar tropes as a Herne the Hunter figure, a goat, and worship of both Hecate and a Celtic goddess whose name I don’t recall- surely’ different pantheons? And I had to raise an eyebrow at the concept of an entire village practising the “old religion” in 1981…

We finally get to meet Sarah’s Aunt Lavinia. Unfortunately, though, we also get a lot of long, stagy, awkwardly acted drawing room scenes where all the characters seem to be based on Margot and Jeremy from The Good Life.

Still, Sarah’s fab as always, but the story relies rather heavily on her general fabness to carry everything else. This is pure telefantasy by numbers, not very encouraging for what’s supposed to be a pilot.

Oh, and K-9’s in this, isn’t he? Mark 3, so presumably constructed alongside Mark 2 as that seems the only opportunity for it to have happened. We get an interesting exchange between Brendan (surprisingly likeable; a sort of non-annoying Adric) concerning the Doctor: “Who is the Doctor?” “Affirmative.” It’s all gone a bit War Machines.

Overall it’s a bit of a wasted opportunity. A plot which consists of a few well-known tropes working their way through in the predictable fashion, and establishing very little that would sustain a series, what with its very small regular cast and total lack of a direction to go in. 2/5.