X
- 1987
- R
- New World Pictures
- 1 h 34 m
- 1987
- R
- New World Pictures
- 1 h 34 m
Summary An unfaithful wife encounters the zombie of her dead lover; the demonic cenobites are pursuing him after he escaped their sadomasochistic underworld.
Directed By: Clive Barker
Written By: Clive Barker
- 1987
- R
- New World Pictures
- 1 h 34 m
- 1987
- R
- New World Pictures
- 1 h 34 m
Hellraiser
56
8.4
Where to Watch
Summary An unfaithful wife encounters the zombie of her dead lover; the demonic cenobites are pursuing him after he escaped their sadomasochistic underworld.
Directed By: Clive Barker
Written By: Clive Barker
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 17 Critic Reviews
56
59% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
24% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
18% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 17 Critic Reviews
56
59% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
24% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
18% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
Utterly bizarre and entirely ridiculous – and yet effective, an imaginative Guignol festival, like the goriest of soap operas, in which one wrong move opens a portal to hell.
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 248 User Ratings
8.4
82% Positive
204 Ratings
204 Ratings
10% Mixed
24 Ratings
24 Ratings
8% Negative
20 Ratings
20 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 248 User Ratings
8.4
82% Positive
204 Ratings
204 Ratings
10% Mixed
24 Ratings
24 Ratings
8% Negative
20 Ratings
20 Ratings
Easily among my top movies of all time. Doug Bradley gives the performance of a lifetime as the lead cenobite! The acting, sets, cinematography, and practical effects were all breathtaking when I first watched it and they still hold up today. It's simply just a cult classic, I love it!
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One of the best 80's horror movies in that epic decade of horror. Very slow going, and it works perfectly in this one. Not sure how the critic score is only a 56. The newest movie is more of a 56 than this ever could be.
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This skillfully creepy film tells the story of some housemates who experience unwelcome visits from a partially decomposed former resident who rises from beneath the floorboards. Seems he wants the flesh and blood of the new residents in order to settle some old scores.
Clive Barker's Hellraiser is one of the more original and memorable horror movies of the year: a genuinely scary, but also nearly stomach-turning experience by a genre specialist who seemingly wallows in excess and loves pushing conventions to their ghastly limits. [18 Sep 1987, p.18]
Though overexplicit and underdeveloped, Clive Barker`s Hellraiser is a horror film with enough personality and ambition to rise slightly above the run of the genre.
Mr. Barker is no more successful in making the big leap from literature to film than Norman Mailer. He's cast his film with singularly uninteresting actors, though the special effects aren't bad - only damp.
This is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination.
It's crazy how this holds up after so long, but what was likely the initial complaint is now one of this movie's greatest strengths: the lack of plotting. The "story" in this movie is pretty thin and simple, but that is because everything is subservient to the spectacle of horror and evil. And what a spectacle! Seriously this movie will stick with you for a long time, so settle in for true horror.
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Beh dai, non è male.
Certo, è un pochino lento per quello che vuole dire, ed alcune scelte di design erano risibili, però ci sono moltissime cose che posso tranquillamente apprezzare, come gli effetti visivi, la caratterizzazione dei **** e il **** completo che è il finale del film.
Consigliato? Magari una volta...
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As a gross out video nasty type film, this is ok. It has its fairly gross out moments, with excessive blood loss and peoples skin being stretched and ripped to an extraordinary extent and so on. The plot I felt was a bit too thin on the ground - I got the main gist of it but I can't say I was perhaps as scared as I maybe might have been, if I'd fully understood the context of everything but then again, its probably not the kind of film to be entirely overly analysed to (pardon the pun) death and back, as it were.
The plot is perhaps a little slow to build up but then maybe it's more like riding a rollercoaster, as you know there's going to be something quite visually shocking about to appear around the proverbial corner but you don't know precisely when. I was a bit frustrated somewhat towards the end, when the daughter appeared to have somehow escaped the hospital she'd been confined in. If your really into these kind of films then I suppose you'd likely quite enjoy aspects of it. I've tended to avoid slasher/overly gory horror films but I saw this film was recommended by a film review group called Wittertainment, so I thought I'd give it a go out of curiosity more than anything, I suppose. I felt that if it had been a bit less fantasy based, it may have been more scary.
For what it is, it's an ok film but for me it wasn't an entirely memorable film. I wouldn't particularly recommend it, no.
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[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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Awards
Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA
• 4 Nominations
Fantasporto
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
