Hellraiser Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Kim Newman

Critical Essay by Kim Newman

SOURCE: Newman, Kim. “Hellraiser: From Horror Fiction to Horror Movies.” Sight and Sound 56, no. 4 (autumn 1987): 233-34.

In the following essay, Newman surveys the film Hellraiser and Barker's horror writing.

In a gutted North London mansion that, conveniently for the publicity people, is supposed to be haunted, Clive Barker was—with apparent ease—making his directorial debut. Best known as a groundbreaking author of short (the Books of Blood) and long (The Damnation Game) horror fiction, Barker turned to direction after a disappointing foray into screenwriting.

Hellraiser resulted from a team-up between Barker and former assistant director Christopher Figg. Figg wanted to produce and Barker to direct and, after discarding several stories from the Books of Blood, they hit on an original idea (‘three people in a house, and things happen’) intended mainly as a showreel. Barker wrote it up into a novella, The Hellbound Heart, for an American anthology,...
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