Halloween Horror: Ranking the Films of the Hellraiser Series

In what is becoming an October tradition, I’ve spent the month working my way through an iconic horror franchise to deepen my knowledge of the much-maligned genre. In 2016 I kicked off the tradition with Paranormal Activity. In 2018, I continued with A Nightmare on Elm Street and last year worked through the Halloween series. This year I turned to a second-tier horror series, Hellraiser, which was spawned from the mind of writer/director Clive Barker and went on quite a detour over the years.

Sadly, the franchise is pretty rough. I’d only earnestly recommend the first two films in the series. A few others would be of interest to horror fans, while the rest are clearly only being watched by diehard horror junkies or completists. A few entries should be avoided altogether, even by people who want to “see them all.” While the series started out on fertile ground with a BDSM-infused body horror concept, it quickly became simply a way for Dimension Films to make a few bucks with direct-to-video offerings and extend their holding of the franchise rights, thus, keeping the royalty checks coming in. This means that unfortunately the most interesting aspects of the series are largely unexplored once Barker is no longer involved behind-the-scenes.

Still, there’s something compelling in the concept of the series and its interest in the intersection of pain and pleasure. And while I have no interest in ever revisiting many of these films, I’m glad I watched them as they were instructive in laying out the formal and narrative approach of direct-to-video genre fare in the late 1990s and 2000s. I’ve updated this ranking to include David Bruckner’s 2022 reboot of the series, which attempts to take the franchise back to basics.

1. Hellraiser (1987) dir. Clive Barker

It’s no surprise that the original film is the best. That’s the case with so many horror franchises, as the fruitful worldbuilding and entertainment of the original motivates producers to cash in on the potential and mine the concept for all its worth. Here, Clive Barker crafts a film that explores the depravity of lust and showcases some of the best gore effects ever put on film. The prologue, which sees Frank (Sean Chapman) come into possession of the puzzle box (named the Lament Configuration in later entries) mines Orientalist imagery and genre tropes about cursed objects in a way similar to “The Monkey’s Paw” or the statue at the beginning of The Exorcist, but is stunningly evocative in its economical storytelling. You can tell that Barker is a visual artist with an interest in the comic book medium, because the assemblage of images almost plays like a splash panel for a work like Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. What comes after fuses haunted house conventions with a revenge narrative, as Frank gets his lover Julia (Clare Higgins) to lure men to the house and murder them so he can steal their flesh and reconstitute his body.

As in most entries in the series, Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his Cenobites operate on the margins of the narrative, only appearing to punish characters and reset the balance. Their design and narrative function recalls medieval conceptions of demons as adjudicators of justice, and so Barker is playing in fruitful territory with them. They’re evil, but have a strict moral code, which Frank, who is driven by pure fleshly appetites and self-preservation, lacks. Thus, Frank is the true villain and the horrifying way that he destroys his family and manipulates his lover into sullying herself for his own gratification speaks to the evil potential of all abusive relationships. Hellraiser may not be an all-time classic like Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street, but it’s wonderfully designed and taps into a provocative vein of horror that makes it rise above most films of its type.

2. Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) dir. Tony Randel

Hellbound does what most horror sequels do, which is repeat elements of the narrative from the first film while expanding the mythology. There’s a scene in the first film where Frank’s niece, Kristy (Ashley Laurence), happens to open the Lament Configuration during a brief stay in the hospital and wanders into a labyrinthine corridor that eventually leads her to a hideous monster. She flees in the nick of time, but not before alerting the Cenobites of her intrusion into hell. Hellbound takes this one scene and fleshes it out to feature length, with Kristy having to navigate hell to combat Pinhead and the psychotic asylum director in order to save the soul of her dad. Or so she thinks. The mid-film twist that it was Frank who lured Kristy to hell is an intriguing way to bring back the first film’s villain. Less successful is how this film repeats the murder and regeneration element of the first film, with Julia in Frank’s place, reconstituting her flesh victim by victim. What registers more than the narrative rehashes is the spellbinding imagery, with matte paintings of hell as an endless labyrinth of empty corridors. It’s of a piece with C.S. Lewis’s vision of hell from The Great Divorce, where the emptiness is its most defining attribute.

3. Hellraiser (2022) dir. David Bruckner

David Bruckner’s Hellraiser reboot ranks highly on this list sheerly through the virtue of being well made. It has competent actors, some creepy sequences, and a confident command of storytelling. That isn’t to say it’s a successful film. Bruckner’s film is a tad flat and literal. It follows a recovering addict, Riley (Odessa A’zion), who comes into possession of the Lament Configuration, but never implicates Riley in the horrors on screen. It’s content to keep the Cenobites as villains and have them terrorize Riley and her companions in their dungy urban apartments and a derelict mansion in The Berkshires. Hellraiser has always played with slasher and body horror storytelling conventions, so there’s necessarily nothing wrong with this new film leaning on tried-and-true formulas of scrappy victims and demonic killers. But for a franchise that, at its best, forces us to acknowledge the damage that can come from pursuing our pleasures, this new film is frustratingly timid in its interrogation of its characters and its central concept. It’s decent horror, but lacks the psychosexual power of Barker’s original.

4. Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) dir. Anthony Hickox

There’s a common criticism of the first two films, which is that Pinhead is fairly inactive and absent for a horror movie villain. Hell on Earth attempts to rectify this problem by unleashing Pinhead on the real world, where he transforms victims into Cenobites and attempts to devastate everyone that stands in his way. The narrative is fairly facile, with an ambitious television reporter (played by Terry Farrell from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) trying to get a scoop on some weird goings on, leading back to a seedy nightclub. Pinhead shows up, trapped inside a melted column owned by the nightclub’s owner, who unleashes Pinhead in a bid to…satisfy some sadomasochistic interests? The motivations and narrative avenues of Hell on Earth don’t make much sense when you stop to think about them, but the film at least has fun with the concept of Pinhead wreaking havoc and creating an army of Cenobite followers who take on destructive attributes based on the interests of their former human hosts. For instance, a disc jockey memorably transforms into a cenobite who shoots CDs to kill people. The film is only truly bold in the infamous black mass scene, where Pinhead does an unholy communion in a church, forcing a priest to feast on a worm plucked from his own wounded skull. The rest is merely silly fun.

5. Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) dir. Rick Bota

Hellworld benefits hugely from coming after a series of sequels with little-to-no interest in the mythology of the series. Thus, its rudimentary haunted house story with a meta-interest in the Hellrasier series is refreshing because it’s actually connected to this specific storyworld. Filmed in Romania (like Deader, which was made and released the same year) but set in some undesignated part of North America, the film takes a bunch of dumb young adults (included a young Henry Cavill) and sends them to a Hellrasier-themed party—the movie franchise exists within the world of the film—at the spooky hell manor owned by Lance Henriksen’s mysterious benefactor. People die, there are meta jokes about the series itself, and some mysterious revenge scheme plays out linked to a character who is dead before the film begins. It’s not an elegant horror film by any measure, but its interest in an actual story playing with this iconography makes it loads better than most of the other late sequels.

6. Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002) dir. Rick Bota

A lot of the later Hellrasier sequels are noirish mystery films where the culprit behind a series of grisly crimes proves to be connected to Pinhead and the Lament Configuration. This is largely a result of Dimension Films taking horror spec scripts and reworking them to fit into the Hellraiser series. Hellseeker is one of these films, where Dean Winters’ Trevor, who is married to a grown-up Kirsty (Ashley Laurence returning for a few scenes), tries to piece together why his reality is unravelling. The entire film plays largely like the previous film Inferno, with the loser main character peeking behind the curtain of reality to witness the horrors of hell. The only reason I place this film above Inferno in the rankings is that Dean Winters (best known for bit parts in 30 Rock and Brooklyn Nine-Nine) is weirdly effective as the concussed Trevor. He’s a slimeball, but he’s inherently funny, making his convicted turn as a perpetually-confused victim of horrific events a true curiosity in the series.

7. Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) dir. Scott Derrickson

The first spec script to be reworked to fit into the Hellraiser universe, Inferno is a noir-tinged mystery film about piece-of-shit Detective Joseph Thorne (Craig Sheffer) tracking down the culprit behind a series of murders that have to do with the Lament Configuration. Like Trevor in Hellseeker, Joseph Thorne is a scumbag and director Scott Derrickson (in his feature debut) mines every hard-boiled trope he can to try to make Thorne a compelling one. He fails, but that doesn’t mean Derrickson doesn’t go for broke with heavy-handed narration, narrative twists, and a shadowy visual style that tries to capture some of the formal elements of film noir. The film kind of works in the early parts, as Derrickson builds genuine suspense in his scene constructions, but once the Cenobites arrive and the connections to the Lament Configuration are clarified, the film descends into grisly, incoherent violence. Inferno might not be the monstrosity that some claim it to be, but it hardly rises above its low-rent horror brethren.

8. Hellraiser: Bloodline (1997) dir. Kevin Yagher

I might have been unduly hard on this film now that I’ve seen what came after, but Bloodline sets the prototype for the incomprehensible plotting that would ruin the series. The frame narrative takes place in the 22nd century, where a man (Bruce Ramsay) attempts to trap Pinhead on a space station and finally destroy the Lament Configuration. He’s caught in the act by a security team and has to explain the motivation for his actions. Turns out, he’s a descendant of the man who originally made the Lament Configuration and the film takes us through the centuries to explore the history of this family that is accidentally responsible for unleashing Pinhead on the world. We get scenes set in the 18th century, where the original creator (also played by Ramsay) builds the box for a decadent French lord and his petulant aid (played by a young Adam Scott). Then most of the film takes place in 1996 where his architect descendant (also Ramsay) works on a building that resembles a giant Lament Configuration. Director Kevin Yagher tries to give the film some narrative sweep and expand the mythology to epic proportions, but the budget is too low, the performances too shoddy, and the execution too muddled to live up to the film’s potential. At least we’ll always have the hilarious scene of two twin security guards having a weirdly earnest conversation about sex only to stumble upon Pinhead and get murdered.

9. Hellraiser: Judgment (2018) dir. Gary J. Tunnicliffe

The latest Hellraiser film, and hopefully the last under the Dimension Films banner, is essentially a variation on the mystery narratives of Inferno and Hellseeker. This is welcome after the abomination of Revelations (see below), but that doesn’t mean the narrative is particularly fruitful. Judgment follows three detectives (a female detective is thrown in because otherwise the film would only feature dudes) as they hunt down a serial killer who kills people who break one of the Ten Commandments. Sound familiar? Apparently long-time makeup artist-turned series writer and director, Gary J. Tunnicliffe, is such a fan of David Fincher’s Se7en that he stole the concept for the villain of this film, while tying in into the Cenobites. Add in a dash of New Atheism-style hatred of Christianity and an expanded mythology of hell, including the newly-added Stygian Inquisition, and you’ve got Judgment. The opening moments dealing with the Stygian Inquisition’s Auditor (played by Tunnicliffe himself) are the best parts of the film, with some interesting worldbuilding around the operations of hell. After that, it’s just reheated, low-rent Se7en, and as lame as that sounds.

10. Hellraiser: Deader (2005) dir. Rick Bota

In 2005, Dimension Films scored a deal with the Romanian government to shoot two Hellraiser films in the country: Deader and Hellworld. Deader was the first to be filmed and released and it’s actually set in Romania, as it follows a journalist (Kari Wuhrer) who investigates a cult that can apparently raise people from the dead. The entire film seems to take on the dank aesthetic of the crumbling, Ceausescu-era architecture in Bucharest, because there isn’t a more grimey, visually ugly film in the series. Like Inferno and Hellseeker, Deader started as a spec script and the final product has little-to-no connection to Hellraiser. It’s mostly just early-aughts music video-style visuals of the cult doing weird stuff and the journalist wandering around the most putrid parts of Bucharest. It’s about as bad as the series gets, with one exception.

11. Hellraiser: Revelations (2011) dir. Víctor García

Revelations is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. The story behind the film goes like this: Dimension Films wanted to reboot the series like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street had done in recent years, but they also had a deadline to produce a new film in order to retain the rights or they would’ve reverted to Clive Barker. So they decided to rush the production and film the entire low-budget reboot in a single week. Doug Bradley scoffed at the idea and turned the film down, so they recast Pinhead, used some McMansion available from someone on the production team, and cranked out a terrible, found-footage influenced movie about two bros (Nick Eversman and Jay Gillespie) who head to Tijuana, murder a prostitute, find the Lament Configuration, and summon Pinhead. One bro is killed by Pinhead while the other returns to the California mansion where he and his friend’s parents hole up and argue about what happened to their kids during the world’s saddest dinner party. Revelations is aggressively vile and represents all the worst elements of digital-era horror filmmaking. It’s visually unrefined and textureless, erratically edited, and takes place almost entirely inside a garish, sparsely-furnished mansion. Worst of all, it recasts Pinhead as a fat, soft-speaking man who robs the character of what little dread he had left at this point. This is execrable filmmaking, even by the dire standards of later entries in this series. Avoid at all costs.

Hellraiser (1987, USA)

Directed by Clive Barker; written by Clive Barker, based on his novel The Hellbound Heart; starring Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Sean Chapman, Doug Bradley.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988, USA)

Directed by Tony Randel; written by Peter Atkins, based on a story by Clive Barker; starring Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Kenneth Cranham, Doug Bradley.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992, USA)

Directed by Anthony Hickox; written by Peter Atkins, based on a story by Atkins and Tony Randel, based on characters created by Clive Barker; starring Terry Farrell, Paula Marshall, Kevin Bernhardt, Peter Boynton, Doug Bradley.

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996, USA)

Directed by Kevin Yagher (credited as Alan Smithee) and Joe Chappelle (uncredited); written by Peter Atkins, based on characters created by Clive Barker; starring Bruce Ramsay, Valentina Vargas, Doug Bradley.

Hellraiser: Inferno (2000, USA)
Directed by Scott Derrickson; written by Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derrickson, based on characters created by Clive Barker; starring Doug Bradley, Craig Sheffer, Nicholas Turturro, James Remar.

Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002, Canada/USA)

Directed by Rick Bota; written by Carl V. Dupré and Tim Day, based on characters created by Clive Barker; starring Doug Bradley, Ashley Laurence, Dean Winters, William S. Taylor.

Hellraiser: Deader (2005, USA/Romania)

Directed by Rick Bota; written by Neal Marshall Stevens and Tim Day, based on characters created by Clive Barker; starring Doug Bradley, Kari Wuhrer, Paul Rhys, Simon Kunz.

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005, USA/Romania)

Directed by Rick Bota; written by Carl V. Dupré, based on characters created by Clive Barker; starring Lance Henricksen, Katheryn Winnick, Christopher Jacot, Henry Cavill, Doug Bradley.

Hellraiser: Revelations (2011, USA/UK)

Directed by Víctor García; written by Gary J. Tunnicliffe, based on characters created by Clive Barker; starring Steven Brand, Nick Eversman, Tracey Fairaway, Sebastien Roberts, Devon Sorvari, Sanny Van Heteren, Daniel Buran, Jay Gillespie, Stephan Smith Collins.

Hellraiser: Judgment (2018, USA)

Directed by Gary J. Tunnicliffe; written by Gary J. Tunnicliffe, based on characters created by Clive Barker; starring Damon Carney, Randy Wayne, Alexandria Harris, Heather Langenkamp, Paul T. Taylor.

Hellraiser (2022, USA)

Directed by David Bruckner; written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, based on a story by David S. Goyer, Ben Collins, and Luke Piotrowski, based on The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker; starring Odessa A’zion, Jamie Clayton, Adam Faison, Drew Starkey, Brandon Flynn, Aoife Hinds, Goran Višnjić.

Editor’s note: This ranking was originally published on October 30, 2020. It has been updated to include the 2022 reboot of the series.

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