James Rolfe: It's Cinemassacre's "Monster Madness"! Stephen King said "I have seen the future of horror fiction and his name is Clive Barker". That's the author in which "Hellraiser" is based on; the original book "The Hellbound Heart". But I guess "Hellraiser" sounds a little better.
At this point the slasher genre was well underway and it was well-established as a genre that's just for fun. You watch a horror movie to be entertained and sometimes even laugh, but "Hellraiser" is a movie that's so fucked up you don't even look at it unless you wanna be freaked out of your mind.
A man named Frank finds a strange puzzle box which unleashes a group of creatures known as the Cenobites. They're basically a masochist's dream because they're all about causing pain using hooks and chains. But they go as far to rip Frank apart! But he's not really dead, he's just a decayed mess underneath the floorboards, I guess.
His brother Larry moves into the house with his family. Larry accidentally cuts himself and the drops of blood go under the floorboards. Like the Hammer-Dracula, that's all it takes to resurrect Frank's dead body. But now he's just a sickening sack of guts with no flesh. In order to become fully human again he needs more blood. So he uses his brother's wife to lure men back to kill them, which is strange considering how many people get killed, it only gradually builds his body back – even though all it took to begin with was a little bit.
The Cenobites are not in the forefront of the story which may be a little disappointing. There were many sequels which began focusing more on Pinhead as the main villain, though he was never actually called Pinhead in the original movie. He was never my favorite of the Cenobites. I like the guy with the teeth and the melted face. Or even better; those weird creatures that start appearing at the end. Is that not fucking great or what?
Watching this movie is like having a very creative nightmare; nothing makes sense, but why should it?