When you think of the big names from 1980s horror, you tend to think of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers. One name always on the outskirts is Pinhead from Clive Barker‘s HELLRAISER. The disturbing body horror of Barker’s universe is not for all tastes and has only resulted in a pair of watchable movies out of nine films in the franchise. With the last five movies having not been released theatrically, the franchise has waned in popularity. Now, Clive Barker himself is working to change that.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly about the director’s cut of NIGHTBREED, Barker shared some status on the new HELLRAISER he has been writing.
“I think the phrase is ‘reboot,’ although I’ve never really understood what that meant,” he says. “I wanted to make sure we sounded some fresh notes. The movie actually begins on Devil’s Island. I wanted to fold into the Hellraiser narrative something about the guy—the Frenchman Lemarchand—who made the mysterious box, which raises Pinhead. I figured, ‘Well, what would have happened to him?’ He might well have been taken to Devil’s Island and I thought that would be a pretty cool place to start the movie. We’re waiting for Bob to come back to us and see when we’re going to actually make the movie.”
Having Barker himself involved in the writing of the new HELLRAISER is the only way it would be acceptable to reboot the series as it was his original short story that started it all. The first two films in the series starring Ashley Laurence and David Bradley are still very scary even almost three decades later. I would stay the hell away from the other seven. Still, here is hoping we can get a new movie franchise started out of HELLRAISER that retains the semblance of a good script with some truly frightening moments.