Hellraiser + Q&A 18

From the archive

This film was last shown on 22 October 2017

Join us as we open Lemarchand’s box and unleash Clive Barker’s horror classic once more…

Frank Cotton’s pursuit of the limits of human experience leads him to a mysterious puzzle box, which summons the cenobites, a group of demonic entities who are committed to administer the extreme pleasures he craves. After solving the puzzle, Frank is torn apart by hooks and chains at the hands of the cenobites in the attic room of his house and later Frank’s brother Larry and his wife Julia move into the family home to start a new life, complicated by the fact that Frank and Julia were earlier involved in a torrid affair. When a drop of blood resurrects Frank as a skinless corpse, Julia becomes drawn into a cycle of murder and bloodletting to restore her lover to his former self, until Larry’s daughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) discovers the ungodly horrors that are taking place and comes face to face with the cenobites herself.

In 1987, the landscape of modern horror was changed forever with the arrival of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. In the cenobites the horror genre gained a group of strikingly unique and terrifying characters, due in no small part to the performances of Doug Bradley, Nicholas Vince, Simon Bamford and Grace Kirby, and the astonishing makeup effects by Bob Keen and Geoff Portass. Thirty years on, Hellraiser’s visceral impact and complex ideology remain as potent as ever, so sit back and relax… we have such sights to show you.

We are delighted to welcome cast member Nicholas Vince (Chatterer cenobite) and special effects supervisor Geoff Portass to discuss the production and legacy of Hellraiser in a Q&A after the film.

Screening with WE SUMMONED A DEMON