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‘Hellraiser: Origins’ Remains the Best Thing Done With the Franchise in Decades

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The Hellraiser franchise desperately needs a reboot. Several years ago, two fans tried.

As much as we love that we’re still getting Hellraiser films to this day – new sequel Hellraiser: Judgment was finally released this week – there’s no denying that the series has been on its last legs for an impossibly long stretch of time. The 1996 film Hellraiser: Bloodline was the last to be released in theaters; since then, well… yeah.

It’s public knowledge by now that Dimension Films is only churning out new sequels every several years to retain the rights, the last two of which have seen the role of Pinhead recast with two different actors – the less said about Hellraiser: Revelations‘ Pinhead, the better, but Judgment‘s Pinhead is admittedly a worthy successor to Doug Bradley’s. But the Hellraiser problem over the course of the last several years, despite the insistence of Bradley purists, goes way beyond who’s playing Pinhead.

The problem is that Dimension clearly just doesn’t care about the franchise. Sure, they want to retain the rights for monetary purposes, but they aren’t invested in the franchise enough to, well, invest any of their money or resources into it. The budgets are getting lower, and even if you consider Judgement a marked improvement over Revelations – credit goes to writer/director Gary J. Tunnicliffe who, the film’s faults aside, genuinely does care about the world of Hellraiser – the reality is that it’s another sad reminder of how far the series has fallen since Clive Barker was in charge of his baby.

What’s most upsetting about all of this is that Hellraiser, perhaps more than any of the major franchises, has limitless potential; it’s not simply a movie series about a masked killer slicing up teenagers, but rather a rich mythology involving a score of hell monsters with access into our world. If the budget is no issue, the sky is truly the limit.

A handful of Hellraiser projects have come and gone over the years, including proposed reboots with names like Pascal Laugier (Martyrs), Patrick Lussier (My Bloody Valentine 3D) and even Clive Barker attached, but Dimension remains steadfast in their bizarre decision to make the least out of a property with such vast potential. While all of those aforementioned projects remained on the page, there was another one that actually did leap to the screen… even if it was merely a computer screen.

We began talking about Hellraiser: Origins back in 2012, the brainchild of concept artist Paul Gerrard (Wrath of the Titans, Battle: Los Angeles) and director Mike Le Han (“Mrs. Peppercorn’s Magical Reading Room”). Combining their talents, Gerrard and Le Han aimed to pitch Dimension on a visionary new take on the Hellraiser franchise, which was initially teased to us courtesy of some truly attention-grabbing concept art.

Then, on Halloween 2013, their Origins pitch trailer surfaced.

The Hellraiser: Origins trailer ran just two minutes long, yet has proven itself to be more memorable than anything that has come out of the Hellraiser franchise in the last couple decades. Dimension never ended up biting, but the concept grabbed the attention of Hellraiser fans who were fed up with the official trajectory of the franchise. The pitch for Origins opened up the Hellraiser world in a way that it has long been begging to be opened up, reminding that in the right hands, it still has such sights to show us.

The Origins trailer begins with a familiar image, that of a man playing with the iconic Puzzle Box, but then it takes us straight into literal Hell to showcase a newly-redesigned version of Pinhead standing high atop a sea of writhing human bodies. “Welcome to Hell,” Pinhead says as the trailer comes to a close, leaving us begging for more.

All of the project’s concept art further delved into the proposed world of Origins, full of striking imagery and brand new Cenobites that surely would’ve terrified a whole new generation of fans. Literally everything about the pitch was EPIC in scope, which was indeed Gerrard and Le Hand’s general approach to their vision.

Our goal was to expand and explore the mythology, to create an epic vibe while retaining the mystery of the Cenobite order,” Gerrard explained to Horror Homework back in 2013. “It’s about keeping that balance between the mystery of the unknown, and need to see more, to experience more. The original movie was indeed a masterpiece of imagination and iconic horror. The world we live in so saturated with the tones and taboos explored in those early movies that in order to truly capture the imagination of today’s audience a new direction was needed. I wanted the design, particularly of Pinhead to firstly be stripped of the current restraints and second to be driven by esoteric lines, shapes, and concepts.”

In a later interview, Gerrard opined that perhaps he and Le Han aimed *too* high with their pitch to Dimension, and I’d say that’s a fair assessment. Hellraiser: Origins would’ve required Dimension to pump way more money into Hellraiser than they’ve ever really desired, as well as put way too much of their own faith into it, making it an obvious no-go for a studio that’s sadly much more comfortable playing it safe and ensuring that they lose no money with a series of films they just don’t have much love for.

Here’s hoping Dimenion’s troubles end up placing Hellraiser into more loving hands.

Years later, Gerrard and Le Han’s Origins trailer still excites us about that potential.

Writer in the horror community since 2008. Editor in Chief of Bloody Disgusting. Owns Eli Roth's prop corpse from Piranha 3D. Has four awesome cats. Still plays with toys.

Editorials

‘The Company of Wolves’ at 40: One of the Most Underrated Werewolf Movies Ever Made

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There’s a compelling idea in anthropology that many ancient werewolf legends are derived from our species’ need to rationalize the more animalistic side of humanity – which is why lycanthropy has historically been used to explain everything from medieval serial killers to cannibalism. While I personally think there’s a lot more to unpack when it comes to tales of wolfmen and women, this is still a great example of why so many of our most enduring fairy tales involve big bad wolves.

And in the world of film, I think there’s only one feature that really nails the folkloric origins of werewolf stories, namely Neil Jordan’s 1984 fairy-tale horror classic, The Company of Wolves. Even four decades later, there’s no other genre flick that comes close to capturing the dreamlike ambience behind this strange anthology, and that’s why I’d like to take this opportunity to look back on one of the most underrated werewolf flicks ever made.

The Company of Wolves was originally a short story contained in the 1979 anthology The Bloody Chamber, a collection of deconstructed fairy-tales intended for mature readers penned by English author Angela Carter. With the book quickly becoming a hit as readers became fascinated with its subversion of classic folk stories and (then) controversial feminist undertones, it was soon transformed into a duology of BBC radio-dramas which adapted both The Company of Wolves and Carter’s reimagining of Puss-in-Boots.

These radio-dramas soon attracted the attention of then up-and-coming Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan, who decided to meet with Carter to discuss expanding on her stories and bringing them to life on the big screen. The duo soon realized that a single short story wasn’t enough material for a feature-length film, so they decided to adapt all of Carter’s werewolf tales into a single anthology.

With a completed script and a $2.3 million budget, Jordan decided to tackle the project like a hybrid between a theatrical period drama and a schlocky monster movie. Effects-heavy creature features were a hot commodity back in the ’80s, with films like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London proving that there was an audience for horrific lycanthrope transformations, so the director soon recruited a team that could turn this odd collection of feminist folk stories into something commercially viable.

Not exactly a great pick for family movie night.

Shooting would eventually take place almost entirely within the England-based Shepperton Studios, with notable production designer Anton Furst (who would later be known for his work on Tim Burton’s Batman films) helping to bring Jordan’s vision of a darkly romantic fairy-tale world to life. Appropriately enough, production would also involve a real pack of trained wolves (as well as a collection of dyed dogs), though extensive puppetry and animatronics were also used to flesh out the more gruesome parts of the flick.

After a grueling nine-week shoot where budgetary constraints led to corners being cut on props and costumes, The Company of Wolves was finally released in September of 1984 – just in time for spooky season. In the finished film, we follow the strange dreams of a sulky teenage girl named Rosaleen (first-time actress Sarah Patterson) as the film unravels an Arabian-Nights-inspired tapestry of both familiar and not-so-familiar stories about big bad wolves.

From sexually charged cautionary tales to parables about female empowerment, this surreal collection of deranged bedtime stories is much more than the creature feature that the marketing initially suggested. Like a more horror-oriented version of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, The Company of Wolves exudes that same kind of hormonal teenage energy that transports us back to a time when the world was both scary and exciting in equal measure.

That’s not to say that this is an entirely pleasant experience, however, and I’m not just talking about the film’s horror elements. A big portion of the flick’s overtly sexual moments involve the then 13-year-old Patterson coming to grips with her blossoming womanhood and the dangers of predatory men (usually marked with a humorous unibrow), something that naturally makes for some intentionally uncomfortable viewing – especially in the year of our lord 2024.

Obviously, I don’t think it’s my place to dissect (or even judge) the effectiveness of the film’s commentaries on being a young woman, but even as a man I can still appreciate the thought and care that went into crafting this Jungian cocktail of serious themes in a genre-movie package that almost certainly went on to inspire future werewolf movies like Ginger Snaps.

Not the worst wedding I’ve been to.

That being said, what really keeps me coming back to the film is the absurd amount of memorable imagery. From a wedding party being taken over by canines to lonely treks through snowy groves, this is exactly the gloomy world I imagined as a child when reading Grimms’ Fairy Tales – and the dreamy atmosphere is only enhanced by the movie’s overall theatricality.

This also extends to the effects, as it’s easy to forgive decapitated dummy heads and ripped rubber skin when everything is happening in a magical hyper-reality, with a great example of this is being the scene where Grandma’s head unexpectedly explodes like a porcelain doll when it’s knocked off by a wolfman. That’s not to say that the effects are bad, as several of these transformations are downright grisly and likely influenced future lycanthrope effects like those in Underworld and even Trick ‘r Treat (even if the wolf-dogs here often look more cute than scary).

Of course, these aren’t the only things that The Company of Wolves has going for it, as the main trio of Patterson, Micha Bergese and the late, great Angela Lansbury exceptionally bring these exaggerated caricatures to life and the orchestral score is an absolute delight. I also really get a kick out of that bizarre ending implying that the dangers of adult life have literally come crashing into Rosaleen’s bedroom.

The Company of Wolves may not be a perfect film, suffering from some wonky pacing and the classic anthology problem where some stories are clearly much more enjoyable than others, but I’d argue that the flick’s iconic visuals and powerful thematic throughline more than make up for any minor flaws. And while we’ve seen bigger and better werewolf films since then, when it comes to adult-oriented fairy-tales, this is one psycho-sexual journey that is still worth revisiting 40 years down the line.

The Company of Wolves

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