I recently came across a Tweet (or is it a Xeet?) comparing Maggie Gyllenhaal’s controversial The Bride! to the direct-to-video Hellraiser sequels because of the recent film’s inclusion of a bizarre detective plotline that some audiences considered unnecessary. However, while most folks interpreted this comparison as a jab towards Gyllenhaal’s sophomore feature, it was precisely that snarky post which convinced me to go out and watch the movie for myself, as I’m part of the small group of fans that actually enjoy the investigative thrills of the less popular Hellraiser movies.
In fact, I’d argue that, if you’re trying to add a new spin to the Hellraiser mythos after the original duology, focusing on the mental unraveling of a desensitized Humphrey Bogart type who thinks he’s seen everything is one of your best options. So, in honor of Hellraiser: Revival returning the cenobites to their enigmatic roots, today I’d like to invite my fellow horror fans to follow me down a rabbit hole of sex, violence, and gruesome mysteries as we explore the origins of the Hellraiser franchise’s love affair with Film Noir – and why this trend might be worth revisiting in the future.
Of course, in order to properly understand how Noir storytelling complements Clive Barker’s hellscapes, we first have to understand where the genre came from. While it can be argued that the elements of crime fiction which we now associate with Noir have their roots in 19th-century true crime and even in horror stories such as Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Film Noir would only grace the silver screen after the outbreak of World War II.
Not only did the war force an array of German filmmakers to emigrate to the West (bringing with them years of experience with the shadowy visuals and disturbing subject matter that defined German Expressionism), but this undeniably dark period in human history had also left audiences more willing to engage with uncomfortable narratives.
That’s why the 1940s saw an explosion of detective stories about morally dubious investigators, sadistic criminals, and dangerous Femmes Fatales – with this last trope likely being a cultural reaction to how the war had forced American women to take on traditionally masculine roles.
Barker himself has repeatedly affirmed his love for this darker style of detective fiction, with the author going so far as to create the paranormal investigator Harry D’Amour as his supernatural answer to iconic figures like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. It’s also quite obvious that Barker sees the rabbit-hole-like progression of classic detective fiction as an equally effective framework for horror stories. In fact, once you start to look for these investigative patterns in his work, you’ll start to see them everywhere.
Back during the production of Ryuhei Kitamura’s highly underrated adaptation of The Midnight Meat Train, Barker produced a series of fascinating behind-the-scenes vignettes where he commented on his storytelling process regarding the Books of Blood. In one of these videos, the author uses the visual motif of a spiral to explain how he develops his protagonists’ inescapable journey towards a dark truth about the world around them, with each new piece of information pulling them further downwards as they (often quite literally) spiral into insanity.
Not only is this the very same formula that Barker used in The Hellbound Heart, with Frank and Julia’s bizarre partnership also feeling a lot like something out of a pulpy crime thriller, but the idea that our lead character ends up disillusioned and mentally scarred after learning too much is a recurring motif in many classic Noir stories.
While this is only a superficial similarity, some of the most iconic Noir narratives happen to involve the detective attempting to retrieve a memorable MacGuffin of some kind – and what better artefact to ground your mystery narrative than the elusive Lament Configuration? Much like the Maltese Falcon, this enigmatic little puzzle box led many men to death and corruption, though the obsession it causes in its victims is more overtly supernatural than what you usually see in detective fiction.
Unfortunately, there’s a huge difference between a film having a good premise and actually being a good time, and that’s why even I have to admit that sequels like Hellraiser: Hellseeker (a supernatural mystery where Kirsty Cotton’s husband is haunted by her disappearance) and Hellraiser: Deader (a Saw-inspired investigative thriller where a reporter tracks down a death cult) don’t quite make the most of their Noir influences. I may enjoy these movies, but the lack of narrative focus isn’t all that surprising when you consider that many of these sequel scripts were actually unrelated horror stories that Dimension Films hastily re-worked into Hellraiser follow-ups in order to maintain the rights to the franchise, with few writers getting the chance to actually explore the line connecting Humphrey Bogart to Doug Bradley.
I’d argue that Scott Derrickson’s Hellraiser: Inferno is the only sequel that came close to acknowledging these connections, and even that underrated film suffers from a messy narrative. Hell, Barker himself tried and arguably failed to explore this inter-genre love affair in The Scarlet Gospels, his divisive sequel to both The Hellbound Heart and the Harry D’Amour stories – with the end result not really satisfying fans of either series.
Yet, I still think that a disturbing detective story where an obsessed protagonist attempts to piece together a missing persons case involving cenobites has the potential to bring the series back to its pulpy roots. Of course, this would only be possible if said story was actually developed as a Hellraiser yarn from the very start.
Naturally, neo-noir storytelling is just one possible direction that the Hellraiser franchise can take now that the series is back in the hands of the man who created it. However, no matter where Pinhead and company are headed next, I think it’s important for writers to remember the underlying threads of crime, sex, and corruption that originally informed Barker’s nightmarish work.
