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so

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we have such sites to show you

if you'd sat me down

when we were sitting in the hot [ __ ]

cricklewood

six o'clock on a drafty morning

in uh in november

of 1986

and told me that 16 years later i'd

still be

sitting in the makeup chair getting the

glue in the latex and the nails slapped

on my face

i think i would have cried i

look at freddy krueger and jason all

those kind of things and they're you

know acid burns burns whatever's blood

and guts we got to do something that was

a little bit more creative

the line i use most frequently these

days is no teenagers were harmed during

the making of this movie i think that's

what really

set it apart the fact that hell res one

became a cult or a classic

for dear old clive more than anybody

else he got it all together he wrote it

he did put it all together jolly good

show success story there i think yeah i

think it was time for a film like

hellraiser because it was such a

unique vision by clive barker hellraiser

for me is a fabulous

new invention a new myth that clive

in the typical way creates you know it

feels to me that it's got

elements of all those great classic

myths like there's the you know the

frankenstein or the dracula a brilliant

fantastical

extravagant reminder

not to be dabbling in things you

shouldn't the the creation of those

characters and that uh that

idea that you can you can open up this

dark world it's almost like you can

enter a dreamscape

it's quite a scary idea and if you if

that dreamscape you know your worst

nightmares are

formed into reality it had got into the

consciousness

not only of horror fans but of the

general public i think

again because of the makeups and

especially doug's makeup

it was so iconic because he was the

poster boy that by the time number two

came out um

and that

pinhead image was plastered all over

london um

all over billboards all over the world

it was you know it was a great journey

and

um it was great fun it was a very long

time ago um and i'm amazed that they're

still having an impact but of course i

was of course too delighted to be part

of anything

that has that has an impact so i'm

thrilled about it hellraiser is a

domestic drama essentially with

wonderful and terrifying glimpses of

this metaphysical world beyond uh and

hellbound is more

an examination of that world you know

let's get in there and see what's up

what's it look like down there so those

are the ones that stick around

that come out of human drama

and and and and human conflict and and

and the dynamic of what is and what what

could be

and that gap in between that we all fall

into what started out as what sounded

like a very very weird idea that this

bloke called clive barker had who wasn't

really anyone at the time and i didn't

know at all

um has turned into something so

mind-blowingly large a lifelong journey

for a lot of people is actually quite

phenomenal it was fresh and and it was

exciting as far as

and it was english and that was the

exciting bit when hellraiser arrived in

the mid 1980s

it was a bit of a kind of thunderbolt

it was really

a whole new wave of energy and

imagination i would rate it in the top

ten

of horror films ever made

and

i mean i'm not saying that because i was

so involved with it i mean i really

stepped back from it over the last

decades and i've gone back over the time

and looked at it and i do think that

film stands up and will be watched for

a long time the difference between

hellraiser and the films that were being

made at the time is hellraiser took

itself seriously

it never played things for laughs

it never really

went the the

nightmare on elm street route it went

down a more serious route and it said

that horror films could be

intelligent

the fact that it was it was made sort of

quite quite lovingly

um

uh

and it was it was the film that really

introduced clyde barker to the to the

world you know as uh most people hadn't

really encountered clients writing until

until harry racer came on the scene here

it is here are we all these years later

talking about it so it's obviously made

its mark

throughout the 20th century

one of british cinema's most iconic

exports was the campy but entertaining

horror movies produced by hammer films

from dracula to frankenstein

hammer was a mainstay in british cinema

until the influx of american horror

movies of the 1970s and 80s such as

texas chainsaw massacre

the exorcist

halloween

friday the 13th

and a nightmare on elm street

i've always been a fan of horror

as a as a kid as a kid it was all about

ghosts and then i guess as a teenager i

just

discovered

horror through hammer

granada television you had a period

where they were running all

all the hammer movies so that was really

where i came in horror films were part

of you know my life because of

having a rather sort of morbid sort of

teenage hood and wanting to see

these sorts of films i came from a time

where you know the sort of peter cushing

and

whatever his name was playing dracula

you know which was all sort of

tongue-in-cheek almost

and there was an element of the slasher

films which was the same it was meant to

make us laugh and it's actually that's i

think is where the genre's gone since

the great thing when i was a teenager a

young teenager was getting to see x

films

that was that was the thing you did you

put things in your shoes to make you

taller you put your collar up you did

all this nonsense

to to get past just buying your ticket

to get into the cinema also hammer

movies which were the 1950s and 1960s

full color

um horror movies

were being revived in double bills and

playing locally so i would get to

well

hammer was still making movies of course

so by the time i was old enough to

blag my way into an x by pretending i

was 16

um i could see some of the later hammers

but i also saw some of the the

older ones reissued under bubbles the

first horror movies i actually saw in a

theater

uh i took my mum into taking me into the

abc regents elsewhere where is there a

double bill of the herbert lomb

uh phantom of the opera which was

hammer's version of phantom of the opera

and the anthony quinn hunchback of notre

dame

horror films for me are always exciting

you know i think there's i'm more

interested in if you like the more

classical vein of horror movies uh king

kong was a fabulous story which in some

senses i've always felt clive is closer

to

than um some of the other more modern

horrors i don't really watch long films

but um

you know clive was clive and um he he

kind of um

took me around i guess

hammer had tried it and there'd been

some sort of

attempt to make

vampire movies uh you know sort of sexy

but really it was just a lot of girls

with big busts it didn't count it wasn't

sexy but you just couldn't take them

seriously anymore they were

becoming spoofs of themselves

there was a period when all the hammer

horror films were like

little short stories that were being put

together and by that point i think they

were on their demise i would say there

wasn't much going on and certainly not

much horror you know hammer had finished

really

and um we're looking for a new voice and

clive came

roaring through hammer is running out of

steam and it's still but it's you know

the still dracula ad 1972 is happening

around them

the exorcist

not a movie i ever cared for cartoon

movie i always thought

is coming out i think around the same

time

the omen which i did like but it you

know it's a mainstream

studio horror movie 74 i think

texas chainsaw massacre crept under the

fence and it came out completely out of

left field and i had never seen anything

like it hammer house had been a good

tradition of british filmmaking and had

done extremely well for the british film

ministry employed a lot of people

trained a lot of people

and it sort of all fell away and i think

hellraiser was the first

british horror film

that

was seriously scary

um

and it was very much you know the

intellectual without being pretentious

by underpinning for it was the first

impact which is always a good

very good template for any sort of a

horror film

and

all nightmare now street was a great

influence actually just come out and

that was generally scary and horror

being taken to a new level of

visceral as well as psychological horror

certainly most of the big films that

were made

in england were american pictures

um

you know the things that were around

just prior to being made just prior to

hellraiser were were things like aliens

and little shop of horrors and returned

to wars and and those were all happening

around the time that

it was made so they were all kind of

fantasy pictures but but obviously

a very different sort of fantasy

why shouldn't adults be able to see this

kind of thing in their own home i i'm

half tempted to say that people who make

that kind of demand knowing that

children are likely to see it aren't

really themselves very mature an adult

back in the in the late 80s when the

whole video nasty thing blew up i was

actually publishing a magazine called

shock express which was actually one of

the first big gore

film magazines in this country

and i've had a precursor to many many

magazines now

um so we covered the video nasty debate

quite a lot

um you gotta remember things were very

different back in the 80s

also things were very similar video

nasty was certainly um

uh

in the air one was conscious of it um

in i think in quite a valuable way it

meant that the the

subject was up for discussion and it

meant that people were

analyzing these things there was a huge

backlash which i thought was clearly

over the top and people wanted to ban

everything that

had a cut finger we had no moral i don't

get any of it any moral qualms

whatsoever apart from probably you know

dotting when the mary whitehouse's nose

the whole mythology of the cenobites and

the visceral world of hellraiser stemmed

from the unique imagination of clive

barker a genius in his own right

expertly skilled in all mediums

writer and director barker was born in

liverpool merseyside the son of joan

ruby a painter and school welfare

officer

and leonard barker

a personnel director for an industrial

relations firm

barca honed his imagination and skills

through his education at dovedale

primary school quarry bank high school

and the university of liverpool where he

studied english and philosophy

i think one of the things

that's great about horror is that it

appears in various forms right through

our lives

we read it in fairy tales which are full

of very horrific imagery ideas

um and we then then maybe we go and see

it in the movies maybe we see it at the

theater

we read about it i don't think uh

there's ever a period in our lives when

horror isn't available to us in some

form or other what's interesting i think

is that whereas when we're kids we sort

of say yes of course i like the monsters

i love the monsters what happens is that

adults get ashamed of saying that

and you only you only uh have them admit

that they like these kind of movies or

these kind of books when you know them

very well i mean when i was a kid i

always loved monsters i still love

monsters i happily confess i still love

monsters and and i go to movies even bad

horror movies if there's a monster in it

just to see the monster clyde's one of

these people is really interested when i

first met him he was so interested in

you

and everybody he met because as an

author you could always he could always

take a little bit of that and he was

making little mental notes not in a

nasty way but he was just genuinely

interested in everybody he met in the

same way that you meet the aristocracy

and they're so well

groomed and trained to go oh how lovely

how are you what are you doing and

clive's the same but not in a groomed

way just in a completely natural way i

seem to remember somebody saying uh

they'd seen a picture of me eating a

pizza off a slab in a more in

which i think probably sums him up i

don't like overusing this term but he's

a he is a genius

and it's the way he synthesizes

the input he gets onto the page or the

canvas

or onto

a movie clive is simply the most

creative person i've ever met he is a

creative genius when we first met him he

would be sitting there thinking of one

book talking about another and drawing

something else at the same time when

clive signs an autograph he doesn't just

sign an autograph he gives you a quick

obscene sketch as well at the same time

and it's just silly and the man's are

just a genius so we just had a laugh we

had the best fun of our lives live was a

tour de force

so i think he reinvented the game i

think

i've said this many times about clive

and i think this just has to be

reconfirmed really clive is a creative

genius he is

um

one of the few people

that i found

you play a mental ping pong ball with

and he would back the ball back as quick

as you gave it to him and sometimes

quicker

so you really had to be on your toes you

really had to be on your best game to be

able to think as fast as he does i never

had a doubt

that

clive would

be a success

at some point whether it was going to be

in the theater uh writing fiction

painting making movies

whatever i mean if he'd

if he decided to become a philosophy

professor he would have been probably

one of the best the world has ever seen

he's ahead of his time so

and he suffered because of that a little

bit i think

um

but you need people like that you need

people who are constantly going to

change it's also very inspirational you

know because

to

to working class kids from level one

clyde by the way was middle class i was

working class but to a working class kid

from liverpool who

knew he was smart but assumed he was

probably going to end up to be a teacher

or at best you know if you can make it

in rock and roll that was the only way

you thought out

and and clive was really the guy who

said

not in so many words but by inspiration

and example clive said to me to doug to

phil to lyn to julie to everybody who's

involved in the dog company he sort of

said no you know your life can be bigger

than that you can uh we can do those

things we can do plays we can make

movies we can write books we can paint

pictures get hired i went out and

i read all of his stuff

and and really thought he was amazing

just an amazing writer how i met clive

first of all was a

very good friend of mine now uh called

pierce gibson uh he said i met this very

interesting chap who's written a couple

of books

wants to make films and peers knew i

wanted to make films and

he said we must meet each other so

we met on a blind date and going on very

well you look like a school boy

very slender

a lot of hair which i hadn't got then

even then

but

immediate excitement

about the project

and immediately he helps you he's a very

engaging sort of person

whether that comes to all his writing or

not i don't know clive was clearly on a

fast track to somewhere and you know one

of the stops being

hollywood um and uh

and when those books of blood arrived

suddenly the the you could see the the

potential future

and hellraiser was an extraordinary

first step on that path

to allow him to write and direct this

new piece was

was a great achievement um and um

but i think when you met him you had no

doubts he once told me that for every 10

pages he writes he throws 9 away or 11 i

think he was he throws 10 away so he

writes a lot every day he's incredibly

disciplined as a writer

and he writes some rights and writes and

then throws most of it away because

there's only one page which is actually

good enough so that must be

really hard first impressions of clive

you know he

intelligence and

funny i mean

people to this day i think find that

surprising about him he's very funny

he's a razor sharp wit

tremendous sense of the absurd

i've seen him

laugh until he cries

at

the silliest things like ken dodd

and the um

the dancing hippos in disney's fantasia

reduced him to tears of laughter as well

so

um that and then and then of course the

the imagination and there is that

there's nothing he's not interested in

everything is grist to the mill

everything he you know he misses nothing

and everything

everything goes in into the mincer

and comes out in the work at some point

actually

uh he changed my life

i don't use the g word lightly i tried

to avoid it but

he's a genius i don't know him as well

as i would love to know him

but

of course

that film allowed us the opportunity to

have a relationship to sort of in that

in that

brief moment of time in our lives

we were able to uh

engage in in an understanding

that

i haven't

quite experienced since then

it's it's it's it's sort of a special

relationship

because let's face it

apparently

that relationship

and the guidance he gave me

helped

bring forth a score for me

which

has kind of defined my life you know

for you know better or for worse it it

keeps coming around you know i knew i

knew him as a horror writer and as i

knew so many other horror writers

um and and to me that's one of the great

strengths of hellraiser that he comes

out of the literature and the background

to that not out of the movies i think

that's what shook things up as a real

sense of

i mean his imagination is is is unique

and and he's one of those people who's

able to you know i i i had my doubts

that i i wondered

how can a guy who's like such a good

writer and so literary uh how

how can he then make the change into

because a film script is is altogether

different from a novel or a short story

i remember um

pulling up to um this house in north

london

nice big house in north london and um

and we trolled down we i mean i've got

us kids but we weren't kids but we were

very young and um and we all uh turned

up almost literally ringing the doorbell

of this big house to meet this

amazingly enigmatic

charismatic

genius i mean there's there's no other

word for clive in my mind he's um he was

he's an absolute genius and um and he

was just so warm and friendly and he

invited us

into his

felt like not just into his house into

his heart as well he was re he really

cherished us he is a man that

put faith in us you know and

so basically you know it's it's

it's a mutual thing when somebody says

yeah okay i'll believe in you then you

believe in them almost and it's i have a

great adjective you know a great thing

and if i call you an [ __ ]

you're gonna not you're always gonna

remember that and one day

you'll be able to repay me for that

insult

and that's how people are often their

former business they can be really rude

really

and you work for them

i mean you know people i work for people

who are pigs

and you do it because hey you've got to

make them in here because you're

professional about it uh but when it's

over you never want to see them again

clyde barker was a man that you would

more than happy to see again energy

energy vision i mean constantly

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imagining things

constantly

the mental energy was fantastic but also

he was very clever chat you know an

immense breadth of

knowledge about poetry painting

uh

and an understanding of psychology and

you know

but full of energy you know really sort

of

you know never got tired and and it was

very stimulating inspiring to to work

with him i just have a very good

impression i just have very good

memories of being on the set you know

there are some things you do when you

think gosh that was a bit rough or

you know or whatever but there was none

of that we all had a great deal of fun

and we laughed a lot loved a lot

it was lovely he was open to suggestions

but he came to set knowing because he'd

written it knowing the story and what he

wanted out of it sometimes he wasn't

quite sure how he could get that but

that's what we were all there for to

help yeah clive's a sick puppy

biggest accolade you could get from

clive barker on a

if you were deemed to be a sick puppy

you were okay in his book yeah well it

would seem he's um

sort of out of left field he's a sort of

um

he's

and there seems to be quite a strong

sort of

s m

element

gay element in what what he does and um

he's obviously enjoying himself

he envy the crap out of them because

here's a person who

who

who is so

totally

focused on

a vision that he has

about the world

that it includes we knew he started as

an author he's directed and produced

films which is an extension of that

vision and he's a fabulous painter

he's like

he's like the true artist who has

figured out a way

to

give himself entirely to that process

and

as a consequence you know he has put

together a repertoire of materials

visual and and

and the printed word and visuals

combined to

create a body that is gonna that is

going to be around and talked about

forever

you know and you know if you're an

artist hey that's a nice feeling

especially as you're getting older you

start thinking about that stuff just by

talking to him you get a sense of how

deep he thinks you know he brings all

sorts of um his knowledge of history and

literature and everything and he merges

it all into this fantastical world

and it's quite it's quite inspiring it

was amazing it was like in and very

appealing very you know

like a choir boy uh like a demented

choir boy is like as i think of

of clyde but i mean charming and and

lovely to talk to

and and really smart

so i mean you know he immediately

engages your attention little liverpool

and it didn't faze him he was just

got there go and buy some more cigars

they're great guy to work with i feel

like he's always been the same

furnace blazing away creating these

extraordinary pieces forging new

material

and

in some senses that was a a golden

moment those early days of theater where

we were all despite having no resources

working very closely on things we were

very passionate about

and even when you get more resources and

more opportunities as your career

develops you don't always have that same

kind of

innocence and

and shared vision

through meeting friends doug bradley and

peter atkins

barker created his own fringe theater

group called the dog company

the group went on to tour giving

performances of plays that barca had

penned himself

barca's plays would become infamous for

breaking new grounds as having erotic

fantastic and horrific elements

i think when i was about 15 at

quarry bank high school about to become

quarry bank comprehensive school

in liverpool

i think i was in the

third year maybe

a mate of mine called jimmy hughes hi

jimmy um uh who came up to me and said

i'm going to be in the school play and i

thought oh are you [ __ ] you if you're

going to be in the school play i'm going

to be in school play

and our form teacher at the time

wonderful guy english teacher called

bruce prince

um was directing the school play so i

went up to him and said i believe jimmy

hughes is going to be in the school play

sir and he said yes i said i want to be

in the school play i've never been that

forward as an actor since

and he he looked at me and he said you

do do you okay come with me

and i read and he said okay you're in

leaving us like the quality of the work

itself

in some ways i think that's clive's

greatest gift to the arts that he's he's

a genuine

force of example and inspiration walked

into rehearsals and clive is in the cast

as well

now i'd already seen him in school plays

prior to that

and also memorably

he was leading

uh he came into i i think i was in the

in art class

and he came in

leading another guy

around with a noose around his neck and

a werewolf mask on i think for a hairy

werewolf hand

um who subsequently became i believe the

administrator of the liverpool playhouse

theater um

and clive was uh was was drumming up uh

an audience for his own plays which he

was he was then writing

directing starring in and hand drawing

the posters for

his own productions at the school so i

i was aware of him but that was where i

first got to know him i remember when i

would introduce clive to some of my pals

or whatever and you felt like this man

was

successful from the days of the doll he

always knew where he was going had a

sense of real destiny in a sense of

uh what he was trying to create and i

don't think anything was going to stop

him the years which are in a way i count

as my drama school of doing

uh experimental

um theater in in liverpool before by

degrees we moved to london and the dog

company formed

um

so that that's a it's a whole process

for me that and it covers a period of

about 10 years

um i mean obviously there were there

were people who came into the dog

company

uh orbit

uh

who

have a part in this story as well uh

nick vince simon bamford

were kind of peripherally involved to

some extent what we were we were doing

as a dog company

um

and oliver parker of course who

auditioned for us i think around

uh 1979 and became a member of the

company very

very important and influential member of

the company and he and i

uh put a production together for the dog

company called dangerous world

based on the writings of william blake

was very much a collective

clive was the driving force in terms of

the writing but everybody did a bit of

everything and

and he was very encouraging about that

too and you know he used to make the

masks he was extremely adept at the

design himself and create these

incredible masks i first met clive in

1974 when we were both much younger than

we are now uh introduced by mutual

friend a guy who actually was playing

drums in

the band i'd started in

senior school

and uh actually he went on to be uh

fairly well-known television personality

and self-growing beckley

graeme was a couple years younger than

me

and

graham said out of the blue one day you

should meet me sister's mate clive he's

like you he reads books

so we thought well obviously

marriage made in heaven so um

graham arranged a meeting and i met

clive in allen library which is a small

suburban library in liverpool

one day in june 1974 and i met doug

bradley the same day

and i think by the end of that afternoon

i'd agreed to join the theatre company

and conquer the world with them you know

the first play i did with the dog

company

was

called the history of the devil

and

i think i was about 19 and it was an

unbelievable script to suddenly be

working on it felt completely

unique

it had no it didn't feel like it was

part of any british tradition or

or

it seemed to sort of just erupt as a

thought and uh it was funny and

philosophical and outrageous um

and there was doug bradley playing the

devil um

and in fact one could trace amongst the

cast there were a few actors who were

actor stroke demons who had their own

sort of

cenobitic role to play and would steer

the action frankenstein in love was a

a wonderful horror um

that he'd written for the stage um

and he wasn't just writing horror for

this day he was writing all sorts of

things he wrote a comedy called the

secret life of cartoons which was uh

really funny and kind of outrageous

um and

but to return to frankstown love this

was a play which

was a rethinking of the frankenstein

myth and

the idea being

the monster was

far from being a kind of inarticulate

zombie creature

he was stitched together from different

races different colors and he was

extremely intelligent in fact i think he

was something like a rebel leader in

south america or something so

extraordinary creation and the the

creator being

the frankenstein character the doctor

played by doug bradley and i was the

monster

but clive created an amazing

um

uh world for this creature he he

he built a latex suit for me which was

um

uh based on those versailles drawings

where you know you can see all the veins

and the nerves and um so it was a

skinned man

and um

and i remember it being quite shocking

taking it to edinburgh i left dog

company in uh early 1980

uh not really out of any dissatisfaction

with the work we were doing i i loved my

time with them

but i still

i still had that uh naive belief that i

was going to be a pop star a rock and

roll star so uh i had a little devil

whisper in my ear whispering in my ear

who was my old mate from liverpool

saying come back form another band with

me

so uh

it was that i i wanted to go and

play music there were many other

uh characters who who got involved with

the dog company um like simon bamford

and and nick vince

and they were all

absolutely i think

prepared to go to um incredible lengths

to achieve some of the visions that that

clive would create it was interesting

the dog company because we were a profit

share company so any profits we made

were

supposedly shared within the company but

clive's imagination was constantly going

how can we create this effect how can we

create that effect

so all the profits were end up spent on

amazing new effects you can see that in

hellraiser and you know so some people

could say that hellraiser was a a

commercialization

of the ideas

from the forbidden but i think more

realistically and more correctly

hellraiser is a glorious reimagining

made for real people who see real movies

of some of the ideas in the

we were young let's say pretentious uh

the forbidden that was my first

introduction to the world of clive and

it was exhilarating um

and it was definitely marked by this

incredible ambition our ambition

certainly outstripped our resources

which were very few so we were we were

bundling around in this funny van um to

different pubs

doing these plays and then he wrote a

series of them which we all did

including one called frankenstein in

love

which also has uh definite

roots that you see develop in hellraiser

through pending many plays for the dog

company

barca already hinted at his obsession

with all things nightmarish

these stories would grow into the first

volumes of his best-selling books of

blood

first published in 1984.

barca's work would soon catch the

attention of filmmakers wanting to cash

in on the new up-and-coming horror

writer

i

saw raw head rex

and i saw

what was then called

underworld i actually went to see

underworld with clive at a cast and crew

screening in

leicester square

and i do remember standing

um

standing on the paper and outside the

cinema with him afterwards and he said

pretty much quote unquote

well i think i recognized two or three

of my original lines in there

it seems to me

[Music]

that the only way to do this is to do it

yourself i think after clive had seen um

underworld and raw head rex um you know

he was thrilled to have his work adapted

for the movies obviously but i think you

know having come out of theater and

having directed independent film with us

and stuff i think he got the sense of

well perhaps i should try this myself

you know my memory is that he did talk

to me about it when

we were talking about

him doing hellraiser

and i said so why are you doing it and

he said they [ __ ] it up they you know

i believe that was his exact expression

they just [ __ ] them up as far as he

was concerned they weren't very happy

with it at all um

i don't know if it was the effects

people they weren't happy with or if it

was the fact that clive's

books and

work had been completely bastardized and

there was about three words in there

broadhead rex i think it was mentioned a

couple of times when we met him that he

discussed his experience and there was a

should we say um sort of like bad flavor

so he didn't really push it any further

i think he was

his his involvement with those films was

was i think minimal should we say it the

best and that's why he didn't like them

roy hep rex is is one of the the best

stories i think in in the books of blood

um and i'd

i'd read all of them by that stage i was

actually you know quite a big glidebark

of fans so that's why it was

you know amazing for me to get to get to

meet him and things like that

and you wouldn't think anyone could mess

it up but

when i tell you that my my job on rawhid

wrecks principally involved

cleaning

the title creature when he came back

from filming every night you know sort

of taking all the mud off him and

and cleaning the blood off his teeth so

he looked like basically a mattel super

hero toy you know

um

and he and he looked great when he was

covering [ __ ] really

i mean the only time in the film that he

looks good is when he first appears out

out from underneath the uh

the monolith um when he's covered in

crap

i think to some extent uh

whatever the failings may be of

rawhedrags in underworld i think if

nothing else they sort of lit a fire

under him to uh

to take a shot himself i wouldn't doubt

that that probably clive has

already had thoughts in his head about

making his own

movies

um

uh to what extent he was already

thinking about that when those

two movies were made or to what extent

his his disappointment and annoyance

with those two movies was

the catalyst to try and get his own uh

thing going kudos to clive for actually

just saying okay i can do this better

and the next time i'm gonna do it

the next time i'm going to do it and i'm

going to do it how i want to do it

um so i think you know that was the real

driving force as to why he he decided to

do hellraiser he was quite happy to go

ahead with hellraiser within in in his

hands i think everybody now knows the

story really that clive didn't earn a

great deal of money on hellraiser he

sold his soul

but

at the end of the day he got a film that

was pretty much what he wanted you look

at both those films today there's a

there's a lot going for them they're not

as terrible as we thought back then in

the same way we thought a lot of hammer

movies were terrible back then but you

look you know the wonderful bad thing

about history is you look back through a

rosy colored glasses

and you think oh actually that's not as

bad as i thought it was you know at the

time he felt he could do a better job

with his own source material

and

that's why it's

the timing worked when i met with him

um and i

said look you know if you're gonna be a

first-time director we've got to keep

this budget low

um and we've got to be able to do three

people in the house um and there wasn't

anything in the in the

in his book series that sort of fitted

three people in the house so that's why

we came back to

mapping out this fast-impact story of

the hellbound heart

first published in 1986 in the night

visions anthology series the hellbound

heart was written by barker with the

intention of becoming a film the novella

would be later re-released in 1988 as a

stand-alone title after the success of

the film

we were working

in the dog company together doing mainly

clive's plays that he'd written and i

remember one day he turned up with

a massive pile of paper

and it was i can't remember how many it

can't have been all 36

of the short stories that turned into

books and blood but he suddenly appeared

with this incredible treasure chest and

um

and something was clearly going to come

out of them um hellraiser being the

first one

it wasn't necessarily the first one he

intended to make in fact but it seemed

the most immediate and um achievable

uh given the more ambitious plans to

some of the other projects to the best

of my knowledge um

hellbound heart was developed sort of

simultaneously with hillary's i don't i

don't know if clive was literally

writing the screenplay

while he was writing the novella but i

know that um it was very much a story

that was developed for the movies um and

then clearly you know it's a

the novella is excellent um

but it's not that it was the novella

that sat there and then later they

thought let's adapt this

uh clive had found chris fargo chris

figured found clive and they partnered

with a view to making you know a good

british horror movie and the hellbound

heart was was a result of that i'm not

taking anything away from hellbound

heart but

that i believe was the situation going

back to kind of

19 1979 1980 around about that period i

can remember clive

from time to time

putting a a handwritten manuscript in my

hand saying um

have a read of that let me know what you

think i remember him saying quote

unquote um

i'm trying my hand at writing a few

uh horror stories see if i can make a

bit of money out of it

that worked um and they a lot of those

stories were the stories that

um that were then anthologized in the

books of blood favorites in there i

don't know i i mean the obvious ones

probably in the hills the cities

well i'm probably i'm probably biased

about that one because uh

the couple in in the hills the cities in

the first draft were a heterosexual

couple um but they were so snappy and

[ __ ] with each other in the text that

they reminded me of clive when he was

arguing with john and i said you should

just make them a gay couple because it's

obviously you and john

and and he did so

so i felt very proud that uh that i'd

help persuade him to to break ground by

featuring a gay couple in that story

that's not why i'm fond of the story i

think it's a magnificent central image i

read all 36 of those short stories

almost immediately and in longhand

because that's how clive delivered them

to us and they were incredible it was

like a

tsunami of uh stories and ideas and help

on heart

seem particularly potent

and that whole strain of

darkness and

if you like the the macbeths at home

where they're prepared to take

incredible

pacts

to achieve their darker desires that was

an incredibly powerful story i was lucky

enough to read the books of blood in

manuscript form obviously because i was

still living in london um

because clive wrote them

79 8081 he wrote them fairly slowly i

think and

i think i'm right in saying that doug

bradley and i were were their first

readers you know he would pass them on

to us and

and ask for

praise or you know thoughts i had read

the hell about hot um

i loved it i thought it was really good

and creepy and uh

started to read a lot of the other books

as well and and you start to get with

an author you get much more of an idea

what's inside their head

than with a script it's interesting when

you look at clive's work

certain themes always recur one of them

is religion

which i know had a huge impact and still

does on his life not personally but

certainly in his family i'd never heard

of clyde barker i'd never read a book of

his

before i was sent the script the

hellbound heart is a natural

expression of the books of blood um

the similar sort of storytelling um that

you take a natural situation you add a

twist of weirdness to the situation it's

fascinating to see that the lead center

bite was actually

female in that book and that kirstie was

actually just a family friend i think

the changes that were made were

absolutely correct because i don't think

you could have two female baddies

within hellraiser you've got a story

about a family you've got a story about

adults and the teenager is the heroine

she's the person who's trying to sort

out everything so i think it was

completely and utterly different from

everything else that had gone before and

all those stories were really well

crafted and uh

and and chilling and and exciting to

read

i actually wanted to do one of them as

as a film clive talks about

how he had to visit very dark places

from his own life

to create hellrosa

and

i think when he talks about that he

talks

about

sado masochism and

dark things that people do go to for

pleasure from pain i mean the fact that

frank was looking for the ultimate

pleasure

and was finding it

through pain

is is quite unique i always found the

people when they met clive were

surprised at how charming and ordinary

he seemed ordinary in the best sense of

the word

and couldn't believe what

um dark imaginings were seething

in that skull and

with hellraiser it felt like he was

getting a handle on something

very kind of um

classic

and he was always looking to use the

body as a symbol of

uh um of what's going on in the in the

head in the psyche and um so that notion

of

literally getting into somebody's skin

um seemed a hugely powerful one it's as

though he takes um a metaphor and turns

it into a myth

at its core hellraiser is a love story

telling the story of forbidden love and

lust within a family threatened with

turbulent domestic relationships

the key to this story is julia's

relationship with frank and their search

for pleasure well i guess really just

structurally in the script it is i

suppose it doesn't have story there's i

suppose there's two love stories there's

some

julia and

her husband and then there's

julio and

whatever you'd call him hellraiser is

about you know it's a love story about

obsessive love dark love

so you know if an audience gets that

it's kind of a bonus i don't have many

expectations but

i'm happy when people

ask me questions about

elements of the film that aren't related

to

the effects and the

the the

you know monsters and creatures and

and

action and more about what's the deeper

meaning he loves the love story he's a

great romantic

at heart he's just a bit of a twisted

romantic perverted romantic the heart of

every

story that sticks with people's

imagination is always a love story

perhaps it can be said that that is the

reason why hellraiser has the one that's

risen

of the group i guess is the one that's

probably the most talked about because

it is a sick love story it's kind of

like a i've always thought it's like a

sort of kind of a bit of a tragic sort

of love triangle really that you've got

these three characters that um

you know all of their um sort of

attentions are kind of drawn in in

different directions it's about passion

um

the original tagline was there are no

limits that's what was on our crew

t-shirts

um and it's taking

passion desire to its most logical

conclusion

in that kind of supernatural way

anything that sticks with people in

terms of storytelling always has at its

at its heart a love story that goes back

time to time immemorial there are who

was it who said there are only really

three stories in the entire world and

and you know there's there's love

there's there's tragedy and there's love

and tragedy and and that's basically it

so really i suppose one of the reasons

this film's success is that it does have

that at its heart like any

compelling story

too

he's human

he falls in love with people he loves

people he loves romance

[Music]

and it is there's a romance in all of

them it's kind of weird but there are

you have a woman who is so

either

sexually insatiable that she wants the

one man in her life who truly provided

her with the ultimate sexual experience

she wants him back she's prepared to do

anything for it as you said that's the

core of the story so therefore

if he's dead the only way he can come

back is in a fantasy element when you

think about it

julia wasn't enough for this bloke he

wanted more she just wanted sex and she

got the best sex but he wanted more so

he went to the extremes i think that

you've really got to focus on

getting a script that pushes the buttons

with the characters and

if you've got

the collector's subconscious elements of

looking for lost love

of

of immediate short-term gain for a

future

penalty if you've got all those human

frailties being addressed

in a horror film where the audience

identifies with that i think you're

going to have a lot more currency with

that film than going for the vicarious

torch pawn

going for

um you know the sort of

just visceral thrills the original title

was hellraiser a love story that kind of

thing

and he wanted to get that eroticism into

the film and so we wanted to get into

the characters so a lot of the stuff was

trying to push boundaries certainly

you've got a story which all the

pinhead looms above it

feels like it's a one level of retelling

but kind of macbeth story

this love affair at the heart of it um

and how far you're prepared to go

and so to me it will always have a kind

of resonance and relevance it's a sad

story about about a family that you know

that basically is is destroyed i think

that relationship for me was the most

important part of it because that was

the whole point that's why it was so

horrific

because

this was

you know this could have been a love

story i thought it was the weirdest

thing i'd ever read

really thought it was very kinky

uh

but i i but i love the fact that it was

strange

and and it was like it was really

very different from anything i'd ever

done or read it is very much

a story about passion unrequited love

forbidden love

and

and it is about that it is about that

the fact that we've all forgotten that

when you see it again it is what it was

about it certainly was the focus of the

film certainly in reading the short

story i was very caught up in that

dark driven

relationship between julia and frank um

the kind of powerful desires which

breaking taboo

seemed to be an incredible engine born

in buckinghamshire in 1957 one of the

founding fathers of hellraiser producer

christopher figg would graduate from

oxford in 1979 and embark on his career

in the film industry as an editor of

television commercials

this was followed by assistant director

and eventually he become a producer on

the number of cult british films chris

was always charming to be with

as a producer

he's your worst enemy

because he wants more work for less

money we want less work for more money

and that's always going to be the trick

it's always that way he was always a

gentleman to work with and we always got

on very very well i think he was a

little bit of a fish out of water in

terms of the horror aspect i don't think

he likes horror films i i think he

thought what the hell am i doing here

half the time and then he would look at

the stuff we're doing i thought what the

hell are you doing there because it was

just perhaps not to his taste he's a

really really

good person

he's one of those people that

he shouldn't be a producer right because

he is

too good to be a producer right and i

can say that with hand on heart

he should be

working for united nations or something

like that he certainly shouldn't be

producing but he also is a very very

good producer as well

he just doesn't fit the bastard mode

which 99.9 of them fit into he was a

very nice presence he was there to

i suppose just make sure we didn't spend

too much money but um

you know i just remember chris is a very

very good presence i was scared of chris

i mean it was my first movie he was a

producer i was scared of him i didn't

speak to him chris figg

came into the project and really took it

by the scruff of the neck as a producer

you're

again

the jack of all trades master of none

um you could keep an eye on on the

schedule make sure

what's being scheduled is filmed um

reporting back to the bond company

uh making sure that

we're on budget um making sure the

rushes look

um

you know we're getting what we need to

get

um

and just

being a big nanny

um

and really that that that is the most

important making sure the actors were

happy i mean there was a lot of hours in

makeup for many of them and that does

get stressful so just making sure that

everyone is happy i don't think anybody

was a task master um i i i think

everybody was working really hard and

knew that you had to

have some sort of relief

in it they could also tell you

you're not going to tell somebody from

mucking around when you know that

they're coming in seven days a week and

bringing sleeping bags and things he and

clive were sort of like really working

close together and clive knew that he

had to rely on christopher obviously

and so so christopher was always this

benign uh

calming presence on the set i think his

relationship with clive was close

but he

he let clive get on with it

because i mean he had a professional

crew sound camera uh bob keane with all

the makeup the special effects people

the creature people

um

uh

he saw that it that the ship was rolling

well and that's that to me that's the uh

the the sign of a good producer when he

sees it's working and doesn't interfere

because we've all worked on sets where

producers are on there bollocking

screaming shouting

in public and that undermines a crew

chris's usual line to me whenever i did

see him

usually late at night as i was being

taken out of makeup is are you still

here

um that was chris you always chris's

line to me whenever he saw me late at

night and i suspect that was just

because he knew he was paying me

overtime

with their partnership now firmly formed

fig and parker would set out to attract

interest in their novella the hellbound

heart after expanding into film

production with notable successes in the

early 1980s british entrepreneur richard

branson's virgin films consequently

would announce in 1983 that they would

be investing 14 million pounds in a

series of movies by 1986 virgin films

developed an interest in hellraiser with

the prospect of developing it into a

feature film

i was introduced to clyde by a mutual

friend

and

he said i want to make a film and i said

i want to produce a film

he said i want to make a horror film i

said but fine that's popular genre at

the moment and we're talking 1986.

and

we decided okay

jeep

three people in the house and we'll go

from there clive told me he was you know

was going to make a movie that he'd

partnered with this guy chris feig and

the interesting thing actually is that i

wasn't surprised because

at that stage he'd had pretty enormous

success with books of blood they'd made

underworld and raw head wrecks so it

didn't feel

like it you know wow male friend just

won the jackpot you know it didn't feel

like it came out of nowhere it just felt

like oh great you know

um perhaps you'll make doug a household

name i said i didn't really who knew the

putting together um of the financing i

hadn't got a clue you know the thing

about being a producer is you're

jack of all trades and master of none

and anyone can be a producer you just

have to have a script on your arm

but what um

i did was i was all right okay who's

making who's financing stuff and at that

time virgin were making films virgin

films

so we started with them

and they said yes i think there was a

deal in place with virgin

it would have been a british-backed

movie

my understanding other people will have

a clearer idea of this than i but i

i think virgin backed out because they

didn't think it sat with it its images

as a

family entertainment

clive and chris took themselves off to

to la and i and i i think i'm right in

saying their very first pitch was to new

world

and they said yes i think new world were

letting him take quite a risk with these

characters and when you think it was

originally called by s m zombies from

beyond the grave or all that kind of

stuff

we were being given the chance to do

something that was that was sexually

horrific they were meant to be sexual

returns to all these things los angeles

and went to new world because they had a

track record in this type of genre

and they said

maybe we'll come and see you

then we had this extraordinary tea in

the ritz where the chap from new world

a guy called david saunders

asked us come and have tea in the ritz

with them and because neither of us had

a tie in the time when you had to have a

tie to have tea in the ritz

so he scrubbed around and bought a tie

in

barrack street or something and went

down the ritz had tea with david

saunders where he said we don't want to

do this

and clive and i said you're mad it's you

know you can't lose on that we've turned

him around during tea they teamed up

with virgin and then just as we were

closing the financing virgin films

suddenly stopped doing it and we managed

to persuade new world to take on the

whole budget which was about 900 000

pounds then

um

and we

then went off and

made it for that

originally the film studios of

pioneering filmmakers the samuelson

family cricklewood production village in

north london would become the home of

the production of hellraiser in 1986.

the studios were situated on an

unremarkable north west london suburban

road featuring the archetypal village

green bar pond and

ducks

it was part of samuelson's i mean again

this is part of the world that's

vanished now

um there was a there was a big there

could be a camera suppliers with a

company called samuelsons who were

terrific and they they basically were

the company before panavision came here

and what they sam wilson's were were the

sort of premier suppliers and they had

panavision they had this they had that

we all went through so many of us worked

through samuelson's

um and they owned cricklewood village

and it was like their little studio idea

it wasn't particularly warm it wasn't

particularly cold but it wasn't

comfortable

but it was it was a small place

but the joy of it was is that because we

were all at the beginning of our careers

professionally on a large-scale film

shefton studios that was our home

it was a it's a lovely um little studio

that got taken over by another effects

company and i i think it's um recently

been knocked down i don't think it's

there anymore but um that was that was

our home and um and it was the the my

um my birth into the film business we

were stuck in a a production village our

makeup application room was the back end

of a garage so occasionally you would

get the sort of the the beep beep

reversing of a truck because production

village was also a nightclub um bar

so you would get a brewery lorry sort of

like reversing right back next to you

and you would hear it through the walls

um production village was also quite

well known for not being a soundstage

there was no

sound insulation cricklewood was great

because it was it you know it's a

village it's a little community

and you couldn't help

but bump into

you know the other members of the cast

the other crews um had a wonderful bar

there and

it was a great atmosphere

um

apart from the constant bloody geese

during filming sometimes the first or

the second ad would have to go and shush

the the ducks while they were quacking

because it wasn't a risk the sound stage

wasn't that much of a sound stage in the

production village i was a first

assistant who had to go and stand out by

the duck pond to keep the ducks quiet

during takes

um because you hear the duck's

for the ducks every now and then they'll

take off and

come back and there'll be a bit of

a bit of stopping and starting for um

for the ducks to sort of do their

business i managed to eradicate that by

sending them to a farm where they got

murdered

it was a fox and it was a

you know

i imagine with all the blood spilled

that was the only real blood you can't

say that no animals were harmed in the

making of this film

boasting a cast of newcomers hollywood

stars classically trained british

theater actors and friends of director

clive barker

the characters that were first created

in the novella the hellbound heart would

emerge from page to scream

and become some of the most iconic

characters

in horror genre history we see the pair

on the doorstep

larry is an american in his early 40s an

attractive man who has lost his age in

recent years

a really nice guy who falls for the

wrong woman

larry's innocent

he is

an unhappy husband

who

is comfortable in his unhappiness he's

kind of hopeful he's going it's going to

change his relationship with julia you

know when you first see them

they're moving in together he's also

quite

complex because he kind of comes across

as a bit of a wimp but he's protective

of kirsty

when he's watching the boxing he

obviously

he really enjoys that physical violence

so there's something there going on

there

but i don't think he'd ever express it

and i don't think he'd ever express it

with julia

um

perhaps if he did they might have a

better relationship story of these two

brothers one of whom clearly is much

more charismatic and exciting

particularly to julia and so poor larry

is a little bit of a um a wet rag by

comparison with the

sort of tornado that frank must be larry

is this pathetic

uh

um downtrodden

under the thumb

milksop weed

and what andy does is he he plays he

plays larry so far down here that when

he's playing frank in larry's skin at

the end he's got everywhere to go to

ramp it up come to daddy all of that

stuff

is is fantastic new world wanted us to

have an american in there so we ended up

with

andy robinson

who was great really good fun really and

because he'd been such a good villain in

um

dirty harry you know it sort of brought

a bit of

subtext at all anyway and it did work

very well

you may he he was kind of a nebushy guy

he was a bit of a nerd

you know well-meaning i mean it was

hard on his sleeve

uh ernest

uh really wanting

something that would never work to work

um

and you know it

i it was like i'd never played that kind

of character before which is one of the

reasons it

absolutely interested me i was excited

that we had scorpio from dirty harry

coming to be in hellraiser because i'd

seen the movie and and

loved it and then

knew all the lines for

you know you're feeling lucky

um

maybe andy was employed

for what he was about to turn into

rather than the nice guy coming first

the believable

amy paul larry whose wife's being

shagged but he hasn't got a clue

and he's got a lovely uh you know

daughter and etc etc all played straight

and nice

i loved what he was doing because he had

this slightly sort of this hidden

psychotic edge and what he did with it

the voice was just fabulous and certain

little bits and pieces the whole come to

daddy thing etc etc was just beautiful

so he was

there are certain actors that when

you're watching on a set

when you're making a film that i've

worked with summons and not with others

but you watch them when they're making a

film that you just think this is a joy

to watch and he was always just good fun

to watch he was a brilliant actor

it was out of his comfort zone he had no

idea what he was doing he had no idea

what was going on

and yet he embraced every moment of it

and was excited all right what i loved

about him was there was a thrill about

andy and he went

yeah tear me apart that's what you want

me to do and let me you let me do that

like no let me just line again slower

and like i'm really being torn apart

and he was terrific he was and from my

point of view as a publicist you need

actors who understand what your job is

he just delivered i mean a real old-time

professional

not that old but uh i thought his

casting was great i thought car clive

cast that film really really well

shooting in that

very old dilapidated house

and um you know there's quite a lot of

waiting around on set and we just sort

of did what all actors do just sit

around

and get to know each other a bit and he

was absolutely charming just lovely to

work and and the script was so

interesting

and so weird uh and and i happen to love

weirdness so i mean you know there was

no question that i you know and and

going to london where i went to school

and i could hang out and see old friends

and whatever there was nothing there

were no negatives about this job

i'm paid well

i assume that the check would clear the

bank

he was fantastic actually i i think

because a lot of his background was

stage acting and therefore

he wasn't in any way a prima donna he

was a great guy actually really was good

and he really contributed and of course

we were all in slight thrall of him

anyway because we were all complete you

know jd harry freaks and this guy had

been he was without a doubt when the

great

you know one of the great psycho players

of all time wasn't he i mean the

characters that i always played with you

know frank when i when i made the

transition from larry to frank frank was

like that was

that was basically more

my territory the territory i felt more

comfortable in so larry was great

because i was i was that was something i

really had to work on andy gives a great

performance and what he does

is he plays larry

so well and so against what you'd expect

from the actor who played scorpio

there's a very in the states the whole

crew are very much

in the same way the americans are very

positive very let's get this done we're

all working together let's get this

it's going you know we're all in the

same boat we're all the same boats we're

on the same page thank you very much

we're all working to the same goals and

let's let's do it let's work together as

a team

in england

it's more

oh you're playing that role are you

let's see what you can do then it's

it's it's slightly more it's a lot more

cynical and you have to prove yourself i

think

before people accept you um

and and people are very judgmental

so

which is a shame

that we we but that's our culture there

are different cultures

how andrew found that i he probably

didn't find that because he'd already

proved himself and

to an american crew he'd be the big

american star coming over so they were

probably quite an awe of him so i'm sure

he was treated exceptionally well

he was certainly

uh

a great asset to the production and

i think it helped on the american

obviously it must have helped in the

sales and distribution

but yeah but as an actor and as a guy he

was fantastic and really good

julia his wife is english and looks

perhaps 10 years as junior

she is beautiful but her face portrays a

barely buried unhappiness

life has disappointed her too of late

and larry has been a major part of their

disappointment

julie's a megalomaniac

[ __ ]

um

wicked stepmother evil queen

at the very beginning she's almost she's

not a country bumpkin but she's

definitely a country girl you know the

accent is very much

um uh there's a lovely bur to julia's

voice uh in those early scenes

you really want to move in here

you don't like it

i suppose it's better than brooklyn

meets this dangerous man who just gives

a hell of a good ride

by the looks of it

really opens up her mind and you just

know she does not get the same sexual

satisfaction

um from her husband

um

she's therefore going to

do something about it at some point we

have to understand that her obsession

with wanting to bring this

illicit lover her

husband's brother back to life

makes sense if you

are able to connect

with her heart

albeit is

off course as it might be

and certainly as we can see

when she has the flashback in hellraiser

where she meets them for the first time

and they subsequently make love hey

it doesn't take freud to figure out this

is not a very healthy relationship you

know and it's only that she has

desires strong and dark enough that

allows the story to take place

so she's really

the means to

to bring our anti-hero back into the

world

dark mysterious

woman that he totally falls head over

heels for and you know and and who was

absolutely the wrong was the wrong

person for him ever to get involved with

he could never satisfy her whatever her

needs were

could never satisfy her

and the relationship between frank and

julia is is an extreme one

i mean it goes into the areas of

possibly being

psychotic or i don't it's hard to talk

about in real terms because it's fantasy

um but yes obviously there's something

about that relationship that people do

find compelling

i found uh judy's a bit odd to me

because um

i couldn't quite imagine going to the

lengths that she did

for frank but then hey you know i mean

she obviously liked him a lot

but i think she is infatuated with him

maybe she is in love with him she he's

certainly not in love with her

how did i uh end up playing julia well

yes clive it was

really very simple clive sent me a

script of the film

and i read it i i was doing

something else at the time and i knew i

was going on to do something else

and i realized i could do the film i

could do it in terms of time but i

turned it down twice initially

because as i say i i don't watch horror

and um i did think the script was pretty

violent

um but then

i think i spoke to clive over the phone

for quite a long time and i was just

sort of enchanted by him

and i thought he had such a wonderful um

he has his own well as everybody knows

he knows clive's work

he has a million different

uh life forms going on inside his head

i thought he was extremely bright

and very imaginative and i liked him

enormously when we spoke

and so i did it claire higgins on her

razor was an interesting thing because

she technically is the star of she's she

was the one person which with acting

chops on that film

that clive i presume had seen on stage

because at that point she was one of the

biggest

stage actresses in england and she still

is to this day

um you know she's she's royal

shakespeare company she's somebody who

brought

immaculate gravitas to that role

first time i met claire was at her

screen test because

i had been asked to

do the other half of her screen test

clive asked me if i'd if i do it i

remember doing

playing the same scene with at least one

other actress maybe two names i don't

remember now

i do know that i have absolutely no

doubt

when claire came out

there was a look in her eye

i remember thinking we don't need to do

this

you're it

clive puts the success of hellraiser

down to claire's performance

and it is

through her story that the audience have

to believe the unbelievable i mean

because you know claire claire's a

basically you know i mean incredibly

well known actress and she's

i think it's quite a coup to get her

she's

a real

class

actress

and here she is

smashing people with a hammer

it's some terrific performances in the

film

claire higgins gives us a very worthy

lady macbeth

and

really potent stuff

i think she's

an unusual element in a horror film

and

she's unusually sort of

she both beautiful and earthy and rough

all at the same time

she's wonderful she she's the best thing

in it

to be honest she's a brilliant actress

um but the thing is that there's

there's certain bits and pieces but

there's there's the shot in the mirror

when she's wiping the blood off her face

and there's just a look that's in her

eyes

that that just is just clear she's

fabulous she goes from

oh my god there's a skinned man

in my upstairs room

to

oh my god it's you and i believe it's

you even though you've skinned in your

your own skin and bones

and a little bit of

gunk

uh

yes i'll go and kill people for you

that that's that's a big ask of any

actress and when you see it in the film

it's very little there it's it's like

the space of two minutes

and she does it she makes it look so

easy you see claire is a consummate

theater actor i mean she's

if you've ever seen any of her work on

stage she's amazing

so claire and i immediately recognize

each other as theater animals she bought

real

terror not just horror

terror to the film and because she was

an actor theater actress as well

um she'd never done anything like this

before

she she she went for it and delivered to

clive everything he asked

and i just thought her performance was

amazing

in the course of her screen test um

clare did nearly relegate the pair of us

to interesting footnotes in the history

of horror films

as i said i was i was playing the

character with the weak bladder um

that she's lured back to the house on

ludovico street so

uh my contribution is is is to come in

with my back to the camera because

obviously it's all unclear and then i

say i need to go to the luge she tells

me where it is

i turn around

and drop out of frame

and claire swings the hammer

and they had

not given her uh a mock hammer they'd

given her a real hammer and they'd

gaffitate the large block of foam

to the wall of the soundstage

so that she could really give it some

welly and whack the hammer in to the

phone

so we did the scene and and i gave my

line now it's it's it's all about

claire's timing because uh all i could

do was turn around and go out of out of

the screen um

played the scene

i

i i i'm crouched down on the floor there

is it seemed to me a long pause and then

a

slightly coward voice behind the camera

said

cut

and i sort of came up to see whether we

were

going again

and it was evident that we weren't going

again

um

selwyn first a d

um

uh then lent in and and he he said

he and clive i think and robin were

behind the camera and they they said to

me

she missed you by that much

she was very very

in the moment

as julia

she wasn't waiting for me to get out of

frame that was that was up to me but i

i i could not control anything about it

she was so scary and manic and went for

it with such ferocity

that um she took clive and chris figg's

breath away

at the audition so i i look back on on

that as the point at which um

any discussion of of hellraiser in the

histories of of horror films would have

an asterisk next to it which would say

in the footnote

that clyde barker's

close friend and colleague doug bradley

was originally cast to play pinhead but

unfortunately after being accidentally

killed on set by claire higgins uh

who then spent the next 20 years of her

life in prison for manslaughter

both parts had to be recast

didn't happen

i i i don't recall especially in doug

said because i didn't audition claire

brought a real

touch of class to the film she was

really um

she was and and that was

what she bought on the film she bought

on the set as well she was she was just

a lovely person i got a picture of me

standing side by side over the other day

she um had the claw hammer um

and a beautiful smiling warm person i

really i fancy though as well she was

gorgeous

and so everybody on set

was quiet no noise so claire could get

in the in the swing of things

so she could start naturally crying

and so we do this and claire she she

turned the tears on she was really good

and everybody is really quiet

it was quite amazing

and as soon as they say cut

danny shelby the focus puller

turned around to her and said

i've got it

i know who you remind me of declare

it's andrew from eastenders

which then everybody started laughing

thank god we weren't going to go again

because

claire was in fits of laughter when

seconds before she'd been in this

terrible sort of crying

situation

she was wonderful i mean as far as i was

concerned that character her

performances is the centerpiece of the

film

as a character

she was evil she played it evil

you know

even on a normal line there was

something sinister behind it she she

added that to it and you couldn't stop

watching her on set she took on this

kind of

this this 1980s fan fatale and raised it

to the level of greek tragedy it seemed

to me and i think it is a great a great

performance

i don't recall

ever for a moment on set there being any

sort of

deep discussion about you know how do we

play this because as i say it was

storyboarded very very very clearly

and all one had to do really was inhabit

the shot because it was such a powerful

story

i have to say that claire higgins is

probably one of the sexiest women

walking the face of the earth to this

day and uh

claire if you're there i want you to

know i feel it from the heart what

lengths

some women will go to for a good [ __ ]

kirsty the daughter of larry's first

marriage and his only child on the phone

she is barely 20 beautiful in an

unpretentious way a dream of a girl next

door we can't see much of the room she's

in at the moment the shot is too tight

so there was an interesting change when

the the film was made in the character

of kirsty to make her the daughter

rather than the assistant and

i think that

certainly added to what feels like

a fully fledged fable

that hellraiser is in terms of

in creating this

extraordinary myth

um

he is turning what is a very potent

story into a kind of fable and he is

using powerful archetypes which we

connect with and there is a sense

almost of religious dimension to it um

so it creates a kind of

religious hierarchy um

through the through the film kirsty is

vulnerable and fearless

and has a strange relationship with her

father

she's a strong caring female

who wants to protect her father who

knows that something you know

julie she doesn't like julia

um

and

obviously julia is not making her father

happy

um and she's brave and she has to deal

with a hell of a lot of [ __ ] how on

earth does kirsty go through all of that

what she's witnessed what she gets an

inkling of what what she actually then

witnesses

and then to discover

you know nasty uncle frank

and the attic and daddy turning into

frank and then all the celebrities and

monsters and chat chatterers and

whatever is tearing down corridors what

she goes through who is she at the

beginning and who is she by the end she

she had done um a soap opera in the

states which was why they cast her to my

knowledge

and they'd seen that

and i think she tells the story that she

because of that she felt she had to

prove herself that she could do

she felt she got this soap background

and she felt she had to prove herself as

a as a legitimate actress which i think

she does

beautifully

i'm sure she was she must have been

feeling homesick to some extent but i

know she she

she loved london loved being in london

her boyfriend was over with her for for

some of the time if not all of the time

i remember when we were filming in the

house in ludovica street i used to

they had kind of a room up at the top of

the house

and i spent time up there chatting to

them both

um

uh

so

how much she was missing

the sun in los angeles uh i don't know

ashley was very good

but i just thought yeah

i just didn't think of all the

characters that she came across the best

in the film i thought i think she was

the weakest written character i don't

know i'd like to hear what clyde would

say about that

but i think she was the weakest written

character which is a pity because she's

quite that pivotal thing between the

whole julia and her father that whole

thing there i just felt she came across

so weak

we always impressed the fact that she

could really scream though we always

remembered that actually really good

scream

um and she was saying she was pretty an

attractive woman i thought you know me

shoving her fingers down her throat

brought us pretty close together i mean

you know my first entrance is in the

hospital was ashley um

who just did a wonderful job of selling

that scene

if somebody

brings their fingers towards your mouth

you're more likely to close your mouth

rather than open it to allow what's

going on i think she really beautifully

played the fact that she was so freaked

out she didn't really know what she was

doing and kind of allowed this invasion

of her

and you know literally all i was doing

was

that

and kind of thinking that's presumably

where i'm supposed to be going with me

unable to see what was going on

so she really did

sell that she was really creative she

knew exactly what she was doing she was

an absolute professional

on set and and she was a baby she was

really young at the time so i think that

the crew at the time really kind of took

her to heart and looked after her

um

you know

pretty girl around on set who couldn't

you know who wouldn't

look after them ashley was uh

always

had a lot of energy on set

um

she had a lot to do she's in a lot of

the movie and

there's

a lot of times where

i felt very sorry for her because

the speed that we were shooting the film

at

um

a lot of times we were traveling very

fast

and you kind of got the feel that she

was keeping up and doing really well but

you know it was like okay now we need to

do this now we need to do that now this

now that you know so every day i think

was really hard for her

i mean ashley's lovely she's i saw

ashley a couple of years ago she's just

again very just very fun warm memories

of her

beautiful face

i felt she could have been controlled a

bit her performance some of it was a bit

a bit skittish a bit

you know i felt sometimes it needed to

come down a little bit

but

it worked for the film but i think

it could have been a little bit

skittish is the word

sometimes a bit too much but that's just

me personally you know standing on set

watching we all stand on sets all our

lives watching actors of all calibers

and uh

when something is not for one is not

quite right you think well maybe

just break it down a fraction

but she was good first meeting with

ashley lawrence uh

was doing her screen test for her i

played um

the scene in which she she meets larry

in the chinese restaurant and hellraiser

i've played

played that scene opposite her

got on really well with her ever since

still friends with her

now

again nothing but admiration for what

she did she was very young

didn't didn't have an easy time through

through the movie

[Music]

she dreamt about it

so she was all the time

i know so that when she when she wasn't

actually

playing the part she was

she was dreaming about it so she was

[Music]

she was kind of locked into the movie

for the

whole duration but

um

uh

i loved it got on really well i mean

actually they're really a very

[Music]

sweetheart um

and and we sort of we bonded and got a

father-daughter thing going i'm i'm you

know i have a daughter

and so it was like that's so i was able

to bring

that to it and she was open to like you

know uh

establishing a relationship and the guy

who played her boyfriend um he wasn't

very good and his dubbing was even worse

so i mean it didn't do with anything

let's put it that way well he must have

been speaking to all the wrong people

julia almost retreats but something

keeps her staring into the merc

as something the remnants of a human

form made of twisted blistered strands

of flesh raises its head

it's squatting against the wall

unable to lift itself into a standing

position

its eyes however have life in them

and hunger

this though he's unrecognizable

is frank

frank is

the bad boy but with incredible

drive to explore and feel

um

pleasure and pain to its utmost

so the the cat although they're quite

similar

in certain ways being brothers they're

polar opposites and frank is the

ultimate person who wants to

experience everything he really wants

he only

it appears he only feels alive

when he's actually physically enjoying

sex

and having had sex and every

permutation he can think of he really

wants to explore the difference between

pain and pleasure and the fact those two

are so closely into what intertwined

twisted sex part a psychopathic guy who

doesn't really care but he's

irresistible

difficult one really but then frank did

chug his uh um

his own brother's wife in her wedding

gown i mean that's a pretty am i right

yeah

it's naughty that's it

a dirty bastard

as we would say in liverpool i i don't

know what else would you say about him

except he is you know i mean he's uh

he lives at extremes

and then of course it's the skinned man

and again i've always said it's

it's it's part of clive's genius that

most people if they're contemplating

putting a skinned man

in a horror film it'll be as a shock

it'll be as a jump cut skinned man

and that'll be it

clive shows you the skinned man

and then he gives you the skinned man

with a glass of red wine and a cigarette

with an emotional life

and ambitions to to become human again

um and you dwell on him and you spend

time with him

frank as played by sean

uh obviously a very hard person and you

know with

bizarre ideas about how to get a buzz

out of life entering hell and shagging

for england or whatever

so one had he was a nasty piece of work

he's a good actor sean chapman

um and he certainly took the role on

very well um

and of course and he meets a grizzly end

between

right at the beginning the film which i

was corrected on recently where you see

this hand after he's been torn apart

right at the beginning you see this hand

putting this face together and it's

supposed to be his and i know that i had

filmed that scene

so i've been telling people for years

that that was my hand putting this

together and then i was corrected

recently by jeff portas who said

actually no we had to reshoot it because

when they shot the original bit they

used real bits of meat

and then

the production office were going hang on

a minute we're not sure we're allowed to

use real meat

because some animal was slaughtered and

we could be seen to be

making money out of

even though it was probably from some

butchers so they had re-shot it with

bits of prosthetics when i wasn't there

so it wasn't my hand putting that stuff

together so

that's my own experience of uh sean

chapman frank was putting his face

together which was cut anyway because it

wasn't putting his face together it was

putting a few bits of um rump steak next

to each other i'm not sure how much

hellraiser helped him on that but he's

flourished as a mainstream actor in

theater and television since that film

in the last 25 years he's on so much

stuff

you know and he was great to work with

very

very receptive to clive's direction

and also quite technical he he would

often talk to us

on set it's just good fun um yeah i need

to kind of hang around and sort of joke

with um yeah we joke with the crew and

uh did a very good sean connery

impression but um yeah so kind of

have everyone in in stitches with uh

with that it's good good fun to be

around sean and i talked about you know

frank and and about putting you know

frank together and sean a really lovely

man um

it's but it's it's so hard because sean

and i are are so different but we did

manage we did manage to find a

uh

i really did try to take you know

base my frank on a lot of sean's

behavior and

um a sort of deliberate sort of like

low

menacing kind of thing

having a pint of bitter one day uh with

my mate uh robin ned will and he said oh

by the way um so we want to wear with

you

he's on a film at the

moment uh some horror film shooting at

production village and they're looking

for a really skinny actor

uh uh who can act rather than rather

sound so grand as opposed to uh

as opposed to an extra you know walking

around like a club dubbing in the in in

a sort of silly suit so it was an acting

part but they wanted a skinny actor for

it uh would i like to get in touch so i

got in touch with selma roberts i knew

serwin

and he'd thought of me and

got me along to to meet clive barker who

i didn't know anything about the film or

him

so i went up to production village where

i was met and interviewed by clyde

barker who took me through the format

and and said do you mind being

rubberized from head to foot

and playing this

there's a before and after uh sequence

of who this character frank is sean

chapman to begin with looking quite

pretty and then emerging as an ugly also

like myself but again it takes a certain

amount of courage to be naked and to be

covered in slime and do this and do that

and

i i never forget that thing when he

smokes a cigarette

oh

um oliver is a very fine actor and and

you know again

it takes an actor

to do that part you you can't

and he played it for real and that's why

it works and that's why he works so well

i think i followed sean's character into

into me so i i was just sort of

thinking about the the script actually

didn't says it anyway and and then of

course it leaves it left andy robinson

with the the problem of becoming his

brother frank

and he did a really good job on that

because

without saying a word he he was the

epitome of evil wasn't he really ollie

is obviously a very thin bloke which is

why he's picked for the job because when

you're making somebody up to like a

skeletal man you have to start with a

skinny amount of very schema in the

first instance

so we were lucky they found

the most thinnest person they could who

could act as well

and

he went through hell he went through

hell we life cast him

from head to toe

everybody had a go at sticking pieces

together and

sculpting pieces it's the yardage as

well when you've got a person who every

single inch of them is covered in either

a suit that was reusable

or prosthetics up to here and here that

had to be replaced every single day

he was one of the few people that we

actually met in makeup so we had a a few

bleary-eyed conversations at

five in the morning having been up at

three to get in the car to drive there

having not got home until nine the

previous nights and

oh god here we are again

he was just like out of another era

plonked into our world and he was

hysterical it's like from from a

slightly uh bygone age but very charming

with it i mean capital c h charming

but i do remember thinking what

extraordinary makeup it was um

and having no idea what the person

looked like underneath i had so much fun

when i got to frank you know you know

putting on the skin and making the

adjustments and whatever and

and to come to daddy and the so much for

the cat and mouse [ __ ] and you know i

mean like that that's that that that

became just pure pleasure for me pure

pleasure

i could have i could have gone on to

play frank for another you know three

years you know i was having so much fun

with him

frank's descent into into hell and back

and coming you know by doing selling his

soul to the devil he encounters these

creatures who in fact are avenging

probably actually not

they're probably not bad i think they're

chasing

the likes of his ilk

uh away from whatever it's a weird one

isn't it there's no need them to be

quite so nasty to kirsty at the end

a church bell rings

off screen we hear voices

two men are attempting to move a bed

into the house with larry masterminding

the maneuvers

obviously i play a very small part in

the film so

i'm not i couldn't really claim huge

involvement there because i repeat in

the second i was surprised it wasn't

called removal man 2 the sequel i was a

bit disappointed by that um

but now i i remember following from a

kind of um uh appreciative distance the

progress that clive was making through

chris figg and meeting new world and

and how everybody i think was very

excited by this

bristling new talent

it's the story that

i wish i'd never mentioned because it's

it's followed me around these 25 years

that i think the there was a point i

think what

christopher called me to to to make it

official

and to start

negotiations with my agent

and

he he did i think say to me

in in that conversation

that there was a choice for me

either

pinhead who didn't have a name this lead

center by figure

or

uh

the the guy who delivers the mattress

to the to the house

um and there was a moment but because

this was my first movie

where i was thinking maybe it would be a

good idea if if i'm doing this movie it

would be a good idea if people can

actually see me

see my face so that if i'm going to

auditions down the line i can mention to

casting directors that i was that guy in

that film

and they

there'd be a recognition factor

i think that might have been a wrong

choice

oh

he could have done both because no one

would have recognized him as he's been

hit in a room with a man don't put in

the same scene that was a great scene i

love that scene

you know the the the the nail and the

nail going into the hand and it was very

it was very symbolic too you know i mean

it's

it's it it

i love the scene i mean i'm thinking of

the scene as as a spectator

watching it i thought that was very

effective

uh

the other guys yeah i remember those

guys you know i'm i get along with i get

unless somebody's an [ __ ] i really

get along with everybody you know and

and they were all congenial that's the

thing about this there was there was no

no prima donnas

on this set at all

i don't know really i i i

wasn't that involved with that moment in

terms of

clive was clearly keen to

to offer us something and um

uh

and

i was very happy to leave it to his

discretion i don't know what would have

happened if i hadn't done the workman of

course the workman has become historic

character and

people remember the film mainly for the

removal man um and uh

uh so

of course i haven't looked back

honestly i don't think it was i mean it

was no more than

you know five minutes of of idle thought

i don't think there was ever any doubt

in my head that this this guy with with

the pins was a bit more interesting than

the mattress delivery guy so

i

was certainly always i think clive's

intention that i that i would play

pinhead it was certainly always mine

they are cenobites

each of them is horribly mutilated by

systems of hooks and pins

the garments they wear are elaborately

constructed to marry with their flesh

laced through skin in places hooked into

bone

and i've always said that you you can

you could take the plot of hellraiser

and turn it into take the cenobites out

of it and turn it into a

rather dull but functional slasher movie

which would absolutely be about that

central relationship between julia and

frank the triangle with larry

and the fourth element which is which is

kirsty and the victims and bringing

frank back to life and putting larry's

skin on that all

works

um

what clive does i think brilliantly is

that he takes that very contemporary

very 1980s

slasher movie context and then he drops

the gothic

into the middle of it

the cenobites are straight out of gothic

horror straight out of gothic horror

and they don't they don't age

they're absolutely timeless you can go

and look at the cenobites in 50 years

time 100 years time they won't have aged

there's a degree of big hair and

shoulder pads going on with julia that

tells us

we're in the 1980s but the cenobites

give this whole other dimension to the

film

that is completely out of out of time

and out of place in a lot of ways with

everything else that's going on around

it

but it but it's it's it's what lifts the

film

onto a completely different level i

think

freddie was

a person

who

is clearly explained in the first movie

you know he's

he was murdered and he's burnt and

that's how he in his eventual spirit so

jason and michael myers they're all

human beings have been twisted in the

first movie it's not really explained

who these people are

explorers in the further regions of

experience demons to some

angels to others so i think that's

what's different um the idea that these

are demons rather than you know if you

compare them to the slasher movies

cenopites were really

um

were really the sort of

mythological

uh

hook that you hang the

the coat on you know it was um

they weren't the main characters at all

and they weren't named in the in the

original script at all

most of those most of those names things

like butterball and chatric

were really sort of nicknames that were

given to them on set

in fact chatura was called paul bastard

most of the time i think because he

couldn't see it couldn't hear i couldn't

speak

um

and pinhead was

again just just came about because of

how he looked he he's just called lead

cenobite in the script

i remember clive talking to me about the

french expression that orgasm is

referred to as la pettimore the little

death

there is something in that

creation of life which is also about

death

and that's what clive's exploring there

to me and those are expressed in the

cenobites

the leader of this quartet has pins

driven into his head at inch intervals

approaching hellraiser i was telling

myself well i'm you know i'm going to

play the monster in a horror film and

that's pretty cool

but actually he's not

he's he's an impartial judge

on what's going on he's not a boogie man

he's not hiding around the corner in the

shadows waiting to jump you with the

knife you know

he's most successful

when it's a grand overture

he's most successful when

he's commanding he's napoleon he's a

general

you know he's least successful

when he's being physical and

there's

you know

there's you break the magic

right the magic is held by his majesty

rather than

the actions you know this is not a this

is not

freddie or

jason or any characters like that this

is

a presence

that holds you

pinhead feels like he's some

dark divinity um

and i hope that nails it a walking

pinking cushion he's the most commanding

he's the most

i don't know doug just brought this

majestic quality to him

i remember when

a hellraiser was getting underway

and

clive was keen to

give us as pals and collaborators in the

dog company um something within the

piece um

and

dougie was uh

veering i remember more towards the

monster which at the time

didn't seem to be hugely significant

demonic gravitas and soulfulness

there is something

regal i think regal is probably the word

for doug

as pinhead

there is something just so

self-contained

and you mentioned being the leader

he's

pinhead is the leader because he just

owns the screen and everything around

him um

so yeah regal in one word

pin ed's not a slasher you know i don't

think he got around to slashing people

did he no pinhead never slashed anybody

so of course the only violation he could

do to you was how the hell you play with

your brain

okay

that's that's a good monster a good

monster can pull that off as a kind of

monster i don't want to be in the room

with

yeah the one who's running around the

knife services or

them too but you can you know

they don't you know cut off their arms

they can't cut your head off

but cut off pinhead's arms and you still

can do

the work that

he will do to your brain

i think the first thing i want to say

about pinhead

and

it's been backed up when they tried it

another way which is

pinhead is 99

dug

and 1

us

what we do

i suppose that is the force that they

are

that they are tangling with

and clive has always

got his toe in that deep dark world of

what the forces of antagonism are and

are they in fact antagonistic and how do

we

how do we address them and uh so you

feel like he's a fabulous

figurehead um

pinhead to be

embodying all those dark forces which if

you like

are the um obstacle to this this dark

romance at the heart of it doug and i's

relationship was just cemented within

the first few weeks and we were just

just at each other's side all the time

and he's a fabulous bloke

i was on set the day he walked in

first time i went wow great makeup

and then he opened his mouth and the

thing about doug was he

was a i said it before in print he is

the lawrence olivier of movie monsters

i've never seen

anybody

create a character in dialogue the way

he did duke's voice is then the sort

like the icing on the cake because he

has a beautiful voice it's a lovely

classical english

fluid voice that really comes out

and i think that's where the character

was really born where doug really

discovered that role was by when he

spoke the lines the lines were always

there are very few of them in the first

film obviously but the lines were so

beautifully written

and he's meant to be a very regal

character

so the whole thing comes together i

think the skirt thing always worked very

well as well in the sense that he seems

to glide over the floor

so you're never quite sure where he

starts on the floor ends and it's that

lovely thing that it's all shot

beautifully dark there's a little kicks

off the leather that kicks off the blood

where the bits of flesh are strapped

over into the leather things like that

the whole thing

i didn't know whether it was just look

just worked very very well for some

strange reason

he is

amazing he was amazing the first time i

met him he's amazing every time i've met

him sit he's

like some of the biggest name actors

i've ever met he has a presence that

when he walks into the room he has a

personality

and a voice

and

he has

a acting style

that was so perfect for that role

doug was was always a gentleman to work

with um he was

in many ways the same as us

because he'd never worked on a film he'd

known clive from the early days working

in the theater companies etc etc

so the thing is that doug was um very

nervous

very nervous

um the main place that you can see that

nervousness is in doug's first line as

filmed

and that line is we want the man who did

this

um doug was very nervous as we sort of

worked up to that particular day that

was the first shot we ever did at

pinhead

we want the man

who did this if you look at that line it

comes out as we want the man who did

this

and it comes out two separate lines

because he was trying to get into

character at that point he'd not really

gotten it we'd done a makeup test or two

and

that day

they just threw in the room it's a very

short scene doug appears point says we

want the man who did this and he put a

gap in the middle and he's just just a

small one but he hated it he so wanted

to go back and do it but they couldn't

low budget for me i've got the time

we tried to rehearse it and i

couldn't i couldn't walk off my first

mark without tripping over the skirt

i learned as time went on how to walk as

pinhead

to accommodate the skirt but i wasn't

i want people to know

use to walk walking wearing a skirt not

used to that

so they got some clips

uh and rolled the bottom of my skirt up

and clipped it in place so now i'm

feeling

anything but

the regal dark pope of hell

you know with my skirt clip pegged

around my knees somewhere

but finally we were ready to put the

scene together and i'm feeling like a

complete idiot and they said to me um

this will be your eye line doug

just this side of the camera

over here is a black hole

and if there's a camera in there at all

i can't see it so i had to say um i

don't know where the camera is

um so they gave me what ironically they

call a pin light which is

like a little

torch light

sorry that was my eye line again quite

common but i didn't know that at the

time i just felt like you know they must

have been thinking oh my god where did

they drag this guy up from

as we're about to finally

put the elements together i heard a

voice behind the camera and i'm never

quite sure

whose it was not clive's i know that

does he know his line

which was kind of kind of

the kicker for me

at that point it was the only line i had

to say all day i would

you know pride myself

as an actor on being able to learn we

want the man who did this in the course

of a whole day

and i always figured if i ever get

around to writing my memoirs that that's

great lying

great title for an actor's memoirs

does he know his line

the central image shifts more towards

the cellobites in particular doug

bradley's pinhead

clearly that was

a creature that had lept out of close

deep dark unconscious and all over not

just the screens but everybody else's

kind of dreams and connected with

something

very potent there you can't discount

i mean when you have a visual like that

it's like you just have to get out of

the way of it

and just sort of like let that visual

you know uh

speak and i think that that was the acne

doug just got out of the way of that and

just sort of like

did

i think i thought his work was very

simple and it was good because if you

got too busy with with that look then

you'd

sort of like uh gilding the lily yeah we

all love the pins in the head and the

white makeup and the you know the

hanging hooks off the of the butcher's

oven uh apron

fine

but what doug always brought to it was a

shakespearean

i was a word

gravitas genius that set it one step

above everybody and i can remember

standing there watching the first take

when they're by the pillar

all the bits of hooks and faces and

things on all their ways and going oh my

god

we've just moved up a notch we've

actually just moved up a notch he's very

funny man he's got a wonderful dye sense

of humor i mean i um

my memories of doug are with him wearing

his glasses

and having a cigarette holder

so he could continue smoking without

sending his face up in flames in the

makeup

doug smoked although

in prosthetic makeups you can't smoke um

really because the thing is that the

nicotine tends to stain the piece if

it's around close to the lips so we

would make the actors all cigarette

holders etc

i i very clearly recall is the thing is

that on most shots um certainly after

let's say four or five takes or

something i would have a cigarette lit

in a holder for doug and i would simply

as he walked towards me like that with a

cigarette hole he would walk into the

cigarette holder and they just carry on

walking

you know he's always been

extremely uh gifted actor and in some

senses it's kind of interesting to think

what would have happened if he hadn't

um

if he hadn't become pinhead um

because it's

it's a huge role which he seems to have

carried for the rest of his life

and

opened up lots of doors

at the same time he's capable of a

diverse range of

characters and

sometimes um it would be interesting to

see what would happen if he was

performing something else

so the day i die i'll never forget um

doug bradley he was just he was just a

warm and and if he was very affectionate

towards me i'm one of those people who

believes that nobody else can play

pinhead

other than doug bradley the same way i

believe that there we could play the

frankenstein once i'm boris karloff

accompanying them is a creature whose

mouth is wired into a gaping rectangle

the exposed teeth sharpened to points

i found him the most disturbing

character of the lot um

there was some you know this idea of

this thing that's with its eyes sewn up

and its mouth

chattering away and this is strange

thing um it's a it's real nightmare-ish

i think it's a real nightmare thing and

to nick's credit is really what made

that character was that presence that

you managed to work through two inches

of rubber and really pull off an amazing

amazing body performance

he's probably

my

best friend worst nightmare

because

i owe so much to having paid this part

but the actual experience

physical experience of being

put in sensory deprivation

was fairly

fairly tough

but yeah it's a best friend worst

nightmare

i think the scariest character

in hellraiser there's something totally

disturbing about those constantly

chattering

teeth and those blind eyes and this

you know

hands going into kirsty's mouth and it's

just

he didn't have to sell it to me he just

had to say would you like to be in a

movie um it was really very

straightforward

i think you used that simon and i have

decided that he used exactly the same

lineup would you like to be in a movie

there's some makeup involved

[Music]

just delighted to be asked you know i

was a young actor this is gonna be my

first movie nick was always a good laugh

um just very sort of like loud and sort

of like jolly onset

he was the first one of the zenobites to

ask how do i pee

um that seemed to be quite an important

factor to all of them

when we first discussed um the chatra he

basically described him as the family

dog

that you had pin head who was definitely

the lead senate he had the female

cenavite you had uh butterball who was

kind of the surgeon

and

and then chatra was going to be the kind

of the

literally the leapy around

dog who would attack people

um

the original idea was that i would be

crouching down

and be very much

a monkey creature

in in the way that you know the height

of the chattering thing is that the

monkeys chatter their teeth or

chimpanzees particularly chats with

their teeth um i think this is what he

was thinking about

even under all that prosthetics and and

whatever

he still brought stuff to chatroom why

in a way that people still remember

people's story over chatter is probably

one of the

first run center bikes one of the major

cena bites and he's fun to work with

he's very funny

when you first see the chatura

um there's a shot from behind

where you see the fact that the the

metal hooks and they've pulled the skin

at the back now originally

the mask was supposed to meet at the

back

um so there'd just be a wound and these

hooks would sit in a wound

but when we actually came to do the

filming the mask had shrunk

um so there was a gap at the back

and clive's answer was just add more

blood

um

and so they literally did it because i

was i was wearing a skull cap anyway uh

a bald caps on skull cap a bald cap

anyway

um so they filled they literally just

painted blood in um at the back and

that's why you've got that split

it's one of those serendipitous things

because i think it actually is a far

more powerful image

and you see this thing come towards you

and then you see at the back of this

very raw open wound apparently with the

skin peeled back from his skull

nick's laughter he's always laughing he

was terribly cheerful

every morning the rest of us are sitting

around in our makeup chairs going i feel

like death

hello everybody you know and he's just

always very cheerful this has been a

trait of mine um because i've talked to

my friends from mountain view as well

and they said exactly the same thing

first thing in the morning i'm very you

know i'm alive i'm doing what it is i

want to do i was always really excited

yeah it used to piss everyone off um

just because

you know

it was great i was making a movie

and

it was early in the morning that's fine

great and so there was this lovely

quiet

period on set where everybody would just

sit there being kind of slightly zen

as everybody got on with their makeup

and then nick would come in good morning

everybody hi how are you nice to see you

here we go oh no no no no it's 5 am

anyway what's doing huh it's good no

nick please be quiet please that stuff's

my memory that was what was going

through my head

because he was so jolly at 5 00 am and

everybody else was like

oh

you know 5 a.m

simon wengen i love you simon you know

nick is a great personality he's got

this really outward personality

and

[Music]

he

he really came up with the whole idea of

chattering and was convincing us that he

could do it

and it was always a case of of

of okay all right what's he talking

about i'm not idea he's talking about

but he can he can do this thing with his

jaw where he can just vibrate it

and he's got this

um

intensity

which he pulled off

just by standing around i mean he you

put the mask on him and

with all the problems i've just

described he could still be really

intense just with his body

actions you know and

and this weird chattering so nick would

often sit there in his costume um with

the chatra mask on just sitting there

very quietly possibly falling asleep

inside the number of times he was kicked

or knocked out of the way physically

pushed out away because people thought

it was just a dummy

um

we're countless

um and he would just sit there and we he

would just get used to it just being

sort of like people would step over it

would just kick him and not realizing

there was somebody in the costume so

but he was he was good about it

he would just sit there in a kind of

buddhist state um

and somebody came across to the chair

not realizing it was

actually a person within that suit just

sat on him thinking it was an empty

shell

and

such of the trials of fame

and a fat sweating monster whose eyes

are covered by dark glasses

fat bastard

um

no no don't put that in

well i've always found him really creepy

with his sort of fingering his open

tummy wound and licking his lips just

sort of a really creepy character who

obviously enjoys his work

simon says a smallish quieter person i

think was slightly sort of all struck by

the whole thing a thin short very nice

guy in a fat man's body

i rang clive after a couple of years to

see what he was up to and um he said

i've just done oh sorry nice to speak to

you i've just done these couple of films

and um

they weren't very good but i persuaded

them to let me direct the next one he

doesn't have this accent at all but i

can't do liverpool um would you like a

park would you like to play a monster in

the next film i went

yeah

thinking it's probably just kind of tiny

like

filmed on a super eight camera he said

yeah i said yeah yeah that'd be good

clive thank you i really didn't think it

was going to be like a big budget film

or reasonable budget film uh and he said

uh uh yeah do you want to play a monster

for me

yeah he said there might be a little bit

of makeup

yeah it's fine

uh and the next thing i knew i was going

to pinewood i was like oh my god this is

this is this is slightly bigger than i

was expecting

and from then i was in awe i think oh my

god i'm at pinewood studios and look at

these people look at all this stuff this

is amazing oh my god simon's one of

those quiet guys who just got on with it

and just did the work and

you know basically

whether he is center bites the best or

the worst it doesn't matter he just did

the job he was pulled in for consummate

professional

very nice guy to work with

simon well he

you know

poor bastard again

him and nick really were the poor

bastards um

and um

you know we had a big problem with

butterball was to

the

foam that we made it out of

shrunk

so we ended up having to cut quite a big

v in the back of it

and then we had to hide the v so the

only real one way of doing that was to

put simon and then stick

a leather patch over the top

which involved super glue uh so very

similar to the problems we had with with

uh

with um

chatra as well well i can imagine what

it's like to be one of those people that

has no sight and no hearing

because it's it's

freaking awful and i broke down and

cried inside butterball

and nobody noticed

nobody could tell

um but i think it did get back because

clive came back with a bottle of jack

daniels and was giving us jack daniels

so yeah so i think simon he was double

booked he's doing a play i'm not sure if

he's actually

performing or doing rehearsals that day

but yeah they needed someone to step in

so um

i

got talked into i didn't want to do it i

got talked and talked for

about a day

um yeah and got talked into it and uh

um the following day you know bald cap

fakes blacked out

put the suit on and then i was coached

by um jane

uh jane wild goose the costume designer

on how to sort of act in the in the uh

in the costume

um beside the the head

to go on as well the mask

glasses on top of that um and then i was

yeah kind of shuffled onto the onto the

stage and to sort of direct it for a few

um a few shots so

it's

mostly towards the end of the film um

where the center bites are all kind of

closing in at the end

um and it's literally me just stepping

here and there between a couple of

pillars and clive saying okay more to

your left more to your right um so i'll

just kind of step and just kind of

awkwardly kind of turn around in the

suit but it's pretty nerve-wracking but

uh but good yeah good fun

i decide a woman whose neck is pinned

open like a vivisection specimen

as a character the female cenovite i

think is one of my favorites the look

of the grace she's got this wonderful

cancerous sunken cheek

look about her

and she again one of my favorite moments

in the movie in the first movie is where

she comes upstairs with that hook

scraping the wall and it bleeds

which i've always found absolutely

fascinating i just thought such a great

image her aesthetic look

covers a

churning pit of sensuality

grace um

was there but um

didn't really appear to want to be there

most of the time she came in did her

lines very beautifully i thought on the

first hill no discredit to barbie on the

second film but um she was very sort of

i had a very cold look to her eyes

i remember the first time the makeup

went on it really upset her to look into

the mirror and see

the face that she'd seen looking back

all her life be so different

and i think the other thing that got to

her was just how intimidated everybody

else was

by her it wasn't the makeup effects make

up a fresh crew would see her go in and

knew who she was and retreated the same

but other people on the crew

i think it was a you know a fairly

hard process for her to go to and that's

quite normal i mean

female actresses often find

when you do when you turn them into

hideous monsters that this is not what

they're used to this is not what they're

used to looking at and frankly i can

understand it it's very difficult for a

woman

to see yourself turned into this bob

bald dead babe you know it's just

i'm bold it's it's difficult it's really

difficult to see yourself like that and

yet you know so many men say oh wow i

just do know what you're sexier you know

barbie is a you know female cenobite and

i'm going

okay

but um you know it's uh it was a

difficult process it's just very long

and tiring but it had to look sexy we

knew that clive made that very clear

that this was um

something of an enigma but she was still

a woman i think you could tell she was

slightly uncomfortable but then we were

all slightly uncomfortable for different

reasons

i'm

nervous for i think for all of us it was

our first time on a film set so

you couldn't tell why people were

filming feeling uncomfortable it was a

bit like being a 17 year old where you

think

i'm the only one suffering all these

nerves and anxieties and then you find

out everybody's suffering those nerves

and anxieties through adolescence the

costumes were

solid leather very heavy solid leather

and i didn't think i don't think she

enjoyed wearing the costumes which is

why she didn't come back for the for the

second film

um but she came and did a beautiful job

and i thought the look in her eyes and

again with little john's makeup on the

film she was perfect first one i believe

had a curvature of the spine

i think it was her

um

but a very small waist so we had to

really really bring the costume in to

accentuate the waist but where there was

a measurement was longer one side than

the other it did make the the pattern

cutting quite tricky um

and if i hadn't been dressing her i

wouldn't have known about it you

couldn't actually tell

um but obviously uh any any measurements

when making a costume if they if they

don't fall to the norm uh especially

when you're dealing with three layers of

leather three layers of wadding foam

rubber trying to get an industrial

sewing machine through all of them um

any little changes to the the pattern

cutting

uh are going to be quite tricky it was a

grueling process wearing that um

the costume

was uh

i never wore one but it looked really

difficult to actually wear not

comfortable wearing prosthetic makeup is

um is torturous at the best of times and

at the end of the day we would

laugh and joke and even when it was late

into the night taking the makeup off in

the last hour of the day when everyone

else has long gone home the prosthetic

makeup artists are still taking off

makeup

interdimensional creatures or demons the

cenobites would attract the attention of

film goers across the world

before hellraiser demons in films were

presented as large horned creatures or

evil entities however barca's creations

were developed through fantastical

costumes and amazing special makeup

effects

i know there were there was a period

um

i know kind of what went into the

cenomite designs and things like that

and the influences for those um there

was a period of about three months when

uh when we were

waiting for the for the money to come

through to start building stuff

for uh for hellraiser and bob keane used

to take a group of us over to clive's

flatting crouch in a couple of times a

month if i remember um and we go over

and literally

try and come up with ideas for cenobytes

the only the only ones that clive had

really realized

was what became known as pinhead and he

had a very specific drawing of that

which was the the drawing that they

they used for hellbound quite a lot the

average day at first was the the

drawings and the designs so we're doing

um joins of zenobites and doing all this

research into material that was um

well it was horrific and shocking at the

time i mean

people weren't pierced in those days and

so looking at pictures of all these

different piercings was really quite

shocking i'd seen one drawing of pinhead

um and that's all i knew and it was a

man with some scars and some some spikes

sticking out of his head i've got a

drawing that i did of pinhead

so there was this drawing that um

that clive did which when you see it

you're just like oh so we we literally

did make that and there's a i think

there's an elegance and uh there's a

beauty to it that came um that got added

into clive's drawing and and so you

could argue oh it was clive's completely

designed but there was a time when we

were actually exploring other things and

i did this one that was really um

because that's what i was into was a

very ethnic looking um

pinhead and so

he wasn't quite it wasn't about symmetry

and um and fine pins it was a lot about

piercings and scarification

and um gosh i haven't seen the picture

for a long time i had seen a design for

the makeup so i had a very good idea of

what it was going to look like there

were actually two designs i think

one was a much looser more

tribal

um

thing with more piercings and

more kind of uh african inspired in a

way

but i think i think clive was always

coming back to the to this to this

precise neat

controlled gridiron look

so there was a the the design stage

where we were just um doing designs and

then taking them along to clive

and that was a really great

collaborative process where we were just

kicking around

designs with him it was such a fertile

soil of creativity because he was so um

he was so magnanimous with his genius

because to me he was a genius and um

and then we

once we got to

look um sort of

understand what the designs were somehow

it got allocated because i was young on

the team i wouldn't have known how they

decided that but um i did a drawing of

the female xenovite

in its early stages which had um a spike

to its cheek and clive made some

suggestions about bringing the the spike

down and

and i've done a wound on the neck and

opening up that wound in a very um

vaginal like manner so it was like um

once we knew what we were doing we got

allocated and then we all set off on

this process of doing the prosthetic the

cenobites were

drawn in

initially very loosely

i think by clive you know he drew pin-ed

what he thought pineda was going to look

like um just a big black and white scamp

on a one piece of paper and that

happened at his house and then jeff

would start sculpting it doug has that

incredibly high collar and i don't know

are there any shots of the back of his

head in the film but the collar then

goes into three fish hooks that are

embedded in the back of his head with

the sculpted flesh so it pulls down etc

so he couldn't do that it's very much

like michael keaton's batman where the

thing is he said he couldn't turn his

head so he moves like that a lot of the

time and doug was forced into this this

rigidity for the whole role and that's

partially what makes the character

once you got the teeth in it was just a

question of putting the mask it's like a

balaclava basically because it was slit

at the back and that just goes around

the face to get that on but it was still

two or three people to do that and just

make sure everything was in place and

and and actually get in seal it down cut

up the condoms stick them to the teeth

and my gum but obviously

with all the zen white costumes trying

to make them as comfortable as possible

was was paramount so no i lied it wasn't

paramount making them look gory and

disgusting and making clive happy was

paramount their comfort came a very

close second

the first

time

we were led onto the set

the crew didn't know that nick and i

were blind

so

we were led onto the set and

the first assistant director came up and

said you can we could only just here i

could only just hear saying okay we need

you to we're going to get you to go over

here and and turn there

move over here pick that up pick that

one if it was pick that up but turn over

here do that move there and i was going

nick

and then they're going what no okay so

you got that and the next thing we knew

there was action

and we were like

what and that was the first time i've

been nick and i all of us been on the

set of course um grace and doug did

exactly what they were told and the two

of us were going

i don't know what we did we probably

wandered off in the wrong direction

certainly didn't do anything we've been

told to do because we haven't got a clue

where we were which way we were facing

where the camera was in the original

makeup he had short

pointed teeth

as if they'd been filed down

and they were made and they were tested

but clive thought that they made him too

inhuman

i remember seeing them the first time

as as a group and being knocked over by

them not not only

by the look of the makeups which

obviously i i'd seen but i hadn't really

seen the costumes

i hadn't seen everything together and i

remember being quite knocked out by the

costumes

i was i was petrified of them so i could

hardly look at them i couldn't be left

in a room on my own with them i really

really was scared

um

but then and it was just really hard to

to

to separate the voice that was coming

out to looking at them so i

they were like i liked them they were

great fun especially when we took the

makeup off and we went for a drink after

work

when pinhead first appears

in hellraiser it's quite a

a

terrifying moment you know i remember in

the cinema thinking wow this is like

hadn't seen that before you know

characters so imposing and

um

you know when you see in real life and

the suit's like half on and you know and

it's you know doug bradley's got his

glasses on and he's doing the crossword

and you know it smells like it brings it

all down to you know the normality

really you know i think one of the main

stipulations when i was designing

pinhead is that clive said he wanted

doug to be there he wanted to see doug

through the character so consequently

the makeup is barely two three mil thick

at the best and he wanted to keep doug's

face in there i've always said that the

wearing the makeup for me was fine as

long as you were working it's the

killing time that's the issue

uh you just you know and

everybody knows that

in makeup or out of makeup

the average day on the film set um is 10

working and 90 waiting

and that's hard enough for the best of

times but you're carrying that makeup

around all day

and uh with the first two movies the

costume was not easy to take off either

so the costume tended to stay on as well

you just you want to be able to just

lift lift that off and put it down and

be yourself for a while

and i um

actually talking about this much later i

discovered i i had this in common with

uh

with robert englund

you become a nomad you can't settle

anywhere

you don't want to be in your own company

um

you don't want to be in other people's

company people don't relate to you as

you they relate to this thing

and it all it all gets very difficult

and it puts you in strange emotional

places but pinhead um clive said just

have a play and see what you come up

with and i just suddenly thought well

the thing is that being the idea that he

was actually the lord of hell i wanted

to make him slightly more formal less

tribal and more formal

so i basically said look can i just put

the scars and make them inch-wide scars

make them very gritty-like and instead

of using spikes they're coming out from

the inside make them nails or pins so

they look like they've been bashed in

from the outside

so i did a single drawing and clay said

yeah let's go with that the torture

instruments were kind of combination

because the props department

um

[Music]

their job was was quite difficult

because some some of the things that

they were designing and making had to be

had to look

meaty you know they had to be made out

of metal they had to have that clunk to

them and had to have some weight to them

but the ones that were worn

it was a strange combination of props uh

cutting things out of gelaton

and costume

putting together leather pieces or

fabric pieces if they could get away

with it if it looked okay if it looked

heavy enough they had the uh onset

jeweler who created the original puzzle

boxes and he was the one who created the

belt with all my torture um

apron

uh

it's a great shame i always thought it

was a great shame you didn't see them

because they were as beautiful and as

ornate as as the puzzle boxes but of

course

you never saw that maybe that's

something for the for the remake

something that they could focus on a

little bit

pinhead is so called because they were

originally pins so when we designed i

took clive's original drawing which so

had like little spikes sticking out very

more tribal i changed that to pins

and we'd thought about various different

options and clive liked the pins it was

very subtle very thin so the next step

in the process for me was going to

cricklewood to screen test the makeup so

that was the first time i had the makeup

applied and then it took about six hours

i think

uh to put the whole thing on and it's a

strange experience first time you go

through it i think i was kind of

zoned out having kind of mystic

experience by the end of it

not at all inappropriate for playing a

part like

i said from the very beginning when we

photographed a sort of a test scope we'd

done some photos and i said look i'm

very worried about these we're talking

small sewing pins they're about what's

probably less than a millimeter thick

tiny little heads on them so the idea

was simple we simply clipped the ends

off the pins and then soldered a small

about three mill wide brass plate

onto the end of the where the sharp end

was the thing about the center brace was

on the first front we had no [ __ ]

idea what

the center plates were going to become

the stars of the film we got to the

point where the shooting was going to

start and they took some test

photographs a lot of which are still

banding around now so in some of the

books very blue tinge photographs

against a rather tatty looking wallpaper

though i think we shot a production

village on the on the set

and you couldn't see the pins

and that was it

so we thought bugger

and clyde said and i didn't say i'm not

i'm i hope i'm not and i told you so

person um but the thing is i said look

you know you can't see the pins so we

all agreed

so we said we've got to go bigger so we

turn them into nails so we came up with

the ideas we found some brass rod

there's a company called kns i think

that makes architectural model maker

supplies and they do a brass a hollow

brass rod

so we cut inch lengths of hollow brass

rod about something about two three mil

thick

and we then cut off the tops of lots of

brass nails and superglue them to tops

of those rods all we then have to do is

snip the tiny little pinheads off the

pins and simply insert the rods over the

top of the pins

which actually made it much much easier

because at the end of the day all you do

is you take dug into the makeup room you

would then simply pull

the nails off the pins because they were

simply sitting there they fit should be

so comfortably tightly but not so

tightly she couldn't simply pull them

off they wouldn't drop off but you

pulled them off took the makeup off

pulled the pins out the back and then

the next day he would push the pin

through put the new nail at the top

and that was it so he was never called

nail head he just remained as pinhead so

when you

sit around in a house and crouch end and

sort of imagine all these

weird and wonderful things um

i remember you know the first time you

saw

doug bradley come in with his pins and

his head and his long big leather it was

very exciting moment because suddenly

you know you've been

planning on paper for

a long time and i think it's the same

for all directors and producers it

doesn't matter what scale of film you're

on

when you're when you're trying to invent

something like that you suddenly see it

and actually it does work and it's

original

uh it's very very exciting with the

makeup on for the first time

and

you look in the mirror

and you've disappeared

you're not there anymore

which is

unsettling

i could see my ears

and my mouth

and my eyes

that was it

um and i sat on my own in front of the

mirror for

15-20 minutes maybe

just starting to get to know this guy

and just staring um and then starting to

see what

happened if i

raised an eyebrow or if i frowned or and

now if i

try saying something like no tears

please it's a waste of good suffering

what what does this look look like okay

all right and

i'm becoming very excited that was the

first time

that the whole thing really caught fire

for me

to create the horrific and gory world

created on paper by clive barker

hellraiser would need a group of both

talented and creative individuals to

bring the horror to life through the

film's spectacular special makeup

effects

born in 1960 co-founder of image

animation bob keane having previously

worked on life force and highlander

would successfully bid for the effects

gig on hellraiser i can't remember how

he found bob but i'm so glad we did he

was such an asset um

and very enthusiastic he would

he would

instead of drawing it he would act it

out and which usually involved a lot of

blowing her lips a lot of salivas flying

around the place

but very talented lovely guy

did a great job

again you know

limited budget

and in a way that limited budget enables

you to do

think harder and work harder to get what

you want

and he did a very good job

and bob again was

you know a hugely enthusiastic

a guy who was into into so many things

you know um

and

and the people he pulled in around him

you know certainly in my case i i don't

think i was very good uh

i i think i i think i had a a talent

there that that he could see that i

couldn't quite see yet and i think that

was the same for a lot of the people

around he could see the potential in

them rather than rather than what they

were actually what they'd actually

produced up to that point you know so

i'm

i'm

very uh grateful to bob for for having

some faith in me

bob was clearly one of those who

responded with incredible enthusiasm to

clive's talent and

he he i think he was

had the same fearlessness um in terms of

approaching these new creatures and the

effects and clive's desire to make them

as

alive in camera as possible and um

and he there was something extremely

up for it about bob that i remember

clive and bob's relationship was just so

warm

that it that it pervaded

right through um for sure our department

taggy ruxpin it was state-of-the-art toy

at the moment at the time that came come

out

and i had a little cassette that would

go into it and you could get this whole

range of toys and that they would all

connect to each other and talk to each

other and tell this story and i remember

and they were like a fortune and i

remember the time bob was collecting had

all of them and you go into the

hellraiser set and there'll be all these

bodies hanging everywhere and gruesome

limbs and throats hanging out and

they're gonna be this complete

collection of teddy ruxpin toys

talking to each other

these really silly stories and in a lot

of ways

that sums up bob keane

he was this wonderful kid who had

very similar to clive had this joy of

life when i first met bob keane

um i was introduced to him bob said oh

hi you're poor bastard

what you said you know you're not going

to be able to see much in this makeup he

said

that's about as much as you're going to

be able to see

um

he lied i couldn't see that much because

block out that side i could see a tiny

little bit

bob keane was one of the most

fun-filled people i'd ever met he was a

jolly

um

bombiver of special effects he would he

would light up a room with with jollity

literally when he came in and

considering he was doing the most

gruesome

pieces of work

that was quite a feat we had an amazing

crew you know it's a really good crew

and everyone

there were sort of limitations but um

you know but people were pretty much

given free reign and that was bob's

thing sort of generally for with every

every film that was done at image

animation that um yeah just a lot of

free reign you could talk to him for

half an hour about a problem that you

had and at the end of it you would have

a solution to it

bob is a very amiable person um he gets

on with anybody um is the thing is that

sometimes he he doesn't like to say no

he's worth but if he has a worst fault

he doesn't like to say no and that can

get you into problems sometimes so

whereas perhaps chris figg was the

person who would say no to clive i would

sometimes be the person who says bob bob

we can't afford to do that

as a workshop supervisor you've got to

look at it in in pure financial terms

and say we can afford this person to do

this and you're organizing people over a

series of weeks etc etc so the thing is

i would come in sometimes and perhaps

just say look bob hang on we need to do

this or think about doing it this way

and talk to other people and say are

there any other ways we can do that

um but bob and clyde got on famously bob

and clive were definitely kindred

spirits in a lot of ways and i think

that's why their working relationship

was so good because they just had this

love of difference and

anything unusual of fantasy

and they just wanted to push the

boundaries the whole way if you want to

look at how

bob keane was you just look at the

people who um who worked for image

animation in in the early days i mean

you have oscar winners you have um

people who are at the top of the

creative tree in design on um

you know

current films at the moment in in

hollywood that's to me is like that till

that's the answer of what

what what's it what was it like working

for for bob is that he

spawned his environment he created uh or

he allowed the the growth of um highly

creative people when we started working

in the in the workshop at shepparton

then it became

real and he was very much my mentor

i think his birthday is about two weeks

ahead of mine with the same

age and

um

yeah so he was actually

showing me how to apply makeup how to

apply paint and you could also see you

know the

artifacts from previous movies and

things that we'd stolen out of skips

from other films bob is a huge bear

he's a very very generous

spirited person

and i think a very loyal person i mean

in the end um his loyalty probably

was as much of a burden for his career

as as it was part of it if you see what

i mean and he wouldn't stick by people

he probably shouldn't have snuck by

but thank god he's stuck by me but they

all seem uh very professional

and they used to put all this goo over

the monsters once the blood went on on

the say like skinless frank and that

once the blood went on all this um

like goo came on i think it was ky jelly

but um

clive clive barker used to call it

elephant [ __ ]

and so he was shouting more elephant

come more elephant come and they

they bought buckets of this stuff in

gallons of it and that was that was

spread about all the time well bob was

um you know it's just uh

you know

very friendly and uh you know

enthusiastic about making movies and

he was interested even then of in

directing and you know he's just you

know he'll go in and with with his

enthusiasm just

just take the ball by the horns and take

on anything and everything really

he was under pressure

and kept his humor

you know despite that and i think he had

a

rather amazing team

but we did go home very filthy either

covered in blood or covered in um

elephant gum

bob keane was just full of um

energy and clive was always there and

bringing loads of ideas himself and

so it was very exciting even though i

wasn't in the film much to go and have a

a glimpse and soak up some of that

energy that was flying around and

seeing some of these creatures being

born the relationship between bob and

clive saw really

uh so you put that under a magnifying

glass and it really uh showed you how

what can come out of something like that

because it was

um

because of of

those two coming together and working so

well together that um all these things

which might not have happened came about

and some of the things that came out

were kind of they were a bit new at the

time weren't they and extraordinary i

owe it all to bob

and uh i think i am not alone i think

there's a lot of people out in that

world

still in this industry who worked to bob

and i'm glad to be able to sort of put

that on

tape as it were

a fan of all things horror from an early

age special effects maestro jeff portas

having worked with keane on life force

would spearhead the makeup effects

company image animation and develop the

unique and fascinating look of the

cenobite world within hellraiser

bob keem's in charge of the of the

workshop of the whole sort of like

process so to speak um i was i think

credited as a workshop supervisor on

hellraiser so i was just sort of like

helping run the thing well again i i

knew nothing about special effects and i

wasn't aware that this was sort of

groundbreaking stuff um but i do

remember the truth them being rather

like mad old boffins they were sort of

jumping around

gleefully

with various tricks and uh

i just used to watch them thinking you

must be so happy you're just like two

big boys

being let loose in a science lab or

something and they were obviously having

the time of their life jeff was great

you know he was very encouraging you

know he liked my portfolio when i came

in and

i was at that time i was kind of uh you

know obsessed by getting into that side

of it it was it was what i wanted to do

you know i made the decision so i was

hard-working you know so i loved it and

you know

so i was probably i'd have done any you

know i used to go and clean brushes and

set makeup rooms up and

um so

i think you know i was i was probably

reasonably useful to jeff at that time

for the amount of money i was getting

paid

my first introduction to to jeff was was

through bob you know and here was a guy

who was

who was two or three years older than me

and had done all this

all this great stuff you know so i was i

was kind of in awe

and um

he really was a you know very nice guy

jeff was a little more serious but

between them they

they had this language which

which was like a shorthand

and and then jeff would translate that

shorthand back to us

and we would then create things as as

they required them created it was great

for me to be in the in the workshop sat

next to

dear jeff

and because i'm doing my first

prosthetic makeup i'm having to keep

tapping him and asking what am i doing

here because

for me it was a very complicated process

i didn't quite understand and to watch

him do his drawings do his sculpture

and

he's just yeah there's a lovely um

maybe it's because he taught me

everything i know about prosthetics

at the beginning i was taught i i sit as

i was taught by

jeff

prosthetics and to watch

your master do his stuff right next to

you is like

it's a treasured memory for that with

both the skills of problem solver bob

keane and special effects wizard jeff

portas image animation was formed in

shepparton studios image animation would

not only create some of the 1980s gorier

special effects but would also attract

and enthuse a generation of british

special effects artists

i think with image animation i think

we'd come up with the name before

hellraiser when we got the small shed in

shepparton which was only about three or

four months beforehand

so we finished highlander moved to

shepparton

we'd set up a small company in a shed

done a couple of small jobs it was a few

little props bits and pieces for i think

a couple of couple of small films and a

couple of big films but subcontracted

work um allen jones came to see us and

said i'd like to bring clive to meet you

and so that's what we spoke we spoke to

him we also went to clive's house in

crouch and to talk to clive about it

when we got the job then we enlarged the

workshop and moved to a bigger workshop

in champion studios

so we redesigned that just it was a

four-room workshop with all the

facilities we needed a couple of small

offices

and just took it from there

what we wanted to do is create a company

that would have

new

new blood

we'd worked for a lot of people who'd

been in the industry for a long time and

we felt that the industry really needed

an injection of new ideas

so a lot of time

we would

tackle jobs together

and we would both we were both

supervised i think jeff is a really good

makeup artist and works out really well

at those things and i'm really good

special effects person who can solve

problems

i think they're about 10 of us

i honestly i think we had about three

months three or four months before

filming started

to actually sort of build the stuff

which is a reasonable length of time for

the amount of work we have to do

um but it got on we organized the place

we got stuff found out you know we found

out what we had to do

and um just took it from there darya the

way i ended up working on uh hellraiser

is that very simply that neither bob nor

jeff knew how to drive a vehicle

and so i said were trying to run a

business and actually trying to run a

film and they had no one to drive the

van and as i was working in a college at

the time it was my summer holidays they

said can you pop in for a couple of

weeks and drive a van while we set up a

film

and three and a half years later i was

still there and i remember how i met

simon was simon was working

he had a little market store

and he

from a distance he caught he

caught my eye because he had this big

hobgoblins

and strangely enough at the time i was

developing a film

as a screenplay called hobgoblins in the

age of magic that never got made i was

working down the market

in

covent garden

and camden lock i was

i've been to art college

and after that i started sculpting

little hobgoblins which were

based on leprechauns and pookas and

they were sold in little jars and

i've been doing it for about a month

and um

one day

this guy came along and

really liked what i was doing and said

he was putting a team together for a

film that was bob keane

and

i think he said the film is due to start

in about three months time

so um we had a couple of meetings he

definitely wanted me on board and um

and that was it it was you know just

meetings around his flat

and

um very small team of people and um

of course every

two months get another phone call saying

the film's gone back again

so it was about six months before we

actually started doing anything

so um we went over and he'd done these

really nice

like little bottled people

that he'd made with some technique which

was part fabrication and part sculpting

and part but bits and pieces and they

were really interesting and different

and very craft orientated

and i said to him straight away i think

other than he believed me at first but i

said to him you know i work in the film

industry i think you'd be really good at

this why don't you you know come along

come along for interview

when i when i was working on on raw head

wrecks someone had said to me we'll go

and see bob keane um

because they knew this this hell racer

film was coming up and i i wasn't really

aware of bob uh i knew that he'd been

working for a chap called nick maylie

who

did things like life force and crawl and

the keep

and being a being a bit of a frothing

fanboy as as far as makeup effects go i

knew

i knew those films but i didn't

necessarily know the names of every

member of the crew who worked on them so

this was my first feature film so i've

done a commercial but this is my first

feature film i didn't know how things

worked i was literally coming in not

knowing how i didn't even actually know

how prosthetic makeup was

made or done i was going to learn all

that

through the production of the film bob

keane's lot were just extraordinary

because you know when you see

some 20-foot monster coming out of the

coming through the front door but if

there's all these guys on the you know

all pulling handles doing this doing

that i mean it's just it's just like a

it's a it's a great new experience and

of course if we look through the camera

the thing looks terrifying

towards you okay good

it's like a little uh

it was like a youth club for makeup

effects you know it was just

constant um what do you used to call it

bottom bump following it was a lot of

joking a lot of uh fun

and then this um this amazing process

that was in its um

in a way it was in its heyday foam latex

prosthetic makeup and creature effects

so it was having its absolute heyday and

and i found myself in it um learning all

about how to make this stuff

it was enormous fun and one of the

biggest problems in any kind of film

situation is you're sitting around for

hours and hours and hours doing nothing

but what i was doing is i was sitting

around for hours and hours and hours

with jeff

ducky uh simon

and

nick

having the the biggest laugh you've ever

had and the other thing i remember about

roy and jeff they seem to have this um

plethora of pretty young boys uh working

makeup

um all just waiting to be cougarized um

have hating tonight i was only 28 at the

time but in comparison you know so so

that was good fun getting to know their

entire makeup crew over the period of

time one by one

the biggest hold up would have been

bob and special effects because they had

so much work to do prepping all the

characters

not every day but they always had

something to do on on every day but some

days they had six creatures on set

sometimes four

but we never waited they were always

there on time it wasn't funny it was it

was a pain in the ass believe me

it was really serious death i mean it

it's

when you when she when she start that

stuff starts slapping on you know and

you're trying to like you know

stay steady it's it's like it's it's

serious

certainly i saw them

and was always excited by

their excitement it was kind of

infectious um

and

you know given this weren't big budgets

they're always using something creative

to to overcome their obstacles i

remember it was it was something that um

you'd be loath to ask in the workshop to

have to go and get condoms and ky jelly

because uh

condoms were made out of latex which was

the bread and butter of prosthetics in

those days and sheet latex was something

that you just constantly need

and

ky jelly was used to um

make something uh appear wet under the

lights of the cameras stay constantly

wet and it was great because you could

have a little drip like there's a little

drip on frank's chin a little bit of ky

jelly and it would just stay there for

hours and he'd move and it would wiggle

about um the nature of ky jelly was such

that it was just perfect for our uses

but god was embarrassing to have to go

into a supermarket and have to buy

boxes and boxes of condoms and kyjenny

well i had to go down to a slough a

lovely place slow they went into the

local chemist boots and

emptied all the shelves of all their

condoms and then when they asked one of

the assistants do you have any more and

i had about two shopping baskets full of

condoms because of course the guys were

using these on

on the dummies to have some sort of ex

expanding and the blood oozing out so

yeah it's uh you know i think i was 19

and going in and buying about 400

condoms so

i'm sure she wondered what was going on

i can remember horrified walking into a

chemist and saying i'd like to buy every

condom you have and the man looking at

me very straight lace look at me i said

are you going to a party

and i thought

am i going to say no i'm going to wash

them cut them up and stick them on

someone's face or no i'm going to a

party

production would commence in september

1986

both using the house in dallas hill and

sets at krickerwood production village

a house

number 55 ludovico street an old

three-story lake victorian house with

gaunt trees lining its overgrown garden

its curtains are drawn there is

newspaper over its top window

clive was very receptive in terms of

of wanting to understand the whole

system and he would ask questions and

hopefully we would be able to point him

in the right direction

i read the script and

so this is going to be a challenge

we found the house for hellraiser by

just driving around and we i was driving

up a cricket wood

lane i think it is now um our giant

cricket woodland i think the first thing

i saw was the house in dollas hill lane

so

um

obviously um

i think the slogan on the film was there

are no limits but there were limits

there in in a sense i hope that

subliminally people think oh that's a

scary house because they associated with

the amityville horror house

because that was such a feature on the

posters we utilized the whole of that

house

um

to the extent and of course

it was full of equipment we with the

ground floors you know once we filled it

full of maggots and the maggots became

flies and we

were infested with flies had to get rid

of the kill all the flies

um

there was a whole you know that that

house was adapted to make a heck of a

lot of places it was their house it was

their front room it was the upstairs it

was you know we we we in fact we built

the attic in the uh in quicker wood

we were given a derelict house in north

london

we couldn't take walls out we couldn't

take ceilings out

but he wanted to explore that house and

make the house the kind of another star

of the movie which it is it wasn't a

studio

it was quite derelict the house

and the problem was where we were going

to store the equipment we were going to

be in there quite a while

and we had to make it into a

studio really you realize just how

difficult

this

tall thin

elevator of a house

is to shoot in because you're constantly

trying to find a place to put the camera

and have a place to put the lights let

alone the actors

so you're lighting

and shooting in an environment that's

that's

12 foot square it might have been a

tight squeeze now and again but you know

again i mean i was you know

very used to location filming

it was all very contained which was

helpful

and we didn't move around

but no it was all very well organized

and um

you know as i say i

i rather enjoyed the fact it was on

location because it one location because

we didn't have to move around we just

went to the same place every day

nightmarish

because the thing is that you're on a

set at least you can go and stand

outside the sword like the periphery of

the set behind the boards and things

like that and know you're out of shot

with hellraiser um i mean you saw what

that house was like in the film it was

just as bad there was a staircase that

was very akin to faulty towers in the

sense it went up and then down then

round i remember it wasn't it wasn't a

very operational house i remember bob

king crapping and

crapping in the toilet that didn't have

any water

during lunch bob went to the bathroom

took a crap

and um and everyone you know came back

after lunch and uh and there was just

this what

yeah so um

yeah so the ad was sort of shouting to

everybody about not using any um any of

the

facilities because they don't work um

and bob yeah was a bit uh sheepish for

the rest of the afternoon so i remember

that the sex sequence they had to climb

up and downstairs to a up up and down on

a ladder outside to the bedroom it

seemed to me that most of the films

either shot the bottom of the stairs the

top of the stairs in the middle of the

stairs

or what the next flight of stairs it

seemed to be

everything seemed to be um

a revolve around this staircase but um

with a few rooms off to the side

but with some stages

all the staircases got blocked up can

they question you imagine cutting your

health and safety now don't think about

it now don't but they were it all had

had monsters in it and equipment and

things like that the house was a studio

you know but nothing moved so

it was really really hard because i had

to get so many different looks on the

landing on the staircase in the kitchen

all over that house inside

we needed different looks and a loft

area upstairs

and he he didn't want to he didn't want

us to say we can't track here because of

the light just around that corner you

know you want to start wide

and you you're going to move and see

around the corner i can't move the

ceiling

so

occasionally we had to modify the shot

slightly but we always gave him the shot

which contained the the scene he wanted

but it was a completely you know it was

a perfect location i mean you just

wouldn't get it these days i mean it's

just like

there it was and we just took it over

um and we adapted it you know there was

the basement there was the upstairs

i mean so many things that robin vision

because as you know the higher you go

the more difficult it is for the

lighting department because they've got

to put the lights up high you've got to

carry it and all the equipment is heavy

for people like clive and dave worley

the grips the electricians it was really

hard work because you couldn't make

anything move you were stuck with that

building uh and we still did it in the

schedule and i think i think

it has a look of

of quite horrific report i still drive

past that house and look at it it's

occupied now but i think i wonder if the

people who own it now i've ever seen a

movie

having directed numerous plays with his

fringe group the dog company

barker would utilize his skills from the

stage as a first-time director on the

hellraiser

and he's he's he's a smart guy you know

he he hired really good people

really good people in front and behind

the camera

and everybody who was on that film knew

what the hell they were doing

and he was not at all shy about like you

know uh

keeping the questions alive because you

have to

while enthusiasm i think would be the

best way to to describe um

clive's directing style he he loved it

all he wanted to be part of it all he

always wanted to put his hands in the

goo and play with the goo

i i just really liked the man and it was

a joy to work for him so whatever he

wanted you just got on with it which is

what you're there for at the end of the

day

yes very fond of him and he was born to

it

um

yeah he uh

obviously because there was a friendship

group involved you know he'd employed a

lot of people that he knew

um there was a lot of uh

working with the shop floor so to speak

um but at no means did by no means did

he ever seem like an amateur

uh i think yeah quite a strong director

for a first film definitely it was

clyde's first time directing but

clifford directed the theater before

you've got to understand he knew how to

deal with actors most of the actors he

knew anyway did life show signs of

nerves no not none whatsoever i mean he

obviously knew his material extremely

well

um

he was highly intelligent highly adept

at handling the situation he you'd never

have known he was a rookie director

certainly not now he he's had total

confidence

total confidence as a director clive was

brilliant because

this was a stage when

hellraiser wasn't a big budget movie

obviously but it had a reasonable budget

we had a shooting stage not particularly

a sound stage a production village in

cricklewood we had a house to shoot in

and we had a reasonable amount of time

to do the effects

um and clive was like us this was our

first big job he was just a really nice

guy there was no

bears and graces he wasn't threatening

at all and he kind of made you welcome

into the into the entire team

because it was a very tight eight-week

schedule

i would have expected him to have

lost his call a lot

uh panicked a bit

never saw that never saw that some of

the other guys might tell you something

that i didn't see but he was always the

same from morning till night quiet

great fun to work with a great sense of

humor

and

enthusiasm

real enthusiasm all the time which made

everyone else enthusiastic too i think

clive was nervous i think he's very very

good at

not seeming to be nervous

but there was a there was a huge

a huge

statement for him to move away from

being an author of a book

to

working with other people i remember

turning up on set for hellraiser and

wondering how clive would respond to the

responsibility and uh give me not been

there before

in that position and he seemed

completely at home

he was

really clearly loving it i think he had

a cigar

which might have been pushing it but he

was he was clearly at home um

and working very closely with the dp and

having a lot of fun and you never got

the pressures

of the you know inevitably filming is

all about time and money and given it

was a big budget and had to move quite

quickly it felt very relaxed when we

started shooting

clive barker came on and i was surprised

how easy going and laid back he was

previous directors i've worked with um

didn't even know my name let alone um

talk to me it was pretty clear from that

i mean

we weren't talking about material where

you would sit down and say what on earth

is this scene about what is the subtext

how are we coming at it you know because

i say it's fantasy it's not real

and so it was pretty clear what was

required really clive was absolutely in

his element he was so excited um

he's such a genius he's got such an

amazing intellect that he wanted to

learn everything instantly from

everybody well i think that's the great

thing about working with clive is is

he's very much a

collaborator he likes to work with

people i think you have to have a

similar mindset he was just very adept

in knowing what shots he wanted

because i think he has an extremely

visual memory he

he he storyboarded the whole thing

obviously there were a lot of special

effects they were

i mean i understand they were

groundbreaking at the time um so i think

really

you know he he knew his materials so

intimately that really

you know with a competent very very

competent crew

he just sailed through it i mean i think

all the work was really done before we

ever turned a camera on i can't really

recall clive at any stage being

particularly twitchy or worried about

things he knew the constraints that we

were under he knew what people were

giving to him

um and to the production and also there

was a really good feel about the film

and we enjoyed doing it

so therefore again that camaraderie

really helped i thought he was quite

confident i mean he was because he was

he was confident about the script and

confident about the actors and um

as far as um

our side of it was concerned i mean

we all worked together and and uh

i don't i wouldn't say he was nervous at

all i think clive has always had a very

complete

vision of what he's trying to do you

know in the way that he's

um

an artist

and how the words and the pictures join

um

are

an indication of how he sees the whole

thing and the icing on the cake was that

clive barker was such a

generally nice guy you know he was he

wasn't like a real director he was just

um

you know one of your regular guys his

imagination which is very probing i mean

he

he he really goes

really deeply into his imagery

um

i think that's that's that's his style i

mean the the film is an out picturing of

pretty much of who

who clive was at that point i haven't

seen cliven years so i don't know who he

is now but i'm sure he's probably

basically the same person

to ensure that barca could successfully

direct his future debut

producer christopher figg ensured that

he was surrounded and supported by some

of the industry's best film crews born

in 1939

cinematographer robin vigin already had

a wealth of experience in film and was

on hand to support barker in creating

his vision

there were an awful lot i think of

of the

very fortunate collisions that happened

on hellraiser and one of them was

robin vigil

now i think i think

a less talented

dp than robin and to be honest just

a downright

what am i trying to say

not such a downright nice guy as robin

might not have been so sympathetic to

hive normally we get invited to

our agents get us into into a meeting

with the producer and director and you

sit down like i'm here and they ask you

all sorts of questions

and if they like you or like what you've

shot before

you'll get the job

but sometimes you don't get it

but

i don't remember going and sitting in

front of clyde for an interview

so i honestly don't know how i got that

film but um it was such a lucky break

because even now

30 25 years

afterwards people still come up to me

and say you worked on hellraiser

yeah but i have done other things you

know i do to do stuff with ladies and

greedy dresses not just blood and guts

but so i had no idea how i got already

so i'd done films with robin as a first

ad

with first time director so i knew how

good he was with the first time director

and how

how he would always contribute

enormously to what was going on in the

scene

and maybe think of a better way of doing

it or a different way of doing it or

more economical way of doing it

or indeed you know improve on what clive

wanted to do yeah robin was wonderful

cameron he was extra because he really

he was very experienced and he

um

he he really he knew exactly what he was

doing very very very good

at his job

well as i said i worked with this crew

before and robin vision was a dp and

david worley was the camera operator

and danny charmedin the focus puller

myself as a loader

and we've worked together

quite a bit before

and we knew we know we knew each other

so we had a close relationship um work

wise

and it was all about helping each other

out we worked we worked as a good team i

went to each scene

to light what i saw on the page of the

script

yeah

and that clive was directing what he saw

on the page of script as well and the

actors were giving him that so we were

all working to make the script work

i think the hardest thing i found in

that was the introduction scene when you

when you have the spinning uh

clubs of meat you know in that which are

meant to be the loft and the beams come

out from the walls that was very hard to

do because the set wasn't that big

um also filling it with smoke all the

time was quite hard because it dispersed

very quickly

um

we weren't on a big stage you know um we

had two guys wafting smoke as fast as

they could and it kind of worked

but that was the trickiest stuff to do

the rest of it was was trying to create

as much

terror move not horror terror move

mood um as we could he lights

almost everyone individually as opposed

to putting up a blank canvas really of

light he will literally put

a key light for each position

of where they stand which is obviously

the old-fashioned way of doing things

there's two in every film there's

something you see

that you think ah i could've done better

there's a scene early on when

uh claire and her husband arrive at the

house

and unfortunately

we hadn't got the money all the time

to build an nd box outside the front

door

so when the door opens and you see them

standing there

instead of being a great pissing day

like it is today it was screaming

sunshine

and i had a real i couldn't have done it

digitally that still doesn't work but i

had a real hassle balancing

them

with what was outside by eight stops

overexposed

with inside the house and that's one it

works you know because we really had

quite a tough time grading that to make

it work but it's not how i would have

done it had i had the time and a bit

more money normally we'd have put a big

frame outside that front door with nd

acrylic sheets reducing the exterior by

about four three or four stops and that

would have been perfect

clive would explain how he wanted to see

things with his artist's eye

i wanted to look like this

and robin would say

okay well if you want to do that

you have to do this and you have to do

this and you have to do this

but but

took the time to make sure that that was

happening and i think you can see that

in the film

i do remember a later point where i

think

robin had obviously

taken clive aside and taught him lenses

so now

clive could not only see what he wanted

he knew how to get what he wanted and i

do remember robin at one point saying

why the hell did i ever teach this guy

how to do this

now i can't pull the wool over his eyes

the one thing that i still do and always

do

is that i insist when you walk on set

uh you have a blocking

of every scene right in other words i

would stay on set at the back and clive

would come on with the actors in the

house with probably the first ad in the

continuity girl just for lines and he

would block it with them and i would

watch because in that 20-minute blocking

at eight o'clock to 20 past eight i'd be

quietly working out i was going to light

it okay then the whole crew would come

in and you play it through again for

sound

and and it's a discipline it happens on

it it should happen on every film set in

the world

and it's the hardest thing to get nude

filmmakers to do

and it just it falls into total disarray

if you don't do that

and clive did

and that's how we were able to shoot it

in the eight weeks

robin was wonderful he um

just one of the best i've ever worked

with to this day definitely i was very

impressed with the way robin was able to

shepherd the first time director's

thoughts into how to construct the scene

how to block the scene how to make it

work what was the point of the scene

um as well as having a bigger eye for

composition and

moving camera and all those things that

those conventions that are so important

for the type of film we were making

uh naughty's

trying to go blue so it worked very well

independent american motion picture and

television production company new world

pictures funded the production of

hellraiser

despite having a relaxed approach to

this british production new world would

keep a close eye on how the new director

was handling their new project

hellraiser was

a film that was in production at new

world entertainment

right at the time they hired steve white

as president of production

uh so steve when he came on the job one

of the first things he did was to begin

looking at dailies on hellraiser

he didn't like what he saw he thought

the film was dull and as he described it

it was a movie about people walking up

and down stairs

so he said get on a plane and go over

there and see what's going on and so the

first two days of rushes were all around

staircases so we'd sent these to new

world in america

and the message came back

this is not a staircase movie we're

sending over tony randall to sort you

out they think fine and they're paying

for it

all right tony came on board and then

realized very quickly we

once we explained actually we'd had to

do all this decade stuff to start with

um it wasn't a second movie there were

other things to come in you often get

executives will come on

and they do look like fish out of water

especially with them because you know

what how film crews are i mean they're

in their suits and they really often are

in their suits

and everybody else is in t-shirts and

parkers and jeans and boots and hats and

whatever you know yeah

uh but really i mean there was not a

huge amount of of of of executive

interference because i think they they

trusted this and they could see what was

being done

and they were shrewd enough not to

interfere because it had been going

badly it would have been a different

story my only my only memory of and all

of us memory of the american produce the

three producers who turned up that day

were the three stooges who are really

nice guys but only ever spoke to one of

them and

he came back for the

for for hellbound to direct

um

so we didn't know them we never saw them

i think they came over bought the coats

showed their faces and bucket off back

to the states you were coming over um

it's as a producer it's very

nerve-wracking because you've got all

these plates spinning um you wonder gosh

is this film going to be any good i mean

all these doubts creep into your mind

you've been living with it for a couple

of years

sometimes longer um

and you think

is this going to be any good are people

going to want to see this film

so you're constantly trying to

sort of preempt that

slight phobia

by making sure that the rushes

look good and the the effects are

working

um and i myself got involved and did all

the second unit stuff and we did hours

of chains flying into the camera well we

did it in reverse but you know just

making sure we had enough coverage

because something a story

of this genre you want coverage you want

to be able to have

lots of cutting because that

will give you a subliminal sense of

energy they understood

what was being asked here

but they also

you know you could see

a different view in their eyes they

could see

lots of money being made from this film

and they wanted to make sure it was

going to appeal to the american market

and they didn't want it to be a little

horror british horror film they wanted

to be an international

major motion picture

i remember when we were filming there

seemed to be an increasing interest in

its potential

that it might cross over and

and that they were talking about bits of

reshooting and adding to the budget um

all of which was a good sign there was a

scene where

frank

uh larry is trying to make love to julia

and they're not a very good match

sexually at all and frank walks in the

room with a rat and cuts it in half this

this scene of dominance

and that's something that was added

later

um with all the lightning and the the

effects

[Music]

the the sequence

where the cenobites appear

in the hospital

uh i had that scenery shot it was

originally shot the same way but without

the bright light and without the smoke

and i i worked with the cinematographer

rob envisioned on how to make that scene

more exciting i think the original

budget was lying possibly 930 000

and then they gave us

more money or gave clive more money um

to do the actual transformation scene

and that took it up to

150

000 or something like that

um

just over the million mark for the

budget i had absolutely no resistance

from anybody uh i think one is the that

i was representing the studio and they

kind of had to do

what the studio wanted

and in a sense i was given carte blanche

to to to accomplish it and um

but that said everybody was great i i

loved working in england i loved the

crew i never heard clive complain

particularly about

stereo involvement or production

involved anything like that he seemed to

be enjoying it and doing what he wanted

to do and getting out of it what he

wanted

on the blood splattered floor a box some

six inches square which resembles an

elaborate chinese puzzle box later we'll

learn its name and function it's called

the lament configuration and it's a way

to raise hell

literally for now it remains an enigma

you have to discover the existence of

the lament configuration

you have to track it down

you have to solve the puzzle with the

right motivation and then you might be

confronted by pinhead and the cenovites

and then you have to negotiate your way

through that and and

you you meet pinhead and he's not he's

not straight into you with the hooks and

chains and tearing the soul apart

he wants to stop and have a good

conversation about

you and who you are and what makes you

tick and what your dreams are

you know it seems a bit boring to just

say okay it's a chinese puzzle box let's

go and

get some chinese symbols it would look

like a tattoo basically

um

and um so just played around and it was

always supposed to be made by

this french puzzle box maker but which

put him in a certain time say

1750s or whatever then france had an

empire and that empire went to china and

that empire went to arabia and north

africa and so you can then start looking

at the symbols of those places and also

old languages if you look at the box as

a square it's divided up this one

surface it's a circle with the lines

coming out when you then pull that out

and twist it it becomes a star-shaped

box and if you look when it goes back in

every three panels has a little drawing

of the engineer going around there's

four engineers just going around in a

circle so when it's in a square you

can't see it but when it's in a star

there's a little motif of the engineer

where you can see its tail you can see

its hands

so we had one box which had a little

syringe in the bottom that would push

the syringe would push it up

and then a little motor inside would

kick in and drive

that would be one box

and then we'd she'd put a finger in and

then it would reverse and then we had

another box that was like a

shape of a of a diamond cut in the wood

so it would literally lift up turn and

then when it came down again the corners

would create a diamond effect

and then we had another box that would

open up on the top

and another box that did other things so

there's probably about eight boxes to

make it do all of those little tiny

tricks to make you believe

that you'd seen one box do everything

but that was what i always saw it as was

was

the

portal not not to hell

we never really talked about held and i

think clive was always very careful

that the devil

is never mentioned in the hellraiser

movies and there's always a lot of

emphasis on the idea

that the hell in the hellraiser movies

is a personal place

it's never talked about

in any way that would relate to hell as

understood in in orthodox christian

theology

so it's that it's that portal to

yourself in a way

to it

it leads people into the places in

themselves that they might not want to

admit to

as well as

confrontation with the center banks oh

there's lots of chains there's nothing i

changed in the design there's nothing i

would change in

how it turns into a star because i was

delighted with that mechanism when when

i did that and i did that initially out

of just cardboard at home and just

cut the box into segments and spun it a

bit and it turned into the star shape

but yeah the the way the box just opens

at one stage i can't remember what we

called it but it opens and slides

and you can see the mechanism you know

when you're watching the film and you

can see the gaps and

[Music]

so

yeah some some things you just say oh i

wish we'd worked out a different way of

doing that

and of course there was a whole horror

of

you know you've built a thing three

inches by three inches and

[Music]

then it you see it on the screen and

it's 60 foot by 60 foot in the opening

shot and you're just looking and

thinking i'm not enjoying this film and

look at the gaps and the

hedges and things

we didn't make that many from from the

first for the first film there was only

a couple of a couple of main boxes in

the the animatronic animatronic the ones

that went you know the one that goes up

and twist is just simply a rod through

the desk it had to be cheap uh the one

that goes up into the side

which was just sort of like you know it

was just a simple little mechanism

inside um for two we obviously made a

lot more so i've got a box from number

two and all it is it's a it's a

six seven centimeter cube of wood and

six edge brass plates and we use the

same matchings on that one and that's it

mine's dented now so it's a little bit

of rust coming off it

i'm sheriff bronson stone and this is

all my stuff even this stupid puzzle box

which doesn't seem to have any use

whatsoever boring

[Music]

who the heck can that be

[Music]

i was thrilled when i was on scooby-doo

that was probably one of the highlights

um

and um

i should have done a royalty deal really

um because it's now produced all over

the world um

i get emails from all over the world

saying how did you do this can you give

me some advice i'd like to do some

and um

yeah so it's nice but you're not

producing an icon when you're doing it

you're making a box

the birth of frank remains one of the

most memorable special effects scenes of

1980s horror however the scene as we

know it was nearly never to be

when um new world saw the the original

cut of what they had they then gave us

some more money and gave us a lot more

money to do the the birth of frank

sequence for the first film because that

was never in the original cut larry cuts

himself there's blood on the floor and

then

we cut away and then julia comes up and

there he is and i thought well we're

really missing a big opportunity here

and in the back of my mind i'm thinking

and an opportunity for chris young who

they don't even know exists yet to do a

great piece of music for

so i um

sort of came up with this notion that

there was

the blood would go into the floor and

that there would be we would reveal

underneath the floorboards

that there was this growing presence

reconstructing itself underneath the

floor which we shot in a small studio in

south london in in january

and that was purely tony randall saying

right we do need to see frank

growing so bob and

floyd designed that sequence

they they showed me the boars i thought

it was great and then bob and his crew

designed how to do it and it was all

that scene as i recall was shot

well after principal

and this is where the american producers

were wonderful was a long time

after the film you know we'd finished

the film and the film moved on we'd all

gone on to do other things

they said

let's go back let's do let's do some

pickups let's set a small unit up

let's come up with a really great

birthing sequence

and we started

completely anew

we had the luxury of a raised stage so

we could work underneath

we built lots and lots of puppet rigs

we had this wonderful goo pumping

material which will pump up methyl

cellulose by the gallon it would all

come up

and we could work through the goo

because we had like rubber

gusseting that would hold all the goo in

still started off as it was written

which was that he's plastered into the

walls so he's all dry as a bone and he's

all dust and he's very mummy-like

i think both me and clive had great

memories of

the universal mummy films and we light

the aspect of someone being

this dry

husk

of life and then being brought back

once it's fed on the blood originally

the the frank was bricked up behind the

wall he just falls out the wall and he

starts talking and we we built a puppet

um

a lip-syncing puppet that

just was too complicated for its own

good really i mean it was it was it was

a fairly simple

rod puppet with with

with cable control facial expressions

but it it just took too many of us to

coordinate it and we never really

we never really got it together we had

made a frank he looked like something

out of a tomb of mummies and he was

inside this wall he was there the bottom

half of him so there was different

animatronic ones that we made we made

one where he was sat in the room and

then there was this one where he was

going to come out of the wall i'm not

quite sure

how he was going to actually be

the concept of how his birth was

actually started when we were doing him

like that

well we did that

and we did it reasonably well we had

animatronics and everything else but it

was wrong

the film had become something else

the process had taken us somewhere else

and we knew it was wrong it felt wrong

it wasn't visceral it wasn't it didn't

have the

the aspect of it that really made it

grab you

and then we did a lot of stuff where we

were doing uh wax

so we'd have the finished item

and then we'd have wax heads on that but

on animatronics

and we'd have

veins that were actually made out of

thread and cotton and everything else

and we would melt the heads or the

bodies or the hands or anything else

and this wax would burn really really

fast it was like a paraffin wax

and then as it would go we would pull

the veins

and everything else back in

so when it shot in reverse you'd see

this flesh forming up and we had all the

different colors of the flesh but you'd

also see the veins go

and then the flesh would look

over which is really nice uh the birth

of frank um when there's this sort of

pulsating um little thing i remember bob

saying to me

i need you to build something just there

and he pointed to this

stage and just under the stage

between the scaffolding

so it's just an empty space he said i

need you to build a little set there and

it's gonna be where the birth of frank

is so it wants to look a bit like an

embryo it's it's a bit the dark arts and

it's oh just use your imagination john

and i was like

okay so i built this what was like a

little diorama a little set i was just

having fun with a

i think it was a condom

with a tube that you could blow so that

you could blow life into

and then um

and just stuff around it it's an amazing

all again back then it was an amazing

scene you probably did five minutes on

cgi now but back then it was all

physically created on the sound stage

and

what is great about that scene is now 20

minutes into whatever is into the movie

it's the first big

bump and scare in the movie you go oh my

god this is amazing and you've got to

remember 1987.

have seen anything like that

from his days with the dog company

kleibach's obsession with skinless

people would be fully developed through

an amazing performance and

state-of-the-art special effects with

the introduction of the skinless

cigarette smoking frank the monster

well me and clive went to

a

autopsy that was being held at one of

the medical schools in london and i

threw up nearly

and we watched a doctor along with a lot

of other students

actually

skinned someone who was a corpse for

real

and

[Music]

like i said i didn't see much of it

because i was going

but clyde was kind of disappointed with

the end result of the real thing

his exact words were it looks like a lot

of looks like bacon's been stuck over

someone

if you read some of his stuff

clive's big fear is skinned people and

he writes it because he doesn't like it

so he writes it very well

and i remember on hellraiser he would

never when i was doing skin frank stuff

he would never come up and talk to me

about it

he convinced us he said oh i've done

skin people before i've done skin people

they're easy

there's no problem doing skin people

you know i did it for plays and

everything like this

um i don't think we had any idea how

complex and how difficult

and how involved

sticking something on the top of someone

but making it look like and feel like

you're that they've taken something away

is a normal process in makeup but this

is amplified by 10 when you have a

skinned person i remember the uh design

being like a sort of skinless

yeah skinless man wearing um like an

apron

and yes a lot of

like medical reference was used there's

a really good um uh medical reference

book that's

just all the layers of um all the layers

of the skin

um sort of visible

underneath the layers of skin visible

so that was used yeah that was used as a

reference because there's different

stages

um to it i'd done quite a lot of work

with um

with jeff on what on what frank would

look like um

and we'd certainly been referencing a

lot of sort of uh

a lot of sort of italian wax

renaissance figures um

there was a book called a color atlas of

human anatomy by mcminnon hutchins that

was basically a book of human dissection

and certainly all the colors uh

uh the sort of muted browns and paints

and things like that that you see in the

first

look of frank when you when you seem

completely skinned that

all those came from that book

definitely

i only really turned up uh when i was a

skinless

being so like walking around

appearing you know as that skin this

creature full length arms and legs and

everything there was a sort of uh young

version of me slithering across the

floor that was not me that there was um

uh

oliver smith wearing um

initially wearing like a pullover mask

and then a little boy wearing

the same sort of style mask

and he had a body suit on as well so you

see like one shot of him in the film

he's kind of crawling towards the door

um it's kind of creepy

yeah so he was um i can't remember the

kid's kid's name but he was about nine i

think

um

and uh yeah he got dressed up for the

day in this kind of miniature um

miniature sort of frank suit um

covered in goo

stuck in the corner and then just you

know it's

sort of directed to crawl around the

room and

come out and be creepy

legend had just come out and the

director wanted to remake legend as

a 30 second soap commercial so we'd use

this kid um

as a fairy and he was really good and um

and so we got him back to where this

frank suit

for that one brief scene where he crawls

along the floor and that was a suit that

was made up of

all the bits and pieces of uh of

the leftover frank suits

um

and he was really kind of good uh bob

keane

and cliff wallace were my sort of uh

well cliff was mine became my man he was

appointed

but in the initial stages jeff and bob

were there and they were just there like

hi jeff hi bob

yeah he kind of got claustrophobic i do

remember that he got claustrophobic

underneath the moulding process

and don't blame him either i mean the

modding process is pretty weird process

when you you cover someone's head

entirely

in

alginate which is what we what you have

your teeth cast with and then to back

that up a plaster bandages over the top

anybody in their right mind is going to

find that claustrophobic

the tiredness factor you know

up at four

and then straight straight home and into

bed sort of if you're lucky by 10 to be

up again five six hours later so you're

on a complete

sort of buzz really as a permanent high

it wasn't time nothing nothing

it was all quite very pleasant oh to say

that but it was not a problem a lot of

people don't realize how isolating it is

wearing a you know being underneath a

lot of prosthetic makeup um

so i think he did find it pretty hard

and he's also he's like completely

covered as well he's absolutely um sort

of encased um but yeah it was really

good you know really good with it and um

you know if you did complain you'd do it

nicely but it wasn't like um you know it

wasn't like he was a

sort of prima primadora primadonna or

anything it's just very um very sort of

easy to work with well three stages to

skin frank the puppet stage one which

was the dried sort of looking makeup and

stage two which is the very red makeup

cliff wallace did the stage three maker

which was then applied on top of my

makeup to save time so so it worked well

we knew we knew there was going to be a

couple of stages of frank uh

so we started off with the life cast of

of uh

ollie's head um

which is as i say had to be done in

stages and sort of glued together so

that wasn't that wasn't the most

auspicious start um

and jeff sculpted a

sculpted a basic sort of skull

and

underlying muscle

structure

sculpture of the head first of all and

then i

i took casts of the pieces those

original pieces and sculpted on top of

those to to do the later stages

and then the suit was

was basically all made in pieces so i

sculpt in individual

pieces you know leg muscles and arm

muscles and

chest muscles and things like that

i also made some

inflating lungs

and its rib cage was built out of

perspex because

bob thought it was really important that

you could see depth into the into the

rib cage so we built these sort of solid

ribs out of perspex that were that were

linked up the back like a like a corset

and underneath were these inflating

lungs which we never really use so it's

a bit of a waste of time the one thing

that really bugs me when i see the frank

makeup or that suit on screen and it

bugged me at the time and it still bugs

me now is that is that some of those

ribs sort of ping up at strange angles

sometimes i work with cliff wallace on

uh

the suit for skinned frank he had um

these ribs

that were made i remember when bob said

to me

uh yeah just make them out of this bit

of perspex how's that huh yeah cut some

perspex out and then heat it into the

shape that you want and i remember

thinking this is insane that will never

look good

to me i was like they should be sculpted

and and he was just like yeah yeah he

knows it's a big sheet of white perspex

that you've done

don't know what you're doing

sorry

so so i cut out these um ribs and and

sanded them and tried to make them look

a bit organic rather than this flat

shiny thing and then made these ribs and

then i got to put them on

with cliff um i used to help him um when

i could

in the makeup and now looking at the

photographs the depths of his um chest

is um

when you know what what it is it just

looks ridiculous to me but when you

don't know it kind of looks oh that

looks interesting how the the depth

that's created on this this this makeup

of this bodysuit i mean to get it into

some retrospect probably as much work as

went into all the other cenobites but

apart from the costumes maybe

went into frank

the same number of hours

of work to sculpt pinhead and butterball

and chatra and the female cerebri was

probably about the same as what went

into frank there's there's the final

stage which was the

sort of surface anatomy stage where um i

think barry norman described it as

looking like a raspberry ripple it's the

uh it's the sort of bloody skin stage

and then there was the the stage before

that which was the the the skinned uh

the skin suit in contrast to the typical

virgin large breasted victims depicted

in many of the horror films of the day

julia's victims a mild-mannered married

businessman lured back to the house on

the promise of sex

instead these gullible men would meet a

grizzly and gory end at the hands of the

creature lurking in the shadows

the the hammer stuff to the face julius

hammerstein's face there's a lot more

shots not in terms of blood but just the

wax to the face of julia enjoying it

almost

and just the screams

they cut a lot of prudo's death out

where he's just screaming and crying you

see a one tiny little snippet they cut a

lot of that out because it was

upsetting to watch

what she's able to do

when she hits those men

on the head with a hammer

i can't think of any other actress quite

doing what she did and apparently

the sort of gruffit sparks

quaked in their boots to witness uh

killing men with a hammer

so so it's it's it's an odd

juxtaposition of this rather sort of

gracious

earthy

roughly beautiful woman with this

hammock

bashing men's heads in

but there's a little twinkle appeared in

her eye

and

she sort of got it and

she really went into it remember we had

to make a rubber hammer and a rubber

weapons for her to handle but even with

rubber hammer and rubber weapons there

were points where whoever was getting

the nailing at the other end you had to

be really careful that you weren't in

the way of it she really got into it

julia

was feeding me looking after me bringing

me back to health and uh it's a bizarre

or something to think she'd go through

all that for the sake of

what what's purportedly gonna happen

next

uh while married to um lovely daddy

larry downstairs

she makes the mistake that we all make

it's just in her case she takes it up a

notch she's willing to go out and kill

people you know

which you know now i've gotten in some

pretty funky relationships and they've

asked me to do some crazy things in

their name

never kill anybody

they may invade my bank and ask me to

you know do some favors for them here

and there but i've fortunately never

been asked to kill anybody you know you

know what urine isn't real

and it's just a motto ketchup at the end

of the day you know if it's splash it on

you know

more blood it's

it's no different from doing um i don't

know

shakespeare or

anything else where there's

buckets of blood involved um

splash it on and don't you know have a

jolly good share at the end of the day

there's a really good sort of broken jaw

appliance um

that was just a uh just a foam appliance

but it looks really good and when i saw

the movie the other day i thought wow

that that still holds up as prudo um he

get gets bashed in there

bashing the face with a hammer and then

a hammer on on top of the head so that

was built by nigel nigel booth

and he actually got me the job he um

recommended me

um to bob you know as a trainee so um

you know it's a really sort of in-depth

to him for getting me getting my break

um yes he designed that um and he

sculpted the suit as well the the dummy

the sort of shriveled up um uh corpse as

well that um that you know they see um

so it's basically a prosthetic that kind

of uh just covered the whole whole jar

and had some teeth sort of sticking kind

of sticking out of the other side as

well to get that kind of lopsided um

sort of look she was really actually

brilliant on set because um

i was just um

he was called the prudo corpse as well

that was the one who goes empty the old

bladder

to the old bladder

yeah he we made a sculpture of him

myself and nigel booth

so nigel sculpted the head and the the

top half of the body and there's a sort

of like a trainee almost i was

underneath doing that the bot from his

ribs down and um

so i think i just remember looking after

him on set

on that day this is truly

a love story of the sickest type

but one nonetheless

that we understand

we understand why she does this

oh when i think about it still makes

online cry because i got it i kind of

think i got it even my little i was a

kid you know i didn't know [ __ ]

really but i seemed to have connected

with that enough unbeknownst to me

maybe he was just there i don't know the

whole idea with the prudo corpse was as

frank sucked the life out all the

cancers and bad things that were in his

body would take over and make him

rupture in all bits and pieces so gone

john gave him rather so he say distended

testicles and we'd sort of like have a

laugh yeah you kind of laugh sometimes i

think they were sculpted separately and

then we put little sandbags in so they

wobbled nicely you'll never see them in

the film but it's just it's a love for

us you know which was a really cool

sculpted thing one of the first times

i'd seen that that sort of

you know the sort of webbed anatomy

uh thing that became very popular um you

know this the sort of freddy krueger

look i guess that that sort of became

very popular after hellraiser um and

that was that was again a a sculpt by

nigel booth who did chatra who was

andy is a brilliant sculptor she just

one look to camera when she kills the

guy

and you just think pure [ __ ] evil

it's just the one scene for me that goes

there's a woman who knew exactly where

the camera was she knew exactly what to

do with it and she pulled off

a look it's just a look all the other

stuff is there but she pulled off a look

and i thought

oh my god [ __ ] from hell

the blood spat is up against her face

and she almost looks orgasmic

with this idea i'm killing people the

ultimate transgression bryant the thing

is about when you film these things

you're never surprised by anything

because as i say i mean people will be

amazed at how dull it all is at the end

of the day you know if you go in and

there you are and there's your light and

there's the blood and

and you know after hour after hour you

put the thing together so

you know you know exactly what's

happening i once once described it as a

charlotte rampling meets peter sutcliffe

it was totally believable what went on

there was nothing cool that can't have

happened

she bought

real terror to that it's he sort of

comes out the door and hangs out the

door and then

and then frank pulls him back in and i i

remember bob originally covering someone

in alginate and trying to paint it and

that not really working so we did that a

second time and actually made an

appliance for them the way it should

have been done the first time clive came

up with this wonderful suggestion as

i've got uh michael custody up against

the wall

this is just before kirsty arrives the

character kirstie arrives

and and i said stop i've got another

this is an idea here says cleveland when

you're getting behind him like that just

it'd be nice to give the impression

you're rogering him

and this is this magic moment i can't uh

re-re-um

emulate it in the same way as uh michael

cassidy he was an absolute gorgeous wit

one line funny he said stop stop he said

my agent said to me this morning pop

along to production village i've got

mornings filming for you so far he said

i've been hit over the head of the

hammer

i i've been shoved up against the wall

and had the net back in my neck down

stop i vomited up against that bloody

wall and now i'm asking now i've got to

be buggered and of course it wasn't so

much that was the way he said it and the

entire crew and actors just just broke

fell about laughing hysterical laughing

laugh laugh i you know i was out of

character laughing as ollie smith like a

drain of what dear old michael had

delivered this little jolly talent

we'd hear that line again and again

because

obviously whenever anything's filmed

it's done sort of take after take but um

it was i just remember a lot of takes

sort of happening sort of on that

particular line

um yeah so we would just hear it over

and over and over don't let him kill me

um

yeah i mean we'd end up doing our own

versions of it in the workshop

to keep ourselves occupied and amused

and that was a funny line not funny but

odd

um was having done that there's there is

kirsty and i and my line is

kirsty it's uncle frank who's got huge

laughs in the cinema because it's kind

of

not like what you'd say or maybe it is

maybe it's supposed to be

so i hope i'm not saying the wrong thing

there

kirstie it's frank it's uncle frank no

it does seem a strange line to come out

with

hello it's uncle frank i've just killed

this person

come in another cup of tea just sounded

a bit wrong

ahead the smoke clears and the light

brightens and we see a creature the

engineer

hanging in the space between the walls

it's in silhouette against the light but

we can see enough to know that it

resembles no earthly animal its vast

black limbs hold it suspended above the

corridor clinging to the stone its front

limbs vestigial by comparison hang down

from beneath its vast head its tail is

curled over its back

the engineer was probably

one of those

well i really like this moment from

clive

when we were already committed to a

budget and we were already committed to

a time scale and we were already

committed to all the other things

and everybody thought that was going to

be the big monster

uh you know you see it

barreling down that tunnel in here

eraser

it turns up in here eraser too

there's a bit of flappy skin i think at

the end of the day

and then it just disappears from the

whole mythology um because people

realize

yep that's the way we were going to go

with with with the engineer

it never happened you know basically

things moved on i mean if you used to do

it cg

how we were envisaging it it would be an

amazing looking thing with these sort of

slightly

withered ineffectual tyrannosaurus type

wrecks hands at the front and then these

whopping great big limbs that were half

legs half arms that could literally

span a wall and run down it i mean it's

a frightening concept it's just but the

the realities of how we made things in

those days didn't quite match up with

the the concept

i think it was the engineer which was

the monster at the end where about eight

people had to operate from behind

that was quite funny but uh he was just

covered in elephant come from at the

foot obviously we were all a bit a lot

younger then i was young then and um and

quite fit i used to do martial arts

before i got into films so um

so somehow it got decided that i was

going to be inside the engineer so um

i'll never forget um

paul catlin and will petty uh life cast

in my backside for the seat that went

inside the engineer and and all the rude

things that were entailed and

so there was a lot of fun um we uh

made this uh amazing creature in the end

with it's all its um

you know restrictions of of how you

could do things in those days and the

budget i mean that's something where

budget would have come along and played

an important part we shot it in daylight

but it's meant to be night so we black

tented a tunnel

from the front door to the gate on the

roadway and i think we put it on a

camera dolly of some kind with a small

crane arm

and they they built this this snapping

head on the front and i do remember

watching the shot and he he dave was

operating and all i could hear was from

his [ __ ] white welcome he was going

for the [ __ ] back the language coming

from under that creature and the smoke

and i think i put some lightning on it

some flashes

but they they cut bits out of it that

made it work you know

all i had was this um

creature that i would slip inside and my

arms would be in his uh feet

my head in his tail and my feet would

work his head

his head movements and then obviously he

was radio controlled to do his his um

uh

eye movement and that

and then i'm inside it so

oblivious to what was going on and then

quite shocked when i watched the film

and said oh okay that's what it all

looked like the first time you see the

engineer you can see

one of the effects guys which is

actually our runner it was a guy called

stuart comrades the first film we've

worked on he was about 16

and a very good makeup artist now

and he looks out

before the thing gets pushed down the

corridor and of course you can see it's

you can see the wheels

on the trolley and things like that

unless they've

unless they've darkened that shot down

and taken that shot out and i think i

was

not sure if i was sweeping up

um but i was kind of walking sort of

walking through and i was just literally

walking past the um the opening of the

corridor set and kind of just peeks down

the corner

um so yeah chris figg was um on the

dolly and the cameraman and they were

sort of shooting down the corridor

towards me and chris figshack have a

bloody way

um and they've kept it in there so i

kind of ran out as soon as i saw saw

them coming down and thinking they

wouldn't have seen me but uh but it's in

film yeah i think there's been a lot of

fair criticism of that particular effect

but if you knew the circumstances and

you were there i think what we did was a

small miracle and the fact that what

kind of on the screen was really cool

again showcasing the immense talent of

image animation one of the goriest

scenes in hellraiser is the final death

of frank which was not only graphic on

film but also just as graphic and

nightmarish on set doing it and i mean

those guys you know

they they were so expert you know that

there were no screw-ups i mean we pretty

much did it in

in one take it was quite quite horrific

and uh and very very explosive and very

very gory and very very bloody uh most

of it obviously you don't see on the

screen um a long time ago but that one

still sticks in the memory as being

quite quite an amazing day

and i thought you know this is such a

great moment that's so

kind of pedestrian and so i came up with

the line jesus wept

and uh which was it's one of my favorite

expressions and and clive jumped on it

without a question

that's what i mean about the the ego

situation there there really wasn't

because i came up with a few lines that

clive loved so there was um also a body

body made that had squibs inside it um

bungee cords um attached the hooks um so

the whole thing was basically kind of um

kind of held like really tentatively

together

then when the squibs blew up the the

bungees kind of pulled the whole thing

the whole thing apart had like blood

bags and all that kind of stuff

so there was a dummy head

with andrew robinson with the

prosthetics glued onto that and you know

everything kind of dressed up to match

the um you know previous previous shots

as well so from what i remember as well

there was the camera speeding uh sort of

speeded up

um as a shooting um the door closed just

like the cameraman in there um and the

whole thing was kind of blown and blown

up so it's kind of a pretty spectacular

um sort of setup to watch and then just

sort of like

uh

tear him literally apart i mean yeah

then there was there was a whole thing

that we had to do um

you know putting on those prosthetics

and whatever which was a

big deal i mean it was a very involved

you know

process as those things always are i

mean it was a few days of of that stuff

the dummy was pretty much uh blown apart

by special effects i think and it was if

i remember it was just a uh

it was a

very simple polyfoam dummy probably

didn't look that great in in real life

but looks fantastic in there in the film

and you just see it explode they cut on

the explosion uh which is always the

thing to do when you're editing these

things and it looks great and the door

closes as soon as it happens and it's

it's just a nice bit of editing and it

works really well i think we did it a

few times and we covered it in various

ways actually

i seem to remember that's why it took

some time because it was a big sequence

and we you know we we reconstituted bits

and put it back and

i wanted to use it in different ways

slightly um but it works it didn't work

we did it so perfectly it looked like

the camera never moved it wasn't the

effect he wanted at all but in the end

they had to chop the end of it because

it was too horrific

you look at alien

that was an 18 when it came out in the

cinema

look at it now we wouldn't get a 12 now

so everything's changed and shifted um

so larry's exploding ahead he might make

the remake but he didn't make the first

one

wanting to end the film with a great

visual punch

bucker wrote the vagrant dragon scene

however it was down to bob keane and his

team to make the effect a reality the

derelict i remember i made the uh the

thing that that

when the derelict walks into the fire

and

and changes into this strange bag of

bones demon i made him

for my sins

i remember bob king giving me 30 quid

and saying go and buy a skull an

interesting looking skull that was a

last minute

effect completely and utterly um

i remember clive coming and going

wouldn't it be awesome if this like bony

dragon rise up out of the flames

and i remember thinking yeah but we're

shooting and

we're already

there and

how we're going to do that i went to

i went to a place called get stuffed

which was

which was in islington

and

and went and bought the weirdest skull i

could find which was the skull of a

south american tape here and it cost me

35 pounds and i got told off because i'd

spend another five pound

and then i bought three ibex

horns and i stuck the horns and its eye

sockets

and

and the rest of it was just a plastic

skeleton or two plastic skeletons stuck

together with a really long neck

and um yeah i'm still making [ __ ] out of

bones really nothing much has changed it

was a funny looking because it was like

this how are they ever gonna turn that

into something usable because um on one

hand it was an interesting looking demon

with its um you know

the skull and the horns and everything

and then

the sheet latex with bits of veins

looked a bit iffy but you thought oh

well you never know in those days film

um

it was it wasn't like high-definition

films so there was everything looked not

quite brilliant in our world to the

naked eye and we were just constantly uh

reassuring people that um that on

the the definition of film would uh

make it all look good and and me on my

first one i didn't know that that was it

but i had been learned like apparently

how to

to reassure people that that was the

case and that was the case isn't it and

um and so things had this lovely quality

on film and those that were shot in

those days put together remarkably

quickly out of four days

and then

um

thrown in a fire for about 10 minutes

so one of those effects that just sort

of fell out of the back of the lorry and

went and went straight for on to set and

they got what they got with that and uh

for the for the way it's edited it works

it works but it's one of those

you know it's not it's not something you

want to do every single day of the week

is in effect that quick

with principal photography now complete

barker and fake would recruit the

support of new world executive tony

randall to edit the film

pretty much right away i went into the

editing room

with um

richard martin and richard who is a

fantastic

older editor who's since passed away

showed me everything everything was cut

and dailies and what i saw i thought

was pretty exciting the footage looked

good it was moody

it really spoke to me i like this type

of material so i was

pleasantly pleased with what i saw

but

what was missing was a lot of

horrific impact i'd say the film was

soft

a lot of the horror elements seem to be

steered away from

and what i immediately wanted to

accomplish was to make the film

definitely a horror film

what was fantastic is we were filming at

a station in cricklewood

and i happened to look over and see the

editor

of hellraiser on the platform at five

o'clock

and i just went up to him and i said

richard why are you here he said i'm

going home i said

what you don't work after five o'clock

he said no now that wouldn't happen

these days because the editor would be

staying in the cutting room until 11 30

at night i see the sensor only pulled us

up on one thing

this was jim furman in the bbfc

i had to go in

[Music]

to the bbfc

and prove that the rats nails the wall

were not real rats or animatronic rats

so i got both keen to

because they were animatronic they

weren't real rats to

let me take in

the rat with a radio control bit so i

got jim furman

in his office proving that these rats

moved

by being radio controlled because again

that was quite new technology

um anyway then we we were

allowed to have an 18 because we weren't

cruel to animals

well that's initially why i turned it

down because i i thought it was very

very violent but um then i sort of gave

in to clyde really because he was so

good in talking about what he wanted to

do

the worst bit actually was when larry

cuts his hand on on the

nail on the stairs and

that was probably the most horrific

thing because that's because that's

actually

it's almost real you know it's not it's

not fantasy that's the sort of thing

that although it's exaggerated obviously

exaggerated

that's the sort of thing that um

could really happen

hellraiser is tripping with gore um

and yeah i mean i think i go through

periods of my life when i look back at

it

occasionally wondering if it's more than

we need and then other times realize

well that's the point of this particular

venture we're going deep into the heart

i think that the gore is the blood as i

say you know you when you consider that

that some of clive's best writing has

been compiled into these stories called

the books of blood you know blood is

really important to him all the the

whole thing about the fluids

uh

yeah no i it's that's that's part and

parcel of it

though american financed hellraiser was

a british production

yet one of the most intriguing questions

that have plagued fans for the past 30

years is

just where is hellraiser actually sat

by a bed

not much

i remember going to see the hellraiser

for the first time and hearing my voice

with an american accent which was a bit

of a surprise and uh i thought it

sounded better um there was a thought

at the at the studio that hellraiser

being a british film would would lessen

its market marketability so they wanted

to make the accents uh americanized or

at least mid-atlantic so some of the

characters were dubbed that's the reason

it was done

but i suppose we shot it in

england and i always assumed it was set

in england

that's

debatable when you actually see the the

final

um edits but originally it was filmed it

was supposed to be all set in england

we'd even filmed in tube stations um

uh so to me it was like a london film

with some american actors in it and

there was part of the story was to do

with the fact that some americans had

come back and i think it was even

mentioned in the script that it made

some sense but when i saw the film it

didn't make sense and and my nose got

sort of put out joint and i struggled

with that

we didn't want to have

um

to be set

british you know um it was set

somewhere

somewhere um

and the second one is

again somewhere i don't don't think

people really minded where it was set

actually

i mean as soon as you have cars and

policemen as soon as you have

public buildings you start to get a clue

where things are set but we try to avoid

those most of it most of the time it's

so english

the father says you know he refers to

julia back on your home turf at one

point

we can make it work here

i've got a terrific job you're back on

your own turf

it's the whole point of it she's english

they come home the house is english

looking the pet shop sequence i mean you

know it's in an english pet shop most of

us know some of those actors etc etc

there are there are bits when they're

walking down the street i just think it

was unnecessary i know that you know

people of people have long been

fascinated by this strange mid-atlantic

place in which uh hellraiser and

hellbound take place

uh english accents american accents fake

american accents fake english accents um

i can't help i wish i could claim there

was a thematic purpose to that that

really what we were pointing out was

that all these people are dead it's all

taking place in the afterlife but no but

we were making a british movie in

cricklewood in london

and

they got wind of just what this movie

could be

and they suddenly changed

what they thought it could be i mean the

whole aspect of putting american voices

on everything the whole thing about

you know let's pretend it's not england

you know

came from our american producers the

post sinking by daryl bob sessions a

sweet lovely canadian actor who wrote me

a really lovely letter saying

dear ollie we haven't met i hope i

haven't screwed up your performance but

i've i've had to turn you into a bit of

a yank i thought it was a very sweet

thing to do because what dear old bob

does or what he was asked to do

is nothing like

what i what was my voice coming my voice

coming out of my mouth was at least

naturalistic cops have guns you know

that that's your first clue so it's

it's sort of america but we'd be stupid

to pretend it was a faultless

presentation of america it's

[ __ ] buckinghamshire you know it's uh

but yeah there's um there are just

pragmatic reasons for that there's

nothing going on there other than

weirdness and money like life really

i just assumed it was set in england

i don't know maybe it wasn't on the

second film i just carried it through

and said this isn't a nowhere land it's

not england it's not america it's

nowhere we never

mention the word london we never say

anything about where we are so it's just

in its own

universe but that really began with the

first film with the studio decision to

dub out the british accents

from an alternative metal band to a

classical composer the music vel razer

would fast become one of the film's

strongest features complementing the

horror presented on screen

one of the first questions i asked when

i got there is who's doing the music and

they told me it was this avant-garde

that's the word they use band

coil and i had never heard of them and i

don't even recall if i ever heard any of

their music

i was made aware of the fact that

initially clive's concept of the music

was that it was going to be performed by

a band called coyle that were friends of

his

london friends

and

i was not familiar with their music

i have since become familiar with it and

and i must say it's stunning music it's

stunning stunning music

uh at the time it was pretty new novel

extraordinarily novel the industrial

thing it was it wasn't it wasn't

mainstream still isn't really mainstream

never will be

clive came into forbidden planet one day

and i was already aware of clive barker

because i already owned the books of

blood and

as a result of that when he was putting

the hellraiser project together

um he said i'd really like you to do the

music for the film and i i do remember

clyde playing some of their stuff and i

don't think i was that desperately

impressed the story that i heard because

i wasn't there was that tony arrives in

london and sits down and says i need to

have a meeting we should have a meeting

with with coyle clive because there are

certain things that a film score needs

to do

which has to do with

having the music being

scene specific and cut specific and

horror films as you know

film music is the music

it's success or failure so much is

determined by the exactitude in which it

connects to the image i knew chris was

destined to be a big time great composer

and i had pretty much decided before i

even left

for england that chris was going to do

the music

so it was really kind of a fade accompli

although i did meet with coyle out of

courtesy

they however after

i questioned them about their ability to

write music for film

and i asked some pretty pointed

technical questions about click tracks

and writing to picture they they

couldn't answer them and they sort of

said well we'll give it a shot

and i think within hours they called

chris fig the producer and said i don't

think we're right for the job and they

bowed out

they bought out and chris young was was

hired

i think as i understand it the clive was

put

in an awkward position there because i

know that he wanted his i know that he

liked what we did and i know that he

believed in what we did

um he was happy with the material that

we played in

the preparatory material that we played

in

but

if the studio is saying

how would you like a bit more money how

do you like to improve the budget on

this picture um how do you like how

would you like us to get behind it with

a little bit more financial muscle than

we have done so far

i think he weighed at the pros and cons

and made a decision uh reached a

compromise which involved us being uh

you know sort of

departing from the project

um i mean obviously it was very

disappointing and um

peter and

john were you know

very very upset about it and and

felt let down

obviously you can't help that you know

that's one of those things suffice to

say tony had had enough

positive experiences with me being the

head of post-production at new world and

i'd done numerous films for them back

then i became kind of the in-house guy

he met me because i just finished at

ucla

and i'd done a film for roger corman and

he was

he was excited about uh you know what i

had to offer and the fact i could do it

very cheaply chris young then was just

starting out little do we know how big

he would become

but he was a joy absolute joy my

specialty was i would take a limited

money and manage to talk some musicians

to come in so that they these low-budget

companies would receive

a big bang for their buck

so

you know in terms of hellraiser

uh i was concerned

that having a big orchestra score would

be the wrong way to go

and because most the film takes place in

a house and it's you know it's it's

there's a very claustrophobic feeling to

the film i thought wait a second a big

orchestra in this claustrophobic

environment isn't that gonna isn't that

gonna be kind of corny over the top no

matter what i do it's gonna sound

bombastic but no they insisted

we

uh he we spotted it came over and we

spotted it

and

knew where we went to the big emotions

um

you know no wind all strings tug of the

heart um

he composed it and then we went to

munich and recorded it

uh and it was just a joy um

incredibly easy

very exciting in those days to have a

full orchestra

playing music to the clips of your film

on a big screen it was really very

exciting i thank milwaukee stars

that that they decided to go with me you

know

i had done just before that uh nightmare

on elm street

and i do remember when i sat down with

clive for the first time in new york

city

he did make he did say to me

by the way i'm not looking for a

nightmare in elm street

you know

and i i like that

his music was was i mean it was kind of

lush and i it was perfect for

i thought you know after having read the

books of blood he's gonna want some

music that's like extraordinarily dark

and complex and

loaded with clusters and here there and

everywhere

twisted

beyond recognition

and the bigger the better

bombastic

vomiting sounds

nightmare

nightmares of the worst order

you know

but that turned out not to be the case

with clive what i learned from clive

is that he wanted

to be seduced by the music

the best way to seduce someone is

usually with very few words

but just make sure they're the right

words

and so his his message to me

was to do it simply i wanna i wanna be

lullabied here he captured the

atmosphere really really well

so i think the score helped

uh

make the film become the cult classic

that it's become i'm not saying that it

was a great score i'm just saying the

sonori the fact that it's orchestra and

not a synth score i think in for this

picture

did help

his

score

for me is at least 50 percent of the

power of these films

it takes them and it and it lifts them

again onto a whole new level

and

his his score for hellraiser is

brilliant and then to me he out does

himself

uh when it comes to hellbound it's i i

still listen to it now clive said to me

by the way chris i'm not looking for

another nightmare on elm street

you know in in those nightmare films

it's all tongue-in-cheek we don't really

care we care not for for freddy there's

nothing there that we really care for

and the people that he kills yeah we

sympathize with them but we don't really

connect with them in ways that we did

with julia very successful at what it

sets out to do

yeah

it's not among my favorite movie scores

but then would it ever have been it's

not going to work because that's not

going to happen when i think of clive

remember

he was overseas a lot of this i was here

he was there we didn't spend a hell of a

lot of time in the same space together

so physically speaking it's not like he

was in the room directing me like he was

with the actors on the set back in

pinewood i guess it was uh with me it

was more conversations out over the

phone and me playing stuff to him over

the phone as i recall you know resting

the phone on the piano

which is the way you did things back in

those days and in hearing my themes

you know via piano performance and the

telephone he went and wrote one of the

greatest

themes ever in a horror film that

rebirth of frank with that piece of

music using that approach something as a

waltz for scoring horror

was perfect it was perfect so you know

you don't know how these things are

going to come about

it just

was in my head that i'd heard this piece

of music years before it was a waltz and

that was the right kind of music to put

in that scene i have a memory of being

in this little editing room with new

world pictures

was it new orleans

yeah

and we cut the cue in

and now i've been exhausted up all night

you know we'd all retired and the queue

was played

that cue and i remember there being

total silence in the room

and

i stood up and started hugging everybody

in tears and we all hugged each other

because we said

we all knew

i i hate to admit we all knew silently

that that cue

was it

and i i you'll never hear me say that

about another cue i've ever written

because i remember thinking to myself

for the first time you know what

maybe i really am supposed to be a film

composer

seriously it was that cue that made me

think

you know there is something happening

here

in this music and the way it's held with

what it's doing to the scene

without the music it wouldn't be kind of

the same

and and we all kind of felt that in the

room and it was so overwhelming that i

believe we i remember crying i think i

remember you know it goes this song long

ago like another lifetime ago but i have

memo the memory i can at least tell you

i had for sure the memory of

thinking that this was

this was worth enough

as as a as a cue for a scene in a movie

to make me think i was perhaps doing the

right thing being a film composer

released on the 11th of september in

1987 in the uk

and the 18th of september in the usa

hellraiser would go on to receive mixed

critical reviews but financial success

but now let me put a question to you

have you ever been to a movie discussed

it with other people and then wondered

whether you'd all seen the same picture

i've just had that kind of experience

with something called hellraiser this is

a british horror pick written and

directed by one clive barker who

according to some admiring sources has

gleefully broken the rules of the genre

and or produced a genuine original i

read these comments with total

bemusement because as far as i'm

concerned hellraiser is a nasty little

film that i watch for the deep and if

not original then certainly genuine

loads i loved it from the start

i thought everything had come together

brilliantly i mean

of course the odd thing is

especially playing a character who i

think was only on screen for about 10

minutes there was there was an awful lot

of the movie that i'd never seen i'd had

no contact with at all

so

seeing that all come together was great

and then the next time i saw it

i went to um cinema

in uh in central london prince charles i

think snuck in at the back

um to watch it with an audience and that

was great

to see

because i did see

the reactions i'd been looking for

we knew it was

they've been you know a good thing but

not like now you didn't don't didn't get

the instant feedback it's not like

you could just log in and get a whole

load of comments this is great this is

bad or anything like that that simply

didn't exist the only way you got fan

mail was through your agent

um and that's when kind of when you got

feedback i i went to see the film with

my mum

and the first one and she kind of spent

my up like this whenever the center

breaks came on and i was going mom no no

this is me but it's horrible yeah so she

never really saw she saw the other bits

but never when we were on screen when i

first saw the film i think it was at the

press showing and i left halfway through

because i i couldn't handle it

i went to sat in the bar

and um i'm not sure i've ever seen it

all the way through

really because i i do find it

shocking and visceral and i

i i sort of look at my eyes i mean you

have this experience all the time

without you thinking who's that

so yeah i mean i actually find horror

quite hard to watch

i couldn't sit through the exorcist

and um i i find it all quite startling

and very very strange to to watch and as

i say i don't think i've ever done it

all at one city

the crew show was the first time that we

first saw hellraiser and we loved it

i think when you know that

if you talk to anybody who works in

films long term it's the thing is that

you can look at the script and think wow

this is fabulous the shooting well this

is good you get to the film you think

this is a piece of [ __ ]

but the thing is it's no it was we loved

it because the thing is there's a lot of

what we've done in there

my stuff again you talk shortly if you

talk to any artists they're never happy

with what they've done i know exactly

where the edges of that piece are and i

know when they pop up

the marketing of hellraiser did focus on

pinhead

and i think the reason for that is

because it was marketed as a horror film

and i think

the thing about marketing

is that you must remove the people who

made the film

as far away from it as possible

only because

it's the job of the distributor to get

the audiences in

and they're going to choose the images

the

clips that are going to work for the

target audience

and you've got to really go for that

target audience you mustn't try and

pull your punches in making a trailer

for example um you know

you mustn't worry about giving it away

in your trailer if if you've got some

really good shots in there because you

know no one's going to see the film if

if you put in the arty bits

and you know if you want to see the the

visceral entertainment um so the

marketing of a film is it's almost sort

of prostituting your baby to to to the

audiences actually that's a terrible

expression but it's it's selling out

your yourself

you're sending out your your work for

the you know for an audience so you

can't be precious about the material

when it comes to marketing

and pinhead is a very iconic image you

know you see it all sorts of places

[Applause]

we have such sites to show you

hell razor there are no limits a film by

clive barker you'd see these characters

suddenly obsessed with pinhead who we

thought was just a small character when

the movie was being made i remember was

dougie coming back from japan or maybe

clive but talking about a huge 25-foot

banner

with pinhead's head on it so it's like

clive has clearly

touched a nerve here he's opened the

vein and so there was clearly something

he did

get a hold of there some tiger by the

tail which had a huge power beyond uh

any of us could imagine certainly me

probably not more than clive imagined i

think he i think he thought it was his

destiny

what a genius marketing idea it was

because

i remember and i've been in it looking

at that image and everybody around at

the time they were going

what is that that's it was so unique

that it instantly caught your attention

wherever you were um and yeah he became

iconic bastard no one expected these

movies to be

you know sort of

i don't know iconic because they were i

had no idea

you know at the point you made them we

were just making you spend no budget

bills for the fun of it basically to

some extent i think it was just

inevitable because all the interest was

around the cenobites and was around

pinhead if you were going to

find a shorthand image

by which people would know what

hellraiser was

it was pinhead if you showed them julia

there wouldn't

immediately be a connection

the character even started being

referred to as

the hell raiser um you know i mean i

didn't have a part in or a hand in that

at all it just

kind of uh

happened around me i didn't realize what

was going on in fandom until

uh fangoria magazine invited me out to

uh fangoria weekend of horrors in l.a in

1989. i rude the day that doug got to be

the poster boy why couldn't we all be in

the poster people could have been four

of us it would have been brilliant

changed our careers he was very lucky i

think hellraiser turned out very well i

think it was um

of its genre was probably one of the

scariest films i've ever seen what we

what we did end up doing was making

british horror cool again and classy

again and a time when america wasn't

really doing that

i consider hellraiser a mini masterpiece

in the genre even though it has flaws

the the story

the mood

the the setting

the acting i i think it's a really quite

brilliant film i'd seen

bits of hellraiser some um little cut

together sequences

and they were pretty thrilling so it was

very exciting to see how it was going to

turn out um

i was a little thrown at first

to hear um the american voices added um

which i hadn't realized about but

uh it was it was the whole thing was

clearly had a kind of energy and um

an irresistible quality to it that

people were seem to be caught by it from

the beginning you know there was a kind

of

um

assurance in the filmmaking and a kind

of

an announcement you know

of a new thing

which one was

uh able to see even in that very first

screening um when we had we had a

casting crew i remember and uh

um there was a there was a

definite buzz

amongst the cast and crew at that very

first showing when i got home from the

cinema i thought i was ill because i was

absolutely white as a sheet i don't

think i'd ever been as

it wasn't so much frightened but really

genuinely very shocked by it

and i suppose really that's what it was

it it was this kind of sense of it being

something real and immediate and now

we've been able to stand back from all

those victorian kind of scenarios and

this was suddenly something that you

believed in a kind of weird and mad way

there were um i still got i think a

newspaper clipping that sort of like

that was written to the evening standard

saying you know sir you know i just i

just walked past a poster that has a

picture of a man with nails banged into

his head and i think they should be

taken down as if he could scare young

children

and that kind of stuff and it's you know

when you think of what was even around

what 87 there was still heavy-duty stuff

around it's just that this got into the

west end

certainly my daughter and her friends

were thrilled

when hellraiser came out i you know all

the work that i'd done all the

shakespeare you know [ __ ] that i mean

you know you were hell raiser then that

that you know that gave me you know sort

of like cred street cred a successor to

hellraiser was soon to be inevitable

with rumors of a sequel being whispered

on the set before production even ended

hellraiser had not been released but i

guess

new world which was the american

financing company were pleased enough

with it uh pleased enough i guess maybe

with previews and stuff

that they you know they had authorized

the sequel there was no mention of any

sequels until after uh we finished

shooting i think rumors were sort of at

the end of the production phase when

just about how razor was coming out i

think there were

rumors were about that they might do a

second one i mean the film industry is

like that they think they've got

something they'll latch onto and get it

going straight away which they did

afterwards before we finished hellraiser

one before i knew any discussions were

going on about it being greenlit

uh

clive said you know there's a chance we

may do another one if you're free would

you do it i said yeah because we had we

had a lot of fun on that first one it

was hard but we we enjoyed doing it with

him yeah we started talking about a

sequel

while uh we were in the editing process

there was a very strong feeling that the

film would be successful

and um

so it really started early development

did not begin until a little bit later

but um yeah it was decided early on to

do a sequel that was an era when on help

on uh horror films were always

generating sequels and new world wanted

their nightmare on elm street

basically

and that's why it was green literally at

least the development of it was green

lit i think we

when we knew that we were going to go

with the second film um i

clive sort of put the word out to the

key individuals

um hoping that they would

be available for us

uh and they were so that was that was

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really as simple as that clive came to

me during towards the end of hellraiser

saying that we intended within the next

six to 12 months we intend to do the

second one over here and he said like if

you're free

but that time

we all thought if another one did go it

would be clive and it wasn't

it was tony it was quite clear that

there was

more juice

in the project from the first one

that he created something which had its

own life

so it felt like there was going to be

more to come david saunders was very

excited about it and they all wanted to

do more hellraisers and

and quite right too because it was that

sort of film

but that's one of the reasons that i

didn't do it and i was asked to was

because i i've been off another picture

and in those days you know you just went

from picture to picture and i wasn't

going to wait around a young family and

to be honest with you i love doing it

but

hey you know you've got another nice job

i think if it come out at the box office

and

and been moderately successful

we would have made another one i think

it would come out the box office and

made a return we would have made another

one it came out the box office and was

enormous

so there was no doubt we were going to

make another one you know so so the

words words were cheap at the time

saying oh yeah we're going to make

another one the action and speed

that they turn the second one into a

movie was impressive

there had been talk i think while we

were making the first film

the new world were looking

at a sequel because they gave us more

time and more money

part of the way through because they

were getting excited about

what they were seeing

the dailies that were making their way

over to los angeles but you kind of

dismiss that talk as fast as you hear it

you know every fringe production i've

ever been in in london was going to

transfer to the west end

don't listen we kind of knew that um a

sequel was going to happen

before we finished

filming hellraiser one

because they changed the ending we had

all these rewrites

there was all this information coming

back from the states half having seen

the rushes so we knew that there was

going to be a sequel when new world

talked to us about the sequel um they

left it up to us i mean we of course we

went in and said that we've got some

ideas for the sequel we'd like to do

this we'd like to do that and that

helped sell it

but there was no

apart from script approval there was

nothing that they were insisting on i

think

clive

who's

kind of always has a stream of stories

in his head

was very quick to jump at the

opportunity and when talking about

different ideas for it

but

i don't remember the moment where

actually it was greenlit i seem to

remember the struggles we had

um they had in trying to raise the money

for the sequels which was a curious

thing given how successful the first one

was even though they talked about it it

was still not particularly

the climate here in britain it wasn't

easy to

uh to raise the money um which is why

america i think was so appealing to

clive it gave him an opportunity to make

movies thereafter

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so

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so

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so

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you