He’d already moved on.īarker’s fantasies were accessible from our own world, his crazy Narnias approached via the threads of a mysterious tapestry. ‘We are Cenobites.’ Okay, and a Cenobite is…? ‘We are explorers in the further regions of experience.’ Yes, but who the fuck are you?!” Films of, shall we say, variable quality immediately followed to explore that question, written and directed by other people who seemed more interested in expanding Barker’s mythology than Barker was himself. “He’s great at dropping in these amazing characters that make you go, ‘Woah! Who are they?’, and then at the end of the film you’re still none the wiser. “I think that’s something that Clive does,” Bradley mused to Empire, back in the September 2012 issue. But “Pinhead' ran away with the whole dubious 'franchise'.

Hellraiser had a pair of fascinating villains in Julia (Clare Higgins) and Frank – a character who, thanks to prosthetic make-up FX and the body-swapping in the story, ends up being played by three actors principally Oliver Smith, but also Andrew Robinson and Sean Chapman. Bradley played a demon with pins in his head: a minor role on paper, but thanks to the actor’s wry gravitas and a startling make-up, one that audiences noticed.

And yet, somehow, it became another of those extended horror sequel factories.Ī small, contained film (set in and immediately around a single house in Cricklewood, although maybe it’s supposed to be America, since everyone’s weirdly dubbed) it nevertheless nodded towards a fascinating extended mythology. Hellraiser was very different to the Freddys and Jasons popular at the time. A strange sort of Faustian, Chekhovian, adult domestic drama about sexual obsession was the result – albeit with supernatural underpinnings, monsters and lots of blood. The million dollars he needed eventually came from Roger Corman’s New World production company. He wrote screenplays adapting two of those stories – Rawhead Rex and Underworld, both directed by George Pavlou – and was so unhappy with the results that he decided to make Hellraiser himself, adapting his own novella, The Hellbound Heart. Barker made short films during that period too, and then made a big splash with The Books Of Blood, published in six volumes between 19 ( The Forbidden kicks off book five). Rose may have written and directed the film – but it was based on a short story called The Forbidden, published in 1985, and written by creative force Clive Barker.īarker had started in experimental theatre in Liverpool in the 1970s, working with a rep company that included his school-friend Doug Bradley.

In almost any other circumstance, you’d call the film Bernard Rose’s horror masterpiece… but another name looms larger. Candyman turned 30 years old this weekend.

Clive barker 80s