The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy (14 page)

Barker was out of the country when the second draft was written, but advised Atkins over the phone to simply make the changes New World wanted to keep them happy. So Randel and Atkins came up with a rough 150 page script incorporating New World’s wishes and any more ideas they’d had themselves. Following another meeting with Barker, during which he offered his opinions, the screenplay was polished and reduced to a workable length. Storyboard artist Floyd Hughes was then brought into the equation and between him, Atkins and Randel—who was by now having meetings with members of the crew such as the director of photography, Robin Vidgeon, the production designer, Mike Buchanan, and Image Animation—they refined the second draft and had it ready for handing in to Chris Figg on November 2.

There are still quite a few differences between this script and the one that was finally filmed, though. At the beginning we have an extended version of the sequence that introduces us to Pinhead in his human guise, including a lengthy bartering scene at the bazaar which would have been in keeping with Frank’s bargaining at the beginning of
Hellraiser
. Pinhead’s first words also echo Frank, “Kirsty, come to Daddy,” but somehow they didn’t ring true. Much better is the line: “The suffering, the sweet suffering....” One of the police officers at Lodovico Street cuts himself on his own notepad and spills a few drops of blood on the mattress where Julia met her end.

The original speech that Malahide (soon to become Channard after Dr. Christian Barnard, the first surgeon to perform a heart transplant) makes during an operation is intact; it was later changed by Barker during postproduction to prefigure the link between the mind and Hell’s labyrinths. There is a sequence near the beginning, where Tiffany has escaped and found her way to a deserted carnival and it is Malahide who brings her back, that emphasizes his control and domination over her. As mentioned, we have the more overt sex scene between the doctor and Julia, and Kirsty finds a room in Hell with photographs of her mother (a scene filmed and recently restored for the DVD release of
Hellbound
). Browning—the character who slashes himself with a knife on Julia’s mattress—is shown in his own private “bug hell.” And, of course, there is the scene with the Cenobites as surgeons. The major deviations, however, were not due to artistic determination at all. They were necessitated by two members of the returning cast.

When it became clear that a sequel was going to be made, several members of the ensemble from
Hellraiser
came onboard again. First there was Ashley Laurence reprising her role as Kirsty. Speaking about this, she said, “I was signed for a two-picture deal. I didn’t know what that meant but I knew I was doing
Hellbound
when I was doing
Hellraiser
.... Oh, there’s a lot of nastiness I have to go through this time. There’s catwalks and abysses and labyrinths and all sorts of things.”
¹³
Without her as its focal point the storyline would not have worked at all. Clare Higgins also agreed to return as Julia. “I had to come back,” she told the media, “because playing the Queen of Hell was an opportunity I just couldn’t miss.”
¹⁴

The actors who played Frank, in both his forms, with skin and without, were set to come back: Sean Chapman and Oliver Smith. Three of the original Cenobites, Nicholas Vince (Chatterer), Simon Bamford (Butterball) and Doug Bradley (as, who else, Pinhead) signed on again. And there was even a role reprisal for Oliver Parker as the removal man at the end. Most significantly, there was to be support again from the Hollywood actor and most famous member of the cast, Andrew Robinson, who would be playing Larry again.

Or so Atkins and Randel thought.

Larry had a vital function in the second draft of the screenplay. In his skinless form he appears to Kirsty at the hospital and entreats her to help him escape from Hell. This is the crucial motivational force for her to seek out the box and run the risk of confronting the Cenobites again. Once inside, she finds Frank and Larry fused together and they fight each other in Frank’s “knife room.” Larry then goes with both Kirsty and Tiffany to find a way out of Hell. It is a new Larry we see in the sequel, more determined and forceful, not willing to let anything or anybody hurt his daughter anymore. As the script says when Larry steps between the Malahide Cenobite and his two charges, “It is not fear, nor defiance. It is simpler than that. He is really, really pissed off.”
¹⁵

While understandable after everything he has been through—he’s been lied to by his wife, killed and had his skin stolen—lines like, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on” simply don’t sound right coming from his lips. However, the scene where he is instrumental in helping the girls escape from Julia in the tunnel does blend in very well, and finally gives Larry his revenge. Sadly, very soon afterwards Larry has a heart attack and drops out of sight until the very end, where we just get a quick shot of him recovering in bed.

As it transpired, all the scenes involving Larry would have to be revised anyway when it was discovered that Robinson’s casting hadn’t been confirmed and he wasn’t available for filming in early 1988. This news came after Atkins and Randel had flown to L.A. for meetings with New World and a final third draft of the script had been delivered in December. An emergency meeting was called at the offices of Pinewood, where the film was due to be made, and Barker, Randel and Atkins went through the script, factoring in this new development. Over the course of two days, a shooting script with these changes was produced which would pretty much resemble the film we now know as
Hellraiser II
.

I said there were two changes involving returning cast members, and the second revolves around the ending. As it was written and appeared in the second draft, the coda has Julia emerging from the mattress as the workman is left alone with it, a re-creation of the earlier scene with Browning:

SECOND WORKMAN: ... Gimme a hand with this.

Almost faster than the eye can register it, a hand shoots out from the mattress and grabs his wrist.

He has about half a second to issue a strangled shout and then, hideously quickly, a matter of two seconds or so, his body is drained of all life and the dried husk collapses to the floor.

The first WORKMAN appears hurriedly in the doorway and then freezes, an awestruck expression on his face.

JULIA is rising, headfirst and upright, from the centre of the mattress. The movement is smooth, magical, unsettling. It is graceful but not slow. JULIA is fully fleshed, fully skinned, and fully dressed. She is in a replica of the dress CHANNARD bought for her, but this one is jet black. She looks fabulous.

As the WORKMAN stands open-mouthed, her feet clear the mattress. But they don’t stop there. She slows to a graceful halt about six inches above the mattress. She stretches and flexes her arms sensually. Then her head swivels and her excited, aroused eyes meet those of the WORKMAN.

JULIA: I’m Julia. Love me.

Suddenly, her head tips back and, accompanied by JULIA’S delighted laughter, a wide beam of Hell’s black light flies at the ceiling from her open mouth. Instantaneously, it spills across the ceiling and falls, like a fountain of blood, across the screen.

COMPLETE BLACKNESS

THE CREDITS ROLL.
¹⁶

This was all calculated to carry Julia through into the next film, just as Barker wanted, making her the Queen of Hell and a recurring figure throughout the franchise.

There were just two problems. The first was that Clare Higgins, in spite of her enthusiasm for this sequel, had no wish to play the character in a further
Hellraiser
picture, nor did she have any aspirations to become a kind of female horror icon. The second thing was, as we have seen, the viewers and fans had already chosen Pinhead to be the recurring villain of the franchise. As Atkins clarifies, “Clive’s original wish was that Julia from
Hellraiser
would be the Freddy Krueger of the
Hellraiser
series and Pinhead and the Cenobites would sort of be the background monsters.... What happened, of course, was the public got in the way. They fell in love with Pinhead.”
¹⁷

There were new members of the cast as well, though. Sixteen-year-old Imogen Boorman was chosen to play Tiffany because of the fresh-faced angelic look of innocence she displayed, so it was strange for other cast members to see her having a break to smoke between takes. Boorman’s previous credits had included starring alongside Patsy Kensit, Daniel Day-Lewis and Elizabeth Spriggs in the 1982 TV adaptation of
Frost in May
, plus a stint on the popular Saturday tea-time science fiction show,
The Tripods
, based on the John Christopher novel. She also featured in the Dennis Potter scripted drama exploring the darker side of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books,
Dreamchild
(Gavin Millar), in 1985. Speaking about the role, Boorman said, “She’s basically the puzzle-solver. Without her no one would be able to get down to Hell. She’s meant to be very intelligent.... The worst thing I have to do in this film is pull Julia’s skin off.... But there are some nice bits in it that you don’t find in most horror films.”
¹⁸

Canadian-born actor William Hope landed the part of the younger doctor Kyle, really a replacement for the character of Kirsty’s boyfriend, Steve. Hope’s first TV role was as Harry in the
Nancy Astor
miniseries of 1982, and from there he went on to star in the Dynasty-esque drama,
Lace
(1984), with Phoebe Cates, then
Tender is the Night
and
Behind Enemy Lines
(both 1985). His first film role was alongside a young Judge Reinhold in the 1983 film,
Lords of Discipline
, directed by Franc Roddam, which concentrated on racism at a military academy in the 1960s. The military theme would be carried on in the film that brought him fame:
Aliens
(James Cameron, 1986). For this he played an inexperienced young lieutenant in charge of the group of marines battling Xenomorphs on a distant planet. This portrayal of nervous Gorman showed off his acting abilities and proved he was worthy to share the screen with the likes of Sigourney Weaver and Lance Henriksen. Kyle would be just as much of a challenge, because he would have to react believably to scenes like the mattress attack in which Julia absorbs Browning.

Angus MacInnes was hired to play Detective Ronson, the first person Kirsty speaks to after she wakes in the Institution. Also born in Canada, this actor was the king of bit-parts, ranging from Gerry Anderson’s
Space 1999
,
The Littlest Hobo
and
The New Statesman
on TV, to
Rollerball
(1975), Gold Leader in
Star Wars
(1977) and
Half Moon Street
(1986) in the movie world. While he again is not on screen for any length of time, his performance does have an impact—not least as the person who stands in for the audience when he says “Welcome back” to Kirsty. His cynical character is also a worthy counterpoint to that of the psychiatrists who believe her. The story goes that Atkins named Ronson after a razor company because he had just watched a film prior to writing where the main character’s name was Gillette.

With Grace Kirby not returning as the Female Cenobite this time, Barbie Wilde stepped in as an excellent replacement. Her two credits up to that point were on TV as Mo in the
Puliski
episode, “The Lone Granger,” and as a punk in the Charles Bronson movie
Death Wish 3
(Michael Winner, 1985), which some might argue was perfect training for a Cenobite. Another new actress who had to endure the make-up process was Deborah Joel, who was actually a dancer by trade before
Hellbound
. She would become skinless Julia and, like Oliver Smith, had to be thin enough so that the suit looked right on her. Ironically, her first scenes in the film are shared with Smith, who was not only portraying Frank this time, but also the inmate Browning, who spills his own blood on the mattress so that Julia can come back. He was able to offer tips and advice about the process, ensuring that Joel’s scenes are some of the standout ones in the whole film.

Another bit part player in the film was Tiffany’s mother, Catherine Chevalier, whose role was actually reduced from an original complex backstory to the flashbacks Tiffany sees in Hell. Chevalier’s first film role was as the French Girl in the U.K. made
Dutch Girls
(Giles Foster, 1985), where she featured along with Bill Paterson, Timothy Spall and Colin Firth, and she followed this up with parts as Rosita in
Riders of the Storm
(Maurice Phillips, 1986) and as Cosmo’s secretary in Mike Figgis’s
Stormy Monday
, released the same year as
Hellbound
. And while James Tillitt, who played Officer Cortez at the beginning of the movie, was a novice, his screen partner, Bradley Lavelle—Officer Kucich—had starred in everything from
Supergirl
(Jeannot Szwarc, 1984) to British TV fare like
Tales of the Unexpected
and
Robin of Sherwood
.

The wheelchair-bound patient who gets to deliver that immortal line, “one hundred and five years and he still doesn’t know my name” (inspired by a wisecrack in a Jerry Lewis Telethon), was brought to life by
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
(1988) actor Edwin Craig. The removal man paired up with Oliver Parker was Ron Travis, who had been in
Scandalous
(Rob Cohen, 1984).