You Inherit the Flames

Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain
Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame
But you inherit the sins, you inherit the flames
--Bruce Springsteen, Adam Raised a Cain

I don't know if Clive Barker was ever a Catholic, but if he wasn't, he sure expresses some of the baggage of Catholicism. The idea that the slightest slip from the path of righteousness, even if you don't know you've slipped or don't know the rules, will land you in eternal damnation is a thread that runs through Barker's The Hellbound Heart even without the trappings of the church. Barker transmits this theme to the Hellraiser movies more or less intact, though films subsequent to the first two Hellraisers are less rigorous in their exploration of this idea, if they're aware of it at all. There's a queer layer to this, given Barker's sexuality and, um, colorful history working at gay leather clubs in the 1970s. His Goth-bondage demons seem tailored to a queer man's self-loathing, where his demons flog not only himself for his deviance, but everyone around him. Sin, it seems, has collateral damage.

The new version of Hellraiser (2022, directed by David Bruckner) has a different set of sins and a different source of self-loathing for its protagonist, but the idea is largely the same. In the Hellraiser universe's framing, basic needs when taken to extremes will land you in hell, whether it's a need for kinky gay sex or for pharmaceutical kicks. All human needs are addictions of a sort. The sins committed by Hellraiser's explorers of the frontiers of experience are a stand-in for any "sin" you like, however small and trivial. The fallout for the people around an addict is usually more dire than for the people around a self-loathing gay leather boy. So, sure. Why not. But there's a downside to this idea. It takes a property that, for all its flaws, originated as outsider art and frames it as mainstream product. Addiction narratives are mainstream films--everyone in Hollywood makes addiction movies eventually. All queer films, even today, are outsider art. You see the dichotomy, right? And this transcends the relative production values and even the competence of the filmmaking. This film has the most technically competent director who ever came near the series not excluding Barker himself, and production resources that dwarf any previous edition, and yet this fails to pull itself away from its progenitors.

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Objects of Chaos

231. It's common practice to group Son of Frankenstein (1939, directed by Rowland V. Lee) with the first two films in the Frankenstein series as a kind of trilogy. That's understandable, I guess, given both the presence of Karloff as The Monster and the steep drop-off in quality in subsequent films. But having watched Ghost of Frankenstein recently, I'm coming around to the notion that Son of Frankenstein is really the first film of a trilogy (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf-Man would be the third in the sequence). The last time I watched Son, I didn't have the frame of reference in mind to notices the deep similarities between the two films. Not only is the tone more or less the same as in Ghost, but it even provides Ghost with its best line: "His mother was the lighting." None of the subsequent films are as good, unfortunately, in part because they got cheaper and cheaper, but also because of the steady drain of interesting cast members. This film, on the other hand, is loaded. It looks expensive and it has terrific faces. The film arguably belongs to Bela Lugosi, but he's given a run for his money by Basil Rathbone and Lionel Atwill ("One does not easily forget, Herr Baron, an arm torn out by the roots"). It's a fun movie.

232. I don't think I've seen all of Hellraiser (1987, directed by Clive Barker) since it was in theaters. I may have seen snippets of it here and there, but the whole movie? No. In the interim, there are a number of things I had forgotten about it. One is the sheer nastiness of its violence (alleviated somewhat by unconvincing make-up effects). The other is the sheer stupidity of its ending. It's two thirds of a good movie, I think, but, Jesus, do the wheels fly off in the last act. I don't think I ever noticed the fact that the first two thirds of the movie are a deconstruction of the gothic novel with the sexual hang-ups brought to the forefront. The sexual hang-ups of the gothic novel are sadomasochistic, which gives the movie its kick and its kink. The whole thing builds quite a head of steam, but Barker has shown time and again that longer narratives are not his forte. So it is here. The images are strong, but the narrative is a muddle. Still and all, the puzzle box is one of the few movie props that I wouldn't mind owning. So that's something, I guess.

233. The Dark Knight (2008, directed by Christopher Nolan) is a crackerjack crime thriller with disturbing political subtexts. I wish I could like it more, because the performances--particularly Aaron Eckhart's--are superb and the whole is really well made. But I have grave misgivings about it. I've posted a long review of the film here: http://members.tranquility.net/~benedict/darkknight2008.html