Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Pursuit of the Flesh
Not just Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, meaning his intellectual property, but a comic actually written by Clive Barker (and Christopher Monfette). Which I can’t say pays off very much as I didn’t care for the writing. There’s a lot of heavy breathing from the Cenobites that’s all just mumbo-jumbo. If you go back and watch the first movie, Pinhead doesn’t actually talk much. Just a handful of lines. In Pursuit of the Flesh he’s making speeches like this: “It is fruitless to wonder how this came to pass . . . History has no place in hell. We live our deaths within a final, unending chapter. Unraveling, unfolding, forever. And there is no prologue for us but pain.” There’s a lot of this stuff, and while it may sound cool, it means exactly nothing.
As far as I could understand it, the flesh being pursued here was that of poor Kirsty Cotton. Why? I think it has something to do with Pinhead wanting to become human again and he needs to provide her as some kind of blood sacrifice to the demonic powers that be. But I don’t know. And the reason I don’t know is that this book only contains the first four comics in a series and it’s not a complete story arc. It breaks off with a cliffhanger. So I’m not sure what was really going on.
If you want gore, you got it. Those chains with the hooks at the end get a lot of play. Many bodies are torn apart, and the art renders it all quite well. It’s a good looking comic. The story, however, was hard to follow. Something about a team of hell-hunters who each have experience dealing with the Cenobites trying to turn the tables and shut them down. Kirsty seems to be their leader. But it all’s kind of hazy and I didn’t grasp the mythology. The Clockwork Cenobite was a neat addition though.
Not sure I’ll keep going with this series. I’m curious, but not eager. And I watched all the movies!
Alex Good 
That doesn’t sound nice at all.
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The Cenobites aren’t nice people! I wish the story had been more coherent though. The mythology of this franchise has been way overworked.
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I don’t know anything about it other than there’s a bloke who stupidly stuck pins in his head 🙄. No wonder the world is going down the toilet.🤷♀️
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Well, he had pins stuck in his head. But he was asking for it so it comes to the same thing.
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You watched all the movies, even the one with the chubby Pinhead? That was a travesty in and of itself…
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Actually I guess I only watched the first spate of movies, up to 2005. Haven’t seen the later ones. I heard they were kind of dreadful and for some reason they seem hard to track down. Did Pinhead gain weight? That’s sad.
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They WERE dreadful. They ended up getting different actors for Pinhead since Doug Bradly retired or was sick or too old or something. And one of the guys was chubby. He was totally miscast as Pinhead.
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I’d still like to see them sometime. Just because I’m as big a glutton for punishment as the idiots who keep opening the magic box. But like I say, they’re not easy to find.
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Oh, no worries. I watched them after all, so I can’t blame anyone else.
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I watched the first movie. Maybe the second. I saw Nightbreed. Barker’s love affair with ugly creatures does nothing for me. Nor does the Hellraiser mythology. I have, however, read the Books of Blood. No favorites, but seems like there were one or two good ones in there.
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I thought the first movie was a classic. Things went downhill sharply after that. I’ve only read bits and pieces from the Books of Blood. I think that’s where the Rawhead Rex story came from.
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Rawhead Rex, the Midnight Meat Train, that story about the warring tribes of people who climb on top of each other to form gigantic humanoid combatants…..
I’ve also got a few of his novels, one of which is enormous, but really haven’t ever been interested enough to (try to) read them.
I liked Hellraiser when I first saw it quite a bit. With Barker himself directing it had an unusual feeling about it that resonated. But I saw it again years later and wasn’t as impressed. So not really sure what I’d think about it now.
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Rawhead Rex was a funny movie. Was disappointed by Nightbreed, to put it mildly. I’m sure I’ve seen The Midnight Meat Train but now can’t remember much about it.
I find the first film holds up well. It has a low-budget, indie sensibility that’s not quite like other horror films of the period. It really stood out at the time and still does. Plus Andrew Robinson.
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I thought the first film was pretty good, but I too thought they kinda fell off a cliff after the original. The second and third didn’t get it done for me..maybe because the first one set the bar high. Yes, this sounds like Pinhead got a good agent who now has him getting paid by the word in the comic. I am a bit curious about seeing the artwork of the body parts flying about, and that is not a sentence I thought I’d be typing this day…or any day.
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You would think with eleven films in the franchise and such a good start they would have come up with something even passably decent as a follow-up. But not even close.
The chains-and-hooks stuff here are a highlight. They even cut through cars and subways.
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😱
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