Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Hellraiser

 Off to the video shop with me to return with nine DVDs and VHS!! Have just watched four!! After visiting some of the better looking horror blogs, and there are some good ones out there, I thought I'd hire some of the films I saw as a teenager.
 It is amazing how many films you can see and forget! Some of those blogs have brought some real memories flooding back for me. I didn't realise how many horrors I saw as a young fella. It also shows how many I didn't see and how many I have never heard of. I have admitted in some of my earlier posts that I'm not a horror fan per se, but I do occasionally endure, oops, partake!
 Well I rented Hellraiser because I saw this in 1988 in Wellington with a cousin and a couple of his mates. By god I'll tell you now that it scared the living daylights out of me. Twenty three years later I couldn't remember much except the opening few scenes. I vividly remember the guy opening the box and the chains with fish hooks flying out of the walls and jagging him. I also remember when he was brought back to life by the dripping blood on the floor boards. And of course the torn apart face being pieced back together. But that was it.
 What I saw just hours ago made me laugh! And hard. How the hell it scared me  is beyond belief now! My god how it has dated!!!!!!!! And that is the crux of it. In its day the special effects were on the cutting edge but today look extremely lame. But because they are dated doesn't mean they are irrelevant. I love watching older films to see how far special effects have developed. By god they have come along way since 1987 when this was made.
 Hellraiser is interesting in that it doesn't have the obligatory and cliqued 80's horror boob shots. Hmmmmm..... I was a teenager then so now I remember why I went to horrors, it is all coming back to me!!!! 
 I remember seeing Hellraiser 2 the next year and being equally as scared!. Don't think I'll bother spending the money on that one as they really are just so dated. But what great fun to visit the past. I can see why horrors have the following they have. Even dated stuff like this is still viewed today by afficianados of the genre.
 Scary once, and I mean in 1988 this was GENUINELY scary, but not anymore. I found both Paranormal Activity films creepy and looking back at Hellraiser I wonder, how will they  stack up in twenty three years time when I give them a nostalgic viewing?

Visit Emily C at The quest to watch every movie made ( great title for a blog and it makes me wish I'd been more imaginative in naming my own,  and I hope she succeds because I'm trying to do the same thing!) for a good horror selection, and Horror movie a day, which is soley horror orientated and damn good. Both have clickable links on my blog.

Click here for more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellraiser 

2 comments:

  1. " Scary once, and I mean in 1988 this was GENUINELY scary, but not anymore."

    Agree with you on this one. I saw 'Hellraiser', up until the fourth installment, but just kind of gave up on it. As a film, I was never quite into it, even though I very much liked Clive Barker's novels.

    I would like to see, however, a well-made remake.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I never saw past the first two which I saw at the flicks. They were scary once but horrors are prone to dating especially if they are special effects heavy.

    ReplyDelete