“Hellraiser” Is the terrifying aesthetic the ultimate pleasure or the ultimate pain?

Ultimate pleasure = ultimate pain

The story begins when Frank (Sean Chapman) obtains a puzzle box called Lemarchand's Box in Morocco. Frank, a hedonist, intends to use the box to open the door to another world and obtain the "ultimate pleasure". However, his body is torn apart by the Cenobites and he disappears from this world. What awaits him is a purgatory of sadism and masochism, where the ultimate pleasure is the ultimate pain. The Lemarchand Box is a matching app that searches for masochists who can become partners for the extreme sadists, the Cenobites.

However, even for Frank, who has had his fill of pleasure, the "ultimate pleasure"that Hellraiser" was "Sadomasochists from Beyond the Grave." The exploration they seek ultimately ends up being nothing but Inferno for ordinary people.

Doug Bradley, who played Pinhead, revealed that when he asked Clive Barker about his role, he was advised to "think of him as a hospital administrator, a surgeon. There are no wards, only operating rooms. He's not just the one who wields the scalpel, he's also the one who keeps the timetable." (*2) The motif of the Catholic Church influenced the design of the Cenobites, so they are probably some kind of saviors.

Hellraiser© 1987 New World Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

It's also very interesting that the key item to contacting the Cenobites is a puzzle box. Clive Barker had this to say about the idea:

"Drawing circles on the floor with magical symbols felt old-fashioned to me, so I went back to something I remembered from my childhood. My grandfather was a ship's chef and brought back strange little toys from the Far East, one of which was a puzzle box, which fascinated me for a long time. (...) So the idea of ​​a puzzle box being presented to the person who would open the gates of Inferno came quite naturally." (*3)

Lemarchand's box is not a Pandora's box that brings about disaster, but a key item to access different cultures and religions. An entrance to a new world, an encounter with an unknown universe. It is similar to the procedure to access the strange movie "Hellraiser."

clever plot, casting