kagablog

directed by Harmony Korine

screenplay by Clive Barker

soundtrack by Scott Walker

starring: David Blaine, Maggie Cheung, Dakota Fanning,…Robinson and Antony Perkins as Pinhead

Drawing derision from the American Censorship board for its flagrant depictions of occultish sadism, Harmony Korine’s 16mm remake of Clive Barker’s debut film has attracted much speculation at its premier in Berlin this year. Starring a sweaty David Blaine as Frank, a man seduced by a magical box into the realm of the sickening Cenobites, the movie rapidly spirals into a kaleidoscope of maniacal and truly surreal gore. The shock value is tripled by the fact that many of Franks acts of sadism are ‘real’ magical acts, performed by Blaine himself. Indeed, the scene where he convinces mongoloid boy to use a crossbow on himself [a scene not included in the book, but hastily imrovised by Barker after a drunken episode with Blaine!] must stand out as one of the truly avant-garde shockers of the last ten years. The choice of maverick Polish film-maker Jan Svankmeyer as the films special effects director is also a marvel. Svankmeyer, renknown for his stop-motion epics [including a fabulous rendition of Alice In Wonderland] unleashes the full fury of the Cenobites unearthly realm on unsuspecting veiwers. The medium of ageing 16mm stock, rather than detracting from the atmosphere, spookily enhances the dream-like quality of the Cenobites world. Described by Clive Barker as ‘explorers in the further regions of experience’ the Cenobites inhabit a parrallel dimension of inhuman torture and alien vice. Svankmeyer’s depictions of the Cenobites include enormous, automated wooden puppets [constructed by the same company responsible for the life-size puppets in the Broadway production of Disney’s The Lion King]. These monstrous apparitions roam derelict basements [filmed in real half-destroyed locations in war-gutten Serbia!] clothed in offal and human intestines, spouting in quasi-shakespearian monologues and indulging in little stop-motion visceral miracles. Scott Walker’s grotesque industrial soundtrack peppers this visual deluge with a cacophany of gutted tape noise and metallic shrieking, creating a neural headspace which for one of the first times in modern cinema argues true horror against the genre which flaunts it… The casting of Antony Perkins as the totemic Pinhead character was originally critiscied by die-hard fans of the original as a sell-out in favour of cheap horror typecasting, but under the direction of Korine and Svankmeyer, Perkins blossoms, achieving and indeed transcending the feverish heights once glimpsed in his portrayel of a sex-mad priest in Ken Russel’s Crimes of Passion. As if this all wasn’t enough, The film also features Maggie Cheung as Frank’s unwitting mistress, who engages in a tortured affair with the half formed monster he has become and seduces strangers to the attic to feed Frank’s insatiable bloodlust. Her tortured and necrotic obsession with Frank colours the potent imagery with an emotional landscape as nerve-racking as any of the visual effects. ..Robinson [of Dirty Harry and Deep Space Nine] reprises his role as Cheung’s unsuspecting husband, spouting the famous ‘Jesus Wept’ line with a delicious darkness. There is also, lest we forget to mention, a wonderfully haunting performance by a speechless Dakota Fanning as the demure little daughter of Robinson, who gets lost in the dimensions of the magic box, terrified by all the monsters who lurk in the attic, and the dimension next door…

All in all Korine’s Hellraiser, which began as a true foray from the horror genre into the avant garde, instead annihilates it’s self inflicted definitions and succeeds in redefining the horror genre itself. A truly demonic little masterpiece!