The Hellbound Heart

Not only that, but I'm going to be doing a little something different.

For the first time in High on Horror History, episode 150, I'm going to be talking about a novel.

That's right, I'm talking about Clive Barker's biggest success, The Hellbound Heart, the book that would eventually be adapted to the big screen to become Hellraiser.

But first, our segment.

It's one called The Engineer.

It's the only one with a name.

I'm pretty sure that one's either supposed to be Satan or God, but it's hard to tell when you're reading a Clive Barker novel.

Kirstie takes the box back to Rory's house to find that Frank has stolen Rory's skin.

So long way of saying I'm starting.

I'm going to circle back and read The Hellbound Heart, which is Clive Barker's book that that Hellraiser was based on.

But I was able to find a book that came out.

I think it was in 2016 that I had never heard of.

Hellraiser opens theatrically in the United Kingdom, and a small brass puzzle box makes desire look like a door with no handle on the inside.

Clive Barker adapts his novella The Hellbound Heart for his feature directing debut.

Frank Cotton solves the lament configuration while searching for sensations beyond anything ordinary life seems to be able to offer.

What answers him are the Cenobites.

We are talking about the immediate visceral shock, a complete assault on the senses on page one.

The prime example the article offers is Clive Barker's 1986 novella, The Hellbound Heart.

Oh, man.

This is the origin story of the Hellraiser franchise and the Cenobites.

It is a calculated juxtaposition.

Consider the alternative.

If Barker starts at a level 10 of intensity in The Hellbound Heart, the baseline of the novel is extreme.

Right.

So the reason I bring this up, obviously, is because Hellraiser does explore sex.

bdsm and the use of uh sex to gain power so prior to hellraiser clive had produced two non-sync sound shorts salome and the forbidden so these film experiments nor his turn at theater or illustration had like garnered him much success but it was in like 1984 where his collection of short stories the books of blood became widely successful and he became a successful writer And so in 1986, a second entry into the Books of Blood, The Hellbound Heart, was published at 186 pages.

And what this novella was initially about was it concerned an amoral sybarite.

I had to look this up.

So it is this novella that would form the basis for Hellraiser.

And Clive very much had a film in mind when it was written.

So Clive Barker stated that he wanted to make the Hellbound Heart into a film because he wanted to prevent low quality adaptations of his work being made by other people.

He was very critical of two different adaptations of his previous works, 1985's Underworld and 1986's Rawhead Rex, which secretly I like, both directed by George Pavlou and wanted to prevent this from happening again.

Rated R.

The Hellraiser franchise, created by author Clive Barker, began as a work of literature, namely a 1986 novella titled The Hellbound Heart.

The following year, Barker himself wrote and directed Hellraiser, which became a commercial success and is now considered a horror classic.

Three sequels would be produced and released to theaters over the following decade, each less successful financially than the one prior.

Aye.

It's in my book.

That one, that's the siren song.

That's what Matt Damon's hearing.

I mean, Rawlins talks about the clash and, you know, this is what Joe Strummer trained you for, you know.

I think Coyle kind of trained me for the apocalypse and it kind of trained me for AIDS as well.

We're in really difficult times and they were a really interesting boathole as a queer guy to be able to kind of also maybe pan back a little and say that actually there's something quite kind of esoteric happening right now as well and it's quite Jungian and as I'd mentioned as well you know their Open the Bloodgate booklet is really interesting as a bit of a

You know, it's maybe a bit of an A to Z

And so some fun facts real quick.

So Clive Barker, first film he directed, he wrote and directed the film based off his novella, The Hellbound Heart.

But fun fact in his writing credits, Candyman, the story, he wrote the story that the movie was based off of, which was called The Forbidden.

Cool.

People love the second one, by the way.

Really? People are saying that's the better one.

maybe we should check it out that one is called hellbound which i then caught was from like the novel novella the hellbound heart which is funny they made them change the title because they thought it sounded like a romance

Well, I mean, it's a borderline between pleasure and pain.

Mm-hmm

... uh, Hellbound Heart, Cabal, which informs, um, uh, uh, Nightbreed, the film, uh, which definitely is a thing that has influence here.

I mean, you know, both the, the short story that goes into that and then the film that resulted from that, um, were very sort of like back of mind for me for this book.

They've li- those...

[laughs]

So I need to...

And I have read Hellbound Heart, but I can rem- I can remember nothing about it 'cause the film kind of overwhelmed it.

Yes.