And when he faces Lucifer, the original Fallen Angel is brilliantly characterised as well.īut every truly vile antagonist needs a worthwhile hero and D’ Amour and his gang of Harrowers don’t always fit the bill. His easy betrayal of his followers and the casual way he massacres Hell’s inhabitants make him a fantastic villain. There are moments of grisly, utter, personalised horror – the Hell Priest’s treatment of Harry’s mentor and friend, blind, old medium Norma Paine, is appalling enough when minutely described and later, when referenced in passing, even worse. Ruthlessly, murderously eliminating Hell’s existing clergy, any potential rivals and hordes of lesser, demons, our anti-hero is on a quest to find Hell’s founder, Lucifer. Surely a writer as stunningly, gruesomely imaginative as Barker could have come up with something else?įunctioning both as a sequel and a reboot of the Hellbound Heart, the Scarlet Gospels places far more of an emphasis on the Hell Priest than any other story, film or comic.
And he sort of delivers.Įarly on, the title ‘the Hell Priest’ is established and while it far better fits the character, it feels a little uninspired considering the character’s origins date back to the 1970s.
Written/plotted/overseen by Barker himself, the twenty issue ‘Hellraiser’ series published by BOOM! Studios from early 2011 to late 2012 and the lesser, twelve issue ‘Hellraiser: the Dark Watch’ sequel (2013-14) revived ‘Pinhead’s greatest enemy Kirsty Cotton and brought Barker’s occult private eye Harry D’ Amour into the Hellraiser mythos.īarker had long promised that the Scarlet Gospels would give ‘Pinhead’ (an unofficial nickname never used by Barker himself, and one he considers undignified) his proper name. If the films messed about with and sullied the ‘Pinhead’ name, he’s been far better served in comic book form. And the grim procession of sequels that followed may have caused more combined suffering than all the Lemarchand puzzle boxes ever opened.( The third betrayed much of the tone of the first two as it blundered into action film territory. The first film was a genuine classic of British horror cinema, the second a quality sequel.
( Read Andrew Garvey’s reviews of Hellraiser sequels here.) ANDREW GARVEY looks at Clive Barker’s new Hellraiser novel, The Scarlet GospelsĪfter first being publicly announced in the late 1990s, just the second novel to feature one of the most visually iconic characters in horror film history was finally released in May of this year.īarker’s ‘Pinhead’ first appeared in the 1986 novella the Hellbound Heart, was immortalised in the 1988 film adaptation Hellraiser and since then, the character (‘demon to some, angel to others’) has had a long history on screen.
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