Hellraiser

The reason the movie works as well as it does is because of its human characters.

Horror is at its best when it's relentless. Clive Barker knows this, and his debut feature as director is so gleefully vicious, so relentlessly grim that it's going to be very hard for fans of the genre not to like it.

With Hellraiser, Clive Barker created one of the most genuinely disturbing movies of the last 20 years.

Utterly bizarre and entirely ridiculous - and yet effective, an imaginative guignol festival, like the goriest of soap operas, in which one wrong move opens a portal to hell.

Barker's vision cribs equally from the mythos of vampires and zombies, but Hellraiser's overriding ridiculousness (and nagging budgetary shortcomings) can't disguise the fact that the movie is at least unwittingly a product of the AIDS crisis.

Minor grisly fun, but don't expect the movie to linger when it's over.

Clive Barker's original adaptation of his Hellbound Heart novella, Hellraiser, remains a tightly-paced genre classic, despite its narrative flaws.

The acclaimed young fiction writer turned filmmaker, Clive Barker, here wears his heart on his sleeve -- along with his brains and his intestines... By pushing his horror gimmicks to the limit, Barker becomes a pain for the audience.

Sexy, gooey and filled with imagination, Hellraiser is Clive Barker's magnum opus.

...a demystifying experience, especially if the movie’s Pinhead poster was a staple of your youth.