Hellraiser (1987) - Part 4: The Engineer and Dragon

Continued from the Part 3 article on Hellraiser which focused on the Cenobites

The main monster of Hellraiser, the fleshy 'Engineer', was actually a last-minute addition according to Bob Keen, 'The Engineer was one of those 'Well I'd really like this?' moments from Clive, when we were already committed to a budget!'.

However, Keen also was enthusiastic about tackling the Engineer, in a discussion with Fangoria, 'What's nice about the Engineer is (...) we had the opportunity to come up with something different, not something that has to walk around on two legs. (The Engineer) took a long time to work out; we wanted to give him some sense of logic in his anatomy.

We made two versions, one fully articulate and one static dummy version. Additionally, it was necessary to have special arm, tail and eye sections for close-ups. I had worked on Return of the Jedi's Jabba the Hutt so the Engineer was more of a process than a problem.'

The articulated Engineer puppet had mechanisms inside to control the eyes, assorted facial expressions and jaws, and required six people to operate. Keen's history of work for Nick Maley proved useful by his own admission, 'I learned from the experience we had on Lifeforce, which had several puppets, that if you get more than 10 people on anything, you lose time and energy, so we devised a multifunction set of controls that one person could operate. I prefer to keep things simple and use four or five smaller sections if possible.'

The Engineer sculpt.

The Engineer was sculpted by Julian Callow and Paul Catling, and operated by John Cormican. Cormican said, 'I'll never forget Paul Catling and William Petty life-casting my backside for the seat that went inside the Engineer (...) We made this amazing creature in the end with all the restrictions of how you could do things in these days. '

'All I had was this creature that I would slip inside and my arms would be in his feet, my head in his tail, and my feet would work his head movements. He was radio-controlled to do his eye movements.'

Several errors were left in the final cut of the Engineer's scenes, namely the trolley pushing the puppet being visible in some shots, as well as a crewmember poking his head out from behind! The Engineer puppets were reused in the sequel Hellbound: Hellraiser II in a deleted scene.

Even more of a last-second addition was the skeletal dragon that briefly appears at the film's end. Keen recalled, ' That was a last minute effect. I remember Clive going 'Wouldn't it be awesome if this bony dragon rised out of the flames', and I remember thinking, 'Yeah, but we're shooting! How are we going to do that!' '.

The task of realizing the dragon fell to Cliff Wallace, 'I remember Bob Keen giving me 30 quid and saying 'Go and buy an interesting looking skull'. So I went to a place called 'Get Stuffed' in Islington, went and bought the weirdest skull I could find, which was the skull of a South American tapir, which cost me £35, and I got told off cos I'd spent another £5!

And then I bought three ibex horns, and I stuck the horns in (the skull's eye sockets), and the rest of it was just two plastic skeletons stuck together to have a really long neck.

It was basically a couple of skeletons stuck together, with some dental dam for wings, and a couple of rods out the back with three or four of us wiggling it to give it some semblance of life. Not very well, really!'

Keen stated, 'It was put together remarkably quickly, in four days, and then thrown into a fire for 10 minutes! (...) The way it's edited, it's works. But it's not something you want to do every single day of the week, an effect that quick!'

The hard work of Bob Keen's team paid off; Hellraiser became a classic of the horror genre, with Geoff Portass's makeup (together with Jane Wildgoose's costuming) for Pinhead remaining a design icon to this day.

Clive Barker praised Keen, 'His work is excellent. Bob is very consistent in his work. He designs material with human and technical fallibillity in mind; if they don't work the first time, you can repeat them.'

The success of Hellraiser, and of course its makeup effects, put Bob Keen's Image Animation on the map; Image would later contribute makeup effects to several cult classics, such as Barker's own Nightbreed, Lair of the White Worm and Dog Soldiers.

True to Keen's intention to foster new blood in Britain's makeup effects industry, Image Animation launched the careers of several prolific British makeup artists who work in the business to this day, on various international productions.

Keen said about the Hellraiser experience, 'This is how I hope to carry on in the future. On this picture more than any other I've worked on, everyone knew what they were aiming for. Also I had the best team I ever put together, which obviously was a plus.'

Sources:

• Fangoria #66, 'Putting the Hell in Hellraiser' by Philip Nutman
  
• Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (2015 documentary)
  

Hellraiser (1987) - Part 3: The Cenobites

Continued from the Part 2 article on Hellraiser which focused on Frank and his victims.

When it came to realizing the Cenobites, Hellraiser's supernatural arbiters of pleasure and pain, Clive Barker stated, 'We've gone out of our way, Bob Keen's team and myself, to design monsters that are not going to resemble anything that has been seen before.'

Bob Keen explained in Fangoria, 'In a way, the Cenobites were the hardest effect to achieve, because they went through so many stages of design. You can create creatures very easily by being elaborate, but we wanted to come up with something simpler, more logical. It's all tied to the pain/pleasure principle, though you're never quite sure why they've done this to themselves. That was why put in the most time and effort designing them.'

'Being an artist, Clive did some initial designs, and we discussed the concept. This was a great help, since he could clearly show me what he was after. At one point we had everyone on the team drawing, so we ended up with around 200 designs. Then Clive went through them, selecting the elements he wanted'.

Keen also explained how even the costumes, which were designed by Jane Wildgoose in collaboration with Barker, were workshopped alongside the makeups, 'There was a conscious effort to steer away from the Mad Max look, that leather punk style. Clive had this image that calls to mind the Spanish Inquisition, and the end result was a reflection of the two; the long coats of the Inquisition, and the leather bondage thing, though much more extreme'.

John Cormican also remembered, 'At first it was the drawings and designs, and doing all this research into material that was shocking and horrific at the time. People weren't pierced in these days, so looking at all these different pictures of piercings was quite shocking.'

While the process of designing the Cenobites was a collaborative one, Cliff Wallace recalled that Barker heavily influenced the design of the Cenobite's leader;

'Keen used to take a group of us to Clive's flat (..) a couple of times a month, and we'd try to come up with ideas for Cenobites. The only ones that Clive had really realized was the one that became known as Pinhead.'

While Pinhead was inspired by Clive Barker's artwork, the realization of his makeup, sported by Doug Bradley, fell to Geoff Portass. Portass explained, 'I'd seen one drawing of Pinhead, and that's all I knew. A man with some scars and spikes sticking out of his head.'

'One of the main stipulations when I was designing Pinhead is that Clive said that he wanted (...) to see Doug through the character. So consquently the makeup is barely 2-3 millimetres thick at the best, as he wanted to keep Doug's face in there'.

Bradley recalled the first time he underwent the makeup application, 'It took about six hours to put the whole thing on. It's a strange experience the first time you go through it. I think I was kind of zoned out and having a mystic experience by the end of it. Not at all inappropiate for playing a part like Pinhead!'

According to Keen, 'The lead Cenobite, the guy with the pins all over his head, had six appliances on his face and four on his body.' These body appliances were designed to be visible through the holes of the leather Cenobite costumes.

Portass explained how Pinhead's makeup was made, 'Pinhead is so called because they were originally pins! When we designed it, I took Clive's original drawing, which had spikes sticking out, more tribal. I changed that to pins (...) and Clive liked the pins, it was very subtle, very thin.

'We got to the point where shooting was going to start, and they took some test photographs (...) and you couldn't see the pins! (...) So we said, we got to go bigger, and we turned them into nails. We found some brass rod (...) from architectural model supplies, so we cut each length rod, and then cut off the tops of lots of brass nails, and superglued them on top of the rods. All we then had to was snip the tiny little pinheads off the pins, and simply insert the rods over the top of the pins. (...) But he was never called Nailhead, he just remained as Pinhead'.

While Bradley would return to the role for several of the sequels, playing Pinhead was originally an uncomfortable experience, 'I've always said that wearing the makeup for me was fine if you were working. It's the killing time that's the issue. Everybody knows that in makeup or out of makeup, the average day on a film set is 10% working and 90% waiting.

'And that's hard enough at the best of times, but you're carrying that makeup around all day, and in the first two movies the costume was not easy to take off, so the costume tended to stay on as well. You just wanted to be able to lift that off and be yourself for a while!'

The first Cenobite under Pinhead's command is the otherwise unnamed 'female Cenobite', whose makeup was designed by Cormican, 'I did a drawing of the female Cenobite in its early stages, which had a spike to its cheek. Clive made some suggestions about bringing down the spike, and opening up the wound in a vagina-like manner!'

The female Cenobite was played by Grace Kirby, who also required a long session in the makeup chair, as Keen stated, 'The female had about eight appliances, requiring approximately three hours to put on'.

Cormican's sculpt for the Female Cenobite appliance.

Between the lengthy makeup application and the heavy leather costume she had to wear, Kirby did not enjoy the Female Cenobite role, and thus did not return for Hellbound: Hellraiser II. Keen remembered her sullen mood on the set;

'I remember the first time the makeup went on, it really upset her to look into the mirror and see the face she'd seen looking back all her life be so different. And I think the other thing that got to her was just how intimidated everybody else was.

It wasn't the makeup effects crew, they knew who she is, and treated her the same, but other people in the crew. It was a hard process for her, but it's quite normal. Female actresses often find, when you turn them into hideous monsters, this is not what they're used to'.

The other two Cenobites were the bluntly nicknamed 'Butterball' and 'Chatterer', both of which were masks and chest appliances. The Chatterer was intended to be hunched over like a chimpanzee - hence the chattering - and in early tests the masks had pointed teeth.

Nicholas Vince, who played Chatterer, recalled why the design was changed, 'In the original makeup he had short pointed teeth, as if they had been filed down. And they were made, but Clive thought that they made him too inhuman, you needed to see that he *was* a human.'

While the Chatterer and Butterball appliances were simpler to achieve, they were worse for the performers to wear as Keen wrly said;

'The Chatterer, whom we nicknamed, 'Poor Bastard', because he can't speak, see or hear, was much easier to sculpt. That was basically an over-the-head appliance, as was the last Cenobite, the one with the shades.'

Vince remembered how exhausting the role was, 'He's probably my best friend and worst nightmare, because I owe so much to having played this part, but the actual physical experience of being put in sensory deprivation was fairly tough!'

The 'Butterball' Cenobite, much like Chatterer, was realized as a full face appliance and a torso appliance to show through the costume. The Butterball and Chatterer appliances were reused in Hellbound: Hellraiser II.

Simon Bamford, who wore the Butterball mask and costume, recalled it as being just as claustrophobic to wear as the Chatterer costume was for Nicholas Vince, with the added embarrassment that it disrupted filming,

'The first time we were led onto the set, the crew didn't know that Nick and I were blind (in the masks). I could only just hear, 'We need you to go over here' and I was going, muffled 'I can't hear!'. Next thing we knew it was 'Action!' and we were like, 'What?''

Sources:

• Fangoria #66, 'Putting the Hell in Hellraiser' by Philip Nutman
  
• Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (2015 documentary)
  

Read more on Hellraiser's special effects in the 'Part 4' article, covering the Engineer and Dragon.

Hellraiser (1987) - Part 2: Frank & His Victims

Continued from the Part 1 article on Hellraiser which focused on Frank's bloody resurrection.

After his resurrection, Frank Cotton would remain in most of his scenes as an undead, flayed apparition. This was a daunting task for Keen's Image Animation crew, as a full body flaying had rarely been attempted in makeup effects.

Even though Clive Barker himself had achieved a rudimentary full body flaying effect for his 1978 short film The Forbidden, it was banking on the film's grainy black and white quality to look more 'real'. Studio films generally did not have that luxury.

Stan Winston had realized a skinless burning victim for 1981's Dead & Buried by making a puppet. Craig Reardon and Michael McCracken similarly utilized puppetry to realize the face-ripping effect for 1982's Poltergeist.

Christopher Tucker's skin-ripping werewolf transformation for 1984's The Company of Wolves was also achieved via puppets, as was Peter Litten and John Humphrey's skinning victim for 1985's Underworld, which was sadly cut from the final film.

(Underworld, incidentally, was written by Clive Barker and was one of the film adaptations of his work that went so awry that it convinced him to direct his own films)

The only realistic full-body flaying achieved with prosthetic makeup by that that point was Dick Smith's skinless bodysuit for Blair Brown in 1980's Altered States; an effect that, again, never made it into the final film.

Some Asian films had attempted full-body flaying effects, with 1983's The Boxer's Omen going with a fakey bodysuit, and 1986's Guinea Pig: Devil Doctor Woman achieving a full chest and face makeup, albeit with the facial appliance being static.

What made Frank Cotton far more complex than any of the above was his many scenes of screentime and lines of dialogue, meaning that puppets, fakey bodysuits and static masks were all completely out of the question.

Keen voiced his frustrations with achieving the flayed Frank Cotton, '(Barker) convinced us, 'Oh I've done skinned people before, they're easy, I've did it for plays'. I don't think he had any idea how complex and difficult, and how involved it is sticking something on the top of someone, but making it look and feel like something's been taken away. It's a normal process in makeup, but this is amplified by ten when its a skinned person'.

There was three stages to Frank Cotton's makeups, with his first being the greyish mummified makeup he sports when newly reborn. Playing Frank in his skinned incarnations was English actor Oliver Smith, who had a lifecast taken of him for the prosthetics.

The Frank prosthetics were primarily the work of Cliff Wallace, who ironically enough had previously worked under Peter Litten and John Humphreys on the earlier Barker adaptation Rawhead Rex. Wallace recounted the inspiration for the Frank makeups;

'My main task on Hellraiser was the various incarnations of Frank, the skinned man. It was a huge learning curve as I’d never sculpted anything more complicated than a mask at this point. Clive had the coolest references too, Vesalius etchings, Joel Peter Witkin photos. Books on piercings and body modifications, stuff that was very underground then. Kind of scary and sexy at the same time. Always a potent combination'.

For the shots of Frank scrambling across the floor, a child actor wore a mask (made from the same sculpt as the Oliver Smith prosthetic) and bodysuit, to give Frank a shrunken, pathetic appearance.

The mummified Frank bodysuit's fleeting appearance in the film.

The second stage Frank makeup was his initial 'flayed' look, and was perhaps the most complex makeup in the film. Oliver Smith had to wear a full facial appliance, as well as a full bodysuit. Keen descibed Smith's ordeal;

'He went through hell. We life cast from head to toe, everybody had a go at sticking pieces together and sculpting pieces. Its the yardage as well. When you got a person, who every single inch of them is covered in either a suit that was reusable, or prosthetics (on the arms and head) that had to be replaced every single day'!

Bob Keen had a grim anecdote about how the flayed Frank makeup was researched, 'Me and Clive went to an autopsy being held in a medical school in London. And I threw up! We watched a doctor, along with a lot of students, actually skin someone, a corpse, for real. I didn't see much of it cos I was (throwing up), but Clive was kind of disappointed with the end result of the real thing. His exact words were, 'It looks like a lot of bacon's stuck on someone.'

John Cormican, who worked on the second-stage Frank makeup, revealed how the ribcage was achieved, 'I worked with Cliff Wallace on the suit for skinned Frank. He had these ribs, and Bob said to me, 'Just make them out of this bit of perspex' (...) I remember thinking, 'this is insane, it will never look good, they should be sculpted!'. So I cut out these ribs (from the perspex sheet) and sanded them and tried to make them look a bit organic.

And then I made these ribs, and got to put them on with Cliff, as I'd help him with the makeup when I could. And now looking at the photographs, with the depth of his chest. When you know what it is, it just looks ridiculous, but when you don't, you notice the depth on this bodysuit.'

The third and final stage of the skinless Frank makeups was partly made by Geoff Portass, achieved as a full face mask and hand appliances. Cliff Wallace had an amusing anecdote on the final Frank makeup, 'The final stage, which was the the surface anatomy stage, which Barry Norman described as looking like a raspberry ripple!'

Image Animation also handled the film's gore, much of it at the bloody hands of Frank. A prosthetic appliance was made for Anthony Allen as the first victim, to simulate his jaw having been dislocated by a hammer blow.

A full facial appliance, with a sagging, decaying appearance, was made for the third of Frank's victims, who escapes after having been partly drained.

A simplistic aging makeup was also applied on Clare Higgins when Frank, now played by Andrew Robinson, drains her life out.

The sequences of disguised Frank required Robinson to wear a facial appliance after his cheek was gouged out, as if the skin was weaker - in the story, its because Frank is literally wearing the skin of Robinson's family man Larry.

Much more elaborate was Frank's demise, when the chains of the Cenobites literally rip him apart. This was realized as a prosthetic appliance, designed to appear as if Robinson was having his face stretched apart, with flaps on to which the prop hooks were attached.

Several dummy bodies were also constructed for the grisly deaths in Hellraiser, the first being an apparition of a dead Larry in a dream sequence, realized as a dummy sculpted in Robinson's likeness.

Another dummy head was made for the scenes of Frank draining the life from his victims, by shoving his head in their neck. Several prosthetic 'skin' close-ups were made for the shots of the hooks tearing at their victims.

A prop rat corpse was also fabricated, for the shot of Frank tearing its skin off with a knife, as well as the skin fragment's of the original Frank's torn apart face.

The dead Larry dummy head.

The life-draining dummy head and neck.

The skinned rat prop.

The torn Frank face props.

More elaborate was the mummified corpse of the first victim, sculpted to have a twisted, sagging visage.

A grisly flayed corpse dummy was also made to represent the unfortunate Larry's fate. This particular prop ended up on the cover of Fangoria #67.

Note Fangoria's error; this is neither meant to be Frank *or* his resurrection!

A flayed dummy head was also made to depict Julia's fate, seen towards the film's end.

Lastly, was Frank's demise, realized as a dummy head in Robinson's likeness designed to tear apart, and a dummy body to blow up. The two effects would be cut together in editing to appear as if it was the same effect.

Cliff Wallace stated, 'The dummy (body) was blown apart by special effects. I remember it was just a very simple polyfoam dummy. Probably didn't look that great in real-life, but looks fantastic in the film, and you just see it explode.'

The head-splittng Frank/Larry dummy head.

The exploding Frank/Larry dummy body.

Sources:

• Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (2015 documentary)
  
• Cliff Wallace interivew on HorrorTourGuide.com
  

Read more on Hellraiser's special effects in the 'Part 3' article, covering the iconic Pinhead and his fellow Cenobites.