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 ill-fated skinned Denholm Elliot for 1985's Underworld, which was 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 ill-fated 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!

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.