Title：Marie O'Regan (ed) - Hellbound Hearts # with Paul Kane (ed) (v5.0).epub

Introduction: Raising Hell, Again

Stephen Jones

For many of us who worked on it, Hellraiser was a life-changing experience.

For Ashley Laurence, who made her movie debut as ingénue heroine Kirsty Cotton, it lead to a successful acting career that includes three Hellraiser sequels, two screen adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft stories, and a third entry in the Warlock series. She is also a very talented artist.

After portraying the coldly homicidal Julia Cotton, Clare Higgins has gone on to become one of Britain’s most acclaimed stage actresses, winning numerous prestigious awards. Meanwhile, Oliver Parker, who portrayed one of the luckless moving men (a role he basically reprised in the sequel), is now better known as the director of such successful British movies as An Ideal Husband (1999), The Importance of Being Earnest (2002), St. Trinian’s (2007), and a new version of Dorian Gray (2009).

Although originally conceived as a minor character with only a few minutes’ screen time, Doug Bradley’s Lead Cenobite became the character that most resonated with audiences—rechristened simply “Pinhead” for the sequels. The actor created one of the most eloquent and iconic cinematic monsters in popular culture and has become indelibly identified with the role.

For Doug and some of the other Cenobite actors, it has also led to a profitable side career attending conventions all over the world and signing stills of themselves buried under the time-consuming prosthetic makeup.

With Hellraiser, Bob Keen consolidated his skills as a special makeup effects designer, later expanding his talents into special effects and directing, while for producer Christopher Figg it was the start of a career that has led to such box-office hits as Trainspotting (1996) and Dog Soldiers (2002).

Of course, Clive Barker was already established as the author of the six groundbreaking Books of Blood collections and the novel The Damnation Game before taking on the mantle of both screenwriter and first-time director. He has subsequently enjoyed a successful career as a bestselling novelist, playwright, painter, and film producer—most notably of the Oscar-winning Gods and Monsters (1998).

And then there’s me, listed way down at the end of the credits under “unit publicist” as “Steve Jones,” Hellraiser was the first movie I ever worked on. John Carpenter had sown the seeds while I was interviewing him in Los Angeles, and upon my return to London, I contacted Clive—to whom I had been introduced a couple of years earlier by our mutual friend, horror writer Ramsey Campbell.

Clive liked the idea, and after meeting Chris Figg, I got the job. As a freelance film journalist I had visited the sets of a number of films and had often come away disappointed. So for a relatively low-budget film like Hellraiser, I decided to do something radically different.

I invited numerous journalists from all types of publications—but particularly the specialist genre periodicals—down on set to interview key personnel during filming. It helped immeasurably that the location was only two stops away on the London Underground from where I was living in North London at the time. (If only getting to work on a movie was always so easy!)

I also created extensive press kits during shooting so that the writers had all the background material they needed for their articles way ahead of time, and I produced T-shirts and button badges (“There Are No Limits”) that we gave away to visitors and offered as competition prizes.

As a result, Hellraiser received unprecedented publicity for a film of its budget and expectations—while it was still in production. As planned, this extended coverage led to a heightened sense of expectancy long before the movie was released.

Even though my career as a writer and editor was starting to take off at this time, I also had a promising future as a producer and director of television documentaries and commercials. So I used my contacts to shoot an EPK (electronic press kit) featuring behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the principle cast and crew. Again, this was almost unheard of at that time for a small film like Hellraiser. (And here’s a piece of trivia for the fans: Many of the interviews on that EPK were conducted by a young journalist just starting out who wanted the experience. His name was Neil Gaiman.)

Anyway, when it finally opened in September 1987, Hellraiser was both a critical and commercial hit thanks to its literate script, strong performances, and stylish visuals. I also like to think that my innovative prepublicity campaign helped in some small way toward its success.

I never returned to my old occupation. Instead, I went on to work on a number of other low-budget horror movies on both sides of the Atlantic, including the next two Hellraiser films (or “the good sequels” as I like to think of them). Although I had very different experiences working on Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) at Pinewood Studios, just outside London, and Hel