Free The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy by Paul Kane Page A

the human body and the subject of life itself, which preoccupied his studies at the university of Ingolstadt, Germany.
    But his greatest obsession was to “bestow animation upon lifeless matter,” which he finally accomplished by creating a monster out of body parts from graveyards and slaughterhouses, and passing electricity through it to bring it to life. This abomination of nature seeks refuge in a country hovel where a blind man and his two children reside. There he learns to read from the books on the shelves, one of them being Milton’s Paradise Lost , which allows him identification with both the first man created, Adam, and the angel cast out of Heaven, Satan. When he reveals himself to the blind man’s family, though, the monster is spurned and in a rage kills Frankenstein’s brother. Frankenstein eventually finds him, and the monster demands that he build him a female companion. Frankenstein complies but when he destroys this work, the monster kills Frankenstein’s new bride, Elizabeth, in revenge. The story ends with the doctor chasing his creation across the North Pole—actually the framing device for the book—but perishing himself.
    In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , the doctor becomes a monster himself, a deformed, stooping murderer, after drinking one of his own concoctions. The two beings, Jekyll and Hyde, are at complete odds with one another. The doctor has no control over the transformations, falling to sleep as himself and waking as Hyde, and he fears Jekyll will take over and remain indefinitely. At the end the potions he uses to turn himself back fail to work and he runs out of the salt needed for the mixture, so he is forced to commit suicide in order to free both Jekyll and Hyde from their torment. In these two stories the physicians are doing what they do with the best of intentions, for the good of humanity—in Frankenstein’s case to try to prevent death, in Jekyll’s case to separate the two halves of man, good and evil. But the results of playing God in this way are the same.
    Channard is both Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll at two different points in the film. His obsessive tendencies, like those of the two doctors mentioned, are evident by the set cast and crew would come to call The Obsession Room. In here we see various photographs of occult symbols, pencil drawings of faces in pain, organs in jars, extracts from Aleister Crowley on the walls, 1 more symbols on a blackboard, puzzles, anatomical drawings of a skinless man, Egyptian markings, drawings of the pyramids, skeletons, an altar, a replica skinned body in a glass case and the Lament Configuration boxes in bell jars. Kyle also finds a scrapbook filled with related articles belaboring the point, including “The Labyrinth of the Mind,” “Children of the Vortex: Puberty and the Link with Psychic Phenomena” (giving us another reason for his interest in the young Tiffany), and “Is Death the Fourth Dimension?” There is also the sepia photograph of the human who used to be Pinhead, along with a diagram of a man’s head cut into squared segments, which Kirsty finds later. We also see a book on the side called The Internal Inferno with a picture of Magritte’s famous painting, False Mirror Original (1928), on the front cover (more eye imagery and references to mirrors). This has been Channard’s line of inquiry for some time, or as Kyle whispers, “Jesus, he must have been into this shit for years.”
     

    Channard follows in the tradition of Dr. Jekyll, who releases the beast within. Hellbound: Hellraiser II still (photograph credit: Murray Close).
    That patience is about to be rewarded, as he is on the verge of reanimating his own carrion, just like Frankenstein; the only difference is there’s no electricity involved this time: just blood. He “creates” Julia by letting Browning slash himself open on her mattress, but like Frankenstein he still constructs a monster, one which starts its new life by ravaging Browning. Julia