Book Review: The Hellbound Heart (1986)

I've recently become interested in the Hellraiser franchise after many years, writing a review of the first movie and how I would have done the movie. The first movie, for those not familiar with the franchise, was inspired by the novella The Hellbound Heart. Recently my friends James R. Tuck and Danielle Tuck started a new podcast and they gave a glowing review to The Hellbound Heart. Danielle strongly recommend I buy it, so here goes...

The Plot

A solid but boring man named Rory (Larry in the film) and his bored wife Julia move into a house previously owned by Rory's late grandmother and now jointly owned by Rory and his brother Frank. Frank, however, has been missing for some time. A selfish hedonist, Frank had grown bored with the usual debauchery and sought out a certain puzzle box rumored to contain wonders and pleasures beyond human comprehension. Unfortunately, he should have been careful what he wished for, because the demonic Cenobites' idea of pleasure and his don't really overlap.

Freed from Hell by an accident--albeit as a skeletal skinless monster--Frank manipulates Julia (with whom he had a brief affair before her wedding to Rory) into murdering people for him to feed on and regenerate his body. Unfortunately for him, Rory's friend Kirsty is onto them...

The Good

*Barker is very good at writing vivid, descriptive scenes. The story opens with Frank solving the mystical puzzle box has a lot of really good descriptive imagery, including a bare light-bulb pulsing with the mournful toll of the bell that heralds the Cenobites' arrival. Another scene from Frank's point of view in which he recounts his year of sensual torment at the Cenobites' hands is also well-done.

*The multiple scenes from Frank's point of view confirm my earlier observations from my film review. Frank is so totally depraved that even a year of torment in Hell by beings he summoned thinking they'd bring him new extremes of pleasure hasn't turned him from his course. Rather than being sobered by the experience and wanting to turn over a new leaf, Frank definitely intends to resume his immoral lifestyle once he's freed. And some of his thoughts toward Julia suggest that the whole "pleasure that becomes pain and pain that becomes pleasure" that this story's Hell is full of have given him some ideas about what to do with her.

I'm reminded of the distinction commentators on 2 Corinthians 7:10 make over "godly sorrow" vs. "worldly sorrow." Frank regrets his bad decisions that lead to him being kidnapped by a bunch of extra-dimensional leather freaks but has no sorrow for his bad behavior generally. This behavior, among other things, caused great grief to his parents, included him cuckolding the brother from whom he was once inseparable, apparently caused him to run up a lot of debt, and even involved smuggling heroin and doing "small favors" to get his hands on the puzzle box. These "small favors" are implied to be immoral or criminal in nature, but he doesn't regret those even though he clearly regrets getting involved with the Cenobites. He is clearly, totally 100% selfish.

*I saw many scenes, concepts, etc. that I recognized as the nuclei of scenes from the movie. Obviously they'd be there since the movie is an adaptation of the book, but Barker, who was in charge of the whole movie, was able to develop his imagery, story, ideas, etc. more fully.

*The book introduces the idea that the prisoners of the Cenobites are aware of and interact with each other. Frank apparently learned of the possibility of escape from "whispers" of other inmates. I don't remember this in the original film, although you see a bit of in Hellbound: Hellraiser II (the only sequel Barker was involved with).

*At 164 pages long, it's a pretty quick read.

The Bad

*Some of the scenes are far more bony and could easily be elaborated on. This is especially disappointing considering the vivid description he employs elsewhere in the story. Contrast the opening damnation of Frank Cotton with Kirsty's initial confrontation with the Cenobites in the hospital. The former scene is very vivid and well-described, but the latter is, well...

“You can’t do this,” she insisted. 

It moved toward her nevertheless. A row of tiny bells, depending from the scraggy flesh of its neck, tinkled as it approached. The stink it gave off made her want to heave. “Wait,” she said. 

“No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering.” 

“The box,” she said in desperation. “Don’t you want to know where I got the box?” 

“Not particularly.” 

“Frank Cotton,” she said. “Does the name mean anything to you? Frank Cotton.”

The Cenobite smiled. “Oh yes. We know Frank.” 

“He solved the box too, am I right?” 

“He wanted pleasure, until we gave it to him. Then he squirmed.” 

"If I took you to him . . .”

"He’s alive then?” 

“Very much alive.”

"And you’re proposing what? That I take him back instead of you?” 

“Yes. Yes. Why not? Yes.” 

The Cenobite moved away from her. The room sighed. “I’m tempted,” it said. Then: “But perhaps you’re cheating me. Perhaps this is a lie, to buy you time.”

“I know where he is, for God’s sake,” she said. “He did this to me!” She presented her slashed arms for its perusal. 

“If you’re lying”— it said—“ if you’re trying to squirm your way out of this—” 

“I’m not.” 

“Deliver him alive to us then . . .” 

She wanted to weep with relief. 

“. . . make him confess himself. And maybe we won’t tear your soul apart.”

Compare the above, in which I only got the vaguest notions Kirsty was frightened or the Cenobite was something terrifying, with the movie adaptation below. The Cenobites make their appearance at around five minutes in...



The movie scene displays Pinhead in his dark grandeur and shows Kirsty's visceral terror. The sequence in the books is so monotone, especially in comparison.

*It has some of the same flaws of the film, including a lack of on-screen confrontation between the undead Frank and his brother.

*The e-book is rather expensive for a novella, around $6 or so. I've gotten full-length novels like Marko Kloos' FRONTLINES novels Terms of Enlistment, Lines of Departure, and Angles of Attack for a fair bit less. Is Barker's talent worth the higher price? It's good, but worth that much? The Hellbound Heart isn't even a full novel.

*I liked the film's dynamic of Kirsty as Larry's daughter and Julia as her stepmother better than Kirsty as a platonic friend of Rory (who seems to have romantic feelings for him) who doesn't like Julia. Kirsty knowing Frank as her uncle is a lot less forced than Kirsty having met Frank during the preparations for Rory and Julia's wedding four years before. The familial dynamic also makes Frank even more revolting, as in the films he seems to have incestuous intentions toward his own niece.

The Verdict

Generally good and a worthy seed for which the very creepy tree known as the film Hellraiser grew. However, it's not as good as its reputation, even though it does have a surprisingly high amount of reread value.

8.0 out of 10.

My First Podcast Interview...

After lunch Wednesday, my friend Nick interviewed me for his Dudeletter podcast.  Apparently I'm the third audio interview he's recorded.  In addition to asking me about how I wrote, why I wrote, etc., we discussed two of my specific projects a fair bit and touched on a third.

First, we discussed my novel Battle for the Wastelands.  Nick, along with Jeff Baker and Sean C.W. Korsgaard, was one of my beta readers that I had take a look at the completed first draft after I ran the entire novel through my Lawrenceville writing group and before I bring it in its entirety before my Kennesaw writing group Thursday.  He had some good ideas, like officially making the last chapter an epilogue and increasing protagonist Andrew Sutter's soul-searching when he's forced to re-evaluate his prejudices against "the trading folk."

(The trading folk are an ethnic group resembling a combination of Jews, Gypsies, and Native Americans.  They call themselves the Menceir, like our world's Irish Travelers.  The neutral term for them is "trading folk," but the racial slur is "pikey," which is an anti-Gypsy/Traveler slur in our world.  The stereotypes Andrew associates with them are generally similar to those held by anti-Semites, with a sprinkling of anti-Gypsy views too.  Having the hero of my story starting out as a racist is not an endorsement of racism--heroes need flaws.)

The idea of military service discouraging racism is something borne out in real life.  When I was in either very late middle school or high school, I read an article about the Marine Corps training regimen in Parade magazine, which comes with the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  The article referenced a recruit who went in a skinhead and came out saying "there are cool people of all races."  William Broyles Jr., who wrote the film Castaway, also wrote a column I read in the AJC about how reviving the draft would mix the different races and classes and reduce social division.  Although I don't think that's sufficient justification for conscription, I don't see a flaw in the logic.

We also discussed Grendel as a villain and Andrew as a hero.  Grendel is to a large degree amoral--he'll do what he views as necessary to secure his objectives.  Although these objectives aren't necessarily bad, the means he uses often are.  Meanwhile, there are moral lines Andrew will not, under any circumstances, cross.  Furthermore, Grendel's motivations are also rather selfish, while Andrew's will eventually become more altruistic.

We also discussed what I call the "Afrikanerverse," the world where my published short story "Coil Gun" and my as-yet-unpublished story "Picking Up Plans In Palma" takes place.  We briefly touched on how I'm transforming "Coil Gun" into a movie script based on S.M. Stirling's advice that short stories make good movies and books make good TV shows and discussed the Afrikanerverse in general.

One thing we touched on was how, during this world's 20th Century, the world divided into two camps.  Fascism never arose and the USSR, which started World War II in an alliance with Japan (I don't think there was a Russo-Japanese War in this world) and the Qing Dynasty of (northern) China was defeated, nipping Communism in the bud.

What resulted was a geopolitical confrontation between the League of Democracies, led by the United States and including the great European powers Britain, France, Germany (unified in 1848 under little-l liberal leaders), and post-Communist Russia, against the Afrikaner Confederation and its allies, including the Persian Empire, a Sikh state in northwestern India, and the Taiping regime in southern China.  The Afrikaners and their allies have formed what I tentatively call "the Self-Determination Compact"--basically a coalition of states who feel threatened by the spread of "American" ideals. 

The battle lines of this world's Cold War are not centered on different economic systems, but something more basic.  The League of Democracies is driven by egalitarian, Enlightenment-based little-l liberalism much like the ideals that the United States is based on, while the ideology of the "Self-Determination Compact" can essentially be described as "authoritarian traditionalism."  This does not mean there aren't any Enlightenment influences on the SDC states--the Afrikaner Confederation has democratic freedoms and the like for the white (to varying degrees) ruling class, albeit marred by religious discrimination, while the Sikh state practices a weighted voting system much like pre-WWI Prussia rather than being a straight-up despotism.

These two value systems, in a way, transcend religion.  Most of the states of the League of Democracies have largely Christian populations.  The Afrikaner Confederation's state ideology is something resembling our world's Afrikaner Calvinism and the Taiping regime is an overt Chinese Christian theocracy (Afrikaner influence means the founder of this world's Taiping, rather than viewing himself as "God's Chinese son," instead views himself as being analogous to the Old Testament Jehu--the executor of God's judgement).  Meanwhile, the Persian Empire, Thailand, the Rashids (an Arab state), Afghanistan, and some other states are traditional monarchies and the Sikh state is, although not a theocracy, a state where one religious/ethnic group rules over others.


We also briefly discussed two villain-protagonist stories I wrote centered around the character Andrew Patel, a half-Indian biomedical engineer who lives by the ideas of the philosopher Nietzsche and who does medical work for criminals in exchange for the funds needed to pursue transcendence as he understands it (basically turning himself into a cyborg).  I originally intended for them to run in a superhero anthology my Kennesaw group was putting together, but the project seems to have died for lack of interest.  I'll see what kind of markets accept superhero stories and, failing that, put them on the Kindle.  No real discussion there, but they were mentioned.

I'll post the link to the actual interview here when Nick posts it on the Dudeletter.  Although my comments about what was discussed are pretty detailed, I left a lot out--after all, you need a reason to listen to the podcast.  Although I don't know how he'll edit it, there's a good chance there will be spoilers for Battle for the Wastelands and other books in the series, as well as "Palma."