Editing Hellraiser (section)

==Reception==
''Hellraiser'' grossed $14,564,000 in the United States and Canada,<ref name="numbers"/><ref name="mojo">{{cite web|url=https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0093177/|title=Hellraiser (1987)|website=[[Box Office Mojo]]|access-date=26 October 2024}}</ref> £763,412 in the United Kingdom and $30 million worldwide.<ref name="org">{{cite web|url=https://www2.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/bfi-back-to-the-future-the-fall-and-rise-of-the-british-film-industry-in-the-1980s.pdf|page=23|title=Back to the Future: The Fall and Rise of the British Film Industry in the 1980s – An Information Briefing|publisher=[[British Film Institute]]|year=2005|access-date=29 November 2020|archive-date=12 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150912042419/https://www2.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/bfi-back-to-the-future-the-fall-and-rise-of-the-british-film-industry-in-the-1980s.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name=ww/>

===Critical response===
For contemporary reviews in the United Kingdom, ''[[Time Out (magazine)|Time Out London]]'' referred to the film as "Barker's dazzling debut" that "creates such an atmosphere of dread that the astonishing set-pieces simply detonate in a chain reaction of cumulative intensity" and concluded that the film was "a serious, intelligent and disturbing horror film".{{sfn|Kane|2015|p=51}}<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://timeout.com/london/film/hellraiser-1987|magazine=[[Time Out (magazine)|Time Out London]]|access-date=4 October 2015|title=Hellraiser|archive-date=25 October 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151025014910/http://www.timeout.com/london/film/hellraiser-1987|url-status=live}}</ref> ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' stated that "Barker has achieved a fine degree of menace".{{sfn|Kane|2015|p=51}} ''[[Melody Maker]]'' described it as "the best horror film ever to be made in Britain".{{sfn|Kane|2015|p=51}} [[Kim Newman]] writing for the ''[[Monthly Film Bulletin]]'' noted that the most immediately striking aspect of the movie is its seriousness of tone in an era when horror films (the ''[[A Nightmare on Elm Street (franchise)|Nightmare on Elm Street]]'' or ''[[Evil Dead]]'' films in particular) tend to be broadly comic".<ref name="mfb-review" /> Newman stated that the film "suffers from a few minor compromises: notably a decision made fairly late in shooting to change the specifically English setting for an ambiguous (and unbelievable) mid-Atlantic one".<ref name="mfb-review" /> Newman also noted that the Cenobites were "well used suggestive figures" but "their monster companion is a more blunderingly obvious concession to the gross-out tastes of the teenage drive-in audience".<ref name="mfb-review" /> Newman concluded that the film was "a return to the cutting edge of horror cinema" and that in more gruesome moments the film "is a reminder of the grand guignol intensity that has recently tended to disintegrate into lazy splatter".<ref name="mfb-review" /> ''[[Q (magazine)|Q]]'' stated that "''Hellraiser'' does have its share of problems: the re-dubbing of peripheral character with a mid-Atlantic twang, the relocation of the film in a geographical limbo [...] The film, however, cannot be faulted for the ambitiousness of its themes [...] Sadly the moral and emotional complexity that is the film's greatest strength is likely to be deemed its greatest weakness by an audience weaned on the misplaced jocularity of ''[[House (1986 film)|House]]'' or ''[[Fright Night]]''".{{sfn|Kane|2015|p=51}}

In the United States, ''[[The New York Times]]'' stated that Barker cast "singularly uninteresting actors" while "the special effects aren't bad – only damp".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/20/movies/film-a-horror-tale-barker-s-hellraiser.html|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|title=Film: A Horror Tale, Barker's 'Hellraiser'|access-date=3 October 2015|date=20 September 1987|url-access=limited|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150524214228/http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/20/movies/film-a-horror-tale-barker-s-hellraiser.html|archive-date=24 May 2015|url-status=live}}</ref> ''[[The Washington Post]]'' referred to the film as a "dark, frequently disturbing and occasionally terrifying film" but also argued that "Barker's vision hasn't quite made the conversion from paper to celluloid [...] There are some weaknesses, particularly the framing of close-ups and the generic score, but there are some moments of genuinely inventive gore [...] the film falls apart at its climax, degenerating to a surprisingly lame ending full of special effects and triumphant good".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/hellraiserrharrington_a0aa6a.htm|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|date=19 September 1987|access-date=3 October 2015|title=The Horros of Hellraiser|first=Richard|last=Harrington}}</ref> [[Roger Ebert]] gave the film one-half of a star out of four and deemed it "as dreary a piece of goods as has masqueraded as horror in many a long, cold night. This is one of those movies you sit through with mounting dread, as the fear grows inside of you that it will indeed turn out to be feature length" and that "this is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://rogerebert.com/reviews/hellraiser-1987|date=18 September 1987|last=Ebert|first=Roger|author-link=Roger Ebert|access-date=3 October 2015|title=Hellraiser|newspaper=[[Chicago Sun-Times]]|via=[[RogerEbert.com]]|archive-date=5 October 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151005203300/http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hellraiser-1987|url-status=live}}</ref> ''[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]'' stated that ''Hellraiser'' is "well made, well acted, and the visual effects are generally handled with skill".<ref name="variety-review" />

{{Rotten Tomatoes prose|70|6.5|53|consensus=Elevated by writer-director Clive Barker's fiendishly unique vision, ''Hellraiser'' offers a disquieting – and sadistically smart – alternative to mindless gore.|access-date=1 October 2023|ref=y}} {{Metacritic film prose|56|17|ref=yes|access-date=2 October 2023}}

In the early 2010s, ''[[Time Out London]]'' conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://timeout.com/london/film/best-horror-films|magazine=[[Time Out London]]|access-date=13 April 2014|title=The 100 best horror films|archive-date=8 April 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130408014326/http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-100-best-horror-films-the-list|url-status=live}}</ref> ''Hellraiser'' placed at number 80 on their top 100 list.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://timeout.com/london/film/the-100-best-horror-films-the-list?pageNumber=3|magazine=[[Time Out London]]|access-date=13 April 2014|title=The 100 best horror films: the list|last=Floyd|first=Nigel|archive-date=24 April 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140424123853/http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-100-best-horror-films-the-list?pageNumber=3|url-status=dead}}</ref>