‘Hellbound’s’ Horror-Fiction Lion

Clive Barker isn’t worried about being chewed up by Hollywood. Eyeing the Tinseltown view from his eighth-floor hotel room, he says with mordant glee: “I’ll be happy if I can just survive my fans.”

The literary world’s reigning horror fiction lion (“I have seen the future of horror,” touted Stephen King, “and it is named Clive Barker.”) was in New York recently, surrounded by a crowd of admirers, signing books at a sci-fi salon called the “Forbidden Planet.”

“Then I was given a book to autograph by this perfectly normal-looking guy, who sounded quite articulate and self-possessed,” said Barker, recounting the tale during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “And before I knew what was happening, he took out a razor and slashed his arm open, ripping the razor along his veins.”

The fan stood mute as his blood spurted across the room. Bloody but unbowed, Barker fixed the fan with an icy stare.

“I put my hand into the blood on his arm and asked him, ‘Do you want this in your book too?’ He nodded his head. So I signed the book, planted my bloody palm print next to my signature and told him to have a bloody nice day.”

Call Barker unflappable. At 36, the celebrated writer still has the boyishly exuberant air of a prep-school prankster--and much to be exuberant about. During the past four years he’s graduated from poverty-stricken playwrightdom to best-sellerdom, thanks to the publication of “The Books of Blood,” six volumes of short stories which put Barker on the map as an author of morbid and disturbingly erotic tales of terror. (Barker says the first publisher who saw his books told his agent: “Disgusting. Take them away!”)

The Liverpool native has been churning out novels ever since, including “Weaveworld” and “The Damnation Game,” but he’s now turned to film as well. Last year, he wrote and directed “Hellraiser,” a horror chiller which was such a cult sensation that it inspired a sequel, “Hellbound: Hellraiser II,” which opened Friday.

Next spring Barker will direct “Nightbreed,” an adaptation of his latest novel, which will co-star ghoulish film director David Cronenberg (“The Fly”) as a psychoanalyst who commits a series of grisly murders--but convinces an unstable patient that he did it. (The film is slated for fall release from 20th Century Fox).

Puffing on a cigar (“my most innocent vice”) and sipping decaf cappuccino, Barker visited Hollywood recently, proving a witty, erudite conversationalist, eagerly weighing such cultural icons as William Blake, C.S. Lewis and Freddy Krueger. (Of the latter, the hero of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” film series, Barker complains: “He’s too funny to be scary. He’s a song ‘n’ dance man--a laugh, a joke, a dead virgin.”)

The critics haven’t exactly touted Barker as an Oscar candidate either. Variety dismissed “Hellraiser” as “a maggoty carnival of mayhem, mutilation and dismemberment.” The Los Angeles Herald Examiner’s Andy Klein called it “a silly piece of slice ‘n’ dice nonsense.”

One of its few defenders was The Times’ Michael Wilmington, who dubbed it “one of the more original and memorable horror movies of the year,” adding that “when Barker moves into his specialties--the images of human or monster bodies stripped raw--he’s flagrantly flaunting the taboos, demonstrating his sexual radicalism.”

The sequel’s notices have been largely negative. In keeping with most critics, the New York Times laughed at “Hellbound’s” “fake-looking monsters” and “icky” special effects, saying audiences would only find the film provocative “if--and only if--you badly want to know what people look like after they’ve been stripped of their skins by evil powers.”

“Hellbound” had a rough opening weekend at the box-office, taking in a disappointing $3.2 million at nearly 1200 theaters. (See weekend box-office roundup on Page 1.)

Asked why New World released a horror picture on Christmas weekend, the studio’s marketing and distribution chief Bob Cheren said: “We saw it as an exceptional window of opportunity to reach a young male audience. It was part of our counter-programming philosophy, so we could stand out from the four or five pictures targeted at the same adult audience.

“We’re not satisfied with the opening weekend numbers--we’re never satisfied. But we’re pleased and optimistic. We think it was a good call.”

Having survived literary crit-bashings, Barker can’t resist taking a few jabs himself. “There’s a great critical cowardice when it comes to horror,” he said firmly. “I find that critics, both in literature and film, prefer naturalism to fantasy. They have a fear of seeming foolish, so they shy away from works that deal in metaphor and disquieting images.

“You can always find book critics ecstatically championing the minor naturalistic fiction, which is usually thinly disguised autobiography. Similarly, film critics have a general contempt for fantasy and horror. They perceive--wrongly--that horror films are escapist junk, when it’s quite clear that the best horror films--like the ones David Cronenberg makes--are quite confrontational.”

Barker takes a long, thoughtful pull on his cigar. “People are always asking me if I scare myself with my stories. It’s as if they think there could be a difference between my imagination and myself. It’s all part of me.

“My great hero was William Blake, largely because he worked in so many arenas--he was both a poet and an artist. But what made him so special was his extraordinary ability to synthesize his visions with the world in which he lived. And that’s the real act of imagination--it’s an interpretation of your real world.”

And what a macabre imagination. Barker’s fiction--and films--present ordinary lives suddenly unhinged by supernatural events brimming with terror and perverse sexuality. (He’s also a writer with a vividly tactile sensibility--he researched a recent book by attending an autopsy and holding a dead man’s brain.)

So you’d scarcely imagine that his favorite boyhood book was . . . “Peter Pan.”

“I’d never have gotten through childhood without it,” said Barker. “I actually had a happy time growing up. I came from a family of seafarers. My dad worked on the docks. He’d take me down the Mersey River and point out all the ships and where each one was going.

“The problem was that the ‘50s were very drab in England--we were still using ration cards ‘till 1955. It was as if the first eight years of my life were all monochrome. I think that’s why I’m such a fantasist. All my adventures had to be internal. I had to create my own world inside my mind because the outside world was so dreary.”

Crammed with ghoulish images, “Hellraiser” revolves around the spooky adventures of a plucky teen-age heroine who, having accidentally solved an age-old riddle, is pursued by a murderous quartet of surreal punk spirits known as Cenobites. The film’s sequel, for which Barker wrote the story but did not direct, takes a more voyeuristic spin, focusing on a deranged doctor’s attempts to experience the sensual pleasures provided by the Cenobites’ supernatural powers.

Both films deal with the tangled web of eroticism and death, resurrecting ghouls who feed on human flesh to rekindle lost passions. This sense of erotic doom is a favorite Barker theme. “I must admit I’m fascinated by erotic abandon--aphrodisia out of control,” he explained. “If horror fiction constantly looks for the little death in us all, then you could say that I’m looking for the little death--and a little sexuality in everything.

“The French call the post-orgasmic moment ‘the little death.’ And that’s why we value sexuality. It’s a fleeting moment, but it’s a moment that heightens reality--it’s when anything seems possible.”

Barker frowns. “We had a sequence in ‘Hellraiser’ where our villain comes back to life, so to speak, in his brother’s skin--and sleeps with his mistress, who’s shed so much blood to bring him back. And New World wanted me to cut the scene. I suppose they were a bit worried about it--and we were running behind schedule. . . .”

Barker waves his cigar in the air. “ ‘Hah!’ I said. ‘No way. No way. They get to do it!’ ”

This sort of erotic frenzy did not endear Barker to the Motion Picture Assn. The industry watchdog organization twice gave “Hellbound” an X-rating until the film makers cut enough footage to receive an ‘R’ rating.

Instead of being incensed, Barker seems sympathetic to the MPAA’s chore. “I think it’s unfair to cast them as simple-minded villains,” he said. “I think it’s legitimate to be concerned about what sort of sex or violence children should be exposed to. Here’s what does strike me as lousy psychology--and dodgy thinking: How can one set of adults, the MPAA, view these films and not be corrupted while a second set of adults--us, the audience--view these same films and be corrupted?

“I’m concerned by the MPAA’s priorities. They go over my fantasy films with a fine-tooth comb, but they let films starring (Arnold) Schwarzenegger and (Sylvester) Stallone, which glorify machismo and have obvious fascist underpinnings, sail by virtually untouched. It seems that by focusing on horror films, they create a bit of a double standard.”

Of course, fans of cinematic sex and mayhem could never find a more stirringly articulate defender than Barker. “There’s always been a sadomasochistic subtext to horror films,” he insisted. “When Dracula is biting his victims, the old joke is--’Is she coming or going?’ You see the image of death and the maiden running through all horror fiction and film. In fact, people forget that horror has much of its roots in Romantic poetry and fiction.”

Barker ponders that last image, perhaps wondering what sort of horror films Shelly or Keats would have made if they’d had a production deal at New World. “The only difference is that I’ve always written very articulate monsters in my books and scripts. I was always disappointed that my favorite beasts could never talk. So when you see my monsters, you know they’re going to be chilling, sadistic and very perverse.”

He beams. “And they’re going to talk your ear off.”