Pinhead

Mar 24 2010

I had a friend at Sixth Form who was obsessed with Clive Barker. He was so obsessed that he would make his own latex models and masks, including a very convincing Pinhead from Hellraiser. And Hellraiser II, of course. And III and, actually I have absolutely no idea how many they made. It might well have been as many as the Police Academy movies, in which case I strongly suspect that Hellraiser XVII went straight to video, after the studio realised that the story of Pinhead repenting of the error of his ways (again) and settling down to a life a junior civil servant in Croydon with his wife and spawn, happily adopting suburban bliss until a squad of murderous angels appear smiting the righteous and unrighteous alike with their holy fire and ONLY PINHEAD CAN SAVE MANKIND! But to do so he must re-embrace his former hellish fiery powers and abandon his new family forever.

Fucking tragic.

I'd probably be a sucker for that. I don't consider myself an over-emotional human being, but I can't watch a sad movie without breaking the hosepipe ban. Nor can I watch a happy movie. Or a movie with a dog in it*. This is why my film collection tends not to contain any of these films - I can't afford the moisture loss that would accrue; a couple of hours in there'd be just a little pile of dust, like in Batman: The Movie. I don't like such films - I've never quite worked out why anyone would seek out a film to make them cry. There's probably a complex psychological reason about catharsis and the transference of emotional turmoil away from real problems, but frankly someone cleverer than me has to explain that, and until that happens I reserve the right to mindlessly condemn all such behaviour as weird, just because I don't understand it. It's an approach that works well for the Daily Mail.

Crying gives me a headache anyway, so I have good reason not to seek it out. I'm in a bit of a cul-de-sac though, and getting slightly nervous. I've nearly finished reading The Lord of the Rings and I happen to know through virtue of possibly having glanced at it a couple of times before that the end is a bit sad. It's going to make me cry. It's going to give me a headache. If I was strong I could just leave the final chapter and start reading the copy of From Hell than someone has lent me. But I can't do that - I have to see it through, even if it's like sticking pins in my head. Wish me luck.

* though that's nothing to do with crying.