Class of 88: Director Tony Randel on Taking the Reins for HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II

Released in theaters a little more than 14 months after its predecessor, Hellbound: Hellraiser II had the unenviable task of following up one of the most innovative and boundary-pushing genre films of the 1980s. Tony Randel took over the directorial duties on Hellbound, and he did a brilliant job sidestepping the pitfalls that can often trip up a sequel film effort, ambitiously blazing a new path in the Hellraiser universe by taking viewers into the labyrinthine realm of Leviathan and providing fans with a greater understanding of the franchise’s Cenobite antiheroes as well. Hellraiser II also introduces one of the series’ most dominant and unforgettable villains by way of Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham) and transforms Hellraiser’s wicked stepmother Julia (Clare Higgins) into a bona fide evil queen.

Simply put, Hellraiser II is a perfect example of what every filmmaker at the helm of a sequel should aspire to achieve, and it’s a worthy follow-up that accomplishes cinematic greatness all on its own.

For Randel, his journey towards directing Hellbound: Hellraiser II began several years before the genesis of the sequel, as he’d been working in various capacities for New World Pictures, finding his niche in avant-garde independent cinema.

“At New World, I was the director of post-production, and I joined the company about three months into their inception," Randel said. "We released a lot of films early on, and a lot of them were acquisitions—films like The Philadelphia Experiment, Children of the Corn, Soul Man, or House, I was pretty much involved with all of the post-production on those films, approving final color timing, getting everything done on a technical level for delivery, and making sure that they were ready for release."

"But, in addition to all that, my department created most of the trailer campaigns that were done for those films, too. Girls Just Want to Have Fun is one of the trailers we did. So, we did that for a couple of years, and then I worked on an Americanization of the Godzilla film that was released in Japan in 1984, and we called it Godzilla 1985 here. We shot additional scenes with Raymond Burr and we treated it as if it were a direct sequel to the original. We re-edited the film, cut it way down, added new music at times, and it went out and was very successful."

“After that, I was promoted to production executive. I did that for a couple of years. I supervised Pretty Smart, which was Patricia Arquette's first movie. She was only 17 at the time, so it was quite a while ago. Then, I developed and supervised a film called Spike of Bensonhurst, which was a cult film that Paul Morrissey directed. I developed another film that eventually became Shattered, but it didn’t end up being made at New World. It was directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and it was his first American film. I also did another cult classic called Reform School Girls; I supervised the production on that.”

“Then, I supervised on Hellraiser as a production executive, and that's how I got involved in the series. These are the types of movies that were where my heart was at that point of my career. I really enjoyed doing the more obscure, more independent type of projects,” Randel added.

Even though Hellraiser would go on to become something of a watershed moment in horror cinema, it was a project that the higher ups at New World weren’t initially thrilled about. According to Tony, “I was actually not involved in the film until a couple weeks into the process, because the head of production, Steve White, did not like the dailies. He sent me there to kind of assess what was going on and see what could be done. When I got there, I thought it was pretty interesting, and I saw a lot of dailies that he hadn't. I thought that it all looked good. So, we started to enhance the film."

"We spent more money, and we shot probably an additional three weeks over what was planned, and we added scenes. We came up with new scenes that just were not in the original script. Some of these scenes became the most memorable scenes in the film, specifically the scene of Frank’s rebirth when he’s coming out of the floorboards. That wasn't in the original plans. That wasn't there. There was another scene when Larry and Julia are trying to make love, and Frank walks into the room and cuts the rat in half. We added almost all of the Frank stuff later. The Cenobites arriving in the hospital was completely re-shot and re-staged to make it bigger and more frightening, and the ending was changed, too. A bunch of things were done to enhance Hellraiser, but those were the ones that I specifically remember.”

Once Hellraiser became an out-of-the-box hit for New World Pictures, a sequel was set in motion. For the follow-up, producers were looking to bring on a new director, and Randel discussed how the project evolved during the early stages, and how he ultimately found himself at the helm of Hellbound.

“Originally, Chris [Figg, producer] and Clive wanted Michael McDowell to write and direct the sequel. I met with Michael once, because I was going to supervise the film, and I don't think he wrote a treatment or anything, because very soon afterwards there was some tragedy in his life, and I believe his partner was fairly ill, so I think that's why he backed out of it. So, they went to Pete [Atkins], who was a longtime friend and collaborator of Clive’s, and Pete wrote the first draft of the script.”

“That version was sent to me, and I read it. It was good, but it wasn't exactly there just yet. At that point, I went to my boss, Steve White, and said, 'Look, I think I'd really like to direct this.' After some discussion, he agreed. So, I went to England with a bunch of ideas and notes about the script, and we collaborated on the script very successfully. We've become really good friends over the years. We collaborated and changed things and added things, and that's how the script came about.”

“Our main focus was that we wanted to make a bigger film than the original Hellraiser. We wanted to expand the universe and see where that could take us, especially if the series had continued in that direction. It really didn't, though. After the second Hellraiser, I feel like it really went off the rails,” Tony added.

Once cameras began rolling on Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Randel initially found himself in unfamiliar territory as the sequel was going to be his directorial debut. His expertise in the editing room aided him in some ways, but two key crew people were instrumental in helping him find his groove as a filmmaker.

“Coming from an editing background is helpful, but it also can trip you up a little bit. The biggest thing that I learned in doing Hellbound was to actually not think like an editor. I had a very experienced cameraman, a very experienced camera operator, experienced ADs, and during the first few days on set, they were really helping me quite a bit to get the feel for how to stage scenes. What I learned fairly quickly is that you have to forget about the camera—just forget about it. Rehearse the scene like a play, and once you have the scene the way you want it, then, with the cameraman, decide where you want to put the camera to get the coverage.”

“Now, as an editor, I know what's needed to cut together a scene, so that really comes in handy. But that's how I learned to direct: don't think in terms of shots, think in terms of a scene being a play, and then from that, divide it up into coverage. If you do that and you have your screen directions correct, you will have the best opportunity in editing to cut together the best scene, because you'll have everything covered.”

“The thing is, you don’t always know exactly what you need when you're shooting. You'd like to think you do, but you don't, and opportunities happen that you really only discover once you get into the editing room, and you look at the material, and you say, 'Oh, wow. I thought this scene was about this person, but I'm looking at the close-up on this person, and if I just stay on this person for most of the scene, that's where the impact of the scene is going to be.' But if I had thought like an editor when I shot it, I may have missed opportunities I wouldn’t have been looking for otherwise.”

With Hellbound continuing the story of Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence), one of the many opportunities Tony had in opening up the world of Hellraiser was to include some new characters like the villainous Dr. Channard, a neurosurgeon whose obsession with the puzzles of the mind is only rivaled by his endless fascination with the Lament Configuration puzzle box and the secrets locked within its intricate designs.

Randel discussed the inspirations behind the character, saying, “The original name of the character was Malahide, and when I got the script, I thought the name was too on the nose. I've always been fascinated with these very famous celebrity doctors, and the one that always left an impression on me was Christiaan Barnard. He was the South African doctor who did the very first heart transplant back in the mid-1960s, so his name, Channard, is taken from merging his name.”

“When I met Ken, I think he relished taking on this type of role at the time, although he's kind of pooh-poohed the whole thing over the years. That’s kind of funny, because this is probably his most famous role in his career, but I think he related to the part, and the only thing I ever asked of Ken was just to play his intentions quietly at first. Beyond that, he just did his thing.”

Playing against Cranham’s Channard was the returning Clare Higgins, reprising her role as the manipulative Julia, Kirsty’s stepmother who was sacrificed by her treacherous lover (and brother-in-law) Frank, only to be resurrected in the sequel by Doctor Channard. Tony knew that Higgins would knock it out of the park in Hellbound, but in hindsight, he doesn’t see her return in the sequel as wholly necessary.

“We always knew that Clare could carry the role,” explained Randel. “And I know that she enjoyed playing the evil queen. But in retrospect, frankly, I don't know if I would have continued her character, because I never quite bought it, myself. There's a dissonance about her character from the first movie to the second movie. It feels very forced; the fact that she's reborn out of the mattress just feels a little too convenient for me. It would've been better for me, now looking at it 30 years later, if we had created a new character and not brought her back. Because the stuff for me that's the least successful in the film is where we are trying to tie up so many loose ends, or where we are continuing these story threads from the first Hellraiser. We would've been better to think that Larry's, and Frank's, and Julia's story was over, and just carry it through with Kirsty. That's my opinion.”

“But I do know Clare gets a lot of praise for the part, and I give her kudos for her performance in the film. She did a great job, and it’s a very memorable performance. It’s just that, for me as a storyteller, I don't know if it was the right decision, looking back on it now.”

Also returning for Hellbound: Hellraiser II were the Cenobites, the extradimensional demons who had proven to be quite popular among horror fans. Along with opening up the world of Leviathan, Tony wanted to expand on these otherworldly characters, giving viewers a rare peek into their existences and backstories. While this writer is a huge fan of how Randel was able to lift the curtain (so to speak) on these enigmatic entities, not everyone was pleased with his decision to humanize the Cenobites.

“I got a lot of criticism for that decision, as I recall. I guess people just like their monsters to be pure evil, but that doesn’t work for me. I like more rounded characters, even if they're monsters—more in the tradition of Frankenstein, who's really a victim of his circumstances. These people were victims of their own curiosities, and at the end of the day, there was still that human part of them. They never really did anything, and they didn't do bad things to people that didn't ask for it. That was kind of the point.”

“Pinhead doesn't go after Tiffany because she's innocent, and he doesn't really do anything to Kirsty, either, because he kind of likes her. But there was definitely criticism about the way they were handled, which I disagree with. I think they were handled properly, and the fact that we see who they were as people, it answers some questions, but it also asks more questions, too. For instance, when you see the Chatterer was actually a little boy, it's startling. It’s like, ‘Oh, what happened? What's that story?’ And I always thought that would be a good story to tell.”

When it came time to actualize the world of Leviathan, Randel was inspired by the works of the popular graphic designer M.C. Escher, as well as his own belief system, when he determined how Hell should be represented on a visual level in Hellraiser II. Those ideas even carried over into several of the characters, too.

“I believe that geometry is something that connects to the psyche,” said Randel. “I’ve always liked the work of Escher, and so I brought that into this film. Hellbound plays on those geometrical concepts on a psychological level. There is no religion in this movie, and in fact, I don't think you'll find any religion in any of my movies, because I'm not religious at all. I'm an atheist, so my concept of Hell was a symbolic view of what goes on in the subconscious mind. These things are in our heads, I believe, so I represented that through the geometry in the designs.”

“If you look at the wide matte shots, it's all very geometrical. When I saw Interstellar, and how they did the ending, that's exactly what I was thinking for Hellraiser. And for the Leviathan itself, we used a triangular shape to represent the idea of it, but that was really just a symbolic shape. That shape is not real, because everything in that realm goes on in the mind. Without the mind perceiving things, there's nothing there. It's like if a tree falls in the forest, et cetera, et cetera. The perception of reality is in our heads, and that's what Hellbound is about. It's not a religious Hell, because I don't believe in a religious Hell, and so I would not even know how to portray that. I went in a totally symbolic direction with it, and to me the best way to portray this place was through geometric images and shapes.”

Randel’s grandiose depiction of Hell in the sequel was further elevated by composer Christopher Young’s score, who returned after creating the music for the original Hellraiser, but this time adding a few grandiloquent flourishes, particularly whenever the story traveled to the world of Leviathan. Tony discussed his long-standing working with Young, saying, “It was maybe a year before Hellraiser, and I needed a little piece of music done for a trailer that I was doing post-production work on. One of my editors was a UCLA film student, and she said, ‘I know a guy who's a great composer. He just did a score for a friend of mine.’ It was called The Power, and it was one of his first movies, I believe.”

“So, I met with him, he did a piece of music for the trailer, and then I had a re-cut of a film that needed a score, so I hired him to do this film called Def-Con 4. He did a really great job, and I knew he was someone who was going to be going places in his career. When Hellraiser came about and I was looking at the dailies, I started thinking I wanted Chris to do the music. Everyone else had already engaged a band named Coil to work on it, and I thought they were good, but I didn’t think their music sounded like ‘film music.’ I remember we screened the picture for them and we met with them. I asked them some pretty pointed questions about film scoring, in terms of writing to a picture and being able to make the music work for different moods, and whether or not they could write music that reflected the romantic side of Hellraiser.”

“The very next day, they called up the producer and said, ‘We can't do the film.’ I think for whatever reason, whatever I said to them scared them off, because they realized that they really weren't equipped to do it. So they left, and then I immediately told Chris Figg, the producer, and Clive that I wanted Chris [Young] to do the music for Hellraiser. They heard his stuff, they liked it, and that's how Chris came on board. I worked closely with Chris on both scores. For Hellbound, I told him to go full-on operatic. I didn't want him to make weird noises. I wanted him to make romantic, dark music, and that’s something that he's really good at.”

Before Hellbound: Hellraiser II could make its way to theaters, it had to make it past the ratings board. And considering the amount of gooey plasma, grotesque monstrosities, and gore that made it into the final version of the film, it probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone that Randel had some difficulties getting them to accept his vision for the movie.

“We got an X-rating when we first submitted it. We kept having to cut it back even more. They had a problem with the movie. They didn't like it. They made all these cuts, so the theatrical version of the film was fairly cut down, especially in the reaper scene, and when Julia comes back through the mattress scene. That was one they really had a problem with. In fact, I went in front of the MPAA board in New York City and appealed it, and I lost the appeal. But I only had to make one more cut after that. They wanted me to just do something else, and I cut a few more frames and it finally got the R rating.”

“Also, there’s a funny little thing about that scene with Julia and the mattress that I have always loved. In that scene when the blood goes flying, there's bit of blood that hits Ken right in his face. I was sitting right underneath the lens with a spray bottle of blood, and that moment when I hit him with it, first take, it landed perfectly right across his face, so we never had to do another take. I was so surprised that I got it, because it was just a wild shot, and I got him right in the face, and I think there’s even a moment of surprise in his reaction, too. I just love that moment so much.”

“But in terms of the version of Hellbound that went out theatrically, as far as I know, it's all but disappeared now. The only version that seems to be available is the unrated version. I haven't seen the R-rated version in years. I don't know if it even exists anymore.”

Although it was released during the Christmas holiday season, Hellbound: Hellraiser II still made a decent showing in box office receipts during its theatrical run, and it's continued to find an audience over the years through its release on various forms of home media. While Tony admitted he had some doubts about how Hellbound would fare while they were in the midst of production, he’s come to recognize just how well he crafted an ambitious and thought-provoking follow-up with the help of his brilliant crew.

“Honestly, during the whole production process, I felt like I was failing pretty much every day,” confessed Randel. “There was lot of pressure from all sides. It was my first film and it was also a grind, so I just never knew whether I was getting it or not. But when I say that I felt like I was failing every day, the thing about making a horror film is that you never know what you're really getting. There is a level of imagination that goes into making a horror film, because so much of it seems ludicrous in actuality. It's not scary as you’re filming it. So, you just have to have faith that what you're doing will turn out in the end, and somehow it did. But everybody worked really hard on Hellbound. That's for sure.”

“They had a screening of it in Hollywood a couple months ago, and I was surprised how well it stood up, actually. I remember watching a few scenes in particular, and I thought, ‘Well, that was pretty good. That scene was pretty well-directed.’ You could see the planning in them, and it all came back to me, all the ideas we had in getting this shot or that shot. For instance, when Browning [Oliver Smith, who also plays “Skinless Frank”] cuts himself with the straight razor and Channard pulls the knife out of the drawer, there's a little glint of light there. Robin Vidgeon, the DP, worked very hard to get that shot, and that was all his idea. A lot of the visuals on both films came from Robin, in fact.”

“Making movies—this is something that people need to understand—they're a very collaborative art form. The best films are the ones that are the most collaborative, because that’s where you really have everybody bringing their A-game to it. And for sure on Hellbound, every single person brought their A-games: Robin, [production designer] Mike Buchanan, and Geoff Portass, who did amazing work on all the effects. They're the people that make these things work. Directors who go around taking credit for everything, they're not being honest about the process. There’s no way I could have been able to make this film had it not been for everyone’s efforts, and I’m grateful that the film has not only held up, but that fans still seem to enjoy it today.”

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