The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy by Paul Kane

again, finally providing her with skin. The pact they have made is for Julia to be his escort. But like Frank before him, Channard gets much more than he bargained for when Julia hands him over to her master, Leviathan, to be remade as a Cenobite. Though this might be interpreted as a betrayal, chiefly because the transformation process is so painful—both to endure and to watch—Julia is only giving him what he wanted. Furthermore, he has already indicated this himself. When Julia gives him a chance to back out and asks, “You’re sure this is what you want?” he confirms, “It’s what I’ve always wanted.” His own evil, manipulative nature is given an outlet in Hell and he can be the creature he always wanted to be—powerful, sadistic, unstoppable. As he says himself when he comes out of the Cenobitization chamber, “And to think I hesitated.” This is the only person Channard sought to free: the ultimate selfish act of a man who has devoted every waking minute to his own needs. For Frank, this was grounded in pleasure, but Channard’s weakness is knowledge—of the labyrinths of the mind, of the occult, and ultimately of his true self. His eventual downfall is not Julia’s doing, it is his own—attempting to kill Tiffany when his hand-tentacles get stuck in the ground, ripping his head in two.
    Of the journeys Kirsty and Channard take into the Underworld, hers is the more successful. She may not have found her father or brought him back, but she did save the Cenobites from themselves and Tiffany from a life spent in solitude piecing together puzzles. Channard, even though he was given what his heart desired most, squandered the power and ended up annihilating himself in the process.
    Mazes and Monsters
    The Orpheus Legend isn’t the only Greek myth Hellbound draws upon. In its depiction of Hell with the Channard Cenobite at its core, it also closely adheres to the tale of the Minotaur in the Maze. This begins with the story of Minos who, before he rose to power as King of Crete, prayed to the god Poseidon to send him a white bull as a sign of his favor. Minos had promised to sacrifice the bull, but instead kept it and sacrificed one of his own. As a result, Poseidon made Minos’ wife Pasipha fall in love with the bull and the offspring of their union was a half-bull, half-man creature. Kept in a labyrinth built by the architect Daedalus and offered sacrifices, it was eventually defeated by the hero Theseus with the aid of Daedalus’ daughter Ariadne, whom he had fallen in love with. She promised to provide the means to escape from the maze if he agreed to marry her, and, using thread, he was able to find his way out again.
    For Hellbound we can easily substitute the Channard Cenobite for the Minotaur, the beast at the heart of this hell feeding on sacrifices of his patients. In this reading, Kirsty becomes Theseus, aided by Tiffany’s Ariadne. ( Hellbound has no real love interest, so friendship takes its place.) Together they are able to defeat the monster and find their way out of the maze—much to the chagrin of the monster’s mother (Julia) and father (Leviathan).
    You Wanted to See
    Another important theme in Hellbound is that of voyeurism. Just as Frank was the supreme hedonistic thrill-seeker, Channard is easily his equal in terms of his desire not only to know, but to see . The very first time we encounter him, he is peering into a human brain, looking into the most private depths of the mind. The rewritten speech he gives goes:
The mind is like a labyrinth, ladies and gentlemen, a puzzle. And while the paths of the brain are plainly visible, its ways deceptively apparent, its destinations are unknown. Its secrets still secrets. And if we are honest, it is the lure of the labyrinth that draws us to our chosen field, to unlock those secrets. Others have been there before us and have left signs. But we, as explorers of the mind, must devote our lives and energies to going further, to tread the