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Author | Clive Barker |
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Cover artist | Clive Barker |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Dark fantasy, horror |
Publisher | St. Martin's Press |
Publication date | 19 May 2015 |
Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Pages | 368 |
Preceded by | The Hellbound Heart |
The Scarlet Gospels is a 2015 horror novel by author Clive Barker which acts as a continuation to both his previous novella The Hellbound Heart (which introduced his popular Cenobite characters that then starred in the Hellraiser franchise) and his canon of Harry D'Amour stories. The book concerns the Hell Priest, the demonic Cenobite nicknamed "Pinhead", and his efforts to gain power. Occult detective Harry D'Amour must journey into Hell to rescue his friend and stop the Hell Priest's plans. The book was the first in which the Hell Priest was officially given a name by Clive Barker, who disliked the nickname 'Pinhead' given his character by others. [1]
The Hell Priest, a demonic Cenobite known to some of them as "Pinhead" (a nickname the Cenobite abhors), is murdering the world's true magicians, practitioners of true magic. After years of this, the last remaining magicians gather to resurrect Ragowski, a member of their order killed by the Hell Priest three years before. Ragowski informs them the Priest is determined to obtain every source of magic known on Earth and is too powerful to be defeated by so few magicians. Their only hope of avoiding his fate, he says, is to simply give the Priest the location of all of their grimoires and talismans. The Hell Priest arrives, having been alerted by the spell that resurrected Ragowski. He degrades and massacres all of the magicians save for one, Felixson, whom he enslaves.
Occult detective Harry D'Amour travels to New Orleans, having been hired by a recently deceased magician (via a medium named Norma Paine) to destroy evidence of his occult activities before his family can discover them in his home. Harry learns the assignment is a lethal trap set by the Hell Priest, who sees the detective as a potential obstacle to completing his mission. Harry is rescued by Dale, a middle aged Southern man who experiences moments of precognition. Dale sends Harry back to New York City to attend to Norma. She tells Harry a monumental event is about to occur in the spirit world.
Harry enlists the help of his friend Caz to move Norma to a safe house operated by their mutual acquaintance, Lana. Joined by Dale, they attempt to transport Norma, only to witness the opening of a portal to Hell in Manhattan. The Priest emerges, absconds with Norma, and confirms a momentous event in Hell's history is about to occur. Harry's survival of his assassination attempt has convinced the Hell Priest that the detective is the perfect individual to write an account of the events.
Harry and his group - dubbed the Harrowers - discover Lucifer has disappeared from Hell and a thriving demon civilization has arisen in his absence. The Priest has been using his accrued knowledge of magic to kill Hell's various ruling classes, in order to eliminate any who might prevent his pilgrimage into a forbidden region of Hell called the Wastelands. The Harrowers follow the Priest into the Wastelands and discover a tribe of inbred demons willing to take them across a cursed lake to a tiny island in the center. The Priest and Norma have already secured passage to the island, where the Priest hopes to find a cathedral rumored to be Lucifer's throne room. He wishes to hold an audience with the Devil and experience a spiritual revelation.
The Harrowers and the Priest discover the cathedral is in fact Lucifer's tomb, erected after he had committed suicide due to being exiled from the presence of God. Enraged, the Priest strips Lucifer's body of its armor, dons it, and declares himself the new Lord of Hell. Armies led by Hell's surviving generals raid the cathedral but the Hell Priest, his power increased by Lucifer's armor, easily defeats many of them. The removal of the armor inadvertently causes Lucifer's resurrection. Enraged that he must once more endure existence without God, he engages the Priest in battle. After a vicious battle, Lucifer disembowels the Hell Priest and announces his intention to destroy Hell. The Harrowers, Norma, and surviving demons all flee the cathedral.
The desiccated remnants of the Hell Priest confront the Harrowers on the shores of the lake. The Priest blinds Harry and rapes Norma to death before escaping the lake. The Harrowers discover a wormhole that leads them to a desert road in Arizona. Meanwhile, Lucifer crushes all of Hell and its inhabitants beneath a collapsing stone sky, then travels to New York, resolving to make a name for himself. Angels from Heaven come to observe the ruins of Hell. Later, an unseen force eliminates Hell from existence, destroying the Hell Priest with it.
In New York, Harry — permanently blind and sinking into alcoholism — is contacted by Norma's ghost, who tells him she's gone on to Paradise. She now wants him to take her place as a medium who comforts the recently deceased and passes her power onto him. Taking up residence in her old office, Harry is overwhelmed by the sudden appearance of a throng of ghosts wanting his assistance. Seeing the ghost of a small child clinging to an older woman, Harry feels sympathy and compassion. He comforts the child and tells the pair they can trust him to help.
Clive Barker had no name for his Cenobite characters in the novella The Hellbound Heart, except for one called the Engineer. One of the Cenobites was described as having a head with a grid pattern and golden nails embedded in each vertex, each of which was decorated by a small jewel. When he adapted the story into the first Hellraiser film, Barker decided the Cenobite with nails in his head would act as the leader, referring to the character in early script drafts as "The Priest". The character was never named on-screen, however, and was simply referred to in the final credits as "Lead Cenobite". The film version had iron nails in his head rather than gold ones, and the production team nicknamed him "Pinhead". Fans learned of the nickname and adopted it, and the film franchise referred to him by the same name on-screen in multiple films, starting with Hellraiser III . Barker said on different occasions he didn't care for the name, believing it was undignified for such a well-spoken and sophisticated villain. In The Scarlet Gospels, Barker finally gave the Pinhead character an official name: the Hell Priest. [1] In The Scarlet Gospels, it is mentioned the nails may have once been golden but have now darkened, making their appearance in prose now resemble their appearance in the films. The second and third Hellraiser films indicate Pinhead was originally a human being who died soon after World War I. The Scarlet Gospels narration mentions that different characters in-universe debate whether the Hell Priest is an immortal being who has lived for thousands of years or if different humans have adopted his nature and appearance over the centuries, meaning the origin presented in the film could also be canon within the books or could be dismissed.
The novel had a long gestation period, with Barker talking as early as 1998 about wanting to write a story in which he killed the Pinhead character. Updates to the novel's progress appeared on Barker's website sporadically over the course of the next twelve years, mostly related to the book's progressively swelling length; at one point, Barker predicted that his completed manuscript would reach 1,000-2,000 pages. [2] Updates culminated in a June 2010 Twitter announcement that "the 243,000 words of The Scarlet Gospels merely lacks a publisher". Due to the length of the completed work, the book underwent heavy editing between 2010 and 2013; the novel was finished in September 2013, but no release date was revealed. [3] A year later, the publisher St Martin's Press acquired the rights to publish The Scarlet Gospels and released it on 19 May 2015. [4]
Hellraiser: The Toll is a 2018 horror novella written by Mark Alan Miller and published by Subterranean Press, from a story by Clive Barker. [5] [6] It serves as a sequel to the 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart and a prequel to The Scarlet Gospels, both written by Barker, set thirty years after the events of the former. It focuses on the returning Kirsty Singer, as she once again comes face-to-face with the Hell Priest. Meanwhile, the Priest calls upon a first witness for his plan seen in The Scarlet Gospels. [5] [7]
The Toll evolved from the partially written short story Heaven's Reply by Clive Barker that had been in development dating back to 2010. At one point, Heaven's Reply was integrated into a screenplay for a Hellraiser reboot, which would have featured the creator of the Lament Configuration - the Frenchman Lemarchand - and would have opened in the fictional location of Devil's Island. [5] [8] The script was turned in to Dimension Films, but did not move forward. According to Barker, "that was the last anyone heard until news of a sequel surfaced". [9] When Barker didn't know where to take the short story, it was suggested by his collaborators that the plot tie into the events of The Scarlet Gospels. After considering how to do it, Clive Barker's collaborator and author Mark Alan Miller reverse engineered the story into the novella Hellraiser: The Toll to be published by Subterranean Press. [5] The novella received a limited release in February 2018, in two separate editions–a limited edition, with a quantity of 724 clothbound copies made available, and a lettered edition, with an availability of 26 leather-bound copies. [7]
It was released in audiobook format on 6 November 2018, narrated by horror film director Tom Holland. [10]
Clive Barker is an English novelist, playwright, author, film director, and visual artist who came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories, the Books of Blood, which established him as a leading horror writer. He has since written many novels and other works. His fiction has been adapted into films, notably the Hellraiser series, the first installment of which he also wrote and directed, and the Candyman series. He was also an executive producer of the film Gods and Monsters, which won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Hellraiser is a 1987 British supernatural horror film written and directed by Clive Barker, and produced by Christopher Figg, based on Barker's 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart. The film marked Barker's directorial debut. Its plot involves a mystical puzzle box that summons the Cenobites, a group of extra-dimensional, sadomasochistic beings who cannot differentiate between pain and pleasure. The leader of the Cenobites is portrayed by Doug Bradley, and identified in the sequels as "Pinhead".
The Hellbound Heart is a horror novella by Clive Barker, first published in November 1986 by Dark Harvest in the third volume of its Night Visions anthology series. The story features a hedonist criminal acquiring a mystical puzzle box, the Lemarchand Configuration, which can be used to summon the Cenobites, demonic beings who do not distinguish between pain and pleasure. He escapes the Cenobites and, with help, resorts to murder to restore himself to full life. Later on, the puzzle box is found by another.
Douglas William Bradley is an English actor and author, best known for his role as the lead Cenobite "Pinhead" in the Hellraiser film series and for narration on various Cradle of Filth albums. He is also starring in the upcoming animated film Dagon: Troll World Chronicles as the forest monster Goeyre Heddagh.
The Cenobites are fictional extra-dimensional, seemingly demonic beings who appear in the works of Clive Barker. Introduced in Barker's 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart, they also appear in its sequel novel The Scarlet Gospels, the Hellraiser films, and in Hellraiser comic books published (intermittently) between 1987 and 2017. In the novel Weaveworld, they are mentioned in passing as "The Surgeons". The Cenobites appear in prose stories authorized but not written by Clive Barker, such as the anthology Hellbound Hearts edited by Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan, the novella Hellraiser: The Toll, and the novel Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell written by Paul Kane.
Harry D'Amour is a fictional occult detective created by author, filmmaker, and artist Clive Barker. He originally appeared in the short story "The Last Illusion" in Books of Blood Volume 6, an anthology written by Barker and published in 1985. D'Amour has appeared in other Clive Barker prose stories, as well as comic books published by Boom! Studios, and the 1995 film Lord of Illusions wherein the character is portrayed by actor Scott Bakula. Following this, the comic book adaptation of Barker's novel The Great and Secret Show depicts D'Amour as resembling Bakula. In 2012, the cover for Hellraiser #18 used actor Thomas Jane as the model for D'Amour. In multiple stories, D'Amour is depicted as living in the same reality as Barker's popular creations the Cenobites and the Hell Priest.
Pinhead is the main antagonist of the Hellraiser franchise. The character first appeared as an unnamed figure in the 1986 Clive Barker novella The Hellbound Heart. When Clive Barker adapted the novella into the 1987 film Hellraiser, he referred to the character in early drafts as "the Priest" but the final film gave no name. The production and make-up crew nicknamed the character "Pinhead"—derived from his bald head studded with nails—and fans accepted the sobriquet. The name was then used in press materials, tie-in media, and on-screen in some of the film's sequels, although Barker himself despises the moniker.
Hellbound: Hellraiser II is a 1988 supernatural horror film directed by Tony Randel and starring Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Kenneth Cranham and Doug Bradley. The second film in the Hellraiser franchise, Hellraiser II draws heavily upon its precursor, Hellraiser, which was released a year before. Laurence reprises her role as Kirsty Cotton, who is admitted into a psychiatric hospital after the events of the first film. There, the head doctor (Cranham) unleashes the Cenobites, a group of sadomasochistic beings from another dimension.
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth is a 1992 American supernatural horror film and third installment in the Hellraiser series. It was directed by Anthony Hickox and stars Doug Bradley, Terry Farrell, Paula Marshall, and Kevin Bernhardt. Ashley Laurence, who starred in the previous two films, has a cameo. Following the events of Hellbound: Hellraiser II, in which the demon Pinhead (Bradley) is imprisoned in a statue, he resurrects himself by absorbing the life force of unlucky humans. After converting several power-hungry youths into new Cenobites, Pinhead goes on a rampage, opposed by a reporter (Farrell) and the spiritual manifestation of his good half.
Hellraiser: Bloodline is a 1996 American science fiction horror film and the fourth installment in the Hellraiser series, which serves as both a prequel and a sequel. Directed by Kevin Yagher and Joe Chappelle, the film stars Doug Bradley as Pinhead, reprising his role and now the only remaining original character and cast member. It also features Bruce Ramsay, Valentina Vargas, Kim Myers and Adam Scott in his first major film role. It was the last Hellraiser film to be released theatrically and the last to have any major official involvement with series creator Clive Barker until the 2022 reboot.
Hellraiser: Hellseeker is a 2002 supernatural horror film directed by Rick Bota and written by Carl V. Dupré and Tim Day. The sixth film in the Hellraiser series, it features the return of Kirsty Cotton, the heroine from Hellraiser and its sequel. Also, while not officially part of the production team, Clive Barker had cursory input on the film and some uncredited influence on the third act, specifically. Hellseeker was the last Hellraiser film to have any involvement from Barker, uncredited or otherwise.
Hellraiser is a British-American horror media franchise that consists of eleven films, as well as various comic books, and additional merchandise and media. Based on the novella The Hellbound Heart by English author Clive Barker, the franchise centers around the Cenobites which includes the primary antagonist named Pinhead.
Kirsty is a fictional character from the Hellraiser media franchise. Created by writer Clive Barker, Kirsty first appears in the 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart. Her full name is identified in the sequels as Kirsty Singer, before being adapted in the 1987 film adaptation Hellraiser as Kirsty Cotton. The character served as a major focus in the original film and its sequel Hellbound: Hellraiser II, later playing a supporting role in Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker. In all of her appearances in the film series, she was portrayed by actress Ashley Laurence. The film describes her as being Larry Cotton's daughter, while in the novel she is simply a friend of his.
Hellraiser: Revelations is a 2011 horror film written by Gary J. Tunnicliffe and directed by Víctor Garcia. It is the ninth film in the Hellraiser film series. It follows the fates of two friends who discover a puzzle box that opens a gateway to a realm inhabited by sadomasochistic monsters known as the Cenobites.
Hellraiser: Origins was a cancelled independent film project based on Clive Barker's Hellraiser films, and was presented as a two-minute long pitch trailer directed by Mike Le Han. Written and produced by Paul Gerrard, the trailer was intended to be a reboot of Hellraiser, but due to multiple factors, it did not progress to filming as a feature film.
Hellraiser: Judgment is a 2018 American horror film written and directed by Gary J. Tunnicliffe, based on the characters created by Clive Barker. The tenth installment in the Hellraiser film series, the film stars Damon Carney, Randy Wayne, Alexandra Harris, Heather Langenkamp, and Paul T. Taylor, and centers on three police detectives who, investigating a series of murders, are confronted by the denizens of hell. The film expands the fictional universe by introducing a new faction of hell: the Stygian Inquisition. While the Cenobites offer sadomasochistic pleasures to humans that enter their dominion, the Inquisition processes the souls of sinners. Tunnicliffe plays the Inquisition's auditor, a prominent role in the film.
Chatterer is a fictional character appearing in the Hellraiser film series. He is a Cenobite, an order of extradimensional sadomasochists who experiment in extreme forms of hedonism. His name comes from the constant clicking of his teeth, his only means of communication. He serves the Cenobites' leader Pinhead. Chatterer has become a fan favourite character in the Hellraiser franchise.
Hellbound Hearts is a 2009 anthology of short stories set in the world of Clive Barker's Hellraiser. It was edited by Hellraiser expert Paul Kane and his wife Marie O'Regan. The book features works by several authors.
Hellraiser is a 2022 supernatural horror film directed by David Bruckner, with a screenplay by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, from a screen story they co-wrote with David S. Goyer. It is a reboot of the Hellraiser franchise, the eleventh installment overall, and a second adaptation of the 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker, which was adapted into the 1987 film Hellraiser. The film stars Odessa A'zion, Jamie Clayton, Adam Faison, Drew Starkey, Brandon Flynn, Aoife Hinds, Jason Liles, Yinka Olorunnife, Selina Lo, Zachary Hing, Kit Clarke, Goran Višnjić, and Hiam Abbass. It follows a young woman recovering from addiction who ends up with a mechanical puzzle box that can summon the Cenobites, humanoid beings who thrive on pain and pleasure.
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