Clive Barker claims that he barely knew what he was doing when he directed this adaptation of his novella The Hellbound Heart and I believe him. This is rough and grimy, but with the intensity of an ambitious first-timer dead set on making the Gross-Out of the Year. While feeling his way, Barker’s work here also plays like a classic Eurotrash bloodbath, complete with a few dubbed performances to Americanize the British production. You’d think Lucio Fulci was Barker’s film production crash course instructor. This isn’t far removed from Fulci’s The Beyond. It’s got the rotted old building, the expressway to “Hell” (in this case, a puzzle box that summons a crew of ghastly demons like a genie from a lamp), the dream-like imagery and the flesh that slices as easily as cheesecake at a holiday party. Also when there’s something disgusting on screen, whether it’s maggots, rats, open wounds or scraps of human meat scattered on dirty floors, Barker goes in for the close-up to make absolutely certain that we see it. If there’s a weak stomach in the audience, Barker wants to turn it, bless his heart. For extra spice, he also throws explicit S&M themes into his depiction of Hell as a place of “pain and pleasure, indivisible”. Vicious, perverse and full of some of the best low-budget gore effects ever, Hellraiser holds up.