Hellbound Hearts
AVAILABLE: SEPTEMBER 2009
PUBLISHER: POCKET BOOKS
ISBN: 9781439140901
CONTENTS:
Foreword: Clive Barker
Introduction: Raising Hell, Again by Stephen Jones
Prisoners of the Inferno by Peter Atkins
The Cold by Conrad Williams
The Confessor’s Tale by Sarah Pinborough
Hellbound Hollywood by Mick Garris
Mechanisms by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola (illustrated by Mike Mignola)
Every Wrong Turn by Tim Lebbon
The Collector by Kelley Armstrong
Bulimia by Richard Christian Matheson
Orfeo the Damned by Nancy Holder
Our Lord of Quarters by Simon Clark
Wordsworth by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
A Little Piece of Hell by Steve Niles
The Dark Materials Project by Sarah Langan
Demon’s Design by Nicholas Vince
Only The Blind Survive by Yvonne Navarro
Mother’s Ruin by Mark Morris
Sister Cilice by Barbie Wilde
Santos del Infierno by Jeffrey J. Mariotte
The Promise by Nancy Kilpatrick
However…by Gary A. Braunbeck and Lucy A. Snyder
‘Tis Pity He’s Ashore by Chaz Brenchley
Afterword by Doug Bradley
Special Bonus Material: Wordsworth Graphic short story Original Script by Neil Gaiman
I’ve never been all that immersed in the Hellraiser world – after barely being able to pull myself through the fourth film in the series , I decided to stop taking them at all seriously- sad that what had made the first films so special had been flogged to within an inch of its life. So for me at least, the purest forms of the Hellraiser mythos consists of Clive Barker’s story The Hellbound Heart which first appeared in George R R Martin’s anthology Night Visions 3 and the first film, directed by Barker himself. The rest is all cash-cow, has spawned a massive merchandising monster and as such there have only been a few items that really seem like good value for money and go back to the ethos of what the whole creation is about – the Hellrasier comics, Stephen Jones’ in depth chronicles and the new anthology which has been edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan – Hellbound Hearts.
The line-up is a very impressive one – with Clive Barker giving a foreword, Stephen Jones unleashing a introduction which documents what happened to the main players of the first film and innovative thinking on the publicity and then to the authors - with stalwarts of the genre such as Richard Christian Matheson, Conrad Williams and Mark Morris all popping up, we even have a story from Barbie Wilde, the female cenobite from Hellrasier 2, The Stand’s director Mick Garris, Hellboy’s Mike Mignola and Neil Gaiman.
But to the stories. There are some corkers – and the lead story, Prisoners of the Inferno by Peter Atkins– is an instant hit. It details the downfall of Jack a film buff who finds a still from Prisoners of the Inferno only to be told it is from the lost masterpiece The Cabinet of Doctor Coppelius. A little bit of digging later, finding websites dedicated to the film, he sends off an email saying that he has discovered the image. He falls into the world of some heavily underground cine fanatics who seem to have a print of the lost film. But one man in particular wants to show Jack much more.
Sarah Pinborough’s The Confessor’s Tale is a very dark story that seems to have crawled out of the underbelly of some ancient Eastern European tome. It’s quickly read, but even when I moved onto the story that followed it, Mick Garris’ Hellbound Hollywood – I actually went back to read Confessor’s again, it’s power was such.
Kelley Armstrong’s The Collector is a neat , deftly told tale that concerns a puzzle addict who spends too much time on a particular internet site, only to find that her winning ways could lead to her eternal damnation.
Neil Gaiman’s reprinted Wordsworth is always good value and is great to see here ( an added bonus to the anthology is the short story script to Wordsworth at the back of the book).
Mark Morris is on blistering form with Mother’s Ruin; his last four pages blowing the shit out of any ending of a story I’ve ever read of his before. Barbie Wilde’s Sister Cilice is devastatingly haunting, piercingly erotic and is one of the true stand-out stories of the anthology.
However... by Gary A Braunbeck and Lucy A. Snyder sets a Hostel type scenario with three captives of two deranged sickos finding a puzzle box and summoning a cenobite who becomes bored with them (!) and the brilliant story ‘Tis Pity He’s Ashore by Chaz Brenchley struck a strange, off-kilter feel to everything that had come before. The more you think on the story though, the more it grows on you.
There was only one story that didn’t work for me and that one was Richard Christian Matheson’s Bulimia - which read terribly…staccato… pretentious… ghastly, wordy, drivel - the only blemish in an otherwise great anthology.
My other bugbears are that the foreword by Barker was too short, he should have supplied a story (but is he all written out as far as the world he created is concerned?) – though he did paint a lively and lovely cover with an all new Cenobite, Vestimenti. Another niggle is that there is nothing in the way of notes from the editors . I would have loved to have been able to read how they went about putting the anthology together, how it came to exist, who they touted it to, how many stories they rejected etc, etc . In its stead we get an afterword by Doug Bradley who plays Pinhead – which is all right – but isn’t his appearance in film after film after film (8 in total) part of the problem with the diluting of the franchise? Yes, I know, an actor has to eat.
But kudos MUST go to Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan who have pulled out of the bag a magnificent clutch of tales and have managed to coax from the authors many rich, dark and some truly frightening stories that have added a new and complex light to an already vastly complex universe. It’s a great read and I hope that Pocket Books, the publishers, commission a second volume soon, because this definitely has scope to become a very popular series. But only if the care, evident in this outstanding volume, is shown . Don’t go for the quick bucks and pump out book after book. It’s the pathway to becoming as trite as the truly awful latter films did.
9.5/10
