Read Online The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy by Paul Kane - Free Book Online Page B

interviews that the first imaginative stories he ever read were fairy tales: “I had several volumes as a kid, and found in their darkest corners images and ideas I never tired of examining. Back and back I’d go to keep company with cannibal witches and lunatic queens, dragons and phantoms and malignant spirits, passing over the simpery stuff ... to get to the business of the wild wood.” 4 Obviously much of this can be detected in fantasy novels such as Weaveworld , The Great and Secret Show , Cabal and others. Anyone who has read the original stories of the Brothers Grimm can understand the horror potential therein, so it is hardly surprising that these should be an influence, and it was something Peter Atkins definitely picked up on when writing the sequel.
    The first reference comes from the main protagonist herself. When Detective Ronson is questioning her at the very start he says, “Would you talk to me, and please, this time no demon fairy tales,” to which Kirsty retorts, “Fairy tales, fairy tales. My father didn’t believe in fairy tales either. Some of them come true, Mr. Ronson. Even the bad ones.” Inevitably, Ronson tells her, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Once again it points to Kirsty’s childlike qualities at the beginning; the tantrum she throws with Ronson only emphasizes this, and the way she watches the rain trickling down the window like a bored kid on a wet Saturday afternoon. She believes in the fairy tales because she is still connected to her youth, whereas Ronson is an adult, and has closed off his imagination. This is why he cannot possibly help with this investigation, let alone solve it.
    The next time fairy tales are mentioned is when Julia and Kirsty meet again at Channard’s house. Julia, as we have seen, claims not just to be the wicked stepmother but also now the Wicked Queen—“So come on, take your best shot, Snow White!”—which is yet another reason Julia couldn’t stand to look at herself in the mirror until she could claim to be “the fairest in the land” once more. Like Snow White, Kirsty has been the victim of a foul plot against her; but instead of being tricked into taking the poison apple, she has been tricked into entering Hell, none of which was Julia’s doing, it has to be said.
    But the allusion here does remind us of the jealousy aspect between these two women. Again, Kirsty has a good-looking man at her beck and call—another reason Julia had to kill him—and she probably fears that Channard might be interested as well. Just like Larry and Frank. “Kirsty, you have surprisingly good taste in men,” Julia tells her. Not simply black humor with a double meaning (Julia has literally just tasted Kirsty’s man), but also a sign of envy, as the Evil Queen envies Snow White.
    One could also compare Kirsty to the character of Little Red Riding Hood. She enters the dangerous forest to help a relative—in this instance her father, not grandmother—then arrives at the house only to find the Wolf has disguised himself as that relative: Frank pretending to be Larry. And though it might be stretching the reading slightly, Tiffany is very much like Sleeping Beauty. She may not physically be asleep, but she still needs to wake in order to come to terms with what has happened to both her and her mother. It is not a Prince who comes to the castle to do this now, but Kirsty. And it is not with a kiss that she wakes her—for in the main these signify danger in the Hellraiser mythos—but with love and an embrace.
    There is also referencing evident in the way the narrative and imagery draws on the Rule of Three. This is where patterns of three are apparent in the text, and fairy tales were riddled with them. As explained in Ansen Dibell’s book, Plot , “One is an incident. Two is a pattern. Three breaks it. One tells us what the risk is. Two confirms what wrong behaviour is. At three, we know the rules, and so can appreciate what the smart third person