In 1987, noted novelist/playwright/artist Clive Barker unleashed his feature film debut, Hellraiser, on an unsuspecting audience, bringing an adult and extremely visceral look at horror to the big screen and redefined the horror film genre. Now, 23 years later, Hellraiser has finally hit Blu-Ray and is well worth the wait. The story remains a treatis on the thin line between pleasure and pain and, of course, remains as deviant as ever in terms of character and motivation. We all know the story. The treat is the transfer. The scene when good old Uncle Frank (“Come to Daddy”), freshly ripped to pieces, gets his first taste of blood and begins to pull himself together out of some primordial slime looks so much better than it ever has before. The effects team did a tremendous job with the building of muscle and skeletal structure (and made it gross as hell) so to see it in high resolution really ramps up the horror factor. A lot of the dark torture segments are now clearly visible and the Cenobites makeup does not suffer a bit. The main characters look a little dated (c’mon, it was 1987) and the hairstyles are truly laughable but none of it takes away from the groundbreaking freshness of the plot and the visuals. Hellraiser still remains one of the best horror films to be made in the 1980s and charted the course of genre filmmaking to what it is now with all the Saw’s and Hostel’s clogging the cinemas. Do yourself a favor and rent/buy Hellraiser today and take another spectacular look at one of the genre’s brightest moments.