#ip: hellraiser

[jadefells]

Keith Thompson

[grimmshood]

the general premise has stayed pretty much the same though and i settled on like . jiwoon only has his human appearance up until he gets zarah to start solving the box. and then he sheds it and despite being terrified of how he actually looks as a cenobite she still loves him and well Sorry babes you are becoming an Instrument of athe Flesh to serve the Leviathan now!!!!!!

still not sure how to do the final body horror for hellraiser zarahjiwoon but i gotta think of something

[slashthrashandcrash]

Is there someone from a horror franchise (movie or game) that you would like to see in DBD?

CANDYMAAAAAAAAAN

For IPs that are already in the fog though I would still love if they added Adam or Lynn from Saw, and Kirsty from Hellraiser. Definitely not to give any of the killers girlfriends or anything.

[forcedhesitation]

maaaaaaaaaaan. ridiculous to be calling DBD "pathetic" because it couldn't get licensing for various final girls. as if it hasn't always been because of some bullshit on the end of the copyright holders. fuck, we would have gotten more material from Hellraiser, had it not been for the copyright holders. we lost Stranger Things temporarily because of the copyright holders being out of touch with fans and greedy. Ghostface exists in the game because luckily, the character of Ghostface isn't actually owned by Big Bad Viacrap.

also like. DBD isn't Fork Knife. it's just not. and if I'm not mistaken-- it's not like Fork Knife has any horror character that DBD doesn't, apart from Eleven and Hopper. Eleven could never be in the game anyway, because any character added has to be over 18/a legal adult (for legal reasons). and we have Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan instead. It makes much more sense that they chose those characters for the game, as this followed S2, which made Steve one of the most popular characters from the show. so much so that he can even contend with Eleven in popularity.

and let's not downplay the fact that DBD does have other, very, very impressive licenses in it. such as Silent Hill. that was the first big thing Konami let happen with the ip in YEARS. Resident Evil was...HUGE. Wesker's chapter brought in an unprecedented number of players and anyone who played survivor at that time knows that for WEEKS, all you would get was Wesker after Wesker. We have Chucky and Tiffany, voiced by their original VAs. Sadako from the original Japanese Ringu, not the American version of the same concept! You can play as the Xenomorph, and the Xenomorph Queen! Vecna, from D&D is a killer, and he is voiced by Mr. Matt Mercer! We have Ash Williams, Alan Wake, Leon. S. Kennedy, Cheryl Mason, and very soon Lara Croft! and then After her-- we are getting Castlevania!! So there is no shortage of incredible of characters from horror that are in this game, and it's disrespectful to act like the people who work on this game don't care enough about it to try their fucking hardest to give fans the best possible licensed chapter dlcs they can. it's not their fault if the copyright holders want something different.

Besides, I think it's gross to suggest that DBD doesn't have a claim to the title of "Horror Hall of Fame" just because it doesn't have specific licensed characters in it. what about all the amazing original characters that the game has? do those suddenly not count, just because they do not include super well-known characters from popular old horror movies? A lot of these popular old horror movies don't include/don't give much of a spotlight to people of colour, so the original chapters often give the devs the room to add diversity to DBD's cast of characters, whereas a license might have otherwise not allowed it. and many of these original characters even have nods to existing horror media, like the End Transmission chapter drawing inspiration from both the horror-survival game SOMA, and the sci-fi horror movie/comic book Virus. Does the hard work that the many talented members of the DBD team put into making this original chapter, among many others, mean nothing, just because Sidney Prescott or Sally Hardesty aren't in the fucking game? I should hope the fuck not.

[subatomicskud]

I watched this one video earlier today on YouTube called Hellraiser anatomy of a franchise which was a good informative deep dive into the movies but like good chunk of the video was me in my head like.

strangling the Weinstein brothers: GIVE CLIVE HIS IP RIGHTS BACK YOU ABSOLUTLE CHODES

Video in question for those interested.

[bugmeyer]

Hellraiser Explorations

Last year I did a few rounds of concept art for Hellraiser(2022) with David Bruckner. If I had to pick an IP to take a swing at, this would have been in the top 3. Big thanks to David for bringing me on to this project and letting me play with his toys.

These pieces represent some of the first work I turned in. Check out my other posts to see how the project evolved. Lots of ideas here were left on the cutting room floor, but I was pleased to see the split arm gag (last image) made it into the movie! How cool is that.

[theliterarywolf]

Do you have any opinion on Hellraiser?

So, I will admit that my overall knowledge of classic revival horror (so our giant icons from the 80s) is somewhat limited already. However, the Hellraiser franchise is truly the IP that I've never really known much about or watched...

[angelicguy]

heres something i wrote in 10 minutes about why crossovers sometimes piss me off and sometimes dont

what sucks about the sheer amount of companies that are doing really hamfisted IP crossovers is that theyre always doing it for the worst possible reasons. like smash is cool because each character to some degree is translating their own games mechanics into smash bros right. some do it more than others (the dragon quest guy does it wayyy better than say sephiroth but even sephiroth does it wayyy better than joker who essentially doesnt translate anything from personas mechanics) but for the most part you get a little bit of their game in smash. this applies to a larger degree in tekken (at least for the fighting game crossovers) like akuma and geese have entire input strings that are lifted wholesale from their OG games, balance be damned. which is super super cool! video game crossovers are good because theyre combining two sets of complex mechanics into something new. fighting games especially are a great opportunity for mechanics crossover because theyre often 10 times more complex than what the original game has that character doing- look at link in soul calibur 2 for example! that kicks ass! super deep translation of both ocarina of time stuff to a cool ass fighting game! nice!

why i think MOST IP crossovers suck and are a result of video games more than anything is because non-video game crossovers are just that. theyre just a written character, completely removed from the very very careful contexts that they were created in, kind of smushed into a binary set of mechanics or a story that doesnt need them. look at dead by daylight- while i think it tries its best, pinhead wasnt created as a video game character with a set of iconic moves that were intended, first and foremost, to be fun to play with. hes a character in a story with specific details, whose importance and legacy AS a character is the result of the movies, not just pinhead bein pinhead. and so the DBD devs kind of fit a square peg in a round hole- he just does a set of moves with cooldowns in a context that he doesnt fit in whatsoever. its not translating the aesthetic of the hellraiser movies, but just giving a coat of paint to a set of mechanics that only barely have anything to do with the original character. even then i think DBD does it better than most other crossover titles, especially compared to something like fortnite where you can wholesale shove a characters model in without even designing mechanics for that character- because its not a character based game. youre just shooting with a new coat of ip-friendly paint on it and that sucks. but its for kids so i get it. same with cod warzone you just have donnie darko with a gun.

but the WORST part of all this is that it makes business sense 100 percent of the time to include a crossover character in your piece of media. you could either spend 10,000 dollars advertising your new character or 0 dollars advertising a character from a already-beloved multi-million dollar franchise. hell sometimes you get paid for it depending on how popular your game is.

thats what all these new battle royale “metaverse” fuckin games are doing and its what mortal kombat 11 did. mkx got away with the horror crossover because it fit REALLY REALLY well with the mkx aesthetic, which was just overall darker and gorier than anything that came before it. so horror characters just made sense, even if it was still a clumsy translation. in mk11 all the characters are just. fuckin. robo cop. who like pinhead doesnt have any pre-existing mechanics cuz hes a written character nothing designed with gameplay in mind. so they clumsily shove them into some archetype that already existed in the game. because the very existence of that characters movies and what-not are already doing the heavy lifting advertising the game and the character to potential customers.

thats why fortnite is the most insidious of all of these options- its all advertisement, no mechanics. totally uninteresting action figure smacking that only children fall for. and this is all ENTIRELY separate from when theres a “story crossover” or some such shit that never, ever works. that is entirely the result of everyone having video game brains

[revchainsaw]

Bumblebee (2018)

Good Evening worshippers, and welcome! Today the Cult of Cult goes a little more mainstream than usual. It's been a while since i've tackled a big Hollywood superhero film. But I do believe that these sorts of films will be remembered fondly my small groups of people in the future, especially the smaller films that are being overshadowed by the big bad MCU, films like 2018s Bumblebee.

The Messsage

Bumblebee was originally released as a prequel to the Transformers franchise that had started all the way back in 2007. However, reboots had really hit the market as a way to breath new life into struggling franchises, and the Transformers series had already gone to just about every absurd extreme you could imagine. No changes were made to the movie as it was released, but with it's more childish and heartfelt tone, and a new aesthetic that was softer, smoother, and all around just generally more pleasing to the eye, I think it was a wise choice to rebrand Bumblebee as a new beginning.

Our story is of two friends from two very different worlds and how they came together. Our first character is Bumblebee, then known as B- number sign/it doesn't really matter. Not yet Bumblebee is a soldier set with securing a safe location for the Autobots to regroup and make their home as they suffer a pretty serious defeat on cybertron at the hands of the tyrannical Decepticons. Optimus Prime, here again voiced by Peter Cullen and looking so much more like himself, assigns this task to Bumblebee promising him that they will meet him there when the time comes. Then Optimus fucks off for the rest of the run time making way for our little hero.

Bumblebee lands on Earth and is immediately set upon by John Cena and his military goon squad. It probably would have been wise for Bumblebee to avoid John Cena but in his defense, he couldn't see him. Hardy har har. In his attempt to flee his voice box is damaged, he seeks sanctuary by taking the form of a run down little VW bug, and suffers from amnesia.

Then we have Charlie. Charlie is not like other girls. She likes cars, all the retro music, which wasn't retro when the movie takes place, so I'm supposed to just think she's a rocker but it kinda seems like she'll listen to just about anything. I think in 2018 liking Motorhead and The Smiths (who are used ad nauseum in this movie) is perfectly common, but I feel like in the 80s that was a much different and much older attitude to take.

Anyway Charlie's poor family lives in a super fucking nice house and are poor because the dialogue keeps insisting they are so it must be true despite all the shit they have that actually poor people would sell blood and teeth to attain, but hell, this is Hollywood and Hollywood poor is like regular people upper middle class. Charlies family is so poor that instead of giving her a one time graduation/birthday present to buy a part for a car she already has, they just give her a moped, She also spends all her time at a pull apart where the manager (who might be her uncle that wasn't super clear) is willing to just give her a Volkswagen so I don't understand why she didn't already have the project car up and running. Whatever, it's a plot contrivance. All you need to know is that Charlie is tenacious and hard around the edges cuz her dad is dead and she's not yet mature enough to process that in a healthy way. Maybe her character arch will teach her to let others in, we'll have to find out.

There's also a wacky nerd named Memo, and some bad guys, and John Cena. They are all also pretty archetypal and contrived and don't really do anything of note that isn't just filling a beat that this kind of movie needs to walk. Charlie starts Bumblebee up, discovers he's a robot and the two begin to bond. Charlie learns to make a friend, and bumblebee is learning about himself. They get into hijinks and get revenge on a bully girl who makes Regina George look like a saint, she pretty much only picks on Charlie exclusively for having a dead dad.

The moment Bumblebee is woken back up, some technology goof em up that both he and Charlie are unaware of brings two Decepticon baddies into the picture. I don't remember their names, but since I love The Venture Brothers let's say they can be "Jet Boy and Jet Girl". Jet Boy and Jet Girl are sometimes cars, sometimes various flying military vehicles, and they make friends with the deep state and plan to get all the adrenochrome from all the orphans, or just to go find Bumblebee and beat his ass good cuz their bad guys. Let me tell y'all though, Jet Boy and Jet Girl are so bad that they don't even care that the government is listening when they reveal that they are planning on bringing a Decepticon Invasion and after they rough up Bumblebee real good they are going to destroy all life on this planet. So they start by killing a military scientist.

John Cena is after Bumblebee and he's homies with Jet Boy and Jet Girl until the military scientist butt dials him and he hears the evil plan. John Cena goes from heel to face and helps Bumblebee and Charlie save the day. It's a giant CG clusterfuck climax a la any superhero film in the last 10 years and I basically stopped watching. BumbleBee pulls a Hellraiser on Jet Boy, and then he hits Jet Girl with a freaking boat. Charlie uses her diving skills do dive down and save him, but he's a Giant Robot and he was okay and it was literally pointless for her to to except as a way to show that her character has completed her arch by doing the thing that was representative of her connection with her lost father.

Bumblebee turns into the Camaro from the first movie, meets up with Optimus prime, and the stage is set for this prequel to squeeze more prequels out. So it wasn't very creative, but was it bad? Let's find out.

Please Stand to receive the Benediction.

Best Aspect: Transform the Franchise

Bumblebee was directed by Travis Knight of Laika fame and it shows. This movie marks a stylistic change in the transformers franchise, as in it doesn't look like utter dog shit, but it also represents in many ways a tonal shift. It does hold on to a lot of gross sleaze that has unfortunately been forcibly jammed into the DNA of the franchise but it also attempts to be a more heartfelt entry. The characters of Bumblebee might all be sort of a waste of time, but at least they are doing something with emotions, even if the emotions of the characters are only explored as deeply as a children's cartoon I'm glad they are there. In the previous installments the only thing the characters did between running from action piece to seizure inducing action piece was drool over underage girls like a bunch of chimpanzees at the facility where they test experimental E.D. meds. It was nice to see that at least somewhat tampered. This transformers movie feels more like it's for kids and young teenagers, and strangely that more friendly tone makes for a much less juvenile product.

Worst Aspect: Remember I Love the 80s from the 2000s

I hope you really like Stranger Things. I do, but because Stranger Things was so successful it' s going to be everywhere. Not true Stranger Things just 80s nostalgia porn. This 80s nostalgia is going to be forced on you whether you like it or not, and it's not going to be fun. It's gonna be in your shows, in your music, in your Sunday like Bacon in 2010. It's that or Marvel Franchise Brand Whedonisms. Bumblebee is that brave movie that says, "Why not both?" It would seem fitting that a property as quintessentially 80s as Transformers should feel completely comfortable doing a period piece set in the 80's but it's so fucking half hearted it's depressing. It wasn't done to appreciate the roots of the IP, it was done to cash in on a trend and it feels it. All they did was throw up a date and insufferably force an 80s soundtrack down your throat as if that was enough to convince you that this movie needed to be set during this time. Other than that you could have told me this film was set in 2007 and I couldn't tell you any different.

Best Character: Charlie's an Angel

I liked Charlie. Sure her Arc is predictable, her taste is dumb, and she isn't exactly a master of her own destiny to any degree. But at least she is a woman in a transformers movie who's got something going on. Sure she's defined entirely by grief, but that sure is better than pretending that being able to work on cars is a feminist character trait instead of a weird fetish thing. They certainly do that thing with Charlie, but at least it's not the only thing they throw at the wall. Bumblebee is by no means out of the woods in this department, but it garners a lot of goodwill for trying. Like a racist uncle who just started his journey out of ignorance, but hasn't yet realized he has to stop asking mortifying questions to the barista at Starbucks. Okay, maybe that's an extreme metaphor. I'm saying that perhaps Charlie is not a great character but she's a great character for a Transfomers movie.

Worst Character: It's JOOOOHHHNNNN CEEEENA!!!!

Why is John Cena in this movie? I don't hate the guy, but his character seems pointless. You could remove him from the movie completely and replace him with any one of the random military goons at any point and it changes nothing. What was with that dumb salute at the end? It seems like they put him in this movie in post and it was just to pump up cast list. I wish he was given anything to work with. I can't remember his characters name, and it's not like John Cena did a bad job, I was just annoyed every time they kept giving him hero shots. I felt like I was watching a trailer for a different movie.

Best Actor: Optimal Primo!

Every time Peter Cullen speaks I want to listen. There's a reason they haven't had Chris Pratt or somebody with a bigger name come in and take over the role at this point. He's why the audience keep coming back. Peter Cullen IS Optimus Prime, and there's no changing that. He also wins twice. He's the best actor in the movie AND he's barely in the movie. Good call Peter.

Worst Actor: Mean Girls 2, Meaner and Girlier

I don't want to be cruel so I'm not going to go into to much detail, but there's an actress in this film who's performance is so mustache twirlingly evil and stupid that it ruined my suspension of disbelief when i knew going in that i was about to endure a 2 hour toy commercial about robots that turn into cars. Beldar Conehead was a more convincing human being than Tina.

Best Effect: Goo Be Gone

I really appreciated when the bad guys shot the government nerd into a blast of snot. That was pretty fun for me. Best part of the movie hands down.

Worst Effect: Live Action?

Bumblebee is a cartoon. It's a great looking cartoon but it doesn't sell itself that way. If we were doing a Roger Rabbit thing I'd have no gripes. However, I think CG is just getting worse. I'm criticizing this and it's still lightyears better than the previous entry's on the franchise. No transformation or fight sequence in Bumble Bee had me straining to make sense of what I was looking at. I think it was a great idea to start using some basic shapes and outlines to these characters, and return somewhat to their 80s designs. But at certain points, especially when there were no humans in the shot, i was pretty convinced I was watching Clone Wars. There may not be anyway around this, as the Transformers concept might not be able to be pulled off in any more effective manner. It's a minor gripe, but I just didn't think it looked like anything other than a very expensive cartoon, and in this franchise that's a compliment, because it least it looked like SOMETHING!

Best Scene: Space Opera

I am not a Transformers fan. I missed the boat on the cartoon as a kid. I would sometimes catch it at friends houses but I was more into Batman, Star Wars, and Ninja Turtles. By the time I came onto the scene the world had moved on to Beast Wars. I did one day arbitrarily decide that my favorite Transformer was Sound Wave. He looked great in this. I am a big fan of the return to form with a lot of the character designs in this. They really did keep the things that worked from the other adaptations, and they are steadily removing the things that didn't. For this reason, the scenes on Cybertron, particularly the battle with Soundwave (i prefer for personal reasons) looked great and were exciting to watch. I remember thinking Cybertron used to look like a Marilyn Manson shot a music video from inside to dumpster. This is so much better.

Worst Scene: Blocking the Box

There's a scene in Bumblebee where Charlie's family decides the best way to save their daughter was to cause a pile up of vehicles in an intersection, and it's pure contrived writing that saved any character in that sequence from being killed in a horrific traffic accident. It was stupid, played for laughs, and it wasn't exciting as much as it was anxiety inducing. I also thought that there was no reason the covert military group covering up extraterrestrial life wouldn't just disappear this family of fucking morons in their little piece of shit car. The logic of the scene was just so childish like, "No they won't hit me, I'm a good person."

Summary

Bumblebee may be remembered fondly in a decade. I think especially if the Transformers franchise were to end here. It didn't get the publicity of the other films, and that really is a shame. For my money, this was the best Transformers movie so far. I was very tempted to give Bumblebee a C, it does just enough to right what was wrong from the other movies to make me appreciate all that work. This movie has heart, and if you are at all into Transformers then l think you should see it. It's still pretty stupid, and pretty basic. It's not offering anything new to the genre, and it feels like a commercial for more movies. I really wish we could just get movies that want to tell a story. I thought it over and decided that it wasn't fair not to grade Bumblebee on it's own merits. Bumblebee is substantially better than the films that preceded it, but that's not saying a lot, when the films that preceded it are joyless exercises in self abuse.

Overall Grade: D

[parrisblood]

Hellraiser Brings Pinhead to Dead By Daylight

Behaviour drops Hellraiser teaser for Dead By Daylight. We're one step closer to Pinhead!

On September 3rd, 2021, Dead By Daylight’s developer, Behaviour, posted a short trailer for the upcoming release of their new Killer, Pinhead, to the popular asymmetrical horror game. Set to release September 7th, this is the 21st Chapter for the franchise. Dead By Daylight has been going for 5 years, only recently losing the license to another popular IP in horror, Stranger Things. Access to…

[majingojira]

Crossovers, Magic, and the Two Wizard Harrys

Recently, a post has been going around on my dash about Harry Potter and the Dresden Files. I commented on it, but it got me thinking about the crossovers done with the two Harrys outside themselves, and how mixing these worlds would go about. 

First, we need to understand a few basics about crossovers and shared universes.  

First off, there are several major and influential crossover ‘hubs’ that link many things together, and also affect how we would view a shared world. 

Those are:  Historia Regum Britannia (1136)/Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (1177-1181)/The Vulgate Cycle (13th Century) - Being public domain, these literary characters get a LOT of traction, and add a lot to Fae lore. 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595/96) - This really solidifies a lot of Fae lore in the west. 

Dracula (1897) - THE Vampire story, though not the first to see print (Varney from 1845-1847), it is the most influential of them.  Ask yourself how many people have had a “Vs. Dracula” story and you see how wide-reaching the Crossover Universe can get. 

Carnacki, Ghost Finder (1913-1947) - One of the earliest, and strangest Ghost stories to have a wider reach in the 20th century.  It draws heavily, like Ghostbusters later on, from the Spiritualist and Theosophist movements, which were a syncretic hodgepodge of western and eastern mysticism.  Another important text which is connected and re-affirms this style/rules-set is A Christmas Carol.  

The Cthulhu Mythos (1919-1943) - That is Not Dead Which Can Eternal Lie and In Strange Eons Even Death May Die.  Ol’ Squidface and friends show up a LOT, thanks to the public domain.  

The Dresden Files has complex lore, but one that is built upon both real-world mythology and a lot of stories that came before it.  

The latter include Dracula, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo & Juliet (Mab), The Cthulhu Mythos, and The Vulgate Cycle. 

Dresden also has the benefit of being referenced in other people’s works, expanding his reach. These range from Supernatural, Morris and Chastain Supernatural Investigations, and Rivers of London.   Alongside Harry in the Morris and Chastain Supernatural Investigations crossovers are references to: Warren Ellis’ Gravel, Dexter, Mike Carey’s Felix Castor, Clive Barker’s Harry D'Amour and The Hellbound Heart (a.k.a. HELLRAISER), American Gods, Simon R. Green’s Nightside series, The Wolf Man (1941), Fright Night,  Lord Darcy tales, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, Silence of the Lambs and related stories, The X-Files, Ghost Whisperer, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Millennium, The Usual Suspects, The Shadow, and The Hades Project

Now, before you ask about how magic revealed vs hidden magic can work within those crossovers, they obviously can’t.  The stance taken by Crossover Scholars like myself is that “Elements of the series have counterparts in the crossover universe” so things are altered so they are done in secret rather than in the open.  To some degree.  You work it out for yourself to your satisfaction.  That’s half the fun of this mental exercise.  

Potter has his fair share of crossovers too, but less than Dresden.  

Potter has connections to: The Odessey and The Vulgate Cycle in the first book; Gremlins in the film version of The Half-Blood Prince, and both Dracula and Carmilla in the video game version of Prisoner of Azkaban.  

Also, one time, in New Excalibur #3 (art by Michael Ryan, written by Chris Claremont), The Juggernaut almost crushed Harry Potter as he came out of Diagon Alley while the Juggernaut took a shortcut.  

I will never tire of posting that. 

Anyway. 

As you can see, within the context of the Crossover Universe at least, Dresden has a firmer established place within it than Potter.  I mean, can you really see Harry doing his Auror Duty and coming across THIS?! (WARNING! LINK TO R-RATED FILM).

Dresden?  Dresden would have luck that bad.  Potter, not so much.  There’s a lot of things in Dresden’s world that simply has no known working response in the Potterverse, and any crossover may have to thread one or more of those needles to really work.  This leads me to think of something that probably sparks the vs. threads that people have complained about: Which Series Takes Precedence over the Other. 

99% of the time, it’s Potter.  And I think, because of the crossover weight, and one other reason, that changing it to Dresden would be for the best going forward.   That other reason?   Can you really, in the Year of Our Lord 2020, look at everything J. K. Rowling has done with her IP and tell me that her use of Mythology and Folklore should take precedent over anything else?! 

REALLY?!

Isn’t it much more interesting to think of Voldemort as one of Kemler’s strongest Disciples rather than considering Kemler (a reminder, he’s the puppetmaster behind both World Wars who devised a way to become a god and almost did it) a footnote compared to Wizard Hitler?    I mean, I think so.  But I also just want to write a scene of Harry and Harry at Macks having a drink together, shooting the breeze.  

Now I sort of want to go through who was active on the supernatural scene between 1991 and 2012 (approximate date for Skin Game) to see who is around to give Potter and his friends' lessons in supernatural stuff and how well they’d fit in, at least who’s around within the web of Crossovers that have been sussed out so far.   But that’s for another post.  Gosh, I hope this didn’t come off as too putting down of Potter while bolstering Dresden.  I mean, it is, but I hope it’s not overtly or maliciously so. 

[tisthenightofthewitch]

How Ghost became the face of the new generation of heavy metal

Pressure. Controversy. An army of haters. It seems like nothing can throw Ghost off-course. How Ghost's mastermind Tobias Forge took on the world… and won

Paris, tell me… did that make your asses wobble?” It sure as hell isn’t “Scream for me, Hammersmith!”  but somehow, inexplicably, this flirty, moustached, makeup-splattered dandy wiggling about in a tux and leather gloves has 9,000 people in the palm of his hand like he’s Bruce Dickinson in ’86. Hammer is at hallmark gig venue Le Zenith in France’s capital city, witnessing Ghost deliver their latest sermon.

The City Of Love might be frozen solid on this chilly February evening, but the unstoppable Swedes are heating things up in style – fire, steam cannons, confetti, a dazzling light show and enough costume changes to make Lady Gaga dizzy are just some of the ingredients reaffirming their status as one of metal’s premier attractions in 2019.

It all makes a two-hour set fly by in no time, guided masterfully by that  aforementioned, ’tache-donning Daddy. Cardinal Copia, Ghost’s Master Of Ceremonies, raised a few confused eyebrows when he was unveiled this time last year, breaking an eight-year streak of Papa Emerituses who’d fronted Ghost since its inception. But he’s since become the beating heart of a band that have continued to evolve, grow and adapt beyond all expectations.

He’s also a world away from the blue-eyed, slick-black-haired, quiet and thoughtful man we spent time with two hours earlier, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, decidedly sans-moustache and doing much less wiggling.

When Hammer last spoke to Tobias Forge, he’d recently (some may say forcefully) been outed as Ghost’s resident mastermind – its very own Wizard Of Oz, working behind the scenes and behind the mask to help orchestrate one of the most unlikely success stories of recent times.

We are creating a dynasty.

Soon after our last conversation, Ghost dropped their latest album, Prequelle – an instant classic stacked with playful menace and 80s-tinged pop-rock bangers – and have pretty much been on the road ever since.

“Hey, if you wanna rock, you gotta rock,” shrugs Tobias of his relentless schedule. “It takes a lot of effort, a lot of cogwheels spinning and turning, to make all this work.” He’s not kidding.

A weary roadie will later inform us that it takes almost four hours to pack up Ghost’s monstrous set each night – a towering, multi-platformed, chapel-esque set-up that recalls the kind of backdrops Maiden have made home for decades. “But, once you’ve got that whole machine rolling, you don’t wanna stop,” Tobias adds. “At some point, we will have to wind down a bit, but we’re not there yet.

If you wanna be comparative, look at all the big bands; even though they made it in a different time, statistically it takes five records, about 10 years, to go from nothing to something to something great.”

And that, right there, sums up Tobias Forge. The reason Ghost have been such a triumph isn’t because of great songs, a good live show and a savvy gimmick – metal history is littered with bands that never made it despite boasting all those things.

The difference is that Tobias is the man with the plan. He may not be the tortured artiste or swaggering hellraiser that rock’n’roll loves to stick on a pedestal, but he’s a leader: a brand ambassador with a calculating mind and a shrewd business acumen who knows exactly what needs to be done to immortalise Ghost’s legacy.

He’s playing the game, and he’s winning. And if you look hard enough, the seeds for it all were being sown right at the very start.

“You can find all the details in my record collection,” he says with a knowing smirk – and he’s not wrong. Before Cardinal Copia, there were Papa Emeritus I, II and III – a line of frontmen that not only enabled Ghost to set up a deep-running narrative, but change up the formula and the image for every album cycle. Sound familiar? It should – it’s what rock’n’roll superstars have been doing for decades.

"I’ve always been a big fan of Kiss,” he continues. “Most Kiss fans can tell the era [of the band] by the photo, what they’re wearing. You can say, ‘That is ’75, that is ’76, it’s in the spring, it’s in the fall, it’s Rock And Roll Over, it’s Destroyer.’ So I figured that in order for this band to age, we need to create dynasties.

"And that way, there’ll also be nostalgia. Because I come from a heavy metal background, I know how important nostalgia is, and the attention span nowadays is so short, so you need to create it quickly. You need people to be able to say, ‘I was there when this part happened.’ That’s why it was always Papa Emeritus I, right from the start.”

It’s a meticulous level of forward-thinking that has come up trumps, but amazingly, you’d have been hard-pushed to find anyone who’d have backed Tobias to carve such a path 10 years ago.

Before 2010, it was with respected Swedish death metallers Repugnant that the Linköping native had had his most ‘success’, his love of rock’s theatrical side flirted with via a splash of corpsepaint and a drop of fake blood here and there.

A spate of EPs and splits and one well-received album, 2006’s Epitome Of Darkness, ensured a small part in heavy metal folklore was guaranteed, but it was what happened next that changed everything.

Channelling his love of catchy NWOBHM mainstays like Angel Witch and Demon, Tobias wrote what would become Stand By Him – an irrepressible schlock-rock anthem a world away from the guttural noise of Epitome…

He called up former Repugnant bandmate Gustaf Lindström to help record it, and more songs quickly followed in the same, earwormy vein – “I’ve always liked the NWOBHM bands that had melody and pop sensibility,” he says today.

But there was still something missing. The songs Tobias was now writing were following a formula that had been laid down since the 70s. It needed something different. Something fun. Something… metal.

Deciding that this new project should carry an image that’d bring it a world away from its influences – a band that, in Tobias’s words, should “sound like Angel Witch but look like Death SS,” he began doodling some ideas. One scribble stuck – the image of a Pope-like character, plastered in ghoulish corpsepaint. Papa Emeritus was born.

I was 29 years old. I wasn't going to get another chance at this.

“And as soon as it was confirmed that he’s gonna be a Pope… well, when a Pope dies, you have a new one!” adds Tobias with a laugh. Soon after Papa I came the idea for the Nameless Ghouls – masked, anonymous backing musicians that’d add to the band’s hokey mystique.

By 2009, the project had an image, some songs and a name: Ghost. But it’d be a little while before things started to move forwards, and Tobias’s grand plan would take shape.

Between 2008 and 2009, there were maybe 20 people who knew about Ghost,” says Tobias, who ended up fronting the band through default after unsuccessfully offering the gig to a variety of names from around the metal scene.

“The guys in In Solitude, the guys in Tribulation, the guys in Watain… they were the only people who knew about it! But I knew at that point that it was gonna have the ability to turn heads, because it made everyone [excited].

"Repugnant were popular, but nothing I had ever done had had such an immediate impact on people. They were all like, ‘Ghost! I wanna hear more!’ I knew that there was gonna be some sort of buzz.”

A “buzz” is an understatement. When Ghost’s first songs were finally made public – on MySpace, no less – things began to move very, very quickly. Metal messageboards were set ablaze with excitement and offers came flooding in.

“I was quickly in touch with Will from Rise Above,” notes Tobias now, and he would eventually accept a deal with Lee Dorrian’s much-respected label. An album, Opus Eponymous, was recorded, and the metal underground waited with baited breath for its new favourite band to deliver on the hype. And yet, even at this stage, Tobias wasn’t totally certain just how far things would go.

“Originally, I thought that Ghost was gonna become more like a theatre/installation sort of band, like Sunn O))),” he reveals. “We would play Roadburn, arthouse concerts, five dates at the London Scala, that sort of thing.”

So a kind of ‘event’ band. You’d show up to play special shows and residencies.

“Exactly,” he confirms. “I never thought we would be the band that would play metal festivals, play in daylight, play with other bands.”

But then more offers started steaming in. Suddenly Ghost – with not so much as a gig to their name – were being asked to go on tours, play festivals and do interviews. For Tobias, there was a straight decision to be made: keep this project as a ‘cult attraction’, stay within the underground and become everyone’s favourite ‘Oh, you wouldn’t have heard of them’ reference point, or take a leap into the unknown and reach for greatness.

For a man that had spent years keeping a lid on his grand ambitions, now was the time to sink or swim. And, really, there was only ever going to be one option.

“I wasn’t gonna get another chance,” he states flatly. “I was already 29 years old at the time, so it was like, ‘This is the train and it’s leaving now.’ You can choose to stay, and sit there and fucking wonder all your life, or you can get on.”

Tobias got on the train, and it hasn’t stopped rolling. Opus Eponymous was released on October 18, 2010, and within three years intimate club shows became packed-out academy shows in front of 5,000 people, and soon after that the band could be seen supporting everyone from Metallica to Foo Fighters to Iron Maiden.

They won a Grammy for Cirice (and have been nominated for two more); they’ve been championed by everyone from James Hetfield to Phil Anselmo; their merch has become obscenely big business, t-shirts selling out in no time at gigs (including the show Hammer attends tonight) and the Ghost IP being plastered across everything from baubles to butt plugs to custom plague masks.

Tobias has manoeuvred that quick sketch of a spooky lad in a Pope hat into a machine Gene Simmons would be proud of, all underpinned by a storyline that has fans salivating as they wait for the next chapter to be revealed.

And if there was any doubt that this is still very much Tobias’s baby, you need only look at the casualty list littered with names that have crossed him. There are the disgruntled ex-bandmates who attempted to bring a lawsuit against Tobias in 2017 after claiming they were denied their rightful share of the Ghost pot.

The lawsuit was thrown out in October last year, his former colleagues ordered to pay Tobias’s legal costs (around $145,000, if you’re counting). There was also the Sister Imperator incident, where the elderly Ghost matriarch and star of their ongoing vignette series had to be swiftly recast after a mysterious falling out.

“All of a sudden, you’ve an actress who decides to start making fucking trouble and makes herself unemployable,” Tobias says. “Well, then you have to do what they do in any soap opera… a car accident.” That’s not allegorical, by the way.

Tobias literally had a new vignette made revealing that the Sister was in a car wreck and needed reconstructive surgery. The new actress was brought in so smoothly that many Ghost fans assumed it was the same person with a different haircut. How’s that for efficient?

“That’s how you solve things,” the frontman shrugs. “But that was not planned at first, because we’d been working with the same actress for three years, and then all of a sudden, things fell apart. But, you have to roll with the punch, you have to bite your finger, and come up with another plan… car accident. Boom.”

That Tobias won’t be moved on what actually happened between he and the original actress is understandable – after all, this is a man that spent years holding his cards close to his chest.

That this all managed to play out under the noses of one of modern metal’s most fanatical fanbases, however, is pretty damn impressive. Basically: don’t cross the boss.

While Tobias’s masterplan may seem iron-clad, he will at least admit that there is room for fine-tweaking along the way. He recently revealed that Cardinal Copia’s character could stick around for another five years and multiple albums – a first for Ghost, who have thus far changed up their protagonist for every record.

“That’s just because of the potential of him being a ‘Pope’ or a Papa Emeritus IV,” he explains, before adding: “If he becomes a Papa Emeritus.”

So there could be multiple endings planned for Cardi C?

“Absolutely. All of this is an organic movement, and that is one of the biggest paradoxes for me, as a control freak. To be part of this living world, I can’t control everything. I can control a lot, and I can influence a lot, but I can’t control it [all]. And coming to terms with those things and accepting that is a big struggle for me.”

He’ll also admit that being the mastermind behind a machine as big and ever-evolving as Ghost has had a serious impact on his personal life. Being a part of a successful band is one thing, but having that success rest almost entirely on your shoulders is something altogether different.

“It’s very hard to do this without any casualties,” he muses. “It takes a toll on your surroundings, your crew, your parents, your children… I have two kids, 10 years old. They were toddlers when this whole thing started. My family’s had to endure a lot for this to happen.”

He’s also had to face up to the reality that being in a big rock band means you’re going to attract the attention of

a fair few haters – and Ghost have an army of them. Check out Hammer’s Facebook page to see the dizzying levels of vitriol that a post about Ghost will attract. Recurring issues seem to be accusations of selling out, anger at Tobias’s treatment of his former bandmates and, most commonly, whether Ghost belong in our world at all (and to be fair, you’d be hard-pushed to describe Prequelle as a true heavy metal record by any standards).

“I’ve noticed it,” says Tobias. “I noticed it in the beginning. I think that it’s the same old discussion. ‘Is Ghost a metal band?’ ‘Are we a clone of Mercyful Fate?’ It’s the same old thing. But now these people are saying the new record is not as good because it’s not as much of a clone of Mercyful Fate! OK…”

Why do you think Ghost wind people up so much?

“Because we are ever-present, all the time. We are being shoved into people’s faces, and we’re rubbing it in. They wouldn’t talk about us had we not been successful. Does it worry me? Not really. If they’re talking shit about me, that’s one thing,  especially if it’s someone that I know. That can hurt me deeply. When you’re at the beginning of your career, especially nowadays, you spend a lot of time surveying what’s going on, because you need to feed off anything that’s happening to the band. So I noticed there was a lot of ‘controversy’, a lot of mixed opinions. It’s surprising they don’t understand that the more they talk about us, the more traffic there is about our band. More than we would have had had they not spoken!”

Once again, it’s there: the unnerving feeling that Tobias is metal’s modern-day puppet master, pulling the strings above a performance that we all continue to play our parts in. Whether it’s the media, his fans, his critics or the few who have attempted to foil him, everything only ever seems to play into his hands, and the Ghost train rolls on.

“A few months ago, based on metadata alone, a website made a list

of the biggest bands in metal,” Tobias reveals as a PR informs us our time together is up. “We were number four! Right up there. And that’s thanks to these people that keep on fucking hating. So I have nothing but great feelings for them.”

He makes to leave before adding: “That’s how all these bands made their careers. You think Lars would shy away every time people would talk shit about Metallica? Fuck. That.”

Hated, adored but never ignored. This summer, Ghost will play in front of stadium crowds with Metallica once again – something Tobias calls a “PR exercise” – before more global dates and, eventually, a new album that’ll reveal the next chapter of his grand plan. You can imagine that people will have plenty to say about it. And you can imagine that Tobias Forge is going to relish every second.

ALL RIGHTS OWNED BY METAL HAMMER

[andacherrycoke]

Apparently David Gordon Green is doing the HBO Hellraiser 🙃 he’s the JJ Abrams of horror, just keeps being handed IP no matter how not good his output is

[aholefilledwithtwigs]

Hellraiser has such an interesting story/mythos that i really feel gets underserved for most of the films. That’s why i’m scared to watch the new one— don’t want yet another disappointment. Horror is one of the worst for genuinely intriguing ideas/concepts/whole messages being lost once it becomes IP and the focus becomes the franchise. (probably the first big examples of this being godzilla, a film about post war/nuclear anxieties that became big scary lizard stomps around franchise)

To me, compelling horror is fundamentally about exploring trauma (it’s impact on people/communities/families, how we process trauma, how it stays with us, etc). Hellraiser seems centered on a very specific trauma of living during the AIDS crisis as a gay man. Your desires, which were already viewed as taboo, now carry very real life or death risk. Living as your full self also means embracing the pain and potential of destruction in the course of pursuing pleasure.

You solved the puzzle box of your sexuality, but now have to be ever vigilant of a new danger, that can seemingly appear from anywhere, when you’re most vulnerable

That post about Clive Barker being left out of lists of notable queer authors (probably because horror doesn’t get proper respect as a genre which is a whole other thing) got me thinking about Hellraiser as a queer film.

To me the film has always read as queer regardless of the story being told through straight characters. This idea of crossing a forbidden threshold of desire, temptations of pleasure too enticing, the secretive nature of it all, i mean, all sounds a lot like struggling with sexuality.

Then i thought about when he wrote this, in the mid 80s. Height of the AIDS epidemic. So yeah, desire wrapped in very real fear and very real danger. A world where pleasure was on a razor’s edge. So yeah. I think it is a very queer story, and i think all those layers got lost for the simpler “pleasure gluttony is a sin” in basically all the sequels

[paperfacesllc]

Many years ago I styled the legendary rapper @eminem I was on @google searching for pictures that I may have styled and discovered the the super creative photographer Nitin Vadukul passes away in February. I am so sadden by this news. He was a great man and was so amazing to work with. Here are some of the iconic images that we created of a young “Hellraiser” we know and love as Eminem. #ripnitinvadukul 😢 (at New York, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHlIcghB-Ip/?igshid=1rvryv3hlvvve

[poundfooolish]

zaxal

Iirc the second movie is a different dude doing it.

Hi my name's zax I read wikipedia summaries for horror movies I'm too much of a weenie to watch

Yeah but that doesn’t change my point that this concept alone just only has so much you can do with it. Like. Change the doctors, add more humans to the centipede, at the end of the day, it’s still the same idea and same execution, just longer. And it really doesn’t seem like a concept or execution that needs anywhere near this much time devoted to it. You had your 10 minutes now scoot along. We’re done now. You’re not new anymore, git.

cataradical

iirc the second film is meta? in that a totally diff character sees the movie and tries to recreate it. i don't remember i just watched phelous's reviews on it. i just hate it because the creator just plainly said he wanted to make a movie to shock and gross ppl out but fuck any substance or intrigue god the horror movie industry is awful already these ppl just make it worse

also i'm sad i need to watch the hellraiser with lance henriksen but i watched a review and i cba. i told myself to watch every lance henriksen movie but i already sit through so much shit i can pass it up. my beautiful lance, why do you always get shafted in these pieces of shit.

It’s just. It just seems so pointless, once you’ve read the wiki summary, what’s the point of looking into it further? Shock for shock’s sake is so weak and flimsy because once everyone knows the twist... there’s just no point in continuing, you know? He doesn’t sound like the kind of guy interested in delving into characters, and imo horror as a genre lives and BREATHES on its ability to make interesting characters that you can be scared FOR, or at least be amused watching run around. I have never heard ANYONE so much as mention the names of the people in Human Centipede, so how much oomph can they really have??

Hellworld is not great but it’s one of the more tolerable terribles imo. The true fucking travesties of the Hellraiser franchise are Inferno and Hellseeker because they basically drop everything interesting about the Hellraiser franchise and focus on being some sort of horror-crime drama. I literally remember next to nothing about them because they were so boring and blended together except that I hated them and nearly fell asleep. I think they were meant to be something different that got absorbed into the Hellraiser IP but just. So badly.