This film is mistitled. It's the story about all the people who made Hellraiser and Hellbound. You already know it's much too long. I finally gave up after 2 1/2 of the 4 plus hour version. It's basically asking 40 different people the same question, filming their response, and then clipping it all together.

There are some odd moments. Doug talks at length about Clare's audition for the part, how he read with several actors but when she finished her read, he knew she had the part. Then it cuts to Clare saying, "I don't know what Doug is talking about; I never auditioned for the role." And there is ZERO comment from the interviewers! Every interview is in its own silo with no commentary or corrections or clarifications asked for.

It's one of the strangest films since there seems to be no editing whatsoever; every play Clive wrote is discussed (who cares? Isn't this about Hellraiser?),the back, back, backstory of the special effects teams are told when we really don't care about their personal lives or experience.

Worst of all, it's boring. I kept waiting for some insights but other than everyone calling Clive a genus and saying how challenging their roles were, there's very little digging here. If this was chopped back to a 90 min documentary with some editing and chapter breaks and titling to give it some structure, it would help tremendously. But there isn't, so it just plods along and goes on and on and on....

I don't like to criticize independent labor-of-love productions, but this is just not a good documentary -- unless you're interested in hearing a lot of people talk about what a genius they think Clive Barker is.

I've no doubt Barker is a major creative talent, and Hellraiser is a great horror movie, but it provides next to nothing about the making of the movie, the creation of the story, how it came to life, etc. I mean, apart from "This is a monumental film, Clive is a genius."

There's also almost no actual footage from the film, only occasional glimpses. Mostly it's one middle-aged (the movie is several decades old, after all) person after another talking about how much of a genius Barker is and how amazing it is that they were able to know him.

The film-makers start to delve into how Hellraiser fit in with the other horror movies of the era but it's all so superficial and shallow, and really it seems like the argument for why Hellraiser was so different from the other movies at the time is because it was just *so* different from the other movies at the time. The whole thing feels like a circular argument, which always leads back "I mean... a genius! The man is a genius!"

And even then, they don't even go into *why* he's a genius. People keep talking about how brilliant his paintings are, but then the movie barely shows them. People talk about amazing his books are, and yet I came out of the film not knowing the title of a single one of his books. The whole thing is just so superficial and frivolous.

And of course, Barker himself isn't in it. And also, if you're going to recycle that same, tired Stephen King "I've seen the future of horror" quote, then maybe you should actually interview Stephen King and find out why he said it, what made him think that, how was Barker different from the 'past' of horror, etc. But, nope. Almost all of the talking heads are people who haven't done much apart from Hellraiser.

There's a very good documentary to be made about Hellraiser, but this isn't it. Again, I get no pleasure from criticizing this movie, but this is the perspective of one person who watched it.

Post-script -- Wait, one of the other reviews here calls this a 7 hour documentary. Either he is mistaken or I saw only part of it or I'm confused or.... something. Anyway, what I saw dealt only with Hellraiser and Clive Barker, for what it's worth.

"Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II" is a feature length documentary uncovering the history and the making of Clive Barker's "Hellraiser" and "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" films.

First of all, the opening credits are a bit drawn out and I wish that wasn't the case. But the rest of the film makes up for that. In fact, the Arrow Video release is very extensive, and (as I understand it) was expanded to the point that it had to be turned into two documentaries. (The first half is 90 minutes and I assume the second half is similar.) Where this documentary excels is where it goes into great detail about the makeup and special effects, because this is what really makes "Hellraiser" stand out. Also, the coverage of the Coil music is awesome, because I don't know how many people know their work or knew they had anything to do with the film. (The Arrow set goes into much more detail on the Coil-Barker connection.)