protean depravity

The appeal of a Barkerian monster is something next to impossible to explain, but as real and palpable as can be. This is my prime takeaway having for the first time fully completed the first three volumes of his iconic Books of Blood . It is safe to say that Pinhead is the first real, full-blown villain I rooted for in a movie. As I said above, the appeal is next to impossible to explain, considering I was a child under the age of ten when I first saw Hellraiser. In Bravo's 100 Scariest Moments list ( Hellraiser makes the 19th place ) Barker himself states that the character, even though he never does anything nice or decent in the complete series, still gets fan mail from women who want to bear his children. I wouldn't go as far as that, but I see a certain elegance, an honesty in the priest from hell. I am intrigued and as a consequence Pinhead has been a figure whose dark aesthetic and humor has left a mark on me. Hell supposedly is a place of unspeakable torment and pain, ...

There are spoilers all over in this text! I LOVE the metro, subway, UBahn, underground, metro, métro, metró, metroul, whatever you call it. As long as a city has underground trains and a plan to go with it, I can find my way around and feel safe too. It takes me where I want to go, it shields me from the weather, it provides me a space to (hopefully) sit down and read my book... I feel like getting out that door and running to the next UBahn station just writing this, it's just extremely cozy down there. But I hear there are people who don't share my enthusiasm, especially the dark tunnels and their supposed secrets animating the darker corners of their imagination - notably Clive Barker... whose iconic 1984 short story collection Books of Blood Volumes 1-3 even opens (as far as I remember) with a novelette/short story set in the New York City underground: The Midnight Meat Train. The striking story worthy of the title of the collection revolves around not one, but two protag...