The unofficial Hellraiser: Judgment post-mortem continues today, with writer-director Gary J. Tunnicliffe running the rule over a particular scene that was deemed too shocking to keep in the final cut. Given that the film is already pretty extreme at some points with its gore and violence, offering up tons of imagery that you won’t soon forget, it’s hard to believe that they initially tried to push things even further, but according to Tunnicliffe, they did, and the studio eventually put their foot down.
In a recent interview with Bloody-Disgusting, he explained what exactly the scene in question involved, and we must say, it’s easy to see why Dimension Films had a tough time with it:
“People have been reacting (gagging etc.) to some of the imagery in the movie, but the truth is there were elements that were a lot more shocking that were nixed from the original script and from the film itself. For instance the original cenobite sex scene with Damon (as he’s making love to his wife) was much more intense and we kept cutting back and forth; it originally had several false endings with one where his wife goes down on him and after he climaxes she looks up at him, but it’s now his brother looking back, smiling.”
Continuing on, the writer/director reveals that there was a lot more to the scene, explaining:
“Then when he leaves the house (to go out) drinking, the sequence was much lengthier and intense. He wanders the alley way apparently followed by a strange figure; he looks back and now the figure is gone; he turns back and slams into the vagrant; the vagrant quotes a line from a tale of two cities and then beckons Sean (Damon Carney) forward to show him two pig masked men (behind a dumpster) having sex with a woman – one in front getting oral, one penetrating her from behind.
She looks back at Sean, wiping her mouth revealing herself to be his wife Alison. He staggers back shocked, trips and falls to the floor; he hears a noise and we reveal the jury pulling a lament configuration from a disemboweled goat. The vagrant reaches up and pulls his skin from his face, grabs the box and speaking (with the Auditors voice) says judgment to those who open the box, and then hits him with it. It was meant to be disjointed, bizarre, nightmarish, showing that Sean’s world was being torn apart, undone by his experiences at the house within the hellish dimension.”
What’s even more interesting is that all of this was shot and fully edited, before the studio made Tunnicliffe trim it considerably. Not only that, but Dimension also found some of the Cleaner’s scenes to be too much, as well, and had the director remove them.
“Along with a lot of the Cleaner’s scenes, it was deemed TOO extreme by the studio and a vastly reduced and edited version was eventually used,” he told Bloody-Disgusting.
Though none of the footage that was cut found its way onto the Blu-ray/DVD, Tunnicliffe was kind enough to supply BD with some screenshots of the original “pig mask” scene – which you can see in the gallery down below.
Hellraiser: Judgment is now available across Blu-ray and DVD (buy it on Amazon here), and if it’s more coverage you’re after, look no further than our in-depth review. Also, you may want to hang around after the credits to catch a bonus scene featuring The Auditor (Tunnicliffe).
