10 Horror Movie Romances That Make Love Terrifying

So iconic are Pinhead and the Cenobites that the actual plot of Hellraiser is often overlooked. Based on Clive Barker’s short story The Hellbound Heart, it is one of damning infidelity that carries on beyond the grave.

Julia (Claire Higgins) moves into the house of the recently deceased Frank (Sean Chapman), the brother of her husband, with whom she was having an affair. But Frank is still in the house as a skinless corpse thirsty for blood. Julia, still in love with Frank, agrees to quench his thirst, and begins bringing men back to house for sex before murdering them with a hammer.

Frank and Julia make a frightening couple. Frank is a monstrous sadomasochist driven only by sexual depravity. Julia is a murderer willing to kill her own husband to resurrect Frank and renew their affair. The gruesome tragedy is that she ultimately dies at the hands of Frank, and that Frank is killed by the Hooks from Hell that so seduced him in the first place.

Hellraiser explores the dark corners of our desires where pleasure and pain converge, as do love and lust, sex and death, heaven and hell.