I got The Hellbound Heart as a Christmas gift and finished reading it in one day. And I need to ramble about how much I enjoyed it but also how tragic it is.
The movie is nearly exactly in terms of events and the order they happen. But it’s odd with changes. The changes are both major, but also minor at the same time. So instead of being a friend of Larry, Kirsty is his daughter. The cenobites have dialogue split more evenly between them, though if I remember correctly, in the movie Pinhead has the most dialogue because his makeup didn’t interfere too much with his speech. We also get more detail about what Frank experienced when he opened the box. Also I don’t know if it’s just me, but Julia seemed even quicker in deciding she was going to help Frank, because she wanted to fuck him again.
But the real reason I wanted to ramble is the tragedy of Kirsty and Larry. These two cannot catch a break. It just differs slightly. In the book it hits hard when Kirsty discovers Larry’s body. But in the movie it hits so much harder because she’s lost her dad to her stepmother, who she didn’t seem to like and her pervert uncle. Not just that, but that her pervert uncle took her dad’s skin to wear and she trips against her father’s skinless, bloody remains.
With Larry it’s sad because in the movie he’s constantly out of the loop. He seems to know somethings wrong with Julia and says he doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. When they do try to have sex; which stops because of Frank. But in the book, he comes home drunk after a work party at one point, and that’s when he hears Frank upstairs. And after Julia tries to stop him, he asks her why she treats him like shit. I think it’s that he ends up having to be drunk to even ask her what’s wrong. And it’s not asking what’s wrong with her, but why she’s hurting him. And yet he still doesn’t get an answer.
It’s just sad in the movie and book as, he’s out of the loop and ends up dying because of it and just trusting Julia. He never really gets an answer and when he does, he just immediately dies. And Kirsty’s just left with a lot of trauma.
I guess something we can also get from both stories is that going after your boring, golden retriever husband’s, bad-boy brother isn’t worth it Julia!
