The first film to screen in the inaugural year of Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness section in 1988—then called Festival of Festivals—this follow-up to Clive Barker’s original horror film, also based on his own novella The Hellbound Heart, elaborates on the implications of the enigmatic Lament Configuration and the realm of the iconic Pinhead and the Cenobites, this time with even more blood, gore, and surreal descents into hell. The openly gay Barker’s first Hellraiser film has since been embraced by the LGBTQIA+ community as a definitive entry into the queer horror canon, and these themes continue, though less overtly, into the sequel.