Hellraiser's Puzzle Box Was Inspired By Clive Barker's Grandfather
The famous "Hellraiser" puzzle box, also known as the Lament Configuration, is one of the most iconic items in horror history, up there with the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, Freddy Krueger's razor glove, or Jason Voorhees' mask. The idea of the Lament Configuration, a complex puzzle box that when solved opens up a portal to Hell, comes from the imagination of "Hellraiser" creator Clive Barker, and he once revealed that it was inspired by a similar puzzle box his grandfather once owned.
Barker once appeared on Wired's The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast and talked about his creation of the Lament Configuration, which first appeared in his classic novella "The Hellbound Heart," the source material for the movie "Hellraiser" and its ever-expanding timeline.
He said he wanted to avoid the usual clichés with his key to Hell. "I wanted to have access to Hell in the book and in the first movie, explored by something rather different than drawing a circle on the floor with magical symbols around it. That seemed rather stale and rather old," said the legendary horror author. And for inspiration for what form this access would take, he looked to an item that was owned by his grandfather.
Barker's grandfather owned a puzzle box similar to the Lament Configuration, presumably without its supernatural properties
Clive Barker continued to share his inspiration for the "Hellraiser" puzzle box: "So I went back to something that I remembered from my childhood. My grandfather was a ship's cook, and he came back from the Far East very often with strange little toys. One of the things he brought back was a puzzle box, which obsessed me for a long time."
So when it came time for Barker to come up with a novel way of accessing Hell in his story, the puzzle box came back to his thoughts. And, as he also pointed out, he was participating in a long tradition of cube-shaped symbols and images.
"You know, the image of a cube is everywhere in world culture, whether it's the Rubik's Cube or the idea of the [Tesseract] in the 'Avengers' movies. There's a lot of places where the image of a cube as a thing of power is pertinent. I don't know why that is, I don't have any mythic explanation for it, but it seems to work for people," said Barker.
That's certainly true in the case of the cube in the "Hellraiser" movies, which continues to be one of the most fascinating aspects of the long-running franchise. And just imagine how different these movies might be if Barker's grandfather had collected yo-yos instead.