RAISING MORE HELL

Horror author (“Damnation Game”) and film director (“Hellraiser”) Clive Barker--in NYC promoting “Weave-World,” his new scare novel from Simon & Schuster--is doing double duty as he readies “Hellraiser II” for New World Pictures.

“We have a screenplay partly finished and I will executive produce,” Barker told us. The sequel will start two hours after the grisly end of “I,” Barker’s stylish and ultra-gory pic about a mistress trying to bring her dead lover back to life with infusions of fresh blood. Four characters from the first film return (“One of them alive,” joked Barker), as will the Cenobites--sadomasochistic ghouls from the “other side.”

Despite the solid box office ($8.4 million after a week), reviews for “Hellraiser” were decidedly mixed. Barker feels that some of the critics made good points. “A number of reviewers weren’t happy with the dubbing (English accents into American), and I wasn’t either. But New World felt it was necessary. Also, the picture was too much (gory) for some people . . . and I was real pleased by that.”

Meanwhile, he’s just won an injunction that stops Green Man Productions (producers of Barker screenplays “Underworld” and “Rawhead Rex”) from making any more films based on his work. “I won, which means all material (and potential sequels) returns to me.”

Vestron Video will release the two Green Man films--”Rawhead Rex” Oct. 28, “Underworld” March 9. Both carry the accompanying blurb: “. . . from the terrifying mind of horror genius Clive Barker.”

“I can do nothing about it,” Barker said. “Though there are only seven lines of mine left in the first film and I was locked off the set of the other. . . . It’s bloody irritating.”