﻿Hey guys, I’m Kya and I have such sights to show you.
Throughout the ‘Hellraiser’ series,
the Cenobites have offered twisted pleasure and endless torment to countless unfortunate souls,
Jesus wept.
and their frontman Pinhead has become one of horror’s most feared faces.
Shit!
He’s a demon to some and an angel to others,
but if you don’t want your life to include an eternity of sadomasochistic torture,
you probably wanna steer clear of Pinhead,
his buddies,
or any puzzle more complex than a Rubik’s Cube.
And if you’re so bored with Earthly delights that you literally want to frolic with the devil,
Don’t even think about opening the box until you learn
How to Kill Pinhead.
In Clive Barker’s novella ‘The Hellbound Heart,’
Pinhead is just an unnamed Cenobite,
he’s not even their leader.
But when Barker adapted his story into the movie ‘Hellraiser,’
Pinhead’s unforgettable design and awesome performance by Doug Bradley made him an instant icon,
No tears, please! It's a waste of good suffering!
so fans must have been disappointed when he was
Banished by the Box.
Kirsty Cotton’s dear old Uncle Frank has experienced all the pleasures our world has to offer,
and he still wants more.
So he buys the Lament Configuration from a shady dealer in Morroco,
and locks himself in his attic to solve the puzzle and summon the Cenobites.
I’m not sure what exactly he was expecting,
but it probably wasn’t a bunch of chains popping out of nowhere to tear him into a zillion pieces.
Years later, his niece Kirsty and her family move into the house,
and they inadvertently resurrect the dearly departed.
Well, mostly.
Frank’s got no skin and needs fresh blood to fully restore his body.
Lucky for him, he’s got a history with Kirsty’s stepmom Julia,
who lures victims to the attic and bludgeons them with a hammer to feed her lover’s bloodlust.
This is why you hook up with your brother's wife, guys.
Kirsty solves the puzzle herself, and narcs Frank out to Pinhead and his posse.
He escaped you!
Nobody escapes us!
Once they see through his disguise,
which, by the way, is his murdered brother’s skin,
they rip him apart one last time.
Pinhead and pals turn on Kirsty,
but she’s able to undo the puzzle and banish them back from whence they came.
Okay, it’s kind of a cop-out.
Pinhead doesn’t really die in the first movie, but how can he?
He’s an unthinkable creature from a dimension beyond our understanding,
it’s not like you can just whack him with a machete.
If you’re gonna kill Pinhead, first you need to
Make Him Mortal
In the sequel, ‘Hellbound,’
Kirsty is understandably stuck in an insane asylum after the events of the first film.
Her psychotherapist Dr. Channard is obsessed with the Lament Configuration,
and along with a resurrected Julia from the first movie,
They murder a whole lot of a mental patients,
and open a door to the Labyrinth of Hell where Pinhead and his crew await.
The movie reveals that the Cenobites are all former humans who opened the box and were mutilated into their current form.
Pinhead’s real name is Elliott Spencer,
a World War I vet who danced with the devil after his trauma from the frontlines.
Channard, who’s now a Cenobite himself,
reverts Pinhead to his human form,
complete with receding hairline.
And now that he’s mortal again,
Channard slits his throat with one well-placed hook.
He's choking...
This was supposed to be the final fate of Pinhead.
just like Michael Myers in ‘Halloween II,’
Clive Barker wanted to kill off the star and move the franchise in a new direction.
And, just like ‘Halloween,’ they caved and brought him back,
Only this time, he’s missing
The Human Touch
Despite his twisted appearance,
Pinhead isn’t “evil” in the classic sense of the word.
There is no good, there is no evil. There is only flesh.
True, his job is to mutilate your body and trap you in a horrible pain dimension,
but hey, ya ass opened the frickin box.
The Cenobites are creatures of order,
but that’s only because of their lingering humanity.
In the third movie, Pinhead’s past self gets separated from his demonic half,
which manifests on earth as a straight-up evil agent of chaos.
Well, first it manifests as a spooky face in this big stone Pillar of Souls,
but soon he’s ripping and tearing through an entire nightclub.
Pinhead even creates a few new Cenobites along the way,
disfigured by the best technology 1992 had to offer,
like camcorders and compact discs.
That's What I Call Music 2! That's What I Call Music 3!
To stop the rampage, our hero frees Pinhead’s better half from his prison in Limbo,
and after the two reunite, she’s able to stab him in the gut with the puzzle box and send him packing.
Go to Hell!
Just like the first movie, it’s not a definitive end by any means,
but it never hurts to buy yourself some time.
How does a century sound?
Because that’s how far in the future ‘Hellraiser: Bloodline’ takes place,
where Pinhead meets his ultimate death from
A Bigger, Badder Box
We learn that the Lament Configuration was created in 1796 by a French toymaker,
who had no idea he was working on a portal to Hell.
A demon named Angelique pops out and kills the toymaker,
but not before cursing his entire bloodline for messing with the great beyond.
200 years later, in the present-day,
Well, present-day 1996,
his descendant John Merchant has built a massive skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan
that looks like a supersized version of his great-great-great-grandad’s puzzle box.
This is the Elysium Configuration, a device that creates perpetual light and can potentially seal off the gates to Hell for good.
Angelique summons Pinhead,
and even though the two have conflicting ideologies, they team up to kill Merchant,
not that they even have to, since his big-ass building turns out to be a bust.
Pinhead yanks his head off anyway,
and we jump forward 100 more years to a massive space station built by yet another descendant, Paul.
Paulll!
He summons the Cenobites, who make mincemeat out of a bunch of armed guards.
Then, Paul reveals that the ship is secretly a fully-functioning Elysium Configuration.
It uses lasers and mirrors to birth a swirling field of light,
which is trapped along with Pinhead and friends inside a massive puzzle box.
Then the whole thing blows up.
And unless we get a sequel set in 2128,
that’s Pinhead’s canonical final death.
Amen.
It’s a very weird direction for the gothic horror franchise to take.
It just feels less appropriate for the character than ‘Jason X,’
or even ‘Leprechaun in Space.’
The movie has a lot of problems,
which doesn’t surprise me, given director Alan Smithee’s track record of disastrous films.
Man, you’d think Hollywood would have learned their lesson about this guy by now.
(We know he's not real, guys)
‘Bloodlines’ was the last entry to have any involvement from creator Clive Barker,
but Dimension Films is contractually obligated to release a ‘Hellraiser’ movie every few years or they’ll lose the rights,
which is why the next few Hellraisers were unrelated scripts with Pinhead tacked on and dumped straight to DVD.
Straight to DVD is where films go to die.
He’s basically just a spectator in the movies, and he doesn’t die in any of them.
Well, he gets sent back to Hell in ‘Deader’ when the heroine kills herself,
but we’re not endorsing that kind of tactic.
First and foremost, we’re here to keep you safe!
None of these movies are much help to us,
especially ‘Hellworld,’
where Pinhead’s just a fictional character in a popular MMO inspired by the movies.
Still, our boy does get his hooks into plenty of unsuspecting victims,
and it’s been a while since we’ve heard that beautiful royalty-free Benny Hill music,
so let’s go to the
Lightning Round
[KYA SINGING] Murder, murder, murder, all these people are dying, dead, dead, dead!
Ouch. This series has more chains than a strip mall,
but we’re still not done,
Because the latest film in the franchise just dropped,
and in ‘Hellraiser: Judgment,’
Pinhead meets
A Fate Worse Than Death.
The world of Hellraiser was never really tied to Judeo-Christian beliefs,
I mean, I don’t remember any BDSM chapter in the bible,
but Judgment dives in headfirst.
Most of the movie is a police procedural about a serial killer who bases his crimes off the Ten Commandments,
and when we see Pinhead, he’s mostly dealing with afterlife byurockracy.
Turns out, the big guy upstairs wants the killing to continue,
since they’re literally putting the fear of God into people.
But Pinhead isn’t having it.
He punishes the killer,
and rips apart the Archangel who delivered the message for good measure.
That doesn’t sit too well with God,
who casts Pinhead out of Hell and forces him to walk among us mortals.
It’s the worst possible punishment for Pinhead.
Sweet suffering... The sweet suffering...
In Hell, he’s a big shot,
but up here he’s an average nobody,
who gets to live the rest of his life like a schnook.
Also known as Henry Hill. Pinhead is secretly Henry Hill the entire time.
No one's going to Hell, Karen!
And he’s stuck until the 22nd century,
or the next crappy sequel, whatever comes first.
I’m usually not the biggest fan of reboots,
but the bad ‘Hellraiser’ films way outnumber the good.
At this point, it’s probably best to start from scratch,
because for fans, the suffering needs to end.