hellraiser's iconic pinhead is a
touchstone of cinematic horror
but he didn't begin that way in fact
he's not even called pinhead until the
third movie
it took multiple movies to make the hell
priest into the monster we know and love
this is his story in its gruesome
entirety
so what is pinhead while he's presented
as a simple extra dimensional pain
monster in the original hellraiser
later movies in the series dive into
pinhead's backstory revealing that he
was once a british soldier
named elliot spencer who served in world
war one
pinhead's human origins are first
indicated in the second film
hellbound when an old photograph forces
pinhead to remember his former life
prior to his time in the hell dimension
the monster was just a man who took up
arms in service to his country
only to have his faith and humanity
shaken during the battle of flanders
doug bradley who played pinhead in most
of the hellraiser films
once explained how spencer went from a
charismatic leader of men
to someone seeking out the kind of pain
doled out by the cenobites
in the dvd commentary for hellraiser 3
hell on earth bradley recalled watching
a war documentary and being influenced
by it
saying one of the guys said this
extraordinary thing i just grabbed hold
of
talking about all his comrades who had
died on the first day of the battle of
the psalm
he felt as though he had cheated that he
was in the wrong place that he shouldn't
have lived that he should be dead and
he should have been buried along with
his comrades and friends
and i thought that's exactly elliot's
thing
trying to deal with the trauma of war
sends elliot spencer down a path
that leads him to some pretty dark
places
the first thing you need to know about
pinhead is that he's a cenobite
these types of creatures live in another
dimension and are characterized by their
extensive mutilation
and obsession with pain and ritual
torture anyone
unlucky enough to come in contact with
them and their hell dimension
is subject to any number of outlandish
punishments
almost all of the cenobytes were humans
before being transported into the hell
dimension by opening a cursed puzzle box
and these unlucky souls become servants
of leviathan
pinhead specific group is known as the
order of the gash which is
kind of a religious sect we learn in
hellraiser two and three
that eliot spencer himself was drawn to
the box that serves as a key to the hell
dimension while testing his limits for
pain
the first scene of this series shows a
similarly adventurous frank cotton
being torn to shreds by meat hooks after
discovering the box on a trip to morocco
of course frank makes an attempt to come
back to our world while spencer becomes
pinhead
and gets quite cozy as the leader of the
order of the gash
the backstory of the box that leads to
pinhead's world is nearly as detailed as
the creature's own origin
the lament configuration is a puzzle box
created by
architect mass murderer and all-around
pervert
philip le marshall in the hellraiser
comics when he wasn't creating intricate
cathedrals or
killing indiscriminately the french
artisan would build puzzle boxes meant
to reveal deeply held secrets or
satisfying dark desires
for anyone who could solve them in the
movies however
le marchan is just a toy maker the
lament configuration is just one such
box created while limaushan was working
as a toymaker
he made the box for a rich duke with a
penchant for murder
and an extreme interest in occult
practices
solving the box sets the cenobites free
to enact their elaborate tortures and
probably drag you to hell too
where you'll be flayed into another
grotesque monster
pinhead's story grows far more fleshed
out in hellraiser 3
which spends much of its time exploring
human misery and war
naturally pinhead shares how he felt as
a human soldier
watching so many of his fellow
countrymen perish on the front lines
pinhead as eliot spencer plainly states
that his disrupted faith in people and
god after the war
led him to experiment with torture pain
to pinhead is truth and everything else
is noise the degradation of war is the
final discovery the end point of
civilization
the only thing in a world full of
falsehoods
everyone will figure it out in the end
he just got there a little faster
the story of what pinhead actually is
can get a little muddled
the first two films show him as a
nameless demon then a former human on a
quest to inflict pain
which he sees as necessary during that
second film however
elliott spencer's spirit is trapped in
limbo what's left behind
without spencer's humanity is a
completely evil pinhead
at least until the end of the third
movie but there's an alternate story
presented by the 1993 pinhead comic
miniseries
which claims that pinhead is just the
latest reincarnation of an ancient aztec
deity
zypa totec while zypatotek was an
agricultural god associated with the
regular rebirth of seasons
he also ritually flayed himself to feed
humanity sometimes even peeling off his
skin entirely to reveal a golden body
underneath
his followers believed that totec
invented the concept of war and desired
human sacrifices
much the way the cenobites constantly
need new humans to torture
hellraiser creator clive barker himself
has made the religious elements of
pinhead's story explicit
if naming their dimension hell and
having pinhead deliver a treatise
against god wasn't enough
several of the movies refer to him as a
priest or even a pope
i am the way
pinhead himself is a little more humble
about the whole thing calling himself
an explorer in the further regions of
experience
he does admit however to encouraging
holy connotations and says that
depending on temperament
people view the cenobites as either
angels or demons
if barker had his way the character
would be known as a leader of hell
first and a guy with pins sticking out
of his face last
saying in an interview in my original
script pinhead didn't even have a name
pinhead was the name that the special
effects guy used actually i was like
wait a second you just named my villain
pinhead because i didn't think that
sounded very dignified
but it ended up on the call sheet and it
just stuck
pinhead's personal story doesn't advance
much through most of the films in the
series
he shows up for a few minutes and
generally leaves with a few new
cenobytes
but the 10th film in the series 2018's
hellraiser judgment
found pinhead tied up in a cosmic battle
revealing that god and the cenobites
have different plans for serial killers
hell would like to claim them for their
own
but heaven wants to let some run free to
instill godly fear in people
pinhead interferes with the plans of god
and kills an angel sent to negotiate
because of pinhead's actions a serial
murderer is killed in defiance of god's
plan
probably should not have done that
consumed with wrath
god punishes pinhead in the only way he
can because pinhead
is at his core a seeker of pain and a
leader in hell
god takes all that away from him by
making him a mortal man
putting him back on earth and forcing
him to live without his constant
tortures
is the cruelest thing one could do to
the monster and that's exactly how
hellraiser judgment
leaves him just a regular guy again what
could be crueler
but that's not the end of pinhead's
story hellraiser bloodline the fourth
film in the series had already taken a
giant leap forward into the year 2127
where pinhead again has returned to his
full glory
and has attempted to create an
unsealable gateway to hell
cenobites would no longer have to rely
on puzzle boxes to return to earth
at the same time a distant ancestor of
the original creator of the lament
configuration
an engineer named paul merchant no doubt
an amplification of philip le marchant
wants to undo the wrongdoings of his
family and devises a machine called the
elysium configuration
which would destroy all portals to hell
permanently
luring all of the cenobites to a space
station called the minos
merchant activates the device which is
actually the entire space station
the giant machine folds itself into a
massive box of mirrors and perpetual
light
destroying pinhead and the cenobites
forever
what happened in the century between
hellraiser judgment and the year 2127
we'll just have to wait and find out
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