- He is elegant and regal and horrific.
- My first meeting with Clive he gave me a rundown
of what he wanted, repulsive glamor.
That was my mood board.
- Clive thought of him as a cross
between a monk and a butcher.
- What's interesting about that character,
Pinhead's not even named in the credits of that film.
- Who are you? - Demons to some,
angels to others.
- One of most unparalleled
creative imaginations in horror cinema.
- "Every inch of its head had been tattooed
and, at every intersection,
a jeweled pin driven through to the bone."
- This was a game changer.
This articulate, kind of soft-spoken gentlemen with power,
who could really-
- Tear your soul apart!
- He has become the enduring image of the franchise.
- There are people who've never seen "Hellraiser"
who know Pinhead.
- Welcome to hell.
- I think when people came out of "Hellraiser"
for that first time, they said, "Hey,
check out the guy with the pins in his head."
I didn't really have a sense that
that was what was going to happen.
I would love to say that, "Oh yeah.
Of course, it was all planned." It wasn't.
- He, I don't think ever set out to create a movie monster
in the way of Freddy or Dracula or the like.
He wanted to more so allegorically explore
who we are when we close the door at night.
- I'll do anything you want.
Anything.
- That self that we don't show the rest of the world,
but that everybody has.
- One of the things that makes Pinhead
and the Cenobites so successful in the movie is
that we don't know anything about them.
They arrive and they tell you a lot about themselves,
but then they're very good at giving you a lot
of information while telling you nothing.
- It was the Cenobite, its hooks sparkling,
their anatomies catalogs of disfigurement.
- By the end of the movie, you say to yourself,
"Well, those Cenobites, who are they? What are they?"
You don't know.
That's power because the scariest things are the things
that we can't explain,
the things that we can't hang a label on.
- The box, you opened it. We came.
- Who are you?
- Explorers in the further regions of experience.
- My relationship with Clive goes back
a long way before "Hellraiser."
We were at high school together in Liverpool.
He was already at school writing,
directing, and starring in,
and hand drawing the posters for, his own plays.
I think 1985 he first mentioned to me that he was trying
to put this little independent,
British horror movie together and that there was a part
in there he thought I might be interested in.
We talked about the character a lot.
Of course, didn't have a name at that point
and I'd seen drawings.
I'd read "The Hellbound Heart."
But, it's the female Cenobite who's the main protagonist.
So, the next step is the screenplay.
Then, it's whatever happens between the words on the page
and your imagination as an actor and then the makeup
and the costume, which is 90% of the deal I think.
- There's a description in "The Hellbound Heart"
of what the Cenobites look like.
- When it spoke, the hooks
that transfixed the flaps of its eyes and were wed,
by an intricate system of chains passed
through flesh and bone alike.
- And it indicates that they're sort
of what we would now call modern primitives,
people who've made an art form of their own bodies,
piercing, scarification, brandings of various kinds.
Back then it was much,
much harder to see that.
There was much less of that around.
- Clive had shown me a magazine when we were talking about
and preparing for "Hellraiser,"
which was called "Piercing Fans International Quarterly,"
PFIQ, that was filled with pictures of people slicing
and dicing every inch of their anatomy.
- Whether you're designing a wedding dress
or a supermasochist from Hell's outfit,
you're gathering your resources.
So, PFIQ was a resource.
What I do remember was there was quite a lot of anxiety
about the fact that I could only have the magazines
for a limited amount of time
because the person who owned them was very anxious
to have them back.
My first meeting with Clive he gave me a rundown
of what he wanted for these characters
and I actually have my sketchbook here
from the 20th of April, 1986.
One, areas of revealed flesh where some kind
of torture has or is occurring.
Two, something associated with butchery involved.
This is typical Clive notes for a meeting.
Then a question mark.
Butchers chain mail aprons and gauntlets,
abattoir ware, and then,
and this is such a Clive phrase, repulsive glamor.
That was really, that was my mood board, repulsive glamor.
Then, we have a note about jeweled hooks
and torture instruments which Pinhead
had hanging from his body.
Very interesting how the investment of personal vision
and lived experience in those characters.
So, Clive's S&M, my interest in death and transformation.
Mythical creatures point to deeper truths
and are informed by lived experience.
- Sexuality is very much a driving force in "Hellraiser."
The sadomasochism of the Cenobites is front and center.
Jane and I've talked about this being perversity
as a fashion statement with the Cenobites
and the way in which costume and the flesh are interwoven.
You see it in Pinhead's costume.
The flaps of flash come over the costume
and they're held in place by hooks.
The whole idea of self-mutilation feeds into that as well,
which is an essential element in the way the Cenobites look.
- I was remembering going to this deep sea fishing place
in North London and walking in and saying,
"What are the most brutal hooks that you've got?"
And then, I started to explaining why I wanted them.
And they said they thought that I was somebody who had come
to kind of do some inspection of animal cruelty.
Whereas in fact, I was just wanting something that the guys
in PFIQ might have liked.
Everyone was very happy with the drawings.
And so, then, it was just a rush of order the materials,
start cutting the patterns,
molding the shapes for the top parts of the costumes.
- Makeup and costume are often intrinsically linked simply
because, when you have a makeup,
like one of the Cenobites,
that is literally intrinsically linked to the costume,
so it's like leapfrogging over each other.
Jane gave us the designs.
We worked in what we would be able to do with all of them.
With Pinhead, there are five individual pieces
that make up the makeup.
Biggest piece of the makeup was a cowl piece.
It was the back of his head
and it went round behind his ears
and then down around his neck
with the three hooks on the back.
You then had a face piece that went from across the top
of his head, down across here,
and around here with holes there
and then a forehead piece that went across from there
to there, across the scars,
and then, to finish off, two soft pieces
that finish across scars down there
and blended in around the back there
with a hole for his ears and they would be put
on in a specific order.
- Every inch of its head had been tattooed
with an intricate grid,
and at every intersection of horizontal
and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone.
- I think it's 112 nails in his head.
I actually took a life cast of Doug's face
and projected some lines onto it to give me the basis
for where I wanted the lines to go.
The original design had tiny little
silver sewing pins with little heads.
My problem with it, and I said to Clive,
"I'm really worried about this.
I don't think the pins will show up on film
because they're so thin."
We did one days test shooting with Doug
and with the pins in.
The pins just didn't show up.
You saw glints of light.
It was almost like a flickering halo around his head.
So, we very, very quickly, I think it was about a week
or two to the start of shooting,
I basically took some brass tubing,
cut it into one inch lengths,
and then cut the ends off brass nails and superglued them
to the end of the tubing and each makeup then consisted
of a layer of latex and then a pin pushed through,
and then a nail pushed over the top of that.
So, he was called Pinhead because he had pins.
Otherwise, he might've been Nailhead,
which doesn't sound quite as good.
One of Clive's stipulations
of the design was he wanted Doug's face.
He did not want to lose Doug.
That was major, major stipulation.
- What Jeff was doing from a technical point
of view was phenomenal.
Long before the days of CGI,
what it meant was you could see
all the expression on Doug's face.
I mean, it was a really sophisticated and subtle piece
of makeup innovation in its day and that is a huge key,
I think, to the power of Doug's performance
because we can actually see his facial expressions.
It's not an immobile mask.
- When I had the makeup on for the first time
and it had taken five or six hours to get the makeup on
and I just sat in the chair in front of the mirror.
I look in the mirror and I'm not there.
It's this thing is now looking back at me and it's strange.
A whole multitude of sensations were coming back
off the mirror, different feelings I had suddenly
about what the character was.
- He stood very still and didn't move his face and I said,
"Doug, try it: Smile." And he went, "Oh!"
And he suddenly realized that he could do all the things
that the actor wants to do.
- And then you can start wondering what happens
if I try talking and saying one
of Clive's wonderful lines through the makeup.
How's that reading?
- We have such sights to show you.
- That's really weird, that dichotomy between the two,
between how Doug Bradley physically embodied the character,
but how he looked and the horror
that is expressed through his physicality
versus how he speaks and how he kind of carries himself
and I think that's what was seductive about it.
- First day of filming on "Hellraiser,"
I was really getting one note back from Clive.
He'd finally got this character living,
breathing, walking, talking, standing in front of him.
He's looking at it in the camera, getting very excited.
I got one note from him repeatedly the first few takes:
"Do less, do less.
What you're doing is fantastic, just do less."
What he was saying was "Don't fight the makeup.
If you are selling us nothing and through that makeup,
you're telling us that you'll tear our soul apart it works.
And, by the time it goes up on the big screen,
it will work even more."
- But if you cheat us.
- We'll tear your soul apart!
- Pinhead entirely hinged on the performance.
You can smack pins in somebody's head
and have them walk around in that crazy S&M vestment.
But, at the end of the day,
Pinhead talks and that's not something that we saw
in all of the monsters from this time period.
If we look back, many of them were just silent,
giant, hulking menaces walking through woods and suburbs.
Pinhead had to speak and he had to deliver
and he had to be very menacing
and calculating and frightening.
- When you have an actor who's allowed to actually act,
you have a different kind of personality.
- Doug Bradley did such a good job.
I mean, the delivery of those lines.
- Frank. - It's him.
It's his voice. It's his delivery.
It's his face.
It's all of the things that he did that brought Pinhead
to life and made Pinhead so magical.
- He is elegant and regal and horrific
and you definitely don't want him showing up in your house.
But, you can't help but be in thrall
of that command he holds.
- Pinhead wears those nails like it's regalia,
with his chin held high and with these imposing monologues.
- You solved the box. We came.
Now you must come with us.
- What's interesting about the character,
Pinhead's not even named in the credits of that film.
We don't know it's Pinhead, yet that's what we think of now.
- What really speaks to that,
I think, is that he has become the enduring image
of the franchise despite barely being in that first film.
He just stole the whole thing.
- Pinhead is sort of an outlier when it comes
to the other eighties horror icons
because the initial intent for the character was not
to make him the lead villain of the franchise.
- People really responded to this
very strange and unusual character.
He wasn't someone just in a mask or a hood
or something like that.
He just sort of, I think,
kind of accidentally became an icon.
- You look at Michael Myers, you know what he is.
He's a mass killer.
You look at Pinhead you're like-
- What the fuck is that?
- Up until that point, monsters were either kind
of funny, wise cracking.
- You've got the body,
I've got the brain.
- Or they were silent.
But, when we were introduced to Clive Barker's Pinhead,
it was this demonic icon who could really destroy you.
- We want the man who did this.
- He's good at his job and he enjoys it.
But, he's not as gleeful about it as say Chucky
or Freddy might be.
He's simply there to do the work
and he wants you to join him in hell.
- Pinhead is different from the other
great eighties horror monsters
in that it's not really a slasher.
He's more of a psychological monster and less
of the physical dread.
- One of the things that makes Pinhead
so much more interesting in my opinion than Freddy
or Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees is
that you feel he is a man of the world.
He's seen it all and he's bored with it all
and I think that's kind of interesting.
- When Pinhead confronts someone,
he doesn't just jump out and kill them.
He wants to hear about those murky cobwebbed corners
in your head that you don't really talk about,
those dirty perverse corners,
the corners that horror lives in.
- There's not the kind of the stalking of the prey
that you see in the "Friday the 13th" movies
or "Nightmare on Elm Street."
It's not like Jason cutting someone's head off.
This is more about you being corrupted
by your own curiosity.
- What's your pleasure, Mr. Cotton?
- The box.
- Pinhead and the Cenobites represent that.
- Pinhead is the one you graduate to.
That was my step into adult horror.
- Super bondagey and BDSM realness
that you hadn't really seen before.
- Oh, no tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering!
- It's one of the best character designs we'll ever see
and the performance and the voice grabbed us.
- But, I also love the fact
that Pinhead can be bargained with
and what's great about Kirsty,
as the kind of "Hellraiser" final girl,
is that she knows how to manipulate him.
So, when he shows up, she's like, "Ah, ah, ah!
Before you start flaying flash, I know where Frank is."
- He escaped you!
- Nobody escapes us!
- He did! I've seen him, I've seen him!
- And Pinhead's like, "I'm listening. Tell me more."
And I love that because he's not just a guy
that says, "I'm going to kill you."
He's someone that loves a good conversation.
- What has that to do with you?
- I, I can, I can lead you to him!
And you, you can take him back instead of me!
- Maybe, maybe.
- Pinhead out of all the boogeymen is kind
of a dude I'd love to have a drink with
or some tea and talk about the limits of flesh
and all these kinds of things.
- Clive is great for this.
He'll give you your kind of imaginative insight
into a character that you can't get anywhere else.
So, he told me he thought of him as a cross between a monk
and a butcher, that I should think of myself
being the head surgeon in a hospital.
But, I'm also the chief bureaucrat,
the chief administrator responsible
for keeping things running on time.
- Every other slasher villain takes a pleasure
in the crimes they commit.
They take joy in these murders and these kills.
Charles Lee Ray wants to be a bad guy. Jason wants revenge.
Michael Myers is the epitome of pure evil.
There's something really terrifying about a villain
that lives with a completely different set of rules
and moral codes than anything else on the plane
that you exist in 'cause I don't think Pinhead or any
of the Cenobites are villains necessarily in their realm.
They are just doing the thing that they are supposed to.
- Pinhead, he's just doing what he's told, man.
He's just dealing with the politics of Hell.
Somebody calls him. He shows up.
He does what he's supposed to be doing.
But, Julia is truly for me, the villain of the movie.
- Oh, the baddest bitch.
She didn't have any powers and she was still going
after people and clocking them with a hammer.
You see this degradation of her character driven
by her sexual desire and this decomposition of her morals
and then she just becomes this murderous, crazy bitch.
- I mean, part of me is like, "I get it.
She wants her some uncle Frank
'cause her husband is not doing it
for her the way Uncle Frank used to."
- Come to daddy.
- I think she's so underrated.
Pinhead, of course, became the star, right?
- I don't know if the world was ready to recognize her
as a true monster.
She was being upstaged by Pinhead and his lot.
- Now, where were we?
- The original story that "Hellraiser" is based off of,
the lead center bite is kind of its secondary character.
Instead we focus on family dynamic.
- You going to let me kiss the bride?
- What about Larry?
- Forget him.
- And then steps in the 1980s.
In 1987, we had learned our lesson in Hollywood
of how we needed to be marketing horror movies.
We have to have a monster.
We have to have the face that is going to go on the poster
and that is what is going to sell this franchise forward.
So, what do they put on the poster?
It is Pinhead grinding his teeth, holding a box
and that's really all we need.
- That was the first time I remember just going like,
"Whoa, the villain!"
They knew that the story of Hellraiser was way crazier
than just the image of Pinhead.
- So much for the cat and mouse shit!
- And, so they could put pinhead on the tape cover just
to get you to take it home.
- I feel like a terrified people.
I mean, I remember seeing it and being like, "What is that?"
Because you, of course, saw other movie monsters,
Jason, Freddy, things like that.
But, this person wore, their torment on their face,
which is really unusual just to see that on a box cover.
It was so striking.
I really think that that was genius marketing.
Obviously, there were other horror movies
that were super gruesome back then,
but none that reached that level of media attention.
- Do you want as much graphic detail in the violence
and in the gore as you can get?
- No. No, I don't think the graphicness is the point.
The issue is getting people involved
and then making them jump.
It's got to be a roller coaster ride.
You've got to deliver.
If people put down the seven bucks to see the movie
and they'll seeing a horror movie,
they don't want to see "Little Mermaid."
- "Hellraiser:" Satan's done waitin'!
- When "Hellraiser" came about,
I remember being freaked out
because it was something I never seen in horror before.
I mean, it was a brand new character, a whole new concept.
There was something about Pinhead,
just the coldness of him
and that was more eerie than anything.
- You just heard people talking about it. There was a buzz.
They were like, "Oh my God, it's so satanic and crazy."
And so I just knew, I was like,
"This is a different kind of horror movie."
- Clive Barker did bring this sadomasochistic vibe to horror
and didn't hide it,
celebrating through Pinhead the mixture
of pleasure and pain.
- Leather and straps and chains and flayed flesh
and nipples hanging out.
It was like, "Oh my God, that's fuckin' gnarly."
- Plus, they had British accents, so that's sexy as fuck.
- Oh, yes! - "Hellraiser" is the horniest
slasher franchise you will ever see.
Clive Barker is a man who likes
to keep his kinks on his sleeve.
He likes to let you know what he's feeling
and he's telling you that you're probably into it too.
You just don't know it yet.
- I was a little turned on.
I was like, "Okay, this is kind of cool. Good look, man.
That's bold, kind of terrifying,
what you do with the chains."
- He offers you something that sounds seductive.
- We have such sights to show you!
- What is that going to be?
- Taste our pleasures.
- And Frank gets ripped apart at the end.
So, what he's offering you is awful.
- The image of Pinhead and the surrounding Cenobites
and the mystery around what they want is something
that can continue to haunt you over time.
They're intriguing.
They're hard to get your head wrapped around.
They're both inviting, but also terrifying.
There's a glamorous element to them.
But, there's also something repulsive about them.
There's always this irony.
When Pinhead says "We have such sights to show you,"
he means it.
Sometimes an idea persists because it provokes us
in strange ways, both alluring and terrifying,
and we never really make peace with it
and I think the Cenobites have the power to do that
in a way that none of the other eighties icons do.
- It just grabbed you. Like, "This is unbelievable!"
They knew what they were doing though.
That's why people were flocking to it.
That's why I was such a huge success.
- By the time "Hellraiser" comes out
at the end of the eighties,
we've already had a decade full of slasher movies.
So, in some ways,
it makes sense that "Hellraiser" grabbed audiences
because, on the outside,
it looks like another one of these
until you get into the movie and dig into the story
and realize it's the antithesis of it.
- He took the slasher format
and then he dropped pure Gothic horror
into the middle of it and the Cenobites are out of time.
They don't belong in the 1980s.
I think it's a really clever balance that Clive found was
to embrace what was current in 1980s era
and then subvert it.
- I think part of what it did
and why it was executed so well is that the whole landscape
of the eighties handled sexuality
as something to be forbidden.
The whole notion of if you have sex you die.
And "Hellraiser's" like,
"It is way more complicated than that.
If you have sex, you may die.
But, if you have sex,
all these other things could happen too."
- Jesus wept.
- None of us, apart from Clive and the producers,
ever thought that this was going to see the light of day.
The following year, when I happened to be in New York,
when "Hellraiser" was released
and walkin' through Times Square
and seeing Doug on big billboards
and that was when it hit me.
- It was a little film with no money
and when we saw the reviews coming out
and what people were saying about some tarty,
little cheap horror flick that it could have been
had it just disappeared straight onto video
that we realized that there was something bigger there,
which was nice.
- My first convention I had no idea what to expect.
It took me a good 20 minutes or more just
to get into the elevator because,
for the first time in my life, I was surrounded.
"Mr. Bradley, Mr. Bradley,
could I had my picture taken with you?
Would you sign this?"
I had no idea until that moment that this thing was rolling
and growing out there in horror fandom.
- Last year, they brought Hell to earth!
- No!
- "Hellbound: Hellraiser II." Time to play.
- We were midway through shooting "Hellraiser"
when there started to be a lot of talk
about New World wanted a sequel.
Once you get into sequels, that begins to dilute.
It's absolutely inevitable because you have
to start telling the backstory.
We want to know and I think, as creators, we want to share.
So, right at the beginning of "Hellbound,"
Clive starts putting in a little bit of the back story.
the opening sequence of "Hellbound" is entirely
about Pinhead's origins.
- Finding out that he used to be a British soldier
that eventually became this person
and then he recognizes that he was human at some point-
- What is this? - Really opens up a door of,
how self-aware are these Cenobites?
- Wait!
I remember.
- I'm more scared of villains
that are hard to explain, right?
Once you give a backstory to someone,
they become more human,
and, in fact, you can end up sympathizing with them.
- Sequels are very hard.
I think you make a picture which has some real originality
in the marketplace you're going to get kicked hard
on the second picture.
- Our next movie is
"Hellbound: Hellraiser II."
The problem here is that there was no discernible beginning,
middle, or end to this nightmare,
just a series of disconnected and gruesome scenes.
- I want to focus on one word
that you mentioned, which is gruesome.
I mean, this film could be actually titled "Skinned Alive."
- The second film's a great film.
It's a very different kind of film.
But, it opens up the universe.
It gives us a maze-like Hell, which is really fantastic.
- "Hellraiser II" is actually my favorite, "Hellbound."
I like it even more than the first one
because it really takes the mythology
into new and interesting places.
It has these incredibly powerful images.
The shot of the skinless Julia,
bright red blood standing in this white room is
one of the greatest images, I think, in horror.
It takes the material to even more interesting
and powerful and scary places.
- It's so good to be back.
- "Clive Barker Hellraiser III:
Hell on Earth!"
- Three becomes playful fun.
Three does what probably part four of "Nightmare" does
in a lot of ways.
It makes it a little more poppy.
- Ah, more friends come to play with you, Joey.
- Play with this, Pinhead!
- That's the one where they kind of tried
to turn him into a sort of Freddy-type jokester, killer guy.
- Pinhead's conceptual origins were left behind
and they started to transform him
into a wise cracking villain,
sort of this late phase amalgamation of Freddy.
It starts losing its way.
- It became kind of a bigger studio movie
where you feel the producer is trying to extract
that we want Freddy Krueger.
- Jesus Christ! - Not quite.
- Can we make pinhead create more Cenobites?
One, maybe, maybe one's got CDs in his head. CDs!
And you're like, "Fuck off!" Like, "What is that?"
You could just feel the studio notes
coming into "Hellraiser III."
- If I was going to be a Cenobite,
I want to be the Cenobite that had all the DVDs.
- Get it! - I think it was
a bunch of CDs. - "Hellraiser III," man!
- But, yeah, that was pretty cool!
I do- - You have have any problems
with "Hellraiser III" this is another warning.
If you have any problems with "Hellraiser III,"
I'm going to come to your house!
- Clive Barker- - I will physically
fight people that dislike "Hellraiser III."
I love that film!
- I love that movie!
It's not one that a lot of people love.
But, I love part three.
In that, for some reason,
the camera crew becomes camera crew Cenobites.
- That's a wrap.
- It made for really interesting, fascinating, fun movie.
- The first "Hellraiser" movie
I ever saw was "Hellraiser III."
Clive was not anticipating that Pinhead would become
an icon in the way we look at Jason
and Freddy and Michael Myers.
So, I think some of that was born out of the idea
that the film was successful
and captured people's imaginations
and that's how we understood
our horror villains at the time.
- It's really important that we understand
that these monsters are actually very attractive to us.
These monsters are very powerful figures.
They're creatures who have powers that maybe we want.
There's a part of us that actually wants
to be these monsters.
- A powerful horror icon is like a meme
that's born on the internet.
You never know what's going
to capture the audience's imaginations and persist.
- Oh, hi, I'm Gilbert Gottfried!
Join me and him! - You think your nighttime
world is closed to me?
- For "Hellraiser III!"
- And you are?
- Those who know me call me Pinhead.
- Okay, let me take a look see at the list.
Hmm, no Pinhead. Could is be under Nailhead?
- Just let me in or I'll tear your soul apart!
- The little filmed inserts they used to do
with David Spade, famous people on the list couldn't get in.
And that year it was me,
Andrew Dice Clay, Roseanne, and Ringo Starr.
I was born and raised in Liverpool in the 1960s
and I got out of the limo and the PR girl said,
"Oh, it's a pleasure to have you here.
If you could come this way and just into the auditorium."
And I went around the corner and Ringo had his back to me,
talking to some guys and one of them went.
Ringo turned around and looked at me and went,
"Hey, it's Pinhead!"
- Because of the saturation of Pinhead and "Hellraiser,"
the third installment did so well, that's how we got a four.
- Oh my God!
- Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks?
- I did direct part four.
First of all, I didn't want to do it because I thought,
"What am I going to bring to this? It's 'Hellraiser' four."
But, what I loved about it is
that it showed how the box was first created
that brings hell to us
and it went through 16th century France to modern day,
all the way into space, into the future, and I love that.
I love the, the history and the arc
and I thought, "Well, this is something interesting
'cause the fans will really appreciate that,
to see the whole history of how this all started."
- I don't think it's jumping the shark quite yet
'cause the idea of the space is actually pretty good.
- The sequels onward, they're kind
of a mixed bag of interesting ideas.
You had Scott Derrickson direct one
and Scott's doing great movies now
and then he tried to make his sequel
a little bit more esoteric and Faustian
and I thought that was really cool.
- What are you?
- What I am, who I am, is no concern of yours.
- When you get to the other sequels,
the ones that went straight-to-video,
it was really a matter of Dimension taking scripts
that they had in development and saying, "Well,
we'll put Pinhead in here
and make this a 'Hellraiser' sequel"
to varying levels of success.
- They're trying to split the difference basically between
that sort of horror icon/horror hero expectation
and what the series actually was,
which is nothing like that.
But, he's just too cool looking of a character.
You can't background him for too long.
You got to use him.
- I cannot die.
I am forever.
- What you start seeing is companies have to make a film,
in this case every year, to not lose the rights.
As soon as you do something like you take a script
that wasn't written as a "Hellraiser" movie,
there's no way you're going to be able to keep
that continuity of that character.
It's going to start falling apart.
- Here we go.
- You opened it, summoned us, and we came.
- The one everybody hates the most,
and probably rightfully so,
the first one that was not Doug Bradley.
The movie itself kind of tapped into the same kind
of themes that the originals had.
But, it was made in a week or something
to hold onto the rights.
If they had done that legitimately,
I think people would really have responded to it.
But, unfortunately the way it was made,
you can't really defend it, you know?
- That was the point where you really felt
the series was kind of running on fumes is
when they couldn't even get Pinhead's proper actor
back into the part.
It just kind of seemed like desperation.
- "Hellraiser" has the similar problem
of "A Nightmare on Elm Street."
The series kind of pivots and takes a turn.
I do think you need the sequels to become iconic
and the sequels are important to the iconography
of these characters and these worlds.
But, when you don't deliver and when you're a sequel
that maybe doesn't live up to expectations,
it can really feel like a betrayal to the fan base.
- It's frustrating to me, uniquely this franchise,
because I love that first film so much.
It's one of my favorite horror movies and it's just one
of my least favorite franchises to revisit.
I don't go back to the sequels often
because there's no vision.
There's no cohesion.
- They were not particularly made with the love
and tender care that we lavished on the first two.
- There's no question about that.
It's just how you handle it and you are always as a,
and certainly for me as an actor,
because Clive was having less to do with the franchise
as it developed, I was at the mercy of executives
who can't always be relied upon to make the right decisions.
Can I leave it diplomatically there?
- That doesn't mean that those movies
aren't delicious in their way.
I love the idea of Pinhead in space.
- The Garden of Eden,
a garden of flesh.
- Pinhead in a neo-noir movie.
- Your flesh is killing your spirit.
- No!
- Pinhead on the internet.
- The box, you opened it. We came.
- But, is that the Pinhead that Uncle Frank
initially called out of the box?
I don't think so.
But, what is a film franchise if not something
that we go on a journey?
- Unfortunately, of all the films,
that's the character who's had the hardest go
of creative continuity and,
once you go to space, it is hard to come back.
- I cannot die!
- There, at this point in time,
have been several other versions of Pinhead.
But, we, as fans, keep returning to Doug Bradley
and keep saying, "That's the best one.
That is the performance that made Pinhead iconic."
Much like we will always look at Bela Lugosi
and say, "That's Dracula."
That is what Doug Bradley did to Pinhead.
- I have to have a sense of humor about it.
It's a movie. This is a fictional character.
- I have nothing to fear
- I know Doug Bradley is the original Pinhead
and I respect that completely.
It's a movie role. I got the part.
I played the part and I'm thrilled that I got to do it.
It's the coolest thing that's ever happened to me.
That's all I can really say.
Playing this character, it was the coolest thing
that's ever happened to me!
- It's unfair to say that no one else can play Pinhead.
There are plenty of great movie characters
that have been played by different people.
But, Doug Bradley is Pinhead.
Whether we want that to be true or not,
whether he's replaced again in a reboot or something,
he's always going to be that character for most people
because the way he talked, the way he held himself,
the imagery that he evoked in that role is iconic.
- Kirsty, we meet again.
- How did you find me?
- You opened a door long ago and it will not
be closed until I get what I came for.
- My soul.
- It's been a journey watching how the image
of Pinhead has taken on a life of its own.
There are people who've never seen "Hellraiser"
who know Pinhead and know that image.
Even by the end of the eighties,
Screamin' already had a big Pinhead doll out.
Congratulations, you have just purchased
Clive Barker's Pinhead Cenobite.
This museum quality reproduction is designed
for the serious collector of the bizarre.
Please follow the assembly instructions carefully.
- I think that Pinhead stuck in the minds
of the pop culture for a couple reasons.
The first of which, of course,
is that amazing character design.
the crown of painful pins.
Insert these in areas indicated.
- Not just the pins in the head,
but sort of the flayed chest,
this BDSM sort of appearance
that you never see in mainstream cinema.
all vestments black,
including cassock, rope, and .
Open wounds, bloody crimson, torture tools,
paint and hang as designed.
Your model is now complete.
- If you rented "Hellraiser" in the eighties,
at the end of the credits,
there was a "Hellraiser" commercial
for "Hellraiser" merchandise.
chained to the screen
'cause here's what we have for you.
Get hooked on a "Hellraiser" T-shirt,
"Hellraiser" baseball caps,
one size fits all, even Pinheads.
- It was like, "If you want to raise hell at the library,
get this 'Hellraiser' tote bag."
That's really what's staying
with me is the "Hellraiser" commercial.
- Did they ever make a "Hellraiser" pincushion?
- I have a Pinhead Yoda at home.
I have a Pinhead Winnie the Pooh.
Pinhead My Little Ponies seem to be popular.
Pinhead babies are very popular.
- I got really into the comic books.
Epic did this amazing line of "Hellraiser" comics
in the 1990s and they kind of did everything
that I wanted the movies to do,
where they focused on different Cenobites
and different stories and took the Hellraiser mythos to all
of these different locations and they became a huge part
of my adolescent teen years.
- I think it was the fifties and sixties
when the Universal classic monsters became cartoons
and comic books and action figures and model kits.
We've reached that saturation point with all
of the eighties and nineties characters now.
They've become our pals!
on "Big Brother,"
a practical joke war resulted in hurt feelings.
Who will be evicted? Find out live tonight!
- I think that characters go from being nightmare fuel
to being comfort food because horror movies,
ultimately, are a distillation
of cultural and societal fears.
What's going on in the moment usually is embodied
in horror cinema and so things
that scared us became the things that we loved.
- Suppose you got a handful of thumbtacks
and you accidentally roll over them like so.
Now the fire is out,
but you look like "Hellraiser!"
- I think embracing that is just part of the cycle of horror
because that's part of the fabric of our pop culture.
- We are going to raise more hell than Hellraiser!
- Hey honey, you want some salt for your steak?
- Yeah, sure.
- Got ya! That's more salt than you wanted.
- There's a seduction to that character,
even when you're looking at him,
'cause he's wearing sort of leather S&M gear
and that is really seductive and attractive
to a certain kind of person.
- Number three, "Hellraiser."
- Take those nails out and you've got a hottie.
- And I think that's part of why,
when you look at the character,
you say, "I'm interested in that guy.
I want to know more about that person.
I want him on a t-shirt."
- The great thing about a character like that is it,
I feel, it's hardly been explored.
He's been in a lot of movies,
but has hardly really been explored.
I'd be excited for them to find a way
to return to that character.
But, again, it might, at this point, need a radical change.
- I think if you look at the story
of the original "Hellraiser,"
it is astounding what they pulled off
for something like a million dollars,
both in terms of design and scope and idea and concept.
I mean, they took us in a direction that we're still trying
to wrap our heads around 35 years later.
It's so rare that someone can actually
show you something new, can give you an impression
of something, a vision of a world,
of a corner of the human psyche
that you haven't quite accessed yet.
I think that's something the original movie did
and that the imagery continued to work
with across the films and you see it inspiring other movies.
You see countless other tropes throughout horror
and science fiction that are echoes
of what was originally done in
that very contained, million-dollar production.
- Why does that look so familiar?
- People want more from this world.
I want more from this world.
I want to go deeper inside the puzzle of the box
and see where it may take us.
So, I think there's a hunger and there's an energy
to experiment with that and there's always a risk
that it won't live up to the original and,
I think, particularly in this case, it can't.
It never will.
But, hopefully, as creators and artists,
we can find an inspiration
in what people have done before us and we'll come up
with something that's a worthy journey to go on.
- Let us take one final journey together.
Let me help you remember once and for all.
- In terms of imagination, it might be one
of most unparalleled creative imaginations in horror cinema.
I wish there were more Clive Barker-directed movies
because he's so wonderful with monsters and characters
because he didn't view them as other.
He viewed them as same.
- Again, it's that point
at which Clive imagines this character.
He writes it. It gets physically created.
The costume is made. The makeup is made.
They're put on me. I stand up.
I speak the words. It goes on film.
It goes out there and that then leaves us
and it goes into other people's imaginations
and into their heads and into their lives.
- I think in a way the movies belong
to different people now.
Maybe, arguably, they still belong to Doug
who has been the constant through all these movies
and is, after all,
the icon at the heart of the "Hellraiser" movies
and they belong to the fans
and I think that's very important, too.
They belong to people who love those movies,
perhaps more than I do.
- Pain has a face.
Allow me to show it to you.
- I'm often asked whether I was aware
when we were making "Hellraiser"
of how big this was going to be
and the answer is, emphatically, "No."
- I am pain!
- I've been living with the legacy of saying yes
to playing the character who then didn't even have a name.
I don't think about him all the time.
But, he's present in my life on a daily basis.
I look at it this way.
If this movie and this role has made that much of an impact
that, nearly 35 years later,
people are still interested that people still want to come
and ask me how long it took to put the makeup on,
I think I should be pleased by that.
- None of this is real. You're not real
- Oh, but, I'm afraid I am.
- It's an honor. It's humbling.
Are there times when I wish it would go away
and leave me alone?
Oh, you betcha! But, by and large, it's a good place to be.
- Pleasure was pain there, and vice versa.
And he knew it well enough to call it home.
- The costume and the flesh are interwoven.
You see that on Pinhead's costume where the flaps
of flesh come over the the costume and they're held
in place with hooks.
So, he talks about-
- Hold that thought one second.
They're over there fighting.
Sean, you can go kick those gesse's ass.
- Fucking geese. - On it.
- No actual animal cruelty, but, you know?
- No geese were harmed in the making of this interview.
- I'd like them to go. - You want those geese-
- Chase them away. See what happens.
Don't get attacked.
- Don't make an awful lot of noise.
- Keep goin'.
Get 'em to stop. - I can still here them!
- He's scared of them.
You have to run towards them not away from them!
- Throw something.
- Yeah!
- There we go.
- All right. - They'll turn around
and come right back again.