Cenobites can be angels to some and devils to others; they can be bringers of joy or bearers of perpetual pain. But the peculiar thing about these demons is that they are unable to distinguish between pleasure and pain. Cenobites are demons from a hell-like Labyrinth governed by a deity named Leviathan, as created by CliveBarker in his 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart.
These demons are Theologians of the Order of the Gash who worship Leviathan, according to Barker. Several factions of Cenobites now pray to and serve Leviathan on an eternal basis, but the Order of The Gash, led by Pinhead, nicknamed Hell Priest, is the most powerful.
It wouldn’t be inaccurate to refer to them as underworld surgeons or engineers who operate with human flesh to produce works of art. Cenobites can only enter Earth if there is a break in the space-time continuum.
However, only a few supernatural items can accomplish this, the most prominent of which is a puzzle box known as the Lament Configuration. The Cenobites emerge once the box has been solved or unlocked, with the goal of transforming the user into a Cenobite by transporting them to Hell, where the Engineer Cenobite can operate on them.
Pinhead on Earth, on the other hand, turned a few Cenobites into Pseudo Cenobites. In this video, we’ll go over 21 of the most obnoxiously horrifying Cenobites from the movies. So, all you Leviathan’s faithful priests… Pinhead and his henchmen are on their way, so prepare to be terrified and interested at the same time.
Pinhead
You mighty Pinhead, Pinhead, Pinhead, Pinhead, Pinhead, Pinhead, Pinhead, Pinhead, Pinhead, Pin This powerful priest of Hell is known by many names; some see him as an angel, while others despise him as a monster. Regardless of your point of view, one thing is certain: you cannot ignore him.
While he’s known for being one of the strangest and cruellest Cenobites, Barker created the character in less unusual settings such as fetish clubs. African fetish dolls, such as Nkondi, provided another source of inspiration. Nails are pinned all over the bodies and faces of these dolls.
That’s one international demon! But Pinhead wasn’t given his name until the third film, Hell on Earth, when the hero Joey Summers kill refers to him this way. In fact, the first film credited him merely as Lead Cenobite, a title that was befitting his stature but neither his persona nor appearance.
Nevertheless, as Shakespeare once said, “What’s in a name?”, Pinhead doesn’t require a name to fill our hearts with fear, or to make his hooked chains do his horrific bidding.
Pinhead’s character usually appeared in the films for just ten to fifteen minutes and wreaked his havoc or furthered his plans. However, the tenth film, Hellraiser Judgement, centred pretty much entirely on this cenobite.
Pinhead defies God’s plan, causing the death of a serial killer named Sean at the hands of a seemingly innocent woman Christine. This defiance sort of pissed God off, and he wouldn’t have it anymore.
God snatched away Pinhead’s powers, and turned him into a regular human being. What could be a better punishment to inflict on someone who is addicted to sadomasochistic pleasures and immortality! However, the 1996 film Hellraiser 4 Bloodline is set in the year 2127 and shows Pinhead in his regular cenobite form.
By the end of the film, Philip LeMarchand’s heir manages to destroy the Cenobites, including Pinhead, by activating the Elysium Configuration, or the Anti Lament Configuration. This marked Pinhead’s final demise, but it would be interesting to see how Pinhead got his powers back between the chronological events of the tenth and the fourth films.
However, this ferocious Leviathan’s servant was not always the demon he is described as. He was a loving and empathetic man who helped anyone he could and didn’t hurt a fly during the early twentieth century and up until the First World War.
For the first time, the second Hellraiser film hinted at Pinhead’s human past and how he became the hideous pain monster he is. The hardships of war, particularly the Battle of Flanders(probably pronounced fl-aan-ders), caused British Expeditionary Force Captain Elliot Spencerto lose confidence in humanity.
He turned against his own set of morals as a result of the violence and bloodshed he observed. Following this, he spent many years searching for carnal and hedonistic pleasures and ultimately came across the lament configuration somewhere in or around British India.
After solving the puzzle, the chronically overwhelmed Captain Spencer became the most favorite minion of Leviathan and lived eternally as the master of pain and pleasure, as a demonic angel who didn’t differentiate between the two. Now Pinhead is a Cenobite like many others, but he’s also called the Hell Priest.
Naturally, he is a part of a group called Order of the Gash, which is similar to a religious sect that worships Leviathan. His abilities are derived from the pins affixed to his head, which were likely placed there by Leviathan himself.
Pinhead is the only character in the franchise who has appeared in all ten films. Doug Bradley played the iconic pain demon, while in the ninth and tenth films, Stephan Smith Collinsand Paul T Taylor, respectively, played Pinhead.
Female Cenobite (Aka Deepthroat)
When the Cenobites aren’t ripping people apart or skinning them, what do you imagine they do? To answer this topic, Merkova was introduced in the comics as Pinhead’s demon girlfriend, however she was never depicted in the movie.
The Female Cenobite was considered as Pinhead’s female equivalent instead of Merkova, however their connection is mainly platonic. In the first several films, the Female Cenobite was one of the more powerful Cenobites, as she frequently teamed up with our favourite Pin Monster.
The five cables that sliced open her neck and held her flesh back gave her an extremely ugly and diabolical aspect. The resultant deep gashled toth character being named Deepthroat. This eternal wound also makes her voice raspy and whispery. She is also sometimes referred to as The Fallen, the reason for which is pretty much as you would expect.
Before becoming the Female Cenobite, she was once a nun known as Sister Nikoletta. From a tender age, she became overtly intrigued by sin and its various forms, so much so that she became obsessed with it in her later life. One day, a traveler offered her the greatest object of sin ever constructed.
Nikoletta must have choked from delight. Nevertheless, the object was none other than the Lament Configuration. As soon as she solved it, an ancient Cenobite named Grillard appeared and took her to Hell with him, where she was subjected to intense levels of pain and pleasure.
That’s how she fell far from God’s love and came to be called The Fallen. Grizzard is another one of the Cenobites that never made an appearance in any of the films. We’ve made another video on the Cenobites that appear in media beyond cinema, and if you seek to quench your thirst, you may check out the link in the description
The Female Cenobite initially appeared in the 1987 Hellraiser film as a minor character, looking vaguely human with dark and bluish skin. However, in the second iteration of the franchise, Barbie Wilde played her in a larger role with more lines and screen time. She even teamed up with Kirsty Cotton to take on Channard, a wicked Cenobite. The character died an honourable end in this film, but she reappears in Clive Barker’s Marvel comic Pinhead.
Butterball
Butterball was one of the few Cenobites who changed for reasons other than passion. He was known as Laslo before his conversion, a man who enjoyed eating and gobbling nearly any food that came his way.
He couldn’t stop himself from craving more food, and he eventually discovered the Lament Configuration, which promised him otherworldly bliss. Laslo didn’t realise, however, that the Lament Configuration didn’t distinguish between pain and pleasure. Naturally, after being transported to Hell, he was tortured and cruelly treated in the name of pleasure.
Remember when the Female Cenobite said to Kirsty in the second film, “Perhaps we prefer you.” The dialogue was actually meant for Butterball, but the huge amount of make-up needed for the role made it difficult for the actor to speak even a word. That’s why we usually see him speaking only in hisses and squeaks.
Chatterer
The backstory of Chatterer is one of the most despicable on our list. Jim was raised in an orphanage after his abusive father was convicted of murdering his wife. His orphanage experience was traumatic since he and others were taught that they were the muck of society.
Jim developed a sexual relationship with another boy, Seth, in these circumstances. He became so engrossed in these activities that he began praying to the ostensible deity of love and begging for love. These prayers will subsequently prove to be the cause of his demise.
When he was sixteen, the two lads went into the flesh trade, and Jim’s clients were enamoured with his looks, which irritated Jim. Indeed, there is no such thing as too much of anything!
A client once asked Jim about his greatest aspirations, and after some hesitation, Jim finally admitted that he wished he was unattractive. The client handed him a lament configuration and told him that if he continued to give it to new people, he would be serving the god of pain and desire, who would grant Jim’s wish.
Unbeknownst to Jim, he began serving Leviathan and disseminating the Lament Configuration until he met a now-blind Seth one day. Despite the Cenobites’ wishes for Jim to force Seth to open the Configuration that night, the two of them got physical.
However, Seth left without doing so and Jim’s curiosity made him open the Lament Configuration himself. This was the birth of Chatterer, probably the most hideous of Cenobites and Pinhead’s henchman and muscle man.
The child who lived in misery and grew up with abuse wanted redemption, but all he could really find was pain and eternal suffering. Made to live a solitary life without his parents and friends, in the end, his only companions were the sound of his teeth and a few demons.
When Chatterer appeared in the 1987 film, his entire face was burned apart from his mouth, which was stretched open by eight hooks. However, in the next installment, his burns were toned down to make his facial features like his ears visible.
With or without the burns, Chatterer, and histrademark sound of chattering teeth, have remained a legacy. He’s one of those Cenobites that you never forget once you see him. He shoves his finger into Kirsty’s mouth and restrains her in the first film, but he releases her as soon as Pinhead demands it.
Chatterer was, of course, Pinhead’s ultimate right-hand demon. Chatterer is killed by Channard Cenobite in the second film, but Female Cenobite convinces him to save Kirsty. Nonetheless, Chatterer did not die, since a Cenobite named Chatterer Beast appeared in following flicks.
Chatterer Beast
As intriguing as this specific Cenobite is, there is a severe dearth of knowledge about it. However, we’ve made every effort to gather as many details as possible in order to provide you with a thorough image of this canine-like creature.
Because of its look, it is popularly assumed that it is a dog that has been changed into a Cenobite, but why would such an animal be transformed? Cenobites only convert those who have opened or have the ability to open the Lament Configuration, which is to say, humans. Isn’t it true that a dog can’t do it?
Furthermore, Leviathan’s minions see all creatures as innocent, therefore endangering their purity is not an option. So, what’s the story behind the infamous Chatterer Beast? It is just like the other Cenobites, but it is made entirely of human flesh that was molded into a hound-like creature. It was given a facial structure to match one of Leviathan’s favoriteCenobites—the Chatterer.
Although introduced as Pinhead’s pet in Hellraiser: Bloodline, the Chatterer serves a bigger purpose. Just as how Chatterer used to act as Pinhead’s muscle man, the Chatterer Beast aggressively protects his master. Like all other members of the Gash, the beast also sports leather clothing in the form of black collars and bands around the limbs.
Furthermore, what makes the creature more terrifying is the use of metal plates around its jaws. We said earlier that Cenobites don’t hurt animals, well, they don’t inflict sadomasochistic pain on them. In one of the scenes, Pinhead fed the Chatterer a live pigeon. This is strange because Cenobites are not widely known to need to eat to survive.
Chatterer Torso
The Chatterer Beast wasn’t the only Cenobite with a Chatterer-like appearance. The Chatterer Torso was the other. The Torso, as its name implies, has no body components below its ribcage, and its spine can be seen jutting out. The Torso, interestingly enough, was fashioned in Chatterer’s image.
The Torso, unlike Chatterer, appears to be burn-free and has pale white skin, yet it does have the same signature mouth, which is stretched out with hooks, and the different teeth.
The torso served its creator but once Chatterer was dead, it roamed in the nooks and corners of the Labyrinth in search of a new master, only to be adopted by Pinhead and initiated into the Gash. The Chatterer made its appearance in Hellraiser Inferno, where it worked with the wire twins to torture a man named Joseph Thorne.
Wire Twins
We all know Cenobites can’t tell the difference between pain and pleasure, right? However, there was a pair of twin Cenobite sisters who dedicated their endless undead lives to pursuing fleshly delights through agony, and only torment.
The Wire Twins were formerly a couple of gorgeous sisters who engaged in hedonistic pleasure and frequently utilised their body to acquire power and control over their companions, as their name suggests.
Their thirst, however, was insatiable, and they eventually entered the Labyrinth and realised what true pleasure meant. They were transformed into Cenobites who would continue to rend and torment them, having experienced feelings beyond their wildest conceptions.
The sisters had wires in place of hair and wore scanty but revealing leather suits. Interestingly, they also had a phallus-shaped tongue which they used to torment their victims by giving them pleasure. Can you even imagine what that must be like? Let us know in the comments what you think of these minions of sweet torture.
The Doctor
The Doctor, or Channard Cenobite, was by far one of the most powerful Cenobites ever, killing not just most members of the Gash but also no other Cenobites. Channard realised as a child that he had a fascination in dissecting little animals.
He relished having their blood on his hands, and these experiences would shape his thinking and conscience in the future. Channard went on to become a well-known neurosurgeon and to found the Channard Institute, a mental health facility named after him.
There, he experimented with his patients’ brains and bodies in the hopes of uncovering the truth about suffering and Hell. Anyway, we are not here to judge his moral conscience, as it is clear as crystal. Channard always had some idea about the Labyrinth and the Lament Configuration, but he couldn’t get his hands on a real one.
His favorite patient was a young mute girl called Tiffany, because she had an acute love for solving puzzles, a gift Channard hoped to one day to utilise to further his own plans. When Kirsty Cotton was admitted to the hospital after Julia’s death, she informed him about the Lament Configuration, the real one.
He was now close to getting what he always desired. He made Tiffany open the Lament Configuration and entered the winding paths of the Labyrinth. There he was approved by Leviathan himself to be transformed into a Cenobite, and that’s how the pale blue-skinned Doctor Cenobite was created.
Leviathan bonded with Channard via an extension, bestowing upon him incredible abilities such as the capacity to discharge tentacles from his hands. These tentacles would lead to a variety of torture gadgets.
Kirsty was saved by the other Cenobites, particularly the Female Cenobite, by the end of the film, and they all fought the doctor to no avail. When the Lament Configuration was reopened and Leviathan retreated, his death became possible. Channard was decapitated in a bloodbath as a result of this tragedy.
Pseudo Cenobites
In the third instalment of the Hellraiser franchise, the Pseudo Cenobites come and aid Pinhead in his mission. They’re called pseudo because, unlike pure Cenobites who are converted in Hell, they were converted on Earth by Pinhead. Let’s have a look at what they have to offer.
Barbie
In the film Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth, Pinhead discovered that he was once a World War I British Army Captain named Elliot Spencer. This knowledge split him into two parts, one of which wastrapped in a pillar called The Pillar of Souls, which featured distorted faces and writhing figures.
The pillar was purchased by J. P. Monroe, the owner of The Boiler Room Club. At the club, an attendee named Terri met Monroe, who planned to feed her to Pinhead, but Terri struck a deal with Pinhead and agreed to sacrifice Monroe in return for being transformed into a cenobite herself.
Pinhead is freed from the pillar and wreaks havoc on the clubgoers. One of these unsuspecting victims of Pinhead’s Boiler Room massacre was a bartender named Rick Bloodstone. He was skilled at his job and worked in tandem with his boss until he became Pinhead’s victim,his entire head wrapped in coils of barbed wire.
The wires shut his eyes, making him perpetually blind. As a Cenobite, he carried along his bartending skills and always kept a glass and a mixer of gasoline. He could breathe fire and used it to light the gasoline, to construct makeshift Molotov cocktails.
Barbie was an interesting Cenobite and they could have done great things with him, but he never reappeared after the events of the third film. Watch out for the scene when Barbie burns a group of cops with his fire.
Camera Head
Like Barbie, Camera Head was also a pseudo Cenobite and used to work with Joey, the female protagonist of the third Hellraiser film. He was a camera man for Joey, who was a local news reporter.
After learning about the events at the Boiler Room Club, Joey requested him to meet her there, but since the cameraman was closer to the venue, he reached it earlier and was turned into a Cenobite by Pinhead. Joey had learned from a video tape of Kirsty that the Lament Configuration was the only way to stop Pinhead and his minions.
Naturally, she ran away with it, and Pinhead employed Camera Head and others to go look for it. As the name suggests, this cenobite had a camera stuck into his right eye and a film roll where his ear was supposed to be. Whatever Camera Head filmed in his body fitted camera could be exploded telepathically through his mind.
But what’s a Cenobite that can not impale people! To achieve violent ends, the camera was able to double as an impaling device to slice and slash victims. Interestingly enough, Cenobites are known to forget their past after conversion, but pseudo-Cenobites like Camerahead and Piston head seemed to remember theirs even after being converted. In another contrast, Camera Head is the only Cenobite known to have facial hair.
CD Head
Jimmy Hammerstein was the D.J. of Boiler Room Club and another victim of Pinhead’s wrath. At least before his transformation, from what we were able to infer from his little conversation with Joey about Terri’s whereabouts, he seemed to be a person of manners.
However, Pinhead happily impaled his skull with five C.D.’s and embedded them all in his head. But since Pinhead was a crafty demon, he embedded one CD into each of Jimmy’s eyes and one in his mouth, leaving him blind and mute.
The character was wrapped in chains and wore a leather mask. CD Head used his C.D.’s as shurikens to impale victims. In most cases, the actor who plays the human prior to conversion also plays the cenobite, but for CD Head, Brent Bolthouse played the human Hammerstein, while his Cenobite counterpart was played by Eric Will helm.
Dreamer
The proprietor of The Boiler Room Club’s original lover was The Dreamer Cenobite. Joey encountered Terri, a clubgoer who informed her that chains had sprung from a bizarre puzzle box she discovered near a pillar, and proceeded to shred another clubgoer’s body to pieces.
Terri made a contract with Pinhead, as previously stated. She was a weak and impoverished young girl who was constantly exploited, and her problems fueled her desire for power and control. She had no choice but to become Pinhead’s pawn. Terri could fantasise about all she could never have after her transformation into a pseudo-Cenobite. It was both joy and hell for her.
Cenobites are angels to some and demons to others, as Pinhead correctly pointed out. Terri, like the other pseudos, was able to recall events from her past and could even communicate more than the others.
Terri and Monroe appeared to be in love in what can only be described as a tragic reality, but in a time of difficulty, the two turned against each other. Terri opened the Lament Configuration at the end of the movie and sent all of the pseudos, including Terri, back to Hell, leaving her fate as the Dreamer Cenobite uncertain.
Pistonhead
We’ve been speaking about J P Monroe for quite a while now, but what really happened to him? Well, as you know, Pinhead was stuck inside the pillar and needed to kill people to rejuvenate himself and break free from his prison. So, he collaborated with Monroe, who provided him with unsuspecting victims.
When the time came for Pinhead to hunt his last victim, in a cruel and selfish act, Monroe called Terri and served her to Pinhead. However, a fight broke out between them and Terri overpowered Monroe.
She knocked him down and made a side deal with Pinhead, for the cenobite to take Monroe instead. Pinhead converted Monroe,sticking two pistons into his head, and Pistonhead was born. In all the scenes that Pistonhead appears, the piston in his head remains in motion, which is disgusting to look at!
Angelique
Angelique made her first appearance in Hellraiser Bloodline. Her biography begins in 1796, when Phillip LeMarchand, a French toymaker, created the Lament Configuration, also known as the LeMarchand box, which became his most famous invention.
(We have a lot of trouble pronouncing LeMarchand, so I’d like you to look into it.) The box was created at the request of a wealthy guy named L’Isle. L’Isle and his aide Jaques, on the other hand, utilised the technology to summon Angelique, a Cenobite. Jacques assassinated his master, and Angelique consented to work for him on the condition that he would never oppose a Hell or Leviathan sanctioned deed.
Fast forward two hundred years later, Angelique finds the whereabouts of the Configuration and tricks a security guard into opening it. Pinhead appears immediately, and after a brief tussle due to a difference of opinion between the two, they agree to join forces.
The film is about an Elysium Configuration or the Anti Lament Configuration that can kill all Cenobites and stop them from ever stepping foot on Earth again. Originally Angelique wanted to destroy the Elysium Configuration, but thousands of years of life had left her frustrated.
She was probably the only Cenobite who wanted the destruction of the Cenobites and of Leviathan himself. Angelique, unlike other Cenobites, was the Demon Princess of Hell, the daughter of the god Leviathan. Her tight leather suit, despite her baldness, was a sight to behold. We believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Siamese Twins
Joey buries the puzzle box in a pile of concrete in a building under construction in the 1992 film Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth. The building belonged to an heir of LeMarchand himself, according to the sequel, Hellraiser 4 Bloodline, released in 1996. Micheal and Mark Bradley, security guards, are twin brothers tasked with guarding a new Lament Configuration exhibit.
They stumble into Angelique and Pinhead the night before the exhibition. Pinhead, being Pinhead, knows their fear of fate separating them, and in a terrible move to allay their fears, he conjoins them as a pair of Siamese Twins. They are later sent to Hell, where the engineers can complete thefinal transformation.
One of the most fascinating scenes which involved the Siamese Twins is the one in which they separate from each other and rejoin, only to trap one Captain Edwards between them. The process not only crushes them but also absorbs Edwards. The Siamese Twins died once and for all in outer space when Paul Merchant activated the Elysium Configuration.
The twins were both mute and lacked one arm each because of the fusion. In a way, their conjoining was paradoxical because despite being together forever, they could never see each other. Brilliantly done, Mr. Pinhead!
Stitch
As well as inflicting agony on others, the Cenobites are also infamous for the annoying ways in which they were converted from people to the horrible beings that they are now. Stitch was a pale white Cenobite with burned, peeled, and sewn back facial skin.
But there’s a catch: they didn’t simply reattach her skin; they reattached it in the other way. Of course, her lips, eyes, and ears were stitched shut, rendering her mute, blind, and deaf, but like all Cenobites, she was able to navigate despite her disabilities.
In the 2002 film Hellraiser 6 Hellseeker, Kirsty Cotton returned and this time her husband Trevor was the antagonist, trying to steal her fortune. However, Kirsty opened the Lament Configuration and made a deal with Pinhead in which she offered him five souls in return for hers.
While Kirsty helped get the victims to the Cenobites, Stitch reaped their souls. After this, Stitch shapeshifted into one of Trevor’s mistresses and killed him with her metal mask. The character appeared again in the 2005 sequel, Hellraiser 7 Deader.
Surgeon
The Surgeon, a former medical practitioner who willingly chose Pinhead’s path to escape mental torment, was another interesting Cenobite who featured in Hellraiser 6 Hellseeker.
Deacon Vrainian was a skilled and well-known surgeon who had never failed. He had never, however, operated on someone he cared about. As a result, when he operated on his wife, she died on the operating table. You might be perplexed as to how such a skilled man could make such a blunder when it comes to his wife.
The truth is that the snafu occurred ‘because’ of his wife. He never formed a personal link with other patients, therefore there was no room for concern. All he wanted was to forget about it, to not see himself as the culprit, to shut the world behind him.
He finally found solace and escape in the form of the Lament Configuration and when Pinhead offered him a way to seek all he wanted, Deacon accepted the offer. Naturaly, the surgeon was operated on himself, turning into a Cenobite who wore a black leather coat and carried various tools, chains, and weapons.
Bound
Hellraiser creators have continued to come up with new techniques to gag, strangle, blind, and mute their Cenobites. Two leather bands across her eyes and lips blinded and suffocated Bound, a female Cenobite. Because she is a minor figure, little is known about her personal life.
Prior to becoming a Cenobite, however, it is usually assumed that she was the wife of a psychopath whom she murdered. Bound debuted in HellraiserHellseeker alongside other Cenobites such as Surgeon, as well as in Trevor’s limbo. Following the release of this film, her character was reincarnated as a man, dubbed Bound II.
Bound II
Bound II was the male counterpart of the female Bound, and he could very well be the serial killer with whom she was thought to be married. In Hellraiser Deader, he played a regular member of the Gash who was sent by Pinhead to find the film’s female protagonist.
Bound 2 played a minor role in this storey, and when the Lament Configuration burst, he was sent back to Hell. He next starred alongside Henry Cavill and Lance Henriksen in the film Hellraiser Hellworld, in which a group of young children is kidnapped by the father of another child who committed suicide as a result of his fixation with a Hellraiser video game.
Most of the action of the film takes place in the hallucinations of the four kids and Bound 2 is responsible for the death of Cavill’s Mike. Later, Bound 2 kills the dead kid’s father, slicing him with swinging weapons.
Like the female Bound, Bound 2 also has leather bands around his eyes and mouth but he is muscular and bigger than her. Interestingly, the man who played Bound 2 had also played a deleted Cenobite named Spike.
Female Cenobite II aka Chatterer 4 and Pseudo Pinhead
The Female Cenobite II is the Chatterer’s fourth manifestation, following Chatterer, Chatterer Beast, and Torso. Because of Leviathan’s love for his true, committed, and faithful servant, Chatterer lived on in these incarnations even after death.
Female Cenobite 2 resembles a cross between the Wire Twins and Torso, with wire for hair and facial traits similar to Torso. Her leather costume isn’t as revealing as that of other female Cenobites, but it’s sloppy and heavy. In Hellraiser 9: Revelations, she served Pinhead.
This was the first picture in which Pinhead was played by someone other than Doug Bradley. The film also featured a Pseudo Pinhead, but the designs of both Pseudo Pinhead and the real Pinhead were ridiculed and criticized by both fans and critics.
In fact, their designs went in the opposite direction from what Barker had intended. The idea behind Pinhead is that he’s an ambiguity, one doesn’t know if he’s an angel of pleasure or a demon of pain.
Naturally, he looks both evil and elegant at the same time. What the ninth installment of the Hellraiser franchise did was to make him look like an evil demon with more pronounced features, such as pale skin at the entry points of each of the pins.
Furthermore, instead of using sleek and shiny pins, theyfixed his head with thicker nails. These changes certainly weren’t grounded in the source material, be it Barker’s novella or the first Hellraiser film.
Since you have reached here, we think you’d be interested in our many other videos on the Hellraiser franchise, and especially the one which deep dives into all the ten Hellraiser films.