Hellraiser (2022) The original Hellraiser is based on a novella by celebrated gay author, Clive Barker, and features gay characters from the very start, way back in the 1980s.
In The Hellbound Heart, Pinhead is described as an androgynous being with a feminine voice. In 1987's Hellraiser, the character is portrayed by English actor Doug Bradley, who went on to reprise the role in seven subsequent Hellraiser films.
We always knew that [a female Pinhead] made sense given the history of the franchise and the kinds of fans that have embraced it,” Bruckner says. “It was also a way for us to not replicate Doug Bradley's incredible, iconic performance. There had been a lot of precedent in the franchise.
Pinhead, like all of the Cenobites, is genderless, though described as having a feminine voice. Pinhead's physical appearance in the book is the same, but its actions don't even cover a whole page.
Hellraiser isn't queer just because its writer-director is gay (Barker would officially come out of the closet five years after its release), but because of its punkish sexual abandon.
In today's terms, they would probably be best described as gender-fluid. To that end, they weren't referred to with male or female pronouns. Additionally, Pinhead themself is described as having a feminine-sounding voice, further demonstrating how the original depiction is not necessarily true to the source material.
“The horror really comes out of this marriage that is failing,” Andrew observes. “I don't want to get all fancy about this, but it is a metaphor for a certain kind of family that is detached from the traditional values. The relationship is based around material values.
It is the idea that the search for riches, or in the case of Hellraiser the search for unlimited pleasure, can bring with it unforeseen perils and danger. In other words, it is the old idiom of 'be careful what you wish for because you might just get it. '
The use of nails and pins evolved out of one of Barker's short stories called The Forbidden, which featured a board hammered with nails at specific intersections of laid out squares. This aesthetic would resurface for the Pinhead character years later.
Merkova is a cenobite that appears in the Hellraiser comic series, primarily the ones about the Harrowers, she is the cenobite love interest of Pinhead, as shown in the series they care very deeply about each other.
Leviathan, also known as the God of Flesh, Hunger and Desire, is the overarching antagonist of the Hellraiser franchise. It is the "deity" residing inside the extra-dimensional world known as the Labyrinth who is the overlord ruling the Cenobites, including their masters Pinhead and the Engineer.
In in the original text, the Cenobites are unnamed and are described as asexual beings who have been marred and modified so horribly, they bear little resemblance to the human form. Barker is surprisingly vague in describing the Cenobites in great detail.
"The story [of Hellraiser] is based on a novella, The Hellbound Heart... the movie is based on that story, but is quite a distance from it; there have been many changes.
The lead Cenobite, described as being androgynous, with a feminine voice and elaborate nails decorating their bare head and face, explains that they have reached a level of physical experience beyond sensory overload, and their extreme version of sadomasochism has taught them that pain and pleasure are indivisible.
Etymologically the definition of the term "cenobite" represents the member of a religious order, who lives in a monastic community. Cenobite in the Hellraiser franchise represents a member of a masochistic religious community, priest of Leviathan.
Hellraiser begins as a game of cat-and-mouse between the Cenobites and a recovering substance abuser named Riley. This later morphs into a full-fledged showdown when Riley and her friends are trapped in a mansion, with the Cenobites dead set upon doing what they do best: inflicting unimaginable pain.
Edward, then, is a Cenobite, which is why he has scissors instead of hands, he's so pale, and he wears black leather clothes that look very similar to the ones the Cenobites usually wear.
Apparently, Myers would be converted into a cenobite himself, similar to Dr. Channon from Hellbound. His mask would've replaced his facial skin, permanently embedded to his skin and he would have knives for arms like Edward Scissorhands to give him a more sinister appearance.
Once summoned, it is a Cenobite's duty to take the person who has solved the Lament Configuration puzzle to the Labyrinth/Hell in order to receive their "reward" of an eternity of torture that would reveal to them all of the different levels of pain and ecstasy that the Cenobites know of.
For Bruckner, the decision has its roots in Barker's work, as The Hellbound Heart “was suggestive of a female Pinhead, and the comic books also explored the idea.” Bruckner also points to fan art of female and non-binary versions of The Priest as sources of inspiration. “We were never afraid of it,” he declared.
According to the Cilicium trilogy (contained in the anthology of short stories Voices Of Damned and whose first episode was published in the anthology Hellbound Hearts), written by Barbie Wilde and set in the continuity of the novel Hellbound Heart, the Female Cenobite (also in this version a nun) was transformed by ...
Pinhead's origins and the nature of the Cenobites vary depending upon the medium: while the character began as an amoral entity blindly devoted to the practice of experimental sadomasochism, later depictions have portrayed him as explicitly evil and even demonic in origin.
