In Hellraiser (2022), a reboot of the series, Pinhead is portrayed by Jamie Clayton, the first time a woman took on the role. In the film, Pinhead leads the other Cenobites after Riley and other humans progress through the configurations of the Lament Configuration.
The original book that it's based on, The Hellbound Heart, was suggestive of a female Pinhead, and the comic books also explored the idea. There's also plenty of fan art, wonderful works that all theorized the possibility of Pinhead as a woman. So it only felt appropriate to us.
In The Hellbound Heart, Cenobites are described as androgynous, and Pinhead is said to have a feminine-sounding voice, which was used as inspiration to cast Clayton as the character.
Kirsty reappears in Boom! Studios' Hellraiser comic series, set roughly twenty years after the events of the third film. By issue #8, she becomes a Cenobite, a female Pinhead, as the original Pinhead becomes human again.
Again, not that the Cenobites are particularly differentiated by gender anyway, but in The Hellbound Heart, Pinhead, who is referred to only with “it” pronouns, is described as having a voice that is “light and breathy — the voice of an excited girl,” per Dread Central.
Female Pinhead Origins - Enchanting And Deadly Female Successor Of Pinhead, New Leader Of Cenobites
When did Pinhead become female?
In Hellraiser (2022), a reboot of the series, Pinhead is portrayed by Jamie Clayton, the first time a woman took on the role. In the film, Pinhead leads the other Cenobites after Riley and other humans progress through the configurations of the Lament Configuration.
The actor added that he had no further thoughts on Clayton herself beyond admitting that it was "an interesting casting decision." However, Bradley continued to talk about the decision to turn Pinhead female, even taking time to point out, with a chuckle, that his Pinhead did wear a skirt.
Jamie Clayton plays her version of the villain much closer to that of Barker's novel than Doug Bradley did in when he played "Lead Cenobite" in 1987's Hellraiser, despite the latter making the character a horror icon.
All the evidence to me shows that Kirsty and Pinhead admire and do to an extent love each other. A kind of Romeo and Juliet thing going on, but even more of a horrific way of being in love.
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.
While the novella describes the Cenobites as being sexless (their mutilations having made their gender uncertain and their voices being indistinguishable), the movie is far more explicit as to each member's gender, mostly due to the actors playing each character.
Upon solving the box in the early 1920s, Spencer was given both the pain and pleasure he was looking for, and subsequently transformed into Pinhead, as depicted briefly in the opening of Hellraiser 2.
Freddy is a member of the Cenobite council and the rival of Laughing Jack. He is also the most feared and dreaded enforcer of Zalgo, even more so than Pinhead. Freddy is played by Robert Englund.
Each of the four primary Cenobites from The Hellbound Heart were featured in the film, with appearances based upon their descriptions in the book. The first Cenobite became Butterball, the second Pinhead, the third Chatterer, and the fourth The Female.
However, 20 years after her first encounter with the Cenobites, Kirsty agrees to take Pinhead's place in Hell as the Hell Priest after losing everyone she's ever cared about - becoming a Cenobite crafted based on his original style, and the new favorite of Leviathan.
Hellraiser has since become a queer horror classic for numerous reasons, according to Riley Wade of Horror Obsessive. The work's gay author/director has been hailed as a master of the counter-cultural “splatterpunk” literary genre.
Merkova is one of few cenobites to have a lover, Pinhead, others being Female Cenobite who was also with Pinhead, Alastor and Chalkis and Sculptress and "My Sweet".
They are revealed to be former humans who have been converted into Cenobites by the supernatural power native to their home dimension; the source of that power is shown to be a deity named Leviathan ("the god of flesh and desire"), which appears as a massive, rotating lozenge with patterns of LeMarchand's box on its ...
Female Cenobite was a Cenobite in Hell's Army, commonly partnered with Pinhead. She was once a sin-obsessed nun, who opened the Lament Configuration. She has a large gash in her throat, pulled back with wires, causing her to have a whispery, raspy voice.
In that movie, Barker introduces readers to the Cenobites, a race of God-like sadists who threaten their human victims with sensual experiences far beyond their (or our) tired understanding of pleasure and pain.
While Pinhead isn't a villain in the first two Hellraiser movies — he's a neutral representative of Hell — he switches to being an unequivocal, full-blown bad guy in Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth.
The Cenobites and Pinhead especially, in the source material, are beyond gender due to what has happened to them. In effect, they are genderless. Not trans gender, genderless. Though Pinhead appears feminine in the source material, it is made clear that this is almost impossible to properly and accurately determine.
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.
