Hellraiser Films The original three male Cenobites were dubbed "Pinhead", "Chatterer", and "Butterball" and the one female Cenobite called "Open/Deep Throat". The Cenobite dimension is depicted as a massive labyrinth resembling M.C. Escher's Relativity lithograph, with Leviathan levitating above its center.
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.
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.
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.
Origins, Biology and Types of Cenobites in Hellraiser
Is Freddy Krueger A Cenobite?
Freddy Krueger is the main antagonist of Nightmare on Elm Street and a major antagonist in the Gray Chronicles. 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.
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.
On the decision to cast Clayton, a trans woman, as the character, the film's director, David Bruckner, explained: "We felt a kind of anticipation around the fans to reimagine the character. We knew we wanted Pinhead to be a woman. Jamie was just the right person for the role.
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.
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".
The Cenobites are a monastic order in service to their god Leviathan. Leviathan rules an extra-dimensional realm called The Labyrinth. In the movie it is depicted as a giant living Lament Configuration, but presumably a god can take many forms.
In the mythos, only those who are so obsessed with solving a puzzle that can open a gateway (or 'Schism') can be considered. Those who have a taste for the outermost reaches of human experience and have no moral limitations for what they will do to achieve those desires would even be considered to become a Cenobite.
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.
He even speaks to this neutral aspect of his character when he tells Kirsty that he and the other Cenobites are "Demons to some. Angels to others." Therefore, an encounter with Pinhead is akin to being caught in a natural disaster - neither evil nor good.
According to Hellraiser lore, the Leviathan is a god who is responsible for creating Pinhead and his pain-loving colleagues. It is likely this deity who is responsible for Voight's transformation and it is also likely that they are turning him into a new Cenobite.
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.
Even citing the origins of the original 1986 book, The Hellbound Heart, would back this up. In their introduction, the writing specifically goes out of its way at first to not assign the Cenobites a gender, with only the fourth creature finally being designated as female — "Not a he now saw: but she.
Hellraiser was initially banned in Ontario by the Ontario Film and Video Review Board. By a 3-2 majority vote, the film was deemed "not approved in its entirety as it contravenes community standards". It was banned because of its "brutal, graphic violence with blood-letting throughout, horror, degradation and torture".
The tortures in Hellraiser are indeed extreme and unending. Frank is tortured because he willingly wants to explore the extremes of pleasure that he believes to be found in pain. He, as a sadomasochist, exists in a symbiotic relationship with the dominant sadomasochists (the Cenobites).
While Cenobites tend to be obsessed with masochism and even practicing it to extreme lengths, Pinhead despises such obsession and tends to make himself as professional as he could be, in front of fellow immortals or mortals.
