The Hellraiser series of films, books, and comics share a common conceit: that when someone solves an innocuous puzzle box, they become subject to otherworldly pleasures administered by the Cenobites, members of Hell's Order of the Gash. The box has several names, but it is best known as the Lament Configuration.
Believing he has indulged in every pleasure the world can offer, Frank pursues rumours of the Lemarchand Configuration, a puzzle box said to open a "schism" or portal to an extradimensional realm of unfathomable pleasure ruled by beings called the Cenobites.
For the Cenobites, power equals dominance over those who suffer. So, by picking power, Voight is actually choosing to become a Cenobite himself, a twisted being forged in pain until its soul is so corrupted that it can only find pleasure in other people's misery.
The Lament Configuration puzzle box will activate a Chain Hunt, which summons interdimensional chains to hunt Survivors. Players must pick the box up and solve the puzzle to deactivate Chain Hunt completely.
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.
The Lament Configuration Box is a cubic puzzle that people need to solve to summon the Cenobites. Since the Cenobites come from a dimension of unbounded pleasures and pain, people solved the Lament Configuration Box hoping to experience things unknown on Earth.
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.
The Cenobites are disfigured, sexless, sadomasochistic entities tasked with capturing whoever solved the riddle of the demonic puzzle box known as Lament Configuration and submitting them to extreme physical torture, an act meant to reveal all of the hidden pleasures of intense pain.
Humans can actually kill and vanquish Cenobites if they possess holy, magical weapons or an artifact, like in the case of Dr Paul Merchant who permanently kills Pinhead and all his Cenobite cohorts using the Elysium Configuration.
Not only have the Cenobites completely mutilated themselves, but they'll do worse to anyone who summons them. Much like Frank, the Cenobites are predators, using their puzzle box to lure victims with the false promise of sexual rapture, but in the end, it's all about the Cenobites fulfilling their own pleasure.
Humans who summon the Cenobites, either by accident or in hopes of experiencing pleasures unknown on Earth, are often taken to their home dimension and become "experiments" in discovering the limits of physical experience, resulting in torture for eternity.
Judgment is the first Hellraiser film to include heaven in its mythology. According to Tunnicliffe, he took influence from The Scarlet Gospels, stating "I am in no way religious, but if you are writing a story that acknowledges the existence of Hell, then you have to acknowledge the existence of Heaven.
So the point of “Hellraiser” is to understand three things: Your actions have consequences. They can be good or bad and can affect people in good or bad ways. The first thing you never do is do something without thinking about what could happen.
The film marked Barker's directorial debut. Its plot involves a mystical puzzle box that summons the Cenobites, a group of extra-dimensional, sadomasochistic beings who cannot differentiate between pain and pleasure. The leader of the Cenobites is portrayed by Doug Bradley, and identified in the sequels as "Pinhead".
Leviathan is obsessed with law and order, and views the human realm of flesh as chaotic and wrong. It uses the Cenobites as its foot soldiers in the war against chaos and flesh. The Labyrinth which it presides over represents the maze of the mind.
Because of the iron pins that has been nailed deep into his head, Pinhead is assumed to be in a perpetual state of pain, a pain that he has since his transformation from human to cenobite gotten used to and seems to derive pleasure from it. This allows him to endure extreme amounts of pain without slowing down.
The most straightforward is to reverse the Lament Configuration. In doing so, it will send him back to his world. Pinhead also abides by a strict code, and if a person summons him because they were forced, he won't go after the victim.
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. This is due to Pinhead being killed by Dr.
In Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), Pinhead regains memories of his original self when Kirsty shows him a photograph of Spencer. Pinhead briefly leads his fellow Cenobites in a battle with the newly created Channard cenobite, but is seemingly killed after being reverted to his human form.
According to an interview in the book Taking Shape II, the Michael Myers (AKA The Shape) cenobite would have had his mask permanently affixed to his skin and had his arms replaced with knives.
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.
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.
