Essay: '101 Reasons I Love Pinhead'
Clive Barker’s avenging demon is the monster of my dreams
My favorite ’80s movie monster is Pinhead from Clive Barker’s intense, blood-soaked horror classic Hellraiser. While I remain a fan of other horror franchises from that era, like the Nightmare On Elm Street movies, none of them moved me the way Hellraiser did. I watch it at least once a year.
Unlike other slasher movie characters, Pinhead is kinky and graceful. He’s intelligent. On occasion, he cracks a slight smile because he loves his work. He’s not a hulking killing machine like Leatherface nor a sarcastic wisecracker like Chucky. Actor Doug Bradley portrayed Pinhead in eight Hellraiser movies, and he gave the character a kind of dignity.
Pinhead was also sadistic: you can count on Jason to kill his victims brutally but quickly. Pinhead promises endless misery. He wants to toy with the mortals who summon him. He seems turned on by the very idea of pulling a human apart with hooks attached to chains for eternity.
The name Pinhead was a set nickname. It stuck. Initially, this character was simply the leader of the Cenobites, a sect of extradimensional demon butchers who exist to torture humans. He’s a Lovecraftian demigod happy to answer the greediest of mortal prayers for sex and power. And when he shows up to grant your grossest wish, you’re fucked.
Anyway, I’m a fan of Pinhead. Another difference between him and other ’80s baddies is that he mostly uses violence against those who deserve it. Mostly. You will not likely grab Pinhead's attention if you’re not actively using black magick. He likes to punish the wicked. I don’t think he’s moral — in fact, Pinhead is beyond morality — but he has a job to do. He does it with flair. How can you not think this cruel, avenging hellspawn is awesome? I love Pinhead, but not enough to try to solve The Lament Configuration. I don’t think I’d enjoy eternal damnation. Nope. But that doesn’t mean I can’t share 100 reasons why I think Pinhead is 100% hell yeah.
He’s got a sense of humor
He loves puzzles
He’s into unironic leather; the tighter, the better
Pinhead’s got other names — you can call him “Hell Priest” or “Cold Man.” Just don’t call him late to unimaginable agony.
He’s dependable. You can count on him to relentlessly hunt you down if you’ve somehow escaped damnation.
Quotable Pinhead: “No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering”
He’s really into tender flesh full of nerve endings
He’s also really into geysers of blood that splash on walls and congeal into puddles on floors
Wiggly livers and steaming entrails? Thumbs up from Pinhead.
Pinhead is always low-key horny
Quotable Pinhead: “No more deals child, it is your flesh we want to experience, not your skill at bargaining”
He’s a born leader, just ask his team of horribly mutilated undead assassin surgeons
He’s an explorer in the further regions of experience, whatever that means!
Nobody escapes Pinhead. Anyway, I like that he’s good at his job
Just when you think you’ve suffered enough, Pinhead is there to remind you he has so much more in store
He’s organized
He’s detail-oriented
He’s a go-getter. By that, I mean he goes and gets humans to punish them in horrible ways forever and ever and ever.
He says what he means: If Pinhead says he’s going to impale you and savor your screams, then he’s going to impale you and savor your screams
My favorite Cenobite is the Cenobite without a name who is a woman with her throat split open. She’s fierce!
My second-favorite Cenobite is Butterball
Did you expect my second-favorite Cenobite to be Chatterer? Well, sometimes I zig when you think I’m going to zag.
He’s got a good career
He tells it like it is
He’s emotionally stable. I mean, he has one emotion, which is cruelty, but it’s stable.
He has good relationships with his coworkers and boss
He’s loyal to the enemies of light and goodness
He’s like a dark wizard who loves EDM
Or an S&M ninja who grew up in a religious family
Who wins: Pinhead vs Jason? Pinhead.
Who wins: Pinhead vs Michael Myers? Pinhead.
Who wins: Pinhead vs Freddy? Pinhead
Who wins: Pinhead vs Predator? Pinhead.
Who wins: Pinhead vs Pumpkinhead? Pinhead.
Who wins: Pinhead vs Cthulhu? Tie!
Who wins: Pinhead vs the Terminator? Pinhead.
Who wins: Pinhead vs Darth Vader? Pinhead.
Who wins: Pinhead vs The Crow? Pinhead
Who wins: Pinhead vs Art the Clown? Pinhead
Who wins: Pinhead vs Jaws? Pinhead.
Who wins: Pinhead vs Beetlejuice? Tie!
He tells you how he’s feeling. For instance: Pinhead will tell you if he’s feels like gutting you like a stinking fish.
Fashion inspiration: Dracula + the Pope
He loves pleasure!
He loves pain!
Pinhead doesn’t discriminate: If doesn’t matter who you are — if you conjure the Cenobites, they will do nasty things to you.
Pinhead likes a rainy day. An endless rainy day, inside and out.
Pinhead’s top three favorite body parts: earlobes, nipples, tongues
Fun fact: In hell, bananas shriek when you peel them
The very first version of what would become the Pinhead character appeared in 1973 in a play by Barker called Hunters in the Snow. It featured Doug Bradley.
A demon to some
An angel to others
I still love Pinhead, even in shitty sequels like Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth (1992), Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), Hellraiser: Inferno (2000), Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002), Hellraiser: Deader (2005), Hellraiser Hellworld (2005), Hellraiser: Revelations (2011), and Hellraiser: Judgement (2018).
The five worst Cenobites: Crotchforks, Stapleface, Corkscrewthumb, Lazyeye, and that one with the bellybutton full of teeth
When he says “taste our pleasures,” what he really means is, “We’re going to turn you into sentient hamburger meat!”
He knows how to tear a soul apart, which is a real skill tbh
He can still feel every one of the 137 nails hammered into his head
Fashion inspiration: Mr. Clean + Leatherface
A few of his favorite things: cleavers, scalpels, blood-slicked aprons
He’s BFFs with the god of hell, Leviathan
His human name was Elliott Spencer, a World War I vet who spent his life searching for pleasure and power, which is what I do on social media every day
Spencer unlocked the puzzle box's secrets and was transformed into Pinhead, the sadistic murder monster who likes to fuck!
Pinhead has no memory of his human life. This is sad. Pinhead is emo.
Hobby: collecting noses
There are only three objectively good Hellraiser movies: the original, Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), and the 2022 reboot starring Jamie Clayton as Pinhead. She gives a sensual and sadistic performance in that flick, which starts slow but builds to a bonkers body horror climax.
Fun fact: Pinhead’s favorite last-minute Halloween costume is called the Living Hors D’oeuvre Platter, and it requires a can of Vienna sausages
Quotable Pinhead: “So much flesh, so many different pleasures”
He has a swanky duplex in the depths of the inferno, a dimension of anguish and torment sometimes called Hades
Is Pinhead cooler than the Crow? Answer: They are equally cool.
Quotable Pinhead: “It is not hands that summon us. It is desire.”
He loves turning human beings into cold cuts
He knows how to make an entrance (usually by stepping through holes torn in reality)
I find him oddly sexually attractive. Odd because I’m generally not into inhuman dudes with pins in their heads
He’s sort of a superhero—a deeply fucked-up superhero, but still
Hobby: guillotine restoration
Pinhead laughed all the way through Human Centipede 2
He’s really into jock mantras like “no pain, no gain” and “sweat is pain leaving the body”
Pinhead can’t watch cable news. He can’t bear it.
He’s got Santa Claus vibes, in the sense that he visits bad boys and girls and disembowels them while laughing
Fashion inspiration: Edward Scissorhands + Noel Coward
He’s just a blue-collar sort of guy doing the hard work of making mortals regret being born
Fun fact: Cookie Monster is a cenobite.
Is Pinhead cooler than Jack Skellington? The answer: Pinhead is cooler than Jack Skellington.
Quotable Pinhead: “But please, feel free, explore. We have eternity to know your flesh.”
Pinhead is all-powerful. He can rend and slice and perforate anyway he wants. But for some reason, he can’t get enough of razor-sharp hooks tied to the ends of chains that can fly out of anywhere and tear his human playthings into ribbons. I guess it just works.
There's nothing wrong with the Harry Potter movies that a Cenobite wouldn't fix.
Hooks attached to chains flying out of a piñata! Hooks attached to chains flying out of a calzone! Hooks attached to chains flying out of the medicine cabinet! Pinhead is creative.
All work and no play makes Pinhead a dull demon—Sunday nights are for silk kimono and Great British Baking Show!
Pinhead has a landline and tells pollsters he’s an undecided voter
Fun Fact: Mr. Met is a Cenobite.
Pinhead listens. He really listens, especially when you’re screaming, “NO, OH GOD, STOP THE PAIN, NO!”
Hobby: competitive crucifixion
Barker told the designers of the Cenobites for Hellraiser he wanted “repulsive glamour”
Pinhead’s favorite song: The sound of bones snapping
Pinhead’s favorite food: Effluvia du jour
Pinhead’s favorite movie: Anything by Abraham Zapruder
His favorite book: Normal People by Sally Rooney
Fashion inspiration: Hannibal + the Gimp from Pulp Fiction
Quotable Pinhead: “We have such sights to show you!*” (*The sights Pinhead has to show are mostly naked people being torn asunder by hooks attached to chains)
He’s a powerful supernatural force of evil, yes, but an elegant one. And there just aren’t enough elegant supernatural forces of evil.
Pinhead is horror novelist Clive Barker’s most famous creation, even though he hates the name (see Number Three.) Barker was an author I read when I was too young — his books were full of disgusting demons committing acts of disgusting violence. His books were messy and hot. But underneath the shock, he was deeply subversive. The world, you see, is hostile to outcasts. I thought he was incredible. And he was my secret. He was like Stephen King, only dirtier, meaner, more passionate. King wrote about haunted cars, but Barker wrote about telepathic women who give men lethal orgasms. Young people need to learn that reading can be dangerous. It’s important otherwise they’ll grow up to be insufferable scolds and busybodies. They should seek out and read books their parents and teachers would disapprove of. I first discovered Barker at the library, of all places. I stumbled upon a book called The Damnation Game about a bodyguard hired to protect a man who made a deal with the devil. It’s full of carnage and romance, zombies, and a cannibal child-killer called the “Razor-Eater.” Anyway, I think the man is highly underrated. He’s whimsical and obsessed with wizards and shit like that, but he’s also honest. Honest to the point of rudeness. I'm a fan of his filmmaking, too. His horror movies mix opera and offal. Hellraiser is a classic, a Grand Guignol sprayed with blood and other bodily fluids. His Nightbeed is a cult classic for a reason: that monster movie is the closest thing I ever got to see The X-Men on the big screen, only instead of super heroes with powers, it's sexy horny monsters who live in caves. I patiently wait for news audiences to discover the supernatural noir Lord of Illusions starring Scott Bakula as one of Barker's regular characters, Harry D'Amour, a private eye. Barker is certainly a better influence on young people than some contemporary peddlers of fantasy. He's more sympathetic to those of us struggling to find their place. There’s an alternate reality where Barker is the showrunner of Dr. Who, and entire generations are introduced to an erotically-charged gender-fluid Time Lord saving the universe and making out with everyone. And then there’s the episode where he fights a Cenobite.
Classic 150 Word Review: ‘Hellraiser’ (1987)
serious question why don't u just marry pinhead
Oh, my brother, I, too, read Barker WAY TOO young. I was in Junior High when I read The Damnation Game. I was a touch older when I read The Great and Secret Show. TDG showed me a cast of characters where none of them were good people (arguably the bodyguard was trying). I'd never, ever read anything like that before. Cabal (Nightbreed) was great, too. I reread TGaSS when I was in grad school, so mid-late twenties, and I understood it a lot better. But yeah, Barker is a master at the underdog and the outcast. I also think his book, The Thief of Always, is one of the best YA books ever written. I read that, too, in high school, and it made me want to be a writer. I still reread it from time to time, and I should do it again soon, since it is spooky season.