101 Reasons I Love Pinhead

Clive Barker’s avenging demon is the monster of my dreams

Photo: New World Pictures/Cinemarque/Film Futures

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.

1. He’s got a sense of humor

2. He loves puzzles

3. He’s into unironic leather; the tighter, the better

4. Pinhead’s got other names — you can call him “Hell Priest” or “Cold Man.” Just don’t call him late to unimaginable agony.

5. He’s dependable. You can count on him to relentlessly hunt you down if you’ve somehow escaped damnation.

6. Quotable Pinhead: “No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering”

7. He’s really into tender flesh full of nerve endings

8. He’s also really into geysers of blood that splash on walls and congeal into puddles on floors

9. Wiggly livers and steaming entrails? Thumbs up from Pinhead.

10. Pinhead is always low-key horny

11. Quotable Pinhead: “No more deals child, it is your flesh we want to experience, not your skill at bargaining”

12. He’s a born leader, just ask his team of horribly mutilated undead assassin surgeons

13. He’s an explorer in the further regions of experience, whatever that means!

14. Nobody escapes Pinhead. Anyway, I like that he’s good at his job

15. Just when you think you’ve suffered enough, Pinhead is there to remind you he has so much more in store

16. He’s organized

17. He’s detail-oriented

18. 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.

19. 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

20. My favorite Cenobite is the Cenobite without a name who is a woman with her throat split open. She’s fierce!

21. My second-favorite Cenobite is Butterball

22. Did you expect my second-favorite Cenobite to be Chatterer? Well, sometimes I zig when you think I’m going to zag.

23. He’s got a good career

24. He tells it like it is

25. He’s emotionally stable. I mean, he has one emotion, which is cruelty, but it’s stable.

26. He has good relationships with his coworkers and boss

27. He’s loyal to the enemies of light and goodness

28. He’s like a dark wizard who loves EDM

29. Or an S&M ninja who grew up in a religious family

30. Who wins: Pinhead vs Jason? Pinhead.

31. Who wins: Pinhead vs Michael Myers? Pinhead.

32. Who wins: Pinhead vs Freddy? Pinhead

33. Who wins: Pinhead vs Predator? Pinhead.

34. Who wins: Pinhead vs Pumpkinhead? Pinhead.

35. Who wins: Pinhead vs Cthulhu? Tie!

36. Who wins: Pinhead vs the Terminator? Pinhead.

37. Who wins: Pinhead vs Darth Vader? Pinhead.

38. Who wins: Pinhead vs The Crow? Pinhead

39. Who wins: Pinhead vs Art the Clown? Pinhead

40. Who wins: Pinhead vs Jaws? Pinhead.

41. Who wins: Pinhead vs Beetlejuice? Tie!

42. He tells you how he’s feeling. For instance: Pinhead will tell you if he’s feels like gutting you like a stinking fish.

43. Fashion inspiration: Dracula + the Pope

44. He loves pleasure!

45. He loves pain!

46. Pinhead doesn’t discriminate: If doesn’t matter who you are — if you conjure the Cenobites, they will do nasty things to you.

47. Pinhead likes a rainy day. An endless rainy day, inside and out.

48. Pinhead’s top three favorite body parts: earlobes, nipples, tongues

49. Fun fact: In hell, bananas shriek when you peel them

50. 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.

51. A demon to some

52. An angel to others

53. 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).

54. The five worst Cenobites: Crotchforks, Stapleface, Corkscrewthumb, Lazyeye, and that one with the bellybutton full of teeth

55. When he says “taste our pleasures,” what he really means is, “We’re going to turn you into sentient hamburger meat!”

56. He knows how to tear a soul apart, which is a real skill tbh

57. He can still feel every one of the 137 nails hammered into his head

58. Fashion inspiration: Mr. Clean + Leatherface

59. A few of his favorite things: cleavers, scalpels, blood-slicked aprons

60. He’s BFFs with the god of hell, Leviathan

61. 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

62. Spencer unlocked the puzzle box's secrets and was transformed into Pinhead, the sadistic murder monster who likes to fuck!

63. Pinhead has no memory of his human life. This is sad. Pinhead is emo.

64. Hobby: collecting noses

65. 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.

66. 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

67. Quotable Pinhead: “So much flesh, so many different pleasures”

68. He has a swanky duplex in the depths of the inferno, a dimension of anguish and torment sometimes called Hades

69. Is Pinhead cooler than the Crow? Answer: They are equally cool.

70. Quotable Pinhead: “It is not hands that summon us. It is desire.”

71. He loves turning human beings into cold cuts

72. He knows how to make an entrance (usually by stepping through holes torn in reality)

73. I find him oddly sexually attractive. Odd because I’m generally not into inhuman dudes with pins in their heads

74. He’s sort of a superhero—a deeply fucked-up superhero, but still

75. Hobby: guillotine restoration

76. Pinhead laughed all the way through Human Centipede 2

77. He’s really into jock mantras like “no pain, no gain” and “sweat is pain leaving the body”

78. Pinhead can’t watch cable news. He can’t bear it.

79. He’s got Santa Claus vibes, in the sense that he visits bad boys and girls and disembowels them while laughing

80. Fashion inspiration: Edward Scissorhands + Noel Coward

81. He’s just a blue-collar sort of guy doing the hard work of making mortals regret being born

82. Fun fact: Cookie Monster is a cenobite.

83. Is Pinhead cooler than Jack Skellington? The answer: Pinhead is cooler than Jack Skellington.

84. Quotable Pinhead: “But please, feel free, explore. We have eternity to know your flesh.”

85. 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.

86. There's nothing wrong with the Harry Potter movies that a Cenobite wouldn't fix.

87. 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.

88. All work and no play makes Pinhead a dull demon—Sunday nights are for silk kimono and Great British Baking Show!

89. Pinhead has a landline and tells pollsters he’s an undecided voter

90. Fun Fact: Mr. Met is a Cenobite.

91. Pinhead listens. He really listens, especially when you’re screaming, “NO, OH GOD, STOP THE PAIN, NO!”

92. Hobby: competitive crucifixion

93. Barker told the designers of the Cenobites for Hellraiser he wanted “repulsive glamour”

94. Pinhead’s favorite song: The sound of bones snapping

95. Pinhead’s favorite food: Effluvia du jour

96. Pinhead’s favorite movie: Anything by Abraham Zapruder

97. His favorite book: Normal People by Sally Rooney

98. Fashion inspiration: Hannibal + the Gimp from Pulp Fiction

99. 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)

100. He’s a powerful supernatural force of evil, yes, but an elegant one. And there just aren’t enough elegant supernatural forces of evil.

101. 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.

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Classic 150 Word Review: ‘Hellraiser’ (1987)

Photo: FilmFeatures

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