Welcome, everyone, to Horrorfest 2020, our annual event where I, Red Lanyard, tell you about terrific (and sometimes absurd) horror movies during the month of October to help you prepare for Halloween, the most wonderful time of the year. This year for Horrorfest, I’m structuring my pieces around various icons of horror–the people, either real or fictional, who have made our beloved genre the delightful niche and multi-million dollar industry that it is today. This first week, I’ll be highlighting some of the fictional antagonists who have carried the horror genre on their backs, briefly discussing what they’ve contributed to our macabre hobby and a recommendation for you to watch. Enjoy!
Pinhead (Hellraiser)
It’s 1987. The slasher era of horror is in full force with Michael, Jason, and Freddy having several movies each by now, in addition to some other less successful but nonetheless present horror antagonists trying to find their own path to infamy. You’re Clive Barker, and while you’ve had a couple offerings to the horror genre, their success is. . .debatable (sorry, all 7 of you Rawhead Rex fans out there). What direction do you go with your next film? Full gore? Grounded or supernatural? Raw evil villain or misunderstood antagonist? Luckily for us, Clive looked at these questions and decided, in order, “Yes, very supernatural, somewhere in that sure.” Pinhead offered a totally new take on a horror antagonist–a character not quite traditionally evil but definitely not benevolent. In the midst of the absolute quagmire of sexual themes and interpretations of horror films that would make Freud giggle in delight, Clive Barker embraced it and molded his own horror icon in the very manifestation of the psychosexual human condition.
Pinhead is an interdimensional entity who doles out unreal levels of pleasure and pain to whomever summons him with a nice little puzzle box. In his own words, some call him and his fellow Cenobites angels, others call them demons. Pinhead sticks out among other horror antagonists because when he is done well, he’s not really evil: he’s an agent of mortal experience, and the human factors in Hellraiser stories are far more evil than Pinhead ever is. Rather, he doles out punishment and judgment; he can be reasoned with, and the fact that he is a cold, calculating supernatural force rather than a blind murderous raging bull makes him all the more terrifying. After all, what’s scarier than the sense of our own responsibility in our demise?
The main thing that has held Pinhead back in comparison to the other horror icons is not so much the quality of his movies as it is the quality of his studios. After Hellraiser II, writing declined to the point that film companies have basically just taken random horror scripts, slapped Pinhead somewhere into them, and called them Hellraiser movies for the sake of retaining film rights to the franchise. As a result, the lore has gotten muddied and retconned more than a Spider-Man story, and any staying power Pinhead may have had has been thwarted by corporate greed and pseudo-sequels. All this to say, the first two Hellraiser films are incredible, and I really can’t recommend one individually. Currently, both Hellraiser and Hellraiser II are available to stream on Amazon Prime, and I can think of few better double-features to get your October started right. The practical effects have aged better than most 80s movies, and the Cenobites remain some of the more chilling characters in horror history. As a bonus, the Hellraiser comic books are a fun horror read, especially those written by Clive Barker himself.
