Hellraiser



""No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering.""

- Pinhead, Hellraiser

A 1987 film based on Clive Barker's novella The Hellbound Heart, Hellraiser has gone on to spawn eight sequels (only one of which - the second - Barker was directly involved with) as well as an upcoming remake. The series has at its heart a puzzle box known as the Lament Configuration, which when properly solved summons the Cenobites, a cadre of sadomasochistic Humanoid Abominations. The mascot of the series is the only recurring Cenobyte after the second film, the iconic Pinhead, played by Doug Bradley. He was given a choice, when filming the first movie, to play either the Cenobite or a workman who showed up for all of ten seconds - bet he's happy he went with the Cenobite.

Because it's a Clive Barker production, expect much Body Horror and gleeful blurring of the line between Fetish Fuel and Fan Disservice.

Films of this series include:
 * Hellraiser (1987)
 * Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
 * Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
 * Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996). Last theatrically-released entry.
 * Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)
 * Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)
 * Hellraiser: Deader (2005)
 * Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)
 * Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

This film provides examples of:
"J.P. Monroe: "Jesus Christ!"
 * Above Good and Evil: The Cenobites, usually, there was Pinhead's little descent into Chaotic Evil in Hell on Earth.
 * All There in the Manual: Blurbs on the packaging of several of the minor Cenobites' action figures give them backstories.
 * Arc Words: "Hunt the Engineer, and the Engineer hunts you."
 * "Come to daddy."
 * "What's your pleasure, sir?"
 * Artifact of Doom/Summoning Artifact: The Lament Configuration. Leads to an Oh Crap moment at the conclusion of each of the first several sequels.
 * Ascended Extra: In the book, Pinhead is present but is not the lead Cenobite. The female Cenobite, the Chatterer, and the Engineer all have more prominent roles, but the film adaptation prevented this. The Chatterer could not speak (and the actor could not see), the Engineer was completely remade to the point it's unrecognizable and arguably demoted to a Big Lipped Alligator Moment when it does appear, and the female Cenobite, while capable of speaking, has makeup that severely limited the actress' head and facial movements. Though fixed by the sequel, these problems meant Pinhead took point. And now he's pretty much the face of horror films to the western civilization.
 * Ascended Meme: The "Lead Cenobite" of the first film was given the nickname of Pinhead by the film's fans. In the second film, Pinhead became his official name, and remained such through all the other sequels.
 * Beat Still My Heart: The second and fourth films.
 * Also the first.
 * Bedlam House: The Channard Institute.
 * Being Tortured Makes You Evil: The cenobites are an extreme example of this. They've been quite literally turned into monsters by years of hellish torment. Also Frank, debatably. Even if he was a scheming jerk as a human, he didn't turn into a sadistic, vampiric killer until he had spent years in hell with the Cenobites.
 * Bigger Bad: Leviathan, the God and creator of the Cenobites. It only appears in Hellbound, but is featured with much more prominence in the comics.
 * Big No: The ending of the fifth film.
 * Bittersweet Ending: End of the first film..
 * This is one interpretation of Inferno. While it can be argued, it can also be read as him.
 * Blondes Are Evil: Julia.
 * Blue and Orange Morality: At least in the novella and the first movie or so. The Cenobites inhabit a dimension of pure pleasure...only their idea of "pleasure" is so far removed from what is "normal" that an ordinary human would consider it weirdly discomfiting at best, agonizing torture at worst. The Cenobites don't consider their victims to be victims at all: they're just giving them what they think they want.
 * Body Horror: So much.
 * Bondage Is Bad: A popular misconception of the Cenobites. The first film actually portrays them as amoral, if extreme, Sense Freak types.
 * Boom Headshot: Kirsty's MO in Hellseeker (though in a few instances, it appears to have been a Coup De Grace).
 * Broad Strokes: Word of God has stated the Boom! Studios comics will essentially be taking this approach to the post-Hellbound sequels.
 * Brother Sister Incest: Steven and Emma in Revelations.
 * Call Back: Revelations to the first film in many scenes. Niko is essentially a younger Frank, and even his first opening the box is a visual callback to Frank doing the same.  There's even a callback to the original novella when someone looks up the word 'Cenobite' in a dictionary and reads the actual definition aloud.
 * Came Back Wrong: While most of the Deaders in the seventh film just look like disheveled people with some injury relating to their death, Marla looks like an outright rotting zombie, apparently her lack of faith in Winter being the cause of this.
 * Chekhov's Gunman: Probably just a coincidence, but at one point in Bloodline its mentioned John has a brother, and at the end of Deader its revealed Winter is descended from Lemarchand...
 * The strange hobo from the first film.
 * Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Kirsty boyfriend, Steve.
 * Coolest Club Ever: The Boiler Room from Hell on Earth.
 * Cross Melting Aura: Pinhead melts a cross and badly burns a priest.
 * Creepy Twins: The Siamese Twins from Bloodline and Wire Twins from Inferno.
 * Cute Monster Girl: Marla (depending on how rotten she is in a particular scene) in Deader.
 * Cyborg: Most of the Hell on Earth Cenobites.
 * Darker and Edgier: Yes, even for a series like this. The fifth (Inferno) and sixth (Hellseeker) films don't have the Gorn from the other films and are more psychological, dealing with characters who have become ensnared by the box. Instead of immediately getting dragged in and ripped apart by Pinhead and his cronies, they live out a personal Hell with manifestations of their wrongdoings tormenting them. No happy endings are to be found here. At the end, Pinhead - who acts more like a judge - Gives a Hannibal Lecture and drops a Laser Guided Karma bomb on our Jerkass protagonists.
 * Dark Is Not Evil: More evident in the first two films, in which the antagonists are invariably human and the Cenobites, despite being Demonic Invaders, are clearly only an interested third party and in fact assist the protagonist in both films. Pinhead even explicitly describes his group as "angels to some, demons to others" in the first film.
 * Even more so in the novel, where (except for the soul rape you forever thing) the Cenobites are quite amiable, and do not renege on their deal with Kirsty as they do in the movie.
 * Dark World: The implicit setting after a character solves the puzzle box but before they're taken to the Labyrinth: the surroundings change to become deserted, blood-drenched and adorned with chains.
 * Deal With the Devil: Kirsty makes one with the Cenobites in the first and sixth films.
 * When it comes right down to it, that's what the whole series is about. The pursuit of ultimate pleasure or forbidden knowledge, wherein the seeker places their trust and fate in the hands of unknown entities of supernatural origin. And the Cenobites deliver. It's just that, in true Deal With The Devil style, the ultimate pleasure that the seekers get is not usually the kind they want.
 * Played with in Revelations:
 * Death By Materialism: Everybody just has to have the Lament Configuration.
 * Development Hell: The remake was stuck in it for a long, long time.
 * Did Not Do the Research: People who describe (or dismiss) Hellworld as "Pinhead killing hackers online".
 * Dirty Cop: Detective Joseph Thorne in Inferno. He cheats on his wife with prostitutes, neglects his family, brutalizes his informant, steals evidence, does drugs, frames his partner...
 * Does This Remind You of Anything: The female Cenobite inserting her fingers into her own exposed trachea in the first film - among innumerable other examples likely to make you ill.
 * Doomed By Canon: Hellraiser: Bloodline. You know that the past attempts of the Merchant family are completely useless throughout the entire film. If they weren't, then Dr. Paul Merchant would not have still been trying to undo his ancestor's mistake at the film's start.
 * Downer Ending: may not have been taken by Cenobites, but.
 * Drunk On the Dark Side:, after becoming a Cenobite.
 * Eldritch Abomination: Leviathan. Also, possibly, the Engineer.
 * The first movie treats the Cenobites as such.
 * Mr. Fanservice: Pinhead's human self, Captain Elliot Spencer... and probably Pinhead himself.
 * Expanded Universe: A surprisingly large, detailed one.
 * Everythings Better With Princesses: Angelique.
 * Angelique is the princess of HELL.
 * Further subverted.
 * Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Angelique originally had a really hot accent. It was cut.
 * Evil Feels Good: Frank's entire motivation.
 * : "And to think... I hesitated."
 * Evil Is Visceral: Uses this trope in the extreme.
 * Evil Uncle: Frank.
 * Evil Laugh: The Channard Cenobite from Hellbound had a weird one, while Pinhead also gets one in Hell on Earth.
 * Evil Versus Evil
 * Eyeless Face: The Engineer in Inferno.
 * Eye Scream: The Butterball Cenobite has his eyes sewn shut; Chatterer, meanwhile, usually has skewers through his. Also, one of the nightclub patrons in Hell on Earth gets hooked right in the eye. Finally, the Wire Twins in Inferno seem to be lacking eyes.
 * Fan Service: As the series went on, there seemed to be more and more topless women just for the sake of having topless women.
 * Foreshadowing: Emma making out with her brother in Revelations
 * Film of the Book: The first film.
 * Final Girl: Played straight in the first three and Hellworld only.
 * Especially subverted in Hellseeker.
 * For Want of a Nail: A rather literal example in the first movie. While moving furniture, Larry cuts his hand on a protruding nail and bleeds all over the floor. It's this blood that Frank first uses to reconstruct his body and return to the world of the living. If not for that stupid nail, Larry, Julia and Kirsty might have just gone on living in the house, and Frank might have stayed in Hell.
 * Frickin Laser Beams: Show up quite often, and not just in the film set in space.
 * Gainax Ending: Hellworld, and all the made-for-video sequels to some extent. Before that, the second film, with many a movie critic complaining that the climax didn't make sense. At the very least, figuring out what the Leviathan Configuration does, and what happened at the end will take some guesswork on the viewer's part.
 * Going for The Big Scoop: Joey in Hell on Earth, Amy in Deader.
 * Good Cop Bad Cop: The two detectives from Hellseeker.
 * Gorn
 * Hannibal Lecture: As time went on Pinhead became more and more prone to these.
 * Hell Hound: The Chatter Beast from Bloodline.
 * Hell Seeker: There are several characters with this mindset, and for some of them it even kind of works out: they're turned into cenobites, and enjoy it.
 * He Who Fights Monsters: in Hellseeker.
 * Hey Its That Guy: Viewers may recognize Kirsty's father as plain, simple Garak.
 * Also, in Hellbound we have Lt. Gorman from Aliens.
 * Hell on Earth has Jadzia Dax.
 * One of the Wire Twins in Inferno is on Deal or No Deal as one of The Lovely Assistants.
 * Ho Yay: In Deader, Winter resurrects his followers by pretty much making out with them.
 * Hooks and Crooks: Cenobites attack their victims with hooks on chains.
 * Humanoid Abomination: The Cenobites.
 * Incoming Ham: "The box. You opened it. We came."
 * Infant Immortality: Somewhat averted.
 * Plus the Hell Baby, one of the props in Hell on Earth, with its eyes and mouth showed up. Possibly averted because it started as a doll, but it was thoroughly alive by the time Pinhead had been through the club.
 * Intercontinuity Crossover: The comics had the series crossover with the Marshal Law and the Nightbreed.
 * Intrepid Reporter: Joey from Hell on Earth, for a wannabe example.
 * Ironic Echo: When Frank accidentally stabs Julia in the first film, he states that it's "nothing personal, baby". In the second film, Julia throws that line back at Frank when she quite intentionally (and quite literally) rips his heart out.
 * Ironic Hell: Often. Prominently with Frank's own Hell in Hellbound.
 * Large Ham: Pinhead and the Channard Cenobite.
 * Leaning On the Fourth Wall: The sequel Hellworld involves the fans of a cenobite-themed online group/game apparently also called "Hellraiser". This leads to lots of double entendre dialogue as, while the story still refers to the series' background as canon, there's also lots of talk about "Hellraiser fans" and whether "Hellraiser" is a healthy interest or something that should worry parents.
 * Legacy Character: The Chatterer.
 * Also the Lemarchand family, though the Chatterer's more visible and continuously invoked. It's debatable whether it's the same character throughout the series.
 * Mad Doctor: Dr. Channard in Hellbound, later upgraded to a Deadly Doctor when he.
 * Made of Iron: Pinhead shrugs off laser blasts in Bloodline.
 * Mind Rape
 * Mind Screw
 * Monster Clown: One shows up in Tiffany's Hell in Hellbound, and the comics gave us the Clown Cenobite (aka Winky Dink).
 * Motive Decay: Pinhead. In the early installments he put a great deal of emphasis on the idea that his victims, on some level, wanted pain, and had even sought him out. In Hellbound, he even stopped the other cenobites from attacking a traumatized girl who'd been tricked into solving the lament configuration. By Bloodline, though, he was actively attempting to drag the entire world into Hell, whether they liked it or not.
 * Nasty Party: plan in Hellworld.
 * Nice Job Breaking It Hero: Nice job, Kirsty. Too bad that his evil side no longer follows his rules.
 * In Revelations, just before
 * Not So Different
 * Off the Shelf FX: Pinhead's "pins" in Hellbound are Q-tips without the cottonballs, painted gray.
 * Only Known By Their Nickname: Hellbound's Tiffany (that was a name given to her by the staff) and the Host from Hellworld.
 * The Other Darrin: The actress who played the Female Cenobite in Hellbound isn't the same one who played her in the original, but it's not that noticeable. In Revelations, it's very noticeable that Doug Bradley isn't Pinhead.
 * Our Ghosts Are Different: Elliot's wayward soul in Hell on Earth.
 * Parental Incest: Flashbacks in Deader implicate Amy was sexually abused by her father.
 * The lurking phantom of parental incest is all over the first two films. "Come to daddy" and all that. There's no evidence that it actually happened, but the idea is pretty firmly put into viewer's heads.
 * Incidentally, that was a line taken directly from the novella where Kirsty is twenty-six and a friend rather than the daughter. Doesn't make it any less creepy though.
 * Peek a Boo Corpse: Played about as straight as possible in the first film.
 * Pre Mortem One Liner: Several. For example, "Play dead" (to a demon dog) or "Welcome to oblivion" (to Pinhead) from Bloodline.
 * Recycled in Space: Bloodline.
 * Redemption Equals Death: Pinhead, Butterball, Chatterer and the Female all die shortly after remembering their humanity in Hellbound.
 * Religion of Evil: The Deaders in Deader, and the Cenobites themselves in the original novella, as servants of the Order of Gash (the word Cenobite just means a monk or nun in a convent).
 * Romanticized Abuse: The Hellraiser films have this as a component, creeping most viewers out even further. "We have such sights to show you". The novel version The Hellbound Heart has the initial description of the female cenobite invoke piercing fetishism.
 * Sealed Evil in A Can: The Lament Configuration again, and the pillar in the third film, plus the floorboards and the mattress in the first and second films.
 * Self Constructed Being: The plot of the first movie as far as Frank Cotton was concerned.
 * Sense Freak: The Cenobites. Albiet to a very, very extreme degree.
 * She Is All Grown Up: Kirsty in Hellseeker. This was also Frank's reaction to her in the original.
 * Sinister Geometry: Leviathan is a lozenge!
 * Sinister Shades: The Butterball Cenobite, who wears shades because his eyes are sewn shut.
 * Sinister Subway: Deader
 * Slasher Smile: The Chatterer. (not that he can really make any other expression).
 * Smith Will Suffice: This exchange from Hell on Earth:
 * Smith Will Suffice: This exchange from Hell on Earth:

Pinhead: "Not quite.""

"Tiffany: "Shit!""
 * Spin Off: The Harrowers.
 * Stuff Blowing Up: An entire sequence in Hell on Earth just has Joey running down the street as stuff explodes around her.
 * Suddenly Voiced: Tiffany in Hellbound, after seeing the Channard Cenobite:

"Pinhead: It is not hands that summon us. It is desire."
 * Supernatural Proof Father: Larry.
 * Token Minority: Derek in Hellworld.
 * Tomato in The Mirror: The ending of Inferno.
 * The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Hell on Earth and Hellseeker.
 * Throw It In: Andrew Robinson thought "Jesus wept" sounded so much cooler than the scripted line "Fuck you". He was right.
 * Too Kinky to Torture: 's reaction after is to question why he had any doubts about it.
 * Too Dumb to Live: from the first film. Paying so little attention to your house and to your wife's strange behavior can get you killed. And  from the second. Went to a house where  was, then decided to split up, didn't ask a strange woman who she was and what was doing there, and when she started to behave oddly didn't run away. What an Idiot indeed.
 * Took a Level In Badass: went from being a reluctant and remorseful killer who tried her best to save  from Frank in the first film to a hardened killer in the second, who took great joy in being evil. Probably an after-effect from being
 * The Reason You Suck Speech: Pinhead is prone to these as well.
 * This Is Sparta: "We'll tear your soul...APAAAAAAHHHHT."
 * The Power of Blood: The first three films have Frank, Julia and Pinhead coming back via blood.
 * This Was His True Form: After being killed by the Channard Cenobite in Hellbound, the other Cenobites turn back into humans. Also arguably how Pinhead is defeated in the third.
 * Twin Threesome: Inferno has a disturbing version.
 * Twist Ending: Several:
 * Bloodlines: The space station is
 * Inferno: Joseph is
 * Hellseeker:
 * Hellworld: A double whammy:
 * Revelations:
 * Variable Length Chain
 * The Voiceless: Every Cenobite (except Pinhead) that appears after Bloodline. Also, Tiffany from Hellbound.
 * Was Once a Man:
 * Weapon of Choice: The hooked chains.
 * Julia likes hammers.
 * Welcome to Hell: Literally, in this case.
 * What Could Have Been: The music for the first film was originally done by Coil (they were hired by Clive Barker after he listened to one of their albums and nearly got sick due to how brutal their music was) but the studio ended up rejecting it due to its content. Their score ended up getting released separately and Christopher Young did the score that ended up in the film (which launched his career as a composer).
 * Wicked Stepmother: Julia.
 * She even says so herself.
 * Words Do Not Make the Magic: One character in the series solves puzzles reflexively, as she has a psychological detachment that forces her to do so, whether she wants to or not. She's given the Lament Configuration so that someone else can sacrifice her to the Cenobites, while he can safely watch what happens. The Cenobites ignore her, and proceed to hunt him -- his was the desire that led to the box opening.


 * In Revelations, Niko tries the same trick and also fails, although Pinhead doesn't bother spelling it out this time.