Hellraiser: The Engineer

Horror and hedonist hallmark Clive Barker published his novella entitled "The Hellbound Heart" in November of 1986 as a part of the masterful horror anthology Night Visions. However, this work was far too prolific to be confined to the pages of a mere anthology, spawning itself into a horror franchise so absolutely in touch with the darkest parts of human suffering and eroticism that is takes a sort of magnanimous position to all other horror which precedes and follows it.

The Cenobites, on what is just a lovely VHS
cover. Photo by Jesper Wiking.

What I am speaking of with this perhaps wordy introduction is the well-known film series Hellraiser, the first of which was directed by Barker, the rest of which passed through the hands of numerous B to Z list directors. However, even when the production of the sequels was questionable, the pure power of the base story has provided each subsequent film with the ever seductive intonation of the first, the deep fulfillment promised by a world of pure torture. The characters of the Cenobites, the primary hellish force facing the protagonists of these films, and their General of Sadomasochism, horror all-star Pinhead, are creatures which touch the very base fabric of what human fright is based on, as well as the deeper and more mysterious points of human desire. A sadomasochistic feeling envelopes each film in a particular way, though always intriguing, bringing to question the viewers comfortableness with such "sights" as the ritual skinning of man, the penetration of chain into flesh, the sundering of man into a quivering beast of ecstatic pain.

To those who haven't discovered this series yet, I will warn, it takes a definite personality type to enjoy these movies on a visceral level. Perhaps it is the natural masochist in me, but the film provides a sort of sexual experience that rivals even the most morbid of culture. The series concentrates on a complex puzzle box, a portal  (or as Pinhead would describe it, "a crack in the floor") between Earth and Hell. This puzzle box also serves as one of the more apt metaphors for the mystery of human sexuality: for all who solve itonly a wonderland rooted in the love of suffering awaits them.

The Puzzle Box, also known as the Lament Configuration.
Photo by antipax.

The first two films set the tone, facing a young female protagonist with all sorts of violently sexual imagery, her own family debased to skinless zombies, forced to consume the flesh of others in order to restore themselves. This is where the first tone of eroticism peeks its lush head out, as the flesh-less bodies of the puzzle box's victims appear in an overtly sexualized manner, the ridges and weaving of their bloody muscles forming a figure that reminds one of the pure beauty of the human form, well, beauteous if it wasn't dripping with the excrement of Hell. They seduce their own victims with promises of lurid love, promises followed through on with the almost romantic presentation of lurid cannibalism.

However, this is a mere prequel, a foreword for the truly majestic combination of horror and love that is provided by the Cenobites, particularly Pinhead. From one film to another, Pinhead's motivation seems to alternate between one of an arbiter of justice sent to Earth to punish the wicked for their crimes and one of a demon tasked with the simple torture and eventual destruction of our mutual existence. I prefer to think of Pinhead as a sort of wicked father figure, his eloquent and always beautiful contemplations on the nature of Hell and Pain contain an almost educational tone, scolding these unruly children of another dimension into becoming true pariahs from their own pleasures.

The Cenobites seem to represent a special part of modern society, their irreverent amoralism in the face of a severe devotion to their own lifestyle of seeking pain and suffering is a unique commentary on our own uniquely extensive dedications to our own fetishes. How many people pierce themselves, get tattoos, wear the same ridiculous clothing every day, simply to get across a devotion to something besides God or the Devil? The Cenobites simply choose hooks and flesh as their accessories, with a healthy appreciation for full leather outfits with a style somewhere in between a butcher and a deacon. This thematic is repeated in the religious ambiguity of the Cenobites, Hell merely exists as the only possible human interpretation of the unbearable yet beatific realm from which these creatures hail, with Pinhead serving as their talkative General-Priest, a foil to earlier and near-comic horror villains with his practice of the deliberate elocution of his philosophies.

There is little I can do to represent the pure epic and awesome nature of the character of Pinhead (played masterfully by Doug Bradley, I might add, in all but the most recent film) and the exceptional philosophical hedonism behind the Cenobites except present some of the films' more exceptional quotes:

Pinhead. Photo by Jesper Wiking.

Frank Cotton: I thought I'd gone to the limits. I hadn't. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits... pain and pleasure, indivisible.

Kirsty Cotton: Who are you?
Pinhead: Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others.

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

Pinhead: Two minutes. Two centuries. It all ticks by so quickly. You are so very like your ancestors, did you know that? I have the distinct sense of deja vu. The same defiance, the same faithless hope in the light.
Dr. Paul Merchant: And what do you have faith in?
Pinhead: Nothing. I am so exquisitely empty.

Pinhead: We have no more surprises.
Female Cenobite: We've always been here.
Pinhead: But please, feel free, explore. We have eternity to know your flesh.

Well, fuck me. That is some shit right there. Perhaps much more resonant is what has become a sort of battle-cry or slogan for for the series, Pinhead's terrifyingly exciting declaration that "We have such sights to show you!" It is perhaps the most succinct summation of the occult and dark allure that this film holds for viewers, a peek into a mindset involved in such complete devotion to the phenomenon of physical sensation that this is carried to its extreme: the fury and agony of the rendering of human flesh resulting in an ecstatic connection to something all too greater than man.

Also, Doug Bradley is evidently...
Photo by Stephanie GW.

... a very cool guy.
Photo by Jeremy Nemcosky.