Horror fiction has no shortage of iconic monsters who are instantly recognizable, even to folks who may not enjoy the genre. We all known Freddy Krueger's bladed glove and striped sweater if if we've never seen a single A Nightmare on Elm Street film. The same can be said for Jason Vorhees and his signature machete and hockey mask. These figures have become omnipresent in pop culture.
While they are the subjecst of retrospective podcasts, franchise reboots, and countless think pieces dissecting their impact on the cultural zeitgeist. And while the pair of aforementioned movie monsters have origins most people can instantly recall, there are other iconic horror figures who have a much deeper, darker mythology: the Cenobites from Hellraiser.
WHAT ARE THE CENOBITES?
The Cenobites first appeared in Clive Barker's 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart. The book tells the story of a hedonistic creep by the name of Frank Cotton, who is constantly looking for the next level of sensual exploration, no matter how depraved. Frank utilizes a puzzle box known as the Lemarchand Configuration, to open a portal to an extra-dimensional realm where the Cenobites reside in the hopes to experience the greatest sensual stimulant possible. Of course, Frank gets more than what he bargained for and is shown a world of terror, humiliation and torture.
In in the original text, the Cenobites are unnamed and are described as asexual beings who have been marred and modified so horribly, they bear little resemblance to the human form. Barker is surprisingly vague in describing the Cenobites in great detail. The only figure Barker pays much lip service to is the leader of the group, who've come to take Larry to their realm. The Cenobites' leader would eventually become the poster boy for the subsequent films, comics, and novels The Hellbound Heart would spawn, and a movie monster who would eventuality be known as Pinhead.
WHO IS PINHEAD?
Only a year after The Hellbound Heart was published, Clive Barker expanded on the mythology of his novella by adapting it to the big screen in the cult horror film Hellraiser. And while the the lead Cenobite was never given a proper name in the film either, actor Doug Bradley's performance and the brilliant makeup and costume instantly defined Pinhead as new horror icon.
Later Hellraiser films would expand on the character's background and history. Before becoming the servant of Leviathan, the deity who thrives on the pain and suffering of others and employs the Cenobites to retrieve fresh victims, Pinhead was a World War I Captain man named Elliott Spencer, who befell a similar fate as Frank Cotton after solving Lemarchand Configuration. The grid across Pinhead's with a nail hammered into each intersection is an outlandish character design that has captured the imagination of fans and creators for the last three decades.
WHO ARE THE OTHER CENOBITES?
While Pinhead might be the most recognizable Cenobite, he is by no means the only one to have some unique defining characteristics. In Hellraiser we also meet Chatterer, Butterball, and The Female, who are all part of Pinhead's Gash. And much like Pinhead, their main defining characteristics are pretty much spelled out in their names. Other hellish characters include The Engineer, a creature believed to be the first to open the gates to hell, has spent a millennia as the tortured monster we see in the films and was briefly a member of Pinhead's Gash.
Throughout the years, there have been many other Cenobites introduced into the Hellraiser Universe, but the mainstay has always been Pinhead. As the films in the franchise went on, we did see far more outlandish demons like the compact disc-firing DJ Cenobite in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth and the horrifically terrifying Siamese Cenobites in the underrated Hellraiser: Bloodline. All of these newer additions were twisted versions of characters in the films, which helped grow the mythology, but also took out some of the terror. In subsequent film sequels, which vary in quality wildly, we are introduced to even more Cenobites, most of whom are twisted versions of their human selves whether they opened the Lemarchand Configuration puzzle box or not.
After the release of Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Clive Barker stepped away from the film franchise. But in 2015, Barker released the The Scarlet Gospels, a horror epic which bridged the world of Pinhead and the hard magical noir world of detective Henry D'Amor, the protagonist of "The Last Illusion" which was the basis for the film Lord of Illusion and the novel Everville. The Scarlet Gospels focuses on The Hell Priest (Pinhead) and his quest to become the new Lord of Hell. It's also the first time Barker refers to him as "Pinhead" in his books, a name the Cenobite has come to despise in a bit of meta-narrative.