Hellraiser Reveals Creepy First Video Of New Pinhead And Release Date
A new Hellraiser is bringing back Lead Cenobite Pinhead, and this video has a teasing glimpse of the demon (or angel).
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Hellraiser is the great underrated horror franchise. Where Nightmare Before Elm Street and Friday the 13th became so much part of pop culture that we inevitably demanded Freddy and Jason face-off, Hellraiser and its avatar Pinhead have always been a little bit…weirder. Beginning with the original 1987 Clive Barker film, the franchise has always had weird undertones (and sometimes overt overtones) of BDSM and questions of morality that do not often come up in your typical slasher. Now, the long-dormant franchise is returning with a rebooted Hellraiser and Pinhead himself is back and will be streaming on Hulu October 7. Check out this teaser:
The brief, 15-second teaser for the new Hellraiser movie is about as simple as they get. The title of the movie scrolls across the screen while inside the blood-red letters spelling out HELLRAISER, we get a glimpse of the iconic Pinhead. This time around, the Lead Cenobite (as he is sometimes referred to) is being portrayed by actor Jamie Clayton. This makes Clayton only the fourth actor to portray the character, who has almost entirely been portrayed by Doug Bradley throughout the franchise. Unlike the Friday the 13th franchise, in which Jason Voorhees has been played by nearly as many actors as there are movies, or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, which has a similar revolving door for Leatherface, Hellraiser, Pinhead, and Doug Bradley are all more synonymous than creator Clive Barker himself.
However, all things change and Hellraiser and Pinhead are no different. This Hulu streaming reboot of the series will be the 11th installment of the franchise, following the direct-to-DVD Hellraiser: Judgement in 2018. That film was written and directed by Gary J. Tunnicliffe, and starred Paul T. Taylor as its lead demon/interdimensional seeker after sensual delights and torments. It is not particularly controversial to say that the franchise has generally been considered to be on a downward spiral in the last few decades, with at least one film in the series being accused of being made solely to retain copyright for the Weinstein Company.
There is decent reason to believe that this new version of Hellraiser might be bringing back Pinhead in a good and/or interesting way. While Hulu does not yet have the same reputation for original streaming content as Netflix or Disney+, it has very much been working on improving its game. The recent Predator revitalization Prey is already being considered one of the strongest entries in the entire franchise, so we can only hope that the same quality control is being given to this new film.
The original Hellraiser was written and directed by author and filmmaker Clive Barker, based on his own novella The Hellbound Heart. While various details of the lore have changed from film to film, the most consistent element is unwitting humans attracting the attention of a group of otherworldly figures (often called Cenobites) who are led by a figure named Pinhead. Given that this new Hulu film is supposed to be a proper reboot, we shall have to wait and see how closely they stick to the original story this time around.
