“Hellraiser” villain Pinhead wasn’t originally male & has always been queer
queerty.comHellraiser features transgender actress Jamie Clayton as the film’s iconic villain Pinhead.Some fans worried about a woman playing a male villain, especially since the role was first made iconic by male actor Doug Bradley.
But the 1986 novella that Hellraiser was based on, entitled The Hellbound Heart, actually depicted Pinhead as somewhat androgynous, a fact that the film and its many sequels seemingly forgot.The 1987 Hellraiser and The Hellbound Heart both show the cenobites, an order of mutilated hell priests who are summoned to Earth through a mysterious puzzle box known as The Lemarchand Configuration.
The cenobites find pleasure in sensuously inflicting pain through extreme bodily and psychological torture, particularly through the use of hooked chains.
Their own bodies are pale and have exposed muscle and bone — horrific disfigurements also caused through torture.But while the 1987 film and its 1988 sequel established Pinhead as a former military officer who was definitely male, the novel mostly refers to the cenobites as “sexless things with their corrugated flesh” and “queer deformity.”The novella specifically says of Pinhead, “Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy — the voice of an excited girl.
