Jamie Clayton Cast as Pinhead in New 'Hellraiser' Reboot

It's no big controversy to say that horror films are only as good as their villains. Jamie Lee Curtis is fantastic in the Halloween films, but that series rides on Michael Meyers. Heather Langenkamp kills it (pun intended) as Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street, but everybody will think of Freddy Kreuger with his burned visage and finger knives instantly when they hear the title.

The same goes for the classic 1987 horror film directed by Clive Barker, Hellraiser. Based on his 1986 novella, The Hellbound Heart, the film introduced the world to the Cenobites and their iconic leader... Lead Cenobite. Yes, that's what he was called in the original movie. Pinhead was a nickname given to the character by the production crew and fans which, obviously, stuck. Pinhead is now one of the most recognizable horror icons of all time.

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Part of Pinhead's appeal is the excellent performance by actor Doug Bradley, who played Pinhead in all but the two most recent films. Doug Bradley is Pinhead. Full stop. Every bit as much as Robert Englund is Freddy Kreuger, regardless of any remakes or updates.

However, there are two reboots currently being made, separately from each other, one is a TV series being developed for HBO's streaming service, with an unrelated movie being released in 2022 by Hulu. Both are being produced by author and director of the original, Clive Barker.

So far there are not very many details about the new HBO series, including cast, so we probably won't know who will be under the Pinhead makeup for a while. However, the Hulu project has already announced their casting. Jamie Clayton, best known as Nomi Marks in the Netflix original series Sense8, will be the latest Pinhead.

Obviously, the reaction to this has been mixed. Part of that will stem from the fact that it's not Doug Bradley, and no matter what the film will be like, they will never be able to separate the character from the iconic performance. It's the same idea behind the distain about the casting of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Kreuger in the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. It's hard to separate the actor from the character. It doesn't help that we've seen actors replace Doug Bradley in Hellraiser films before, most notably in 2011's Hellraiser: Revelations, a film so bad that Doug Bradley refused to be in it. Given how bad most of the Hellraiser films are, that's saying something.

The other big aspect of the pushback is that, for the first time, Pinhead will not be played by a male actor. People are inherently suspicious of that, with some accusing the production of not choosing the best performer, but casting Clayton as an example of "virtue signaling" or being "woke." It's following a slight trend we've been seeing lately, with a female Doctor in Doctor Who, and some push for a female James Bond.

However, a female Pinhead would be different. In the original novella, Pinhead isn't given a gender. The Cenobites are so far removed from humanity that they've moved past that. In the novella, Pinhead is originally described;

"Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy-the voice of an excited girl. Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its tongue was similarly decorated."

Even with the vaguely feminine description, Pinhead is sill not intended to be a gendered being. Pinhead is a being of pain and pleasure combined, with little, if any, humanity left in him.

Doug Bradley's portrayal will always be the definitive Pinhead. Nothing is going to change that. There is nothing wrong with taking a few risks with a long stale franchise. The writing and directing will play into how good or bad the movie is, but in terms of Jamie Clayton, we'll have to let the performance speak for itself.

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Written by Tommy Durbin

Source: Screen Geek

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