Trivia for
Hellraiser (1987) More at IMDbPro »

• It took six hours to apply the prosthetic Cenobite makeup on Doug Bradley.
  
  
• Doug Bradley's character's name wasn't "Pinhead"; this was a fan nickname that began circulating after the release of the film. The script originally identified his character as 'The First Cenobite'. In the sequel films, 'Pinhead' became the character's "official" name, and Bradley is credited as "Pinhead" after that point.
  
  
• The budget of this movie was $1,000,000. It earned about $20,000,000. It was the directing debut of Clive Barker, who had made only two short films before this.
  
  
• The film is based on the novella "The Hellbound Heart" written by Clive Barker.
  
  
• The film's working title was "Sadomasochists From Beyond The Grave".
  
  
• Industrial band Coil originally did the soundtrack for this movie, but it was turned down by the studio. Clive Barker said, " [Coil was] the only group I've heard on disc whose records I've taken off because they made my bowels churn."
  
  
• The address for the house in this movie is 55 Ludovico Place. The name of the institute in A Clockwork Orange (1971) where Alex is deprogrammed of violence was the Ludovico Institute.
  
  
• For the video release, the film had one of the most unusual pieces of bonus material that has ever been offered: a Home Shopping Network show where merchandise from the movie could be purchased. The show was hosted by a giddy old lady claiming to be a hardcore fan of the movie.
  
  
• At the time of the movie's release the MPAA had an agenda on "intensity of tone". As a result of this director Clive Barker had to make several cuts to the film - consecutive hammer blows, fingers entering flesh, S&M spanking between Julia and Frank, additional "thrusts" during the sex scene - all with the intention of watering down the overall impact of the piece.
  
  
• Doug Bradley was originally offered a choice of roles between one of the mattress movers and the Lead Cenobite. He originally thought it important that, as a new film actor, the audience should be see his face, and nearly turned down the Lead Cenobite role.
  
  
• In his DVD commentary, Clive Barker explained that filming the movie in an actual house forced him to be creative in his cinematography. There was often only room for a single camera and this explains why many of the shots are from only one angle. In particular, vertical movement was often the only movement available to the camera operators, which explains many of the overhead and zoom shots. Only one room in the house, the attic, was shot on a soundstage, but only the FX shots used this attic set.
  
  
• Many viewers have commented about the poor quality of the FX at the end of the movie. Clive Barker has explained that, due to a very limited budget, there was no money left to have the FX done professionally after the primary filming. Instead, Barker and a "Greek guy" animated these scenes by hand over a single weekend. Barker has also commented that he thinks the FX turned out very well considering the amount of alcohol the two consumed that weekend.
  
  
• The scene where Frank is being spun around upside-down covered in blood was a camera test and the very first thing shot of the film. Afterwards, Sean Chapman (Frank) couldn't help from vomiting.
  
  
• Nintendo developed a video game based on the film. It was planned as one of the first to feature the capacity to save a player's game and let the player return later to that point in the game. However, it was discovered that the Nintendo console could not correctly interpret the saved game codes, so production was scrapped.
  
  
• Andrew Robinson convinced Clive Barker to replace the scripted line, "Fuck you," with the line actually shot, "Jesus wept."
  
  
• During a post production party when filming had ended Doug Bradley was dismayed to be ignored by the other members of the crew. He thought to himself that he found it a pity as he though he got on rather well with people. It wasn't till later that he realized that none of the crew had actually ever seen him without his makeup when playing Pinhead and therefore did not recognize him.
  
  

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