(Photo by New World Releasing/courtesy Everett Collection)
All Hellraiser Movies Ranked by Tomatometer
Clive Barker may not have as many movie adaptations as fellow horror author Stephen King, but at least Barker’s directorial debut, 1987’s Hellraiser, is leagues above King’s single directing effort, Maximum Overdrive. Barker also wrote the screenplay for Hellraiser (based on his novella The Hellbound Heart), introducing freaky icon Pinhead, his Cenobite minions, and whipping some sadomasochism onto the modern horror scene. Besides the immediately recognizable look of the prickly Cenobites, the Hellraiser movies other trademark is the puzzle box which offer a fast and torturous track into another dimension. Doug Bradley portrayed Pinhead in the first eight Hellraiser movies, which, like many a franchise, saw diminishing returns with critics and audiences as the series lumbered on. A reboot and new adaptation of Hellbound Heart released in 2022. —Alex Vo
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