HELLRAISER Doug Bradley Panel – Steel City Con August 2021

nothing more magical than just taking adhesive and sticking these pieces of latex foam together, I mean, were they trying to save it to use again next time or can't they do it? Okay, you can do it, but if you were to do it, you'd have to take off the makeup, uh, with pure alcohol, which is by no means as exciting as it might seem, you don't really want to do that, so you have. Well, the only thing that wasn't attached to me was the top of my head. I had hair then, so we started with a bald cap which is like a kind of shower cap made of latex that sticks with your hair. inside him, so the makeup is stuck to the bald head and not to me, so the beginning of the process, I always feel like I have to apologize for this, no, I love the boy, and we.

You can talk about him for hours if you want, take Sabini here, we will talk about him forever. We call it Kennedy because we basically stick our hands on the top of the head through the makeup and through the um. the ball cap and then you open the top of the head and then somewhere around here, I mean the adhesive, then you sit down with oil pots and brushes and you just start applying oil, applying oil, applying oil to break the adhesive, um and then You know, once you can start to ease it gradually, but what they used as an adhesive was something called professional help and when they were applying it to me the first time, I mean, I'm asking a lot of questions about the In I was actually excited about the makeup process so I asked what Prosaid was and it turns out that Prosaid was used first and foremost as an adhesive in Vietnam, basically to temporarily glue people in sensitive areas to hold them together. until they could get them back to the field hospital and treat them properly, so I'm sitting in the makeup chair thinking what's going on now and in this Europe, you know, I've seen actors who have had prosthetic makeup applied with prostate that I sat down at the end of the day and said wow, not me, uh, they started diluting it half and half with water, but it still stuck to me like a second skin, it was a fight, uh, getting it off my face and I like Por much longer than makeup application, I was fine with that.

I hated the process of removing the product because it lasted so long that it always got to a point where it was hanging from my eyebrows. and it felt so heavy that it made me feel physically sick, so it was a strange process. How many actual days of filming were you there that you had to apply and remove that makeup? I don't know the final count. It was kind of weird because I know I passed milestones along the way and we had little parties and I know I turned 21 in Hellbound, my 21st request, I had my 50th party in Hellraiser 3.

And I think I reached, yeah, I had. my 100th birthday um uh in inferno uh and I was I got a telegram from the queen because of course I'm British that's right everyone in the UK who turns 100 gets a birthday card from the queen it's not so nice um uh I wonder if one will be sent if it reaches 100 it's not too far away now so that was hell and after hell uh it was the dead hell seeker and the hell world so whatever they are, it has to be , I think between 150 and 200 probably answer a few more questions, just raise your hand, we'll get there right there, how's it going?

Back on the amc network before it became all walking dead centric, um, they used to have a lot. of the magic of Hollywood, like documentaries and things they showed on Friday and Saturday nights, I remember seeing footage of you once, um, they said in the documentary that after you were fully made up like a pinhead, you liked it throw the soccer ball, yeah. I want to see if there's any truth to that and if you still do it, you know, that's weird, yeah, that was a show called Movie Magic that we were filming Blue Bloodline in downtown Los Angeles and it was suggested that we should do it. "Um, I'm English, I can't throw a soccer ball to save my life.

I can kick a soccer ball with my foot. I want to start a campaign now. Change the name of American football and call it throwing the ball, since that's what it is." what you are". d throwing the ball um it's a very stupid sport I apologize I'll leave the country tomorrow I love baseball I love baseball I take all the baseball you throw at me but uh football is deeply uh throwing the ball is anyway, but if I can do it with success was renamed as throwing ball so we can stop talking about calling the beautiful game soccer and we can call it soccer because we use our feet to kick the ball playing soccer soccer um I did it once for the cameras and it's not like that um you can have done it. said you know that's how pinhead likes to relax at the end of the long day of filming, but not a word of that would be true, there's a new one about me, it was funny, you have a question down here though, I'm just wondering what that Pinhead versus Michael Myers movie was so close to being made.

As far as I know, Freddie versus Jason was made and released and the script for Freddie versus Jason had been floating around for a long time and I was told. that in the year before the freddie versus jason movies were released, the owner of

hellraiser

and halloween rejected two specific scripts for a

hellraiser

halloween crossover because they said it's ridiculous and no one wants to see it and freddie versus jason will be a bomb, so Freddie Versus Jason opens and goes to number one at the box office and remains at number one at the box office for the next weekend.

I think it was the first movie that year to stay at number one for two weekends in a row, well, you know, it goes to number one at the box office and on Monday morning, you know, people jump on the furniture, um, in the Dimensions offices because they want to prepare a Halloween crossover movie that's coming out next weekend, you know, I had two or three phone calls with Clive about this, um, him, that. was basically the dimension had his wish list in place clive said yes I'll write it john carpenter said yes I'll direct it and I said I want to do it um and I had some conversations with clive about it and he said you know the versus , the Pinhead versus Michael thing is a little silly, it's a little problematic because Pinhead likes a good conversation and Michael is a little, you know, a little inadequate in the conversation department, um Clyde, what Clive was saying It was that he was more. interested in finding where the world collided, where the Hellraiser map and the Halloween map were found and since you know Michael is a psychopath and you know, said a masochistic sexual pervert with a very strange attitude towards his sister, um.

You seem to know the territory that Pinhead would be interested in, so I think that's where Clive's focus was and if you remember also the first Halloween movie, which I'm a big fan of, it's a brilliant piece. of cinema let alone a great horror movie, it works like um, it works like a dracula movie um with michael as dracula um and then you know you have dr. Loomis, who is the character of Van Helsing and at the beginning of Halloween I know that Donald Pleasure is walking around screaming in everyone's faces. You don't know what you're dealing with.

You don't know what you don't know who he is. You don't know what he is. You don't understand and. You keep hearing this and you're thinking about Jesus Christ, what is he? Know? And that gives Michael the supernatural advantage of him, so when he gets shot and he gets up and carries on, that's cool because we don't know what it is, but you. I know that's where Clive planned to operate. As far as I know, the Acad brothers who produced the original Halloween movie must have retained enough say over what was happening with uh um with the sequels.

Musti Akadu died in a terrorist attack in Aden not too many years ago, he basically said he didn't want this movie to end the story, he didn't want his boy Michael hanging around with people like Pinhead, I guess I don't know, but that's what he was going for. to pass. Go ahead and then stopped dead, let's ask one more question and of course you will return to your table. By the way, it's nice to see you in person instead of what you normally see. Yo, let's ask this last question, here we go there, hello, what did you think when you first saw your costume with all the leather?

Oh wow, well the costume was made by a wonderful lady in London called Jane Wild Goose, who had worked with Clive and I at the theater company we had in London, The Dog Company, so she had designed and made costumes for us. Clive chose her to make the Cenobite costumes and she was one of many little ones. Clive's strokes of genius in preparation for Hellraiser were her own department, so the Cenobite costumes were not part of the general costume department, nor part of the special effects makeup department, which they tended to be in later films. , that's why they got them. very cheap and not that good, she created gorgeous outfits, used real aviator leather and we have lots of accessories.

When you look closely you can see how the shoulders and upper arms are made to show off very anatomically precise musculature, but it's all sewn in

panel

s together, a lot of work went into it and a lot of clever design, one of which was lost Unfortunately, Jaina designed the female Cenobites costume, do you know what Victorian hustle and bustle Victorian women had on them? On the back of her dresses she had taken a bite out of the female dinner, a bustle that was not covered, so it was like a cage with a floor attached to her back that contained the mummified body of her dead baby that she was carrying.

I take it everywhere. she said, which is a mind-blowingly beautiful and impressive idea and image, and there are drawings of it, uh vetoed by the producers and because I guess we have to maintain standards of decency in hellish movies at all times, I don't know. It was a song and a dance. They were bright suits and wonderful to look at. They were a choice to wear. First I wore a leotard like a ballerina leotard that had the stomach piece and chest pieces attached and then the jacket. and the utility belt that was attached to the jacket went through the belly button on the stomach and the pieces of meat were attached to the jacket with fish hooks, so now the leotard is attached to the pieces of meat that are attached to the jacket, so everything is subject.

I'll get to the bathroom later and then Jane had created a corset, literally a corset tied to the back of the costume, which helped that very sexy line that Pinhead has in The Razor and Hellbound, not so much in the later movies , but it was actually, we were literally corseted in um and everything about the costume was inflexible, that turned out to be to my benefit, but it has a high collar, which meant my head movement was restricted and initially I thought, oh, this is. It's not right, I can't, I can't use this, I can't move my head, I can't do that, but I realized, you see, yeah, if you ask me a question and I'm standing here, I turn my head like this. to answer the question it's just you know, but if you ask me a question and I do this before I say anything, it's immediately intimidating, well that's not brilliant acting on my part, it needs to be me working with the needs of the costume In the same way I didn't have a lot of mobility in my arms, so all the arm gestures had to be slow and straight because I couldn't do them easily, so a lot of Pinhead's physicality came from the costume then.

Of course, I'm wearing a skirt, so my next task is to learn to walk without tripping over that damn thing, which means you already know the death march, where they know they drag their foot on the ground. Halfway through I developed a version of that because I realized that if I put my foot forward and kicked the skirt, kicked the skirt out of the way, kicked the skirt out of the way then I wouldn't trip over the skirt, which is what the head of a pin. I developed this kind of slide walk, slow slide walk, I was trying not to drip on my skirt, but it looked, it looked amazing, it was never as good again, um and of course this is a director's chair like the one we have on set, you know? no, I can't do that, so at best it was just, you know, paint on the neck, pause it, so at best, it was kind of, you know, very comfortable, no, but if you gave me the option to wear that costume again or the later costumes that just had a zipper in the back so that between takes I could take off the jacket and breathe and relax.

I wore Jane's original costume every day, just, I mean, it looked so gorgeous, brilliant, wonderful job, um, you know, and I've got that makeup that costume those lines lucky guy we're lucky thanks for coming thanks so fabulous seeing you i love this guy thank you so

doug

bradley

clap my friend give up hello i'm michael shanks and you're watching phantom spotlight be sure to like, share and subscribe the fate of the universe may depend on it have fun and follow your fandom.