Hi,
Spoilers ahead...
Is there an explanation for how the cenobites can be killed in hell? I mean, they are already dead humans, right?
What happens when the doctor kills them in hell? They go to hell level 2?
One of the cenobites mentions that they will have eternity to torture Kirsty's flesh, seemingly implying she (and others) cant be killed in hell...
Any logical explanation ever given to this?
I don't think they're actually in Hell when they're killed. The cenobites tend to do a little redecorating wherever they tend to be(like the room Frank hides in in Hellraiser). But regardless of where they're at when it happens, I don't think they're ever truly dead. I believe everyone in Hell exists both as an immaterial soul which can't die and as immortal flesh and bone which can be torn and broken without any actual death occurring. This is how the cenobites can continue to rip people apart and put them back together for an eternity. For example, we see Frank ripped to shreds at the end of Hellraiser, and then in Hellbound, he's whole again.
shareInteresting, that makes sense. Thanks.
shareYet we see Channard kill the Cenobites and then Channard dies by having his head ripped in half for some reason. Julia rips Frank's heart out as if to kill him. It doesn't really make any sense. Julia slips out of her skin for no reason and is sucked into a vortex, apparently dead. Things just happen to be happening while adhering to no internal logic. It's all about visuals.
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I am not a fan. I just happen to enjoy movies. Fans are embarrassing.
the Cenobite dimension isn't hell. Frank explicitly says that "when you're dead, you're dead." This is just some weird world where people can be torn apart and reassembled...?
shareI think it is hell. The whole premise of the movie is that the doctor wants to see hell.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenobite_(Hellraiser):
As the film and comic books series progressed, the Cenobites—particularly Pinhead—began to manifest traditionally evil and sinister traits. In Hellbound: Hellraiser II, the Cenobites' realm is identified as "Hell," although its depiction is removed from most traditional Abrahamic depictions, being presented as a gigantic, three-dimensional maze modeled on the works of M.C. Escher. Rather than Satan, this Hell is ruled by Leviathan, an abstract, ambiguously sentient god that takes the form of a giant, floating silver octahedron at the center of the labyrinth.share
yeah, well...that's just, like, you're opinion, man....
shareyup. that's what these boards are for, right?
do you have any facts that back up your opinion that hell is a separate place from the "cenobites dimension"?
lol check out the big lebowski sometime, for enhanced enjoyment of my comment
shareSome of the dialogue seems to imply it. Frank says when you're dead, you're dead, as if you can't end up in that version of Hell just through dying. That may have been thrown in to explain Larry's absence, since the script has Larry sharing a personal Hell with Frank, which would confirm the opposite. Even Browning(the maggot patient) was in Hell in the script, even though he was only murdered by Julia.
Really though, this is due to the comics and also the Hellbound Heart(which never even refers to the cenobites as being from Hell). Several of the Epic comics go out of their way to state that Leviathan's realm isn't the Biblical Hell you go to when you die. But I'm sure there were differing opinions among the writers because at least one story does have a pregnant woman going to Hell after committing suicide, while the cenobite that appears to her when she does the deed allows the unborn fetus to fly away into the sky, where it becomes a crucifix-shaped twinkle, which implies to me that it passed on to Heaven.
The newest comics by Boom and The Scarlet Gospels make no effort to distinguish Clive Barker's Hell from the Biblical Hell, so either he decided to go with the flow and make the misconception canon, or that's the way it always was.
Frank is a sleazy bastard. I see no reason to trust him :)
To me it's pretty clear that the intention in all of the movies is to make hell the "cenobites dimension". All the trailers and movies refer to that dimension as hell.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/W2eePuYdrRo/maxresdefault.jpg
I think the problem is that people are trying to read the Judaeo-christian hell mythology into the movie. The franchise doesn't really help with all the Jesus imagery... "Then Jesus wept...", Pinhead on the church in Hellraiser 3 "I am the way...". But as I recall they never even mention satan...
I never get the hint from any of the movies that there is another hell besides the one that is the cenobites dimension. I just think it's silly that the entire franchise is about hell and people think we never saw it in the movies. Hell within the context of the Hellraiser franchise IS what is portrayed as the cenobites dimension... But everyone can have their opinion... that's just mine.
It would have made things less confusing if they never used "Hell" in the book or the movies' titles. The cenobites could have been totally independent of any interpretation of Hell and instead come from some other supernatural dimension. That way, nobody would have any preconceived notions about what the cenobites do and whether or not a person has to be a sinner to be taken by them. Having them be from some totally original realm where there is no death, only unending pain and pleasure would allow that dimension to be whatever the creator wants it to be. Nobody could go there simply by dying so it isn't technically an afterlife. It's a world unconcerned with the concepts of good or evil so even "good" people are susceptible to being taken there by the cenobites, which is why they're after Kirsty.
share100% agreed. Likely they just used hell for commercial reasons. "Hellraiser" probably attracts more attention than "Cenobiteraiser" :)
Happy holidays.
In neither the original short story nor the first movie is the realm of the Cenobites ever referred to as Hell. You could argue it's hinted at by the titles of the story and film (Hellbound Heart, Hellraiser) and by some of the dialogue, but it certainly isn't explicit. Furthermore, the realm isn't introduced as serving any particularly Hell-like purpose: the people who go there enter voluntarily, while alive. It isn't initially shown as a place where the spirits of dead people from this world go, and the reason they're there certainly isn't punishment for sins.
As the series progressed (or maybe regressed would be a better word), it seemed to gradually move the idea of the Cenobite realm more toward Western notions of Hell. The second film refers to the realm as "Hell," but other than that treats it more or less the same as in the first film, as some kind of supernatural sadomasochistic den rather than a part of the afterlife. By the later films, especially the direct-to-video ones, the realm was being used in plots where corrupt and depraved souls were sent there after they died. The puzzle box became almost a red herring, and these films ended up as basically conventional horror tales about people reaping what they sewed.
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