I Met The Real Pinhead!

One of the best things about having a partner is the opportunities it can afford you to do something you never thought you would.

I'm not talking about things that you would have never wanted to do in the first place, like paint a two-story house using buckets and brushes in the middle of summer or seeing how many hours you can endure their narcissistic parents over the holidays, but rather the stuff you've always heard about that so many other people do but for whatever reason you've never taken it upon yourself to do.

Last weekend, I had the occasion to do one of those things I no doubt never would have if it hadn't been for my partner and her love of horror movies.

Several months ago she brought to my attention that the annual Crypticon convention would be happening in Seattle over the weekend of May 2-5. She'd been to a Comicon event in the Emerald City with a friend of hers several years ago, but had always wanted to attend something similar that was a little more geared to her love of so many things eldritch and unnervingly strange, so I knew she'd love to go.

She'd planned on asking the same friend to be her tag along at this month's event but I offered to drive us over and make a weekend out of it, which seemed to surprise her a little. She knows I'm okay with some movies that could easily be called horror but am not as big a fan of the genre in general as she is. But thankfully, it was a happily surprised and not one of the other kinds, so we booked a room at the same hotel the convention was happening and when the moment arrived, off we went!

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Admittedly, I don't always do well in large crowds, particularly in tight spaces – they can give me panic attacks sometimes and being more than a bit of an empath, I can also get drained from the collective energy very easily. I also wasn't sure of just how wacko the people in attendance would be and wasn't too keen on standing out like one of the cut off thumbs you might find in the films they all appreciate so much if I just wore something cool but that didn't scream Jason Voorhees in the rotting flesh.

Thankfully, my nerves stayed well in check during our visit and although there were plenty of folks clad from head to toe in ghoulish garb, it was clearly all in good fun and only served to add to the entertainment value of the experience rather than sink it into an inescapable abyss of awkwardness.

The event itself was quite interesting, as it was brimming with a witch's cauldron full of highly-creative artists, quirky merchants selling even more-quirky curios, and also some rather B-list celebrities who were signing autographs and taking selfies next to their maniacal fans.

One of the people who just happened to be on the roster this year was Doug Bradley. Of course to most everyone in ubiquitous terms, that name will not mean anything at all, except to ponder as a possible former draft pick of the Seattle Seahawks or the other guy from that show about the two guys whose name you can never remember.

But in the world of horror aficionados, Doug Bradley is much more of a household name. He portrayed the chief member in a group of ghastly antagonists as part of a series of films called “Hellraiser.”

His character's moniker of default, Pinhead, was adopted by fans of the franchise way back in 1987, when its eponymous debut was released to the world in theaters. The sobriquet is an obvious one based on his appearance as a once-human man who's body has been grotesquely altered in a most artistic fashion to include a head with an intricate grid of deep scars with a jeweled pin driven through to the skull at each intersecting axis.

The actual man beneath the makeup (Doug Bradley) is a British-born actor who's now 70-years-old. He's appeared as Pinhead in eight different Hellraiser films, and has also been featured in over a dozen other movies – mostly in the horror genre, including as a character named Dirk Lylesberg from another film that I enjoy and that, like Hellraiser, was adapted from a Clive Barker novel (Nightbreed is the movie, Cabal is the title of the book).

Doug was charging what's probably the going rate at these things (which to me seemed like a small ransom) for his John Henry on the object of your desire, but was graciously offering a selfie and a little conversation free of charge, so we waited for the lines to dissipate and made our way over.

We didn't want to take up a lot of his time since we wouldn't be paying him for an autograph, but I asked him a simple question about the Clive Barker characters he's portrayed in the cinema (to which I got an incredibly elaborate answer by the way...) and we got an emphatic “certainly” upon asking him for a quick pic together.

And so, Life is sure funny sometimes. I remember being fascinated with the Hellraiser movies when I was a teenager and they were brand new, but I never thought I'd get to chat with Pinhead personally and have the souvenir snapshot to prove that it happened. And if you know the story of Hellraiser at all, I'm sure you'd believe me when I said I'd never hoped to have the opportunity!

Once again, thanks to Doug for being so generous with his time at this year's Crypticon, and an even bigger thank you to my wonderful partner and sweetest best friend for making it all possible. I'm very anxious to find out what else I'll be doing and who I'll be meeting next that I never thought I would by her side. :-)