Such Sights to Show Us: Revisiting Hellraiser with Costume Designer Jane Wildgoose
The multi-talented artist/researcher reflects on the 1987 horror classic and a dynamic career exploring death
Words by Lana Thorn 17 May 2024
© Entertainment Pictures
Through a grassy archway at the end of an alley, I meet Dr. Jane Wildgoose at her library. That’s all I can say about the whereabouts of The Wildgoose Memorial Library, a private collection of objects and books, whose location is shared only upon request to those interested in the “mysteries of the living in relation to the dead.” She offers me tea and we walk past animal skulls, plaster death masks, and tombstone photographs, stopping to examine some Victorian hair jewellery. As we sit by a coal fireplace (I’m thankful after my dreary journey through London), she tells me this is the very room where she designed and created the costumes for the Cenobites.
Director Clive Barker hired Wildgoose specifically to dress the sadomasochistic inter-dimensional antagonists of his gory domestic drama, Hellraiser. The plot follows a family under attack after the devious Uncle Frank, an extreme hedonist, contacts the Cenobites — who promise sensations beyond human comprehension, or “pain and pleasure indivisible.” For context, the film’s working title was Sadomasochists From Beyond The Grave. The four Cenobites (named by the make-up team as Pinhead, Butterball, Chatterer, and Deep Throat) have their own signature mutilations, but are united by Wildgoose’s striking leather silhouettes. Despite the chaos of their deformities, they dress in an elegant demonic couture. It’s as if Thierry Mugler staged a horror show.
A surprise success upon its release in the late 80s, Hellraiser shocked audiences with its graphic violence and portrayal of BDSM. Today, it is one of the most celebrated and influential horror films of all time; while the Cenobite costumes are replicated by major artists like Megan Thee Stallion and on RuPaul’s Drag Race. For Wildgoose, it was her first and last credit as a costume designer for film. But the arresting look of Pinhead and friends is quite the legacy.
Clive Barker and the Cenobites on the set of Hellraiser © Entertainment PIctures/Alamy
“I’ve been walking among the undead throughout my career,” Wildgoose explains. In fact, from very early in life, the artist has had a special relationship with death. She grew up on the Sussex coast in a 1950s modernist bungalow, surrounded by elderly neighbours whose homes were overflowing with objects dating as far back as the 18th century. “They were my friends when I was in pre-school. These very elderly people and their collections.” Her father was an amateur organist. He would often play in ancient churches nearby, and Wildgoose would explore their graveyards. “I think I thought everyone played in graveyards. So I did it a lot.” Not quite your typical teenage obsession, she developed a lifelong fascination with Miss Havisham, Dickens’ tragic jilted bride who lives forever in the past wearing her wedding dress. Wildgoose recites a beloved passage from memory, where the young Pip compares Havisham to “a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress." At the time she met Clive Barker, she was busy planning a life-size papier mâché sculpture of the character.
In what must have been fertile ground for the morbid tale, a defining moment of Hellraiser’s conception took place at a mourning party hosted by Wildgoose. After a pressing question from an art school tutor (one look at the student’s textile degree show and she asked “Why aren’t you working in the theatre?”), Wildgoose joined Barker’s theatre troupe. She worked as The Dog Company’s costume designer, while Doug Bradley served as the lead actor. In 1985, she invited the pair to an extravagant celebration at the space that is now her library. Inspired by Joris-Karl Huysman’s Against Nature, where a newly impotent aristocrat throws a party to mourn his virility, Wildgoose did the same to mourn her lost youth. It was there, amidst the black decor and elegiacally dark red wine, that Barker first approached Bradley about the character that would become Pinhead: the infamous Cenobite leader who has since been immortalised in popular culture.
Jane Wildgoose, Mourning Bride dress (1985) Photograph: Paul Henry Courtesy: Jane Wildgoose
Six months later, rejecting many eager artists who wanted the job, Barker handpicked Wildgoose to clothe the otherworldly monsters. She was surprised at his request, considering he knew she didn’t like horror movies. But he had his reasons. “Clive said: ‘Next to me, you have the most disgusting mind of anyone I know.’”
Barker’s main note for Wildgoose was “repulsive glamour.” Another was to think of the Cenobites as “super-butchers.” To meet the brief, she turned to their shared interest in anatomical dissection drawings, particularly the medical illustrations of Andreas Vesalius. “The repulsion was in the idea that these people have had all their skin removed, but the drawings were incredibly beautiful and elegant. I referred to them closely for the line and material of the leather parts of the costuming.” For the leather, she wanted to avoid the typical S&M and Biker connotations. Instead, she drew inspiration from the brown leathery skin of the Lindow Man, a nearly 2,000-year-old bog body on display at The British Museum.
From the world of the living, Wildgoose looked at body modification communities. Barker’s recommended reading was Piercing Fans International Quarterly, and she looked closely at performance artists like Bob Flanagan and Fakir Mustafar. She soon found herself shopping at a deep sea fishing store, but had trouble when she asked for their biggest, scariest fishhooks. “They thought I was an inspector for animal cruelty! I only wanted them for the Cenobites.”
Sketch of “Deep Throat” costume © Jane Wildgoose (1986)
BTS Polaroid of “Chatterer”
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