SIMON BAMFORD
Butterball in Hellraiser
having played a supernatural sadomasochist torturer, the Cenobite Butterball, in the Hellraiser movies, Simon Bamford has since been busy with charity work and performing in theatre productions internationally. Pinhead probably wouldn’t approve...
Would you like to play the role again?
you know, even when they asked me to do the second film I had to really think about it. the make-up was quite an intense experience. there were no eye holes, nose holes or ear holes, and you were sort of surgically superglued into the thing for 14 hours a day, so it was kind of like sensory deprivation! time went very slowly and it was very disturbing psychologically.
What would Butterball be doing now?
He’s a high priest from Hell, so he would still be around. His job was as a torturer but he obviously liked to eat a lot, so I think he might well be presenting The Great British Bake Off! He would be perfect because he could eat all the cakes, and if he didn’t like any of the contestants he’d be torturing them!
Do you have any souvenirs from your time on the set?
I don’t! Over the years I’ve collected the puzzle boxes, the Lament Configurations – people have given them to me – but I don’t have anything from the original set. I did have a huge poster from the first Hellraiser and my crew t-shirts, but I didn’t do the first convention till 10 years after Hellraiser. there wasn’t really a huge convention circuit happening, so I ended up throwing them all away!