The New York City Horror Film Festival (to be held at Look Dine-In Cinemas, 657 West 57th Street, from December 7-10) will present its prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award to Hellraiser star Doug Bradley. The British actor has been terrorizing moviegoers since 1987 as the iconic Clive Barker creation Pinhead and over the course of seven sequels.
“Doug Bradley created such a memorable character in Pinhead,” says Ronnie Hein, the festival’s CEO and Executive Director. “He brought dignity, chills and malevolence to the role. He made Pinhead almost Shakespearean with his presence and talent. We also loved him as Lylesberg, the leader of the creatures, in Barker’s Nightbreed.
“The festival is also thrilled to be showing Bradley’s latest horror movie, Thorns, as a closing night attraction, with Doug and the film’s other cast and crew attending,” Hein continues. “Fans will flip for him in that one too! The New York City Horror Film Festival looks forward to honoring Doug for his great genre work. And our loyal attendees can’t wait to meet him for what promises to be two very special nights.”
Among Bradley’s other film credits are Prophecy: Uprising, Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes, Book of Blood, Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines and The Exorcists. As a voice actor, he has been heard in video games as the Sith Emperor in Star Wars: The Old Republic—Shadow of Revan and Legacy of the Sith and as Pinhead in Dead by Daylight. He has also been heard as Nyarlathotep in the Howard Lovecraft trilogy as well as in JJ Villard’s Fairy Tales, Defense of the Ancients: Dragon’s Blood and Invincible. On TV, he was seen earlier this year as Joe Chill in an episode of the Batman spin-off Gotham Knights.
Bradley has recorded a number of audiobooks, including Mister B. Gone and Tonight, Again by Barker; The Venus Complex by fellow Cenobite Barbie Wilde; and Morningstar by Peter Atkins. He also recorded Doug Bradley’s Spinechillers, a cycle of over 70 classic horror stories and poems hailed by Audible as “the world’s biggest and best classic horror collection” and by Guillermo del Toro as “remarkable.” He has been publishing further genre readings on his You Tube Channel.
In the 2000s, Bradley performed his one-man show An Evening with Death, and is also the author of Behind the Mask of the Horror Actor (published by Titan Books in 1996).
Bradley joins past festival award recipients George Romero, Tom Savini, Tobe Hooper, Roger Corman, Mick Garris, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Frank Henenlotter, Bill Lustig, Robert Englund, Wes Craven, Lloyd Kaufman, Angus Scrimm, Sean Cunningham, Adrienne Barbeau, Brad Dourif, Tony Todd, Kane Hodder and Greg Nicotero.
The NYC Horror Film Festival is the brainchild of Michael J. Hein, who created the festival in 2001 as a venue for new independent horror filmmaking. After Michael’s passing in 2011, the festival created the Michael J. Hein Achievement Award to celebrate the hard work and perseverance of creators in the field. Rob Zombie, Stuart Gordon and Tom Atkins were the first recipients of this award.
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Pictures courtesy of the NYC Horror Film Festival which will honor THORNS star Doug Bradley with a Lifetime Achievement Award on Sat, Dec. 9. Then THORNS will play on Dec 10.