Episode 6 : Special Guest Simon Bamford

Jose Leitao and Ryan Danhauser talk to special guest Simon Bamford about his works with Clive Barker and his career in general.  This is a man who is so tough he doesn’t even realize when the ceiling is collapsing on him.

Simon played Butterball in Hellraiser and Hellraiser 2, he played Ohnaka in Nighbreed, and was a moving man in Book of Blood.

Simon has had a prolific career in Theater, as well as his own successful childrens’ show about healthy eating.

Look for Simon’s upcoming films, Dead of the Nite, and The 4th Reich

Notes:

Jose’s microphone made that sound for about 5 minutes until he got a different one.  I just gave you a small sample.

Durning the Hellraiser 2 portion of the interview, his answer seems out of nowhere.  That’s because he was following up an an embarrassingly stupid question that I asked, and later edited out.  The gist is, we were talking about if he ever got to take his costume off during Hellraiser 2.

Get the inside scoop on Frank the dog, the Butterball costume, and of course, mysterious disappearing ducks!

Simon Bamford Official Site

Song: Translucia Baboon, The March of the Sinister Ducks

The 4th Reich official Web Site

The 4th Reich Facebook Page

Transcript Below

DANHAUSER: With us today we’ve got Jose Leitao and I’m Ryan Danhauser.  And today we’ve 

got a special guest.

LEITAO: Yeah, indeed we have a special guest. You might recognize him as the Butterball

Cenobite from Hellraiser, also as Ohnaka from Nightbreed and he was also in The Book 

of Blood as Dereck and he will also be appearing in a few upcoming movies like The 

Dead of Night and The Fourth Reich beside Doug Bradley, Sean Pertwee and Tom 

Savini. We have with us theater-trained and movie actor Simon Bamford. Hello and 

welcome to the podcast, and thanks for being here with us tonight Simon.

BAMFORD: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. I was thinking you wouldn’t 

recognize me from my voice from the Butterball character. He did originally have some 

dialogue, actually when the original scripts came out. When they started putting the 

makeup and the heads on and they got to the scenes where I had to talk, they realized I 

couldn’t. (Laughing) I had false dentures glued on top of my own teeth and all the lines I 

had were plosive so there were P’s and B’s “Perhaps we prefer you”, “Impossible” and 

you can’t say those if you can’t put your lips together, you can’t say P’s or B’s. 

“Imhossiwo… werehaa we refer you”. 

DANHAUSER: So your lines ended up going to the Female Cenobite.

BAMFORD: They did indeed, yeah it was a very depressing day for me on set, I tell you. 

(laughing). 

LEITAO: Oh yeah, I can imagine.  We like to start off with a quick summary of your career 

and ask you a few questions as we go along. So you got into theater at an early age, 

right? High School plays and such?

BAMFORD: That’s right, actually even before then my primary school teacher was very into theater so I started doing some work there and then went on did some more in senior school and kind of local amateur dramatics. I always realized it was what I wanted to do and wanted to go to drama school but my folks wouldn’t let me until I kind of got to a certain age and got some qualifications which was very wise of them. Yeah, it wasn’t until I was seventeen-eighteen I went to 

Mountview Theater School in London to properly train. Spent three years there. Whilst 

there we did (we had quite a good time actually,)  a production of “Oh What a Lovely 

War” and we toured it to the States. We went to Daton in Ohio. It was during the 

Faulklins war, so it was pretty good timing really, and it was a very popular production. I 

don’t know if you know “Oh What a Lovely War”  It’s a fantastic piece. 

LEITAO: I’m not familiar with it, but I’ll look into it.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, me too.

LEITAO: So at what point did you get to meet Clive Barker and get involved with the Dog

Company? 

BAMFORD: I was doing a production of King Lear and I was playing the fool in it. Me with a 

mohican actually because I was a punk at the time. It was the ’80’s. Clive 

came along to see the production and asked to see me afterwards. So we met and we 

got chatting and he already moved up, obviously, from Liverpool with Doug Bradley and 

Doug’s wife Lynn, and started theDog Company with Oliver Parker. And he said, 

“Would you like to join the company when we have a part for you?” So I did and I 

started off doing some of the technical theater for some of the pieces and then ended 

up playing Andrew in Paradise Street which you’re probably going to ask me about it 

and I have to admit it was thirty-one years ago. I’ve just been looking online to see if I 

could work out what the hell paradise street was all about. It was a very metaphysical 

piece. 

LEITAO: Yes. 

BAMFORD: Based in… Have you read it?

DANHAUSER: Yeah. 

LEITAO: Yes we have. 

BAMFORD: It’s based in Liverpool and it’s strange. (Lauging) There’s time travel in it. Queen 

Victoria Gloriana comes back to try and get cured for her syphillis, I think. 

DANHAUSER: Oh yeah, that’s right. 

LEITAO: And she comes along with the Duke of Essex. 

BAMFORD: Yeah, the Duke of Essex.

LEITAO: And she’s going to speak with Ben Johnson as well, at one point, or has a 

discussion. So who was Andrew?

BAMFORD: The Duke of Essex, I believe was Doug Bradley playing that. And I was his sidekick in it. It’s interesting looking back. There are a lot of patterns with Clive’s work and I was 

Doug’s sidekick, which of course I ended up being Doug’s sidekick in Hellraiser and 

Hellraiser 2, and I was Doug’s sidekick in Nightbreed. 

DANHAUSER: Oh yeah, right!

BAMFORD: But also the tattoos.. The first Book of Blood, the very first character, the Simon 

McNeal character he based it loosely on me. And of course he ended up 

getting tattooed all over his body, and then I had tattoos in the Nightbreed film. So I’ve 

been thinking about it all day and there’s sort of this strange synchronicity. Whether 

they’re planned or not, I’m not sure. Right down to.. I met up with Clive a few years ago 

in Liverpool and he was visiting his family and we were just walking along the street and 

he suddenly stopped and he went, “Oh my god! We’re on Paradise Street!” And there 

we were on Paradise Street. 

LEITAO: Oh, so it’s an actual street. I had no idea. 

BAMFORD: Yeah, it really exists. I think it’s been flattened in the play, 

hasn’t it?  This guy goes back to kind of look at his youth and finds that the whole area 

has been demolished.

LEITAO: Yes. So it’s funny that you mentioned that sidekick series of parallels that we can 

draw from. Andrew and the Earl of Essex , Butterball and Pinhead, Ohnaka and 

Lylesburg. Actually I hadn’t thought about the Nightbreed one so that’s interesting. 

BAMFORD: And it continues. I get to play his sidekick in the Fourth Reich which is coming up. 

Yeah, I’m doomed to be by Doug’s side.

LEITAO: So Doug Bradley will be playing an S.S. officer as well?

BAMFORD: Yes. Yes. As usual, he’s my boss. It’s just because he’s taller than me, obviously. 

He’s not more talented. (Laughs). 

LEITAO: And then at one point, after the Dog Company, you got back in touch with Clive to 

be in Hellraiser, right?

BAMFORD: Yeah, that’s right. We toured with the Dog Company for about three years, I went to Edinborough, toured in Holland, played a lot at the Coppet theater in London. And then 

we needed to earn a living and it wasn’t really paying, so we all decided we’d disband 

and try and go more into commercial theater. And a couple years later, I hadn’t seen 

Clive for a couple of years, I just rang him out of the blue to see what he was up to and 

he just had a couple of screenplays made into movies which he wasn’t hugely happy 

with. And had persuaded New Line Cinema to let him direct and write the next one, 

which was Hellraiser. And he just said then and there, “Well, there’s a monster part in it 

if you’d like it. Would you like to be in the movie? So I kind of bit his hand off, really. He 

said there might be a little bit of makeup involved. 

DANHAUSER: [Laughing] That’s good.

LEITAO: That’s an understatement. 

BAMFORD: It was rather, yeah. 

LEITAO: I think he gave the same spiel to Doug Bradley. He was like, “Well we have a part 

that’s going to be a monster and we have a moving man. Which one would you prefer?” 

So he went for the monster. And I think he imagined there would be just a little bit of 

makeup involved. And then he had to sit for hours. 

BAMFORD: It’s interesting how the two careers have gone, because I mean actually, picking the 

monster has been great for Doug, I mean he’d done eight or nine… Eight, isn’t it?

LEITAO: Yes. 

BAMFORD: … Of the Hellraiser movies and then has gone along that line and also conventions 

all over the world. But the moving man obviously was played by Oliver Parker from the 

Dog Company and has gone on to become a big director and directed a load of stuff. 

LEITAO: Yes, indeed. Yes, Dorian Gray…

BAMFORD: The St. Trinian’s films.. Johnny English, The Importance of Being Earnest, Othello. 

LEITAO: Big hit, Johnny English, across Europe. 

BAMFORD: He’s had a lot of success as well.  So either role I think probably would have 

worked. 

LEITAO: So you were playing Butterball. How harrowing was the experience of wearing that 

sensory deprivation mask? Could you see anything at all on the sound stage to hit your 

mark? How was that experience?

BAMFORD: It was pretty horrendous, actually. The makeup was about two inches thick, and it 

completely covered eyes, nose, mouth, ears. Well it didn’t cover the mouth. I could 

speak, but then they glued the really nasty dentures on top. So I could just about hear, 

I couldn’t see a thing, I was completely blind. I couldn’t breathe through my nose so I 

had to breathe through my mouth and because of wearing the dentures that meant that 

your mouth was constantly filling up with water so I was <slurping sound> constantly 

<slurping sound> sucking in..

LEITAO: Oh my god…

BAMFORD: And we were put in it very early in the morning and taken out usually around eight 

at night. Superglued into it. The very first day on set, the special effects guys obviously 

knew that we were blind. but nobody else on set did so we were lead onto the set by 

them and then the assistant director came up “we need you to kind of walk over here, 

do this and do that and the other and hit your mark. Nick, who was Chatterer was in the 

same condition as I was, we were both going <mush mouth> “ahhh I unt hear…” Of 

course they couldn’t understand what we were saying, and the next thing we knew was 

“action!” and we just wandered off in the wrong direction.  So I think there was some 

anger at that point that they’d hired these useless actors who hadn’t got a clue until they 

realized that we were just completely blind. 

DANHAUSER: That’s funny.

BAMFORD: And so eventually they came to a compromise that they’d face us in exactly the 

right position for the place we needed to get to and then they had these draft excluders 

on the floor. We’d shuffle forward until we could hit the draft excluders, then we knew 

we’d hit the marks. Yeah, it was pretty miserable. 

LEITAO: I imagine that Nicholas Vince would be in the same situation because the mask also 

covered his whole face, he had fake dentures on, so that must have been several hours 

and hours on the sound stage, waiting you to be called. So Ryan, do you have any 

questions about Hellraiser?

DANHAUSER: So was the suit really heavy also? 

BAMFORD: It wasn’t too bad actually. It was like a fiberglass body, which was really just like a 

yolk that hung over me and then the leather kind of costume hung over that, and then 

there was nothing on the bottom at all, we had skirts. It was quite cool. It was a very 

comfortable costume to wear, it was just the head was miserable. And because we 

were in it fourteen / fifteen hours a day. Sensory deprivation… I mean normally on a film 

set you’re sitting around for a long time but you can talk to other people, you can read 

the newspaper, do the crossword, read a book.. With this we just had to sit, with our 

own thoughts, which was a bit like a nasty psycho therapy. 

DANHAUSER: So when the ceiling collapsed on you, what was that like?

BAMFORD: That was hilarious, that was actually towards the end of the shoot so everybody

was kind of getting used to us and they told me what was going to happen and I think I 

didn’t have to move then, I just had  to stand there and they said okay we’re going to drop 

all this polystyrene and fuller’s earth on top of you and obviously just react and kind of 

collapse to the floor. And they tried.. They did the first take and I was standing there, 

and I was still standing there after it because it was so light and I couldn’t see, I didn’t 

actually know that they dropped it. <laughing> So they had to go again and say, “okay, 

it’s hitting you now.” like an old silent movie. “It’s hitting you now, fall, react.” The scene 

before that I was stabbing Kirsty in the back. I had this big kni.. Actually it was her 

boyfriend, I think. I was about to stab him. Again they had to talk me through the fact of 

where he was and when he was walking in front of me so I could raise the knife ’cause 

otherwise I just haven’t got a clue. It was an interesting experience. 

DANHAUSER: Were there any scenes in Hellraiser that were left out that might have been 

interesting? 

BAMFORD: I don’t think so, no. I’ve had a look. I’ve still got the original scripts (still withe the 

blood on it, which was quite nice). As far as I know, all the ones with the cenobites were 

in. There was a scene I think in Hellraiser II which I think Pinhead and the Female 

Cenobite were dressed as a doctor and a nurse and they got them all dressed up, got 

them to set and they realized the budget for the that particular scene was far bigger 

than they’d actually got so they cut the scene. But I think some stills from that ended up 

on some of the DVDs or the videos. 

DANHAUSER: Yeah, definitely. 

LEITAO: Yes, they definitely became almost legendary among the Hellraiser fans because 

everybody was like, “well what about this scene, it’s on the VHS cover, but I don’t see it 

in the movie.” Everybody started to say “This is one of the cut scenes from Hellraiser”

but then of course Doug Bradley, in the further editions of the Hellraiser DVDs, he 

ended up saying, “Well actually it was never shot because they did put us into costume 

but it was supposed to be special effects intensive so they never really figured out how 

to make it work, so they never really shot it, but jus the still photographer ended up 

taking pictures of it.” That’s what Doug Bradley said. 

BAMFORD: Yeah, somebody contacted me on Facebook to ask specifically about that scene 

and I contacted Doug and I contacted Barbie and then I thought, ‘well I’ve got the script, 

I’ll have a look.’ And I have actually got the scene in my script, and it had all sorts of 

special effects in it which they just couldn’t film. Yeah, it’s a shame. It would have been 

an interesting scene.

LEITAO: So when you were in Cricklewood, the sound stage, did Clive give you any kind of  

directions regarding who Butterball might have been or how he might behave, did he 

give you any kind of directions towards how he would act or did he leave that up to you?

BAMFORD: I think his guidance were that we were high priests of Hell.. There wasn’t a great 

deal.. kind of the makeup spoke for themselves really. We were into pleasure from pain, 

we definitely had that kind of religions sense of authority about us. I don’t remember 

much more, to be honest. [laughing] I probably couldn’t hear him if even he was telling 

me. 

LEITAO: Well the suits were just fascinating pieces of work, they were designed by Jane

Wildgoose, if I’m correct. 

BAMFORD: That’s right, yeah.

LEITAO: I mean, they were supposed to be very priest-like, and actually you were talking 

about the suits a while ago and I remember seeing an ebay auction with the 

original suits from Hellbound were found in a Pinewood storage and they were put on 

auction, and they actually were sold to a Hellraiser collector I know. And they went for 

like a thousand pounds or something like that. I think it was Pinhead, Chatterer and 

Butterball. They were in very bad condition. And they were actually made of leather. 

BAMFORD: That’s right. Like I said, the stomach — the flesh bit that you can see was 

made out of fiberglass with latex on it, but the actual costume was made out of 

leather which was then oiled down to give it a nice sheen. They also had a jeweler who 

worked on the film. I had a tool belt with loads of instruments of torture and they were 

beautifully made, just beautifully made by this jeweler. And he was also responsible for 

the boxes, the configuration boxes, that was his work. It was a great shame. He did 

some amazing work, and you only see it briefly. He also did the jewelry that went 

through the female cenobite’s cheeks into her neck. 

LEITAO: Was that jeweler named Simon Sayce?

BAMFORD: It might well have been. 

LEITAO: Because I got in touch with someone who worked with Bob Keen and she worked 

with Simon Sayce and his brother, and Simon Sayce was credited as the man who 

came up with the lament configuration box. 

BAMFORD: It must have been. It must have been the same person then, yeah. We had some 

interesting times at Cricklewood actually. They had a duck pond outside the production 

studio which had loads of ducks in it, and they were having trouble on the odd take with 

this quacking that was happening on quiet scenes. One day we came back in and 

mysteriously all the ducks had disappeared from the duck pond overnight. 

LEITAO: Had they been taken to Hell? [laughing]

BAMFORD: I think we had duck pancakes for a few days on the set afterwards. 

LEITAO: Duckraiser! We’ll tear your ducks apart. 

BAMFORD: Your quacks will be legendary, even in Hell. 

LEITAO: That’s fantastic. Well, Ryan, do you have any more questions about Hellraiser?

DANHAUSER: Just one more, I mean this is kind of more broad. Have you been following the 

Hellraiser comic book that Clive and Chris Monfette started? 

LEITAO: I haven’t, I haven’t seen them, no. I’ve got some very old comic books, but they were 

kinda 1980’s. 

DANHAUSER: Well these ones they brought the original group of cenobites back rather than just Pinhead plus three or whatever. Which is pretty nice. 

BAMFORD: Oh, I’ll have to get ahold of them.

LEITAO: They actually have replaced Pinhead with Kirsty. Kirsty has become the new 

Pinhead in the comics. 

BAMFORD: Well you see there’s another of Clive’s themes. The strong woman. So much of 

what he writes, the female lead is really the strongest character in the piece. 

LEITAO: In fact, in the end of Hellbound, Claire Higgins was supposed to become the new

villain of the franchise. Julia – she was supposed to come up out of the pillar and 

become the new villain who would take souls to Leviathan I think, but then I think Claire 

Higgins was not interested in doing any more sequels. At least that’s what I’ve read in 

interviews. 

BAMFORD: I did a show with Claire last year in the States and she is wild. We had such a

fantastic time. If you get a chance to go to a convention where Claire’s there, go 

because she’s just great fun. Great fun! 

LEITAO: All right, so any more questions about Hellraiser Ryan? 

DANHAUSER: No, that’s all I can think of.

LEITAO: All right, so moving on to Nightbreed. Of course Nightbreed was a movie which 

suffered greatly from outside interference when it came to the final cut, but hopefully 

we;’ll get to see it partially restored soon. In this film, you play Ohnaka. He’s a member 

of the Nightbreed, and he has tattoos that you already mentioned, and piercings and a 

little dog. Any funny stories about this dog?

BAMFORD: Yeah, the Dog’s name was Frank, strangely enough. You see there’s such 

synchronicity in Clive’s work. But his actual name was Frank. I spent a lot of time trying 

to bond with the dog. I love dogs – just love dogs, but I didn’t get on with this one 

particularly well. He just didn’t want to know me. So yeah, I took it to walks, played with 

it on set, did everything I could to get to know it. Then we had one take, one scene 

where they wanted the dog to… It was a huge scene on the huge stage on the 

Pinewood Jame Bond set, and they wanted this dog to run across the set and up 

these stairs and up into my arms. And would it do it? Oh! I had sausages in my hands, I 

had the owner of the dog kind of hidden behind me calling its name. They ended up 

putting marmite on my legs to get it to come up.

LEITAO: That’s horrible. 

BAMFORD: I think they did sixty takes. Everybody was getting crosser and crosser and more 

frustrated, but they never got the shot in the end. Eventually they gave up and they had 

to do it in sections.

DANHAUSER: You just walk out and you have the dog in your arms, right? .. In the final cut of the movie. 

BAMFORD: I think there’s a scene, you see it running, and then you see me picking it up. It was 

supposed to be all one shot, but they never managed to get it, sadly. Yeah, it was great 

fun for me. Having done two Hellraisers, the following year to go into Nightbreed and 

not have any makeup at all… There was an awful lot of crew who had worked on the 

Hellraisers… To actually meet them properly and to be able to talk to them and get to 

know them and to see the incredible makeups that were coming out of Image 

Animation. I think there were more makeups on that film, I think it was in the Guinness 

Book of Records… More different makeups in that film than any other film that’s ever  been made since. They were going potty in the prosthetics department trying to come 

up with new ideas every day. And funny enough a lot of the actors were the same 

actors, they would just go in and they wouldn’t know what character they were going to 

be. They were doubling up or tripling up with different makeups on. 

LEITAO: Oh that’s just amazing. If anyone out there listening to this is a Hellraiser fan and 

Nightbreed fan I’m sure that they have the Nightbreed Chronicles. It’s a wonderful book 

that has high quality photography done of all the Nightbreed that were done in the 

movie. Well not all, but most of them. And it was just amazing the amount of work they 

did on some of the Breed who ended up being in, you know, the background shots, or 

just showed up on camera for one or two seconds or minutes. 

DANHAUSER: And it had the back-story for each one of them.

BAMFORD: Yeah, absolutely. I had a scene with that wonderful character that had his head… 

He was a big overweight chap, and he had his head in the middle of his stomach. 

DANHAUSER: Oh yeah…

BAMFORD: I had a scene with him it was just incredible that makeup with loads of animatronics for his hands, but in the film you know I run past him and that’s all you see of the guy.

LEITAO: Yeah, that’s actually really sad, all that effort was just for a couple of seconds of 

camera time, but still I’m amazed that they still had time for over one hundred different 

makeups for Nightbreed. And the Nightbreed Chronicles has these fascinating little 

back-stories for it and the one for Ohnaka says that your character was tattooed by 

angels who were scared that God would find out about their handiwork and made him 

so sensitive to light that he couldn’t bear to be out in the sun, which explains your 

character’s demise.

BAMFORD: Isn’t that a beautiful description? It’s just lovely. 

LEITAO: It’s just a wonderful little back-story that Clive wrote for the book. Was any of this 

discussed before the movie or as you were talking to Clive about your character or was 

this just something that they made for the book?

BAMFORD: That’s an interesting one. I don’t remember, if I’m honest. I think a lot of it was 

brought up for the book. Obviously I knew I was sensitive to sunlight. Again, I knew I 

was Doug Bradley’s sidekick. I remember I did a scene with Doug, we.. I’m much 

smaller than Doug… Again they wanted this long tracking shot of him and I talking and 

they had to put this little row of boxes for me so he would walk along and I would be 

walking along on these boxes trying to feel with my feet so I didn’t fall off them so that 

we were the same height so that they could get the shot together. 

LEITAO: Your character Ohnaka, in regards to his back-story, he also had a recurring 

nightmare that one day these angels would return to tattoo him again, but this time they 

would also tattoo his insides as well as out. So that was kind of a sinister edge to 

Ohnaka. 

BAMFORD: That completely ties up with Simon McNeal in the Book of Blood. Completely ties

up. Clive is a genius. He’s a genius on so many different levels. So much of his stuff is 

metaphysical that you know, you can read it on loads of different levels, but also he’s  obviously got these things tying up in his head as well. He’s just so clever! Yeah, 

amazing. He’s amazing!

DANHAUSER: Were there any scenes in Nightbreed that you were kind of disappointed that didn’t make it into the movie, any Ohnaka scenes?

BAMFORD: No, Clive actually said to me at the preview he was very pleased that every scene 

we filmed made it into the movie, which was great. My only regret of the Nightbreed film 

was in the sequel (’cause obviously I exploded in the first film) he had planned for me to 

come back as my twin sister. 

DANHAUSER: Well that’s really interesting. 

BAMFORD: I was really looking forward. I was going to have the most beautiful perfect pair of 

prosthetic tits ’cause obviously she would be topless. And I was just thinking this was 

going to be really interesting to play. 

LEITAO: Oh sweet heavens. That’s fantastic.

DANHAUSER: Next week they’re going to have a showing of what Mark Miller is calling the Cabal Cut of Nightbreed at the Mad Monster Party in Charlotte, North Carolina. And this is 

supposed to be three hours long. 

BAMFORD: Oh, I’ve seen it.

DANHAUSER: Oh, you have!

BAMFORD: Yeah, last year or the year before they had a rough cut version would that be the 

same one?

LEITAO: Ah, no. This one has been partially restored by Seraphim films and they’ve actually 

brought in the original Director of Photography Robin Vigeon.

BAMFORD: No way, that’s fantastic!

LEITAO: Yes, they brought him back, and they used two VHS workprints and the theatrical

cut, and they’ve been working on it. I’m assuming that the Director of Photography came 

in to do some color correcting or something. And they also brought in Doug to re-dub 

his lines as Lylesburg because he had been dubbed over. So they’ve been actually 

doing a good job for that. 

DANHAUSER: There’s a YouTube video out there of Doug re-recording his lines.

BAMFORD: How fantastic! That is brilliant. You know I talked to Clive, ’cause I’ve been doing 

conventions for about fifteen years and I try to see Clive every year. About four or five 

years ago I was saying to him you know there’s more of an interest in Nightbreed. It 

seems to be a bit of a resurrection. He really picked up on it and said, “Well that’s 

interesting.” Because obviously he invested so much of himself into that film. And I 

know he always wanted to do a kind of Director’s Cut version of it. Oh, that will be 

amazing. 

DANHAUSER: Yeah! I’ll be flying out there to see it next weekend. 

BAMFORD: You’ll have to let me know what it’s like. 

DANHAUSER: Oh, yeah definitely I will. 

LEITAO: Ryan’s the lucky one. He’ll be our eyes and ears in Mad Monster Party. So that’s 

going to be fantastic. I’m really expecting that this cut will ever get a proper edition. I know 

one point Phil and Sarah from Revelations, clivebarker.info, were working on trying to 

get in touch with the head of Morgan Creek to see if they could convince him to release 

this new cut, even if it was with a package, like a book about the production of 

Nightbreed, because they were not really interested in investing any money to even 

justify transferring it to HD or Blu-Ray. So there’s been a campaign going on, we’re 

trying to get them to publish it. 

DANHAUSER: And in Europe, right, there’s not even a DVD. 

BAMFORD: No, that’s right. I’ve got an American DVD version, but because I’ve upgraded all 

my systems now, it won’t play and I can’t hack them to get it to play. It’s very frustrating. 

LEITAO: Yeah, I know. I have the same region one version but actually I kind of decrypted 

the DVD and burned it again as region free so I can get back on you on that technical 

way of getting your DVD to work again, it’s really simple. 

BAMFORD: You might say that, I couldn’t possibly comment.  But yes, please. 

LEITAO: Nightbreed was in 1990, but then we see you back again, in the movies at least, in 

2009 for The Book of Blood.

DANHAUSER: Did we want to talk about Hellraiser II a little bit also?

BAMFORD: Nick and I didn’t even get to play ourselves after we’d transformed back into human beings. 

DANHAUSER: That’s what I had heard, that it would have just taken too much time to get in and out of costumes?

BAMFORD: No it was just they wanted him to be a little boy, and obviously he wasn’t, and they 

thought Butterball transforming into me would just be stretching credulity too far because 

I was twenty-three, twenty-four at the time, so, you know I looked like a little boy, it just 

wouldn’t have worked. So they got this guy that looked similar to Butterball and he was 

the one it transformed into. Yeah… [laughs]

LEITAO: I know that at least Nicholas Vince came up with a little back-story that was 

published about his actual human character before he became Chatterer, he was 

supposed to be a comedian and it was called “Look-See.”  Yeah, it’s a funny story, it’s 

out there, it’s been published. So I’ll be honest, I was like ten years old when Hellraiser 

came out, so when Hellbound came out I was like twelve, so I only got to see those in 

the late ’80’s / early ’90’s, and for a long time I thought that the fat guy, when Channard 

kills Butterball, was the actual [actor] that played Butterball. It was only later when I’d 

seen Nightbreed that I saw Simon Bamford in the credits and I was like, “okay, this is 

the same guy who did Butterball, Oh, okay.”  So that was a surprise for me.

BAMFORD: Because Butterball had this great big wound in his stomach, they wanted to make it really deep so I could get my whole hand in and look like I was playing with my innards.  

So they needed somebody skinny to fit inside this big costume to be able to create that 

image, and actually that was one of the scenes that was eventually cut because the 

censors at the time drew the line at that point. I think they drew the line at that and they 

drew the line… There were some sex scenes as well which they said was just going too 

far. 

DANHAUSER: And this is Hellraiser 1, correct?

BAMFORD: Hellraiser 1, yeah, that’s right.

LEITAO: Yes, the sex scenes between Frank and Julia where they could not allow more than 

two consecutive thrusts of the Buttocks. 

BAMFORD: [laughing]

LEITAO: Yeah, so they had to cut to flowers or something, and then cut back to the sex 

scene, and then cut back to something, and then back…

DANHAUSER: The nail in the, yeah…

BAMFORD: Ah, the 80’s. 

LEITAO: Anyway, at one point, you were involved with a healthy eating show, weren’t you?

BAMFORD: Yeah, I still am. I did a lot of theater after Nightbreed, toured in the UK for a lot of 

shows in the West End, all over the place really. About six years ago I decided that I 

wanted to do something that would put back something in the community so I created a 

healthy eating children’s show, which will occasionally roll out all over the UK. And it’s 

been very successful.

LEITAO: That’s wonderful.

BAMFORD: Because it’s a kids’ show, I have to keep it very much apart from the horror stuff. It’s a bit like Doctor Jeckyll and Mister Hyde, you know?

LEITAO: So you’re saying that the chubbiest Cenobite actually is very concerned about 

proper eating. 

BAMFORD: [laughing] That’s right, that’s right.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, and actually I’d noticed that in Hellraiser all the other Cenobites got sent 

home, but Butterball kind of got left there in the house. 

BAMFORD: Yeah, that’s right, he did, didn’t he?

DANHAUSER: Did he have to walk home?

BAMFORD: I think there was a kind of yellowish glow when the others all got sent back they had this yellow effect put over them. There was a yellow glow in the distance and I think that 

was supposed to be… I think there was probably too much dust and chaos for them to 

actually be able to do that to me in special effects afterwards. Yeah, if he walked home, 

he probably didn’t make it, you know?

LEITAO: I think he rode the Chatterbeast home, the one from Hellraiser IV. 

BAMFORD: He’s probably still wandering around Cricklewood somewhere.

LEITAO: The phantom of Cricklewood. He eats all the scraps from the cafeteria. 

BAMFORD: [lauging] That’s right, yeah.  It’s him and the ducks. 

LEITAO: Oh, that duck story is just amazing.  And then you were also in the Little Shop of 

Horrors, the UK tour, right?

BAMFORD: Yeah, I went to see it, actually with Ellen Green in the West End and she was just 

sensational, I don’t know if you were lucky enough to see her live but she was/is 

brilliant. And thought I really want to do this, and they had final auditions for the tour of it 

in the UK and I got the part. So yeah, we toured for six months here in England and it 

was great fun, it was great fun, we had the West End plants, which were brilliant, and I 

was lucky enough to do it again a couple years later here in England and they had the most amazing plant. They had a hydraulic Audrey II at the end, which, when it ate us, it went kind of went fifteen feet up into the air and chewed us, we had to come down the back of it, and right at the end, it went way over the audience, over the first kind of five or six rows, and looked down at them and the squirted CO2 gas through its nostrils onto them. It was awesome. 

LEITAO: Sounds pretty cool.

DANHAUSER: Sounds really neat!

BAMFORD: Yeah, I did a lot of musical theater, I did the very first tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, which really is going back some way now as you can imagine. I was Simon Zealotes in 

that. 

LEITAO: That’s fantastic. All right, Ryan, would you like to talk about the Book of Blood?

DANHAUSER: How did you end up becoming a part of that movie?

BAMFORD: I was just trawling the internet and by accident came across an article that they 

were filming the Book of Blood, and I hadn’t heard anything about it, and so I fired off 

some emails to the casting director and the director and said, “Actually this story was 

written about me all those years ago. Is there a part in it that I can have? And as usual I 

got no reply.  So the next day I sent an email off to Clive and the following morning I had 

an email back from the casting director. “Of course we’ve got a part in it for you!  It isn’t 

a big part.” So yeah, that’s how I ended up playing the Dereck the removals man in the 

Book of Blood and went off to film in Edinborough. 

LEITAO: Well, you know I have to say that I really enjoyed that adaptation. I just want to say it 

was great to see you back in a movie that’s based on a Clive Barker story and with 

Doug Bradley on board as well. He was playing that character that was a bit like Alister 

Crowley or something. And I think it was one of the best Barker story adaptations in the 

last few years.

BAMFORD: It was interesting, it was kind of a love story.. very much a feeling of a kind of love 

story about it, more than a horror film, more than a horror story. It was lovely working 

with Janice Armstrong, who obviously we’ve seen over here in the Robin Hood TV 

series, I don’t know if you’ve got that over there where you are. 

DANHAUSER: No. 

BAMFORD: And John Harrison as well from the Dune mini-series.

LEITAO: Yeah, right! 

BAMFORD: I was terrified, actually because I hadn’t done a movie for a decade and a half and., 

yeah, I was very, very nervous. I was actually vomiting the night before I was so 

terrified. [laughs]. In retrospect it was completely crazy. But, yeah, I learned a lot from 

doing that. Thankfully I’ve got a couple more movies coming up. I’m feeling a little bit 

more… I’ve learned a lot from the Book of Blood, so it’s reminded me where I should be 

going, what I should be looking at, so I’m very looking forward to these next two. 

DANHAUSER: So Dead of the Nite, can you tell us about that, what is it about?

BAMFORD: Dead of the Nite, we’re filming next month in April in Cardiff, I think 85% of the film has now been shot. It has Tony Todd (The Candyman) playing a part in it. It’s about a 

group of television ghost hunters who go to investigate an infamous haunted house 

called Jericho Manner and they soon realize it’s not the ghosts who are going to give 

them problems and one by one they get slaughtered. They have to try and discover who 

or what is killing them. It’s a great script. I was only sent the script three weeks ago and 

thought, “this is brilliant! It’s so clever!” And because it’s a TV ghost hunting company, 

it’s shown from the perspective of looking back at the footage that they’ve shot…

DANHAUSER: Like Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield? 

LEITAO: Like a lost footage movie?  Or found footage…

BAMFORD: Yeah! It’s kind of a mix between Paranormal Activity and Halloween, but with some Blair Witch and some… It reminded me a bit of Woman in Black as well. I don’t know if 

you’ve seen that yet. A lot of jump moments. 

LEITAO: Not yet, but I plan to. 

BAMFORD: I play a police lab technician called Gary, which is slightly comedy [laughs] but I 

can’t really say much more than that. Hopefully not too much comedy. I’m a great 

believer in something like a horror film, comedy should come from the truth rather than 

being imposed upon it.

DANHAUSER: Oh yeah. When can we expect to see it coming out?

BAMFORD: I believe, as I say, the filming next month in Cardiff is the last of the filming and 

they’re hoping to have it out by Halloween. 

LEITAO: Oh, wonderful. 

BAMFORD: Yeah, later this year. 

LEITAO: No, I was just saying, I’m actually looking at the IMDB page right now and there 

might be a big spoiler in the page because there’s a character billed as “Killer” so we 

get to know which actor is going to play the killer in the IMDB page. So, yeah, I would 

like to warn the people if you don’t want any spoilers, don’t look at the actor’s name. 

BAMFORD: Yeah, you might say that. I couldn’t possibly comment, but I think that’s there

deliberately.

LEITAO: Oh, okay. 

BAMFORD: I think that’s the red herring. 

DANHAUSER: That’s a little better, then. 

BAMFORD: Obviously I know how they die. I’m picking my words carefully now. I know how they all die, but obviously I can’t say. 

LEITAO: Very well…

DANHAUSER: And then Fourth Reich, is that going to be coming after Dead of Night?

BAMFORD: Yeah, The Fourth Reich I was offered a couple of years ago and I know they’re still having troubles with the funding. The Fourth Reich is a second World War movie. 

Basically, there’s a group – British Third Infantry Division – they’re kind of advancing 

through France and through Europe, and as they do they’re uncovering these very 

strange events and it turns out a team of Nazi doctors and scientists have been 

experimenting and have accidentally created zombies. I’ve got a lovely scene with Tom Savini and Doug Bradley. Again, I play Doug Bradley’s sidekick, where we’re kind of 

shoveling corpses onto a funeral pyre. 

LEITAO: And you play SS Unterschach Fuhrer Krause, right? 

BAMFORD: Yeah, that’s right, yeah we’re all going to be speaking German, the three of us, so 

that’s going to be… Ich bin Schauspieler und spreche nur ein bisschen Deutsch. I did a convention in Germany recently and they were very complimentary, they actually said I speak German like a German, so that’s good. 

LEITAO: I can only understand from what you said, “I am an actor” I didn’t get the rest. 

BAMFORD: Yeah, I’m an actor and I speak only a little German. I know very little. Obviously how to order beer. [laughs]

LEITAO: Also Sean Pertwee is going to be in this movie? 

BAMFORD: Yeah, that’s right. I’ve not meat Sean, so I’m looking forward to working with him. 

It’s an exciting project, both of them actually looking like they’re going to be great fun to 

work on. We’re supposed to be filming the Fourth Reich in Estonia, I believe.

DANHAUSER: With Tom Savini being in the cast, do they also have him set up for practical special  effects?

BAMFORD: Not as far as I know, no I asked that. As far as I know he’s only in it for the acting. 

Whether he’ll be advising, I don’t know. 

LEITAO: So we’ll be sure to add links to this movie’s web site and the trailer after the 

interview on the podcast web site, so our listeners, please make sure to check it out. 

BAMFORD: Yeah, and Dead of the Nite as well would be great. The night is spelled “N-I-T-E”. 

Yeah, that would be great. 

LEITAO: Right, yes. “Dead of the Nite” not “Dead of Night”, ’cause there’s another movie with 

that name.

DANHAUSER: Thanks so much for agreeing to do this. It means a lot to us. 

BAMFORD: No problem. I’m sure we’ll catch each other at a convention sooner or later as well. 

Yeah, come on by. 

LEITAO: Yeah, it was a pleasure to have you as a guest of the Clive Barker Podcast and 

please keep us informed of all your future projects, whether through Twitter of 

Facebook. 

BAMFORD: Sure, I will do, yeah, definitely. Yeah, nice to meet you, thanks very much, guys.

DANHAUSER: Thank you.

LEITAO: Thank you, it was a pleasure.

BAMFORD: I look forward to listening to it.