Nightbreed (1990)
It comes as little surprise to long time Mutantville Players to hear that Clive Barker is Streebo’s favorite horror storyteller. Clive Barker’s work was an influence on me long before I ever realized that I was a true fan and horror geek. Perhaps this influence started with Hellraiser II: Hellbound as I was lucky enough to join a friend who had advance passes to see the movie in the theater.
Hellraiser II: Hellbound would mark only my second venture into horror at the movies and boy did I pick a crazy movie as my sophomore viewing. My mind was simply overwhelmed by the mix of occult madness, flayed villains, otherworldly Cenobites and a near endless variety of unpleasant people committing atrocities on themselves and others. I did not know then but from that moment on I was irrevocably hooked on horror.
Later that same year, I would finally see the original Hellraiser on VHS at a friend’s house. Despite the fact that there is less time spent in the otherworld in Barker’s directorial effort – I found Hellraiser to be much more disturbing than it’s sequel. The perverse love triangle between Julia, Frank and Larry AND the Cenobites if you want to take it that far got under my skin in a way that standard stalk and slash fare could not. The body mutilation and the S&M subculture that is seen in the film also represented a darker set of desires for Barker’s characters than that of the typical teenage babysitter fare.
Read the rest after the leap!
HELLRAISER II: HELLBOUND (1988) TRAILER
Hellraiser II: Hellbound (1988)
This was a type of horror that truly horrified me when considering its subtext. At the time I wasn’t a student of subtext nor was I even aware that such a thing existed. I just enjoyed the films for what they were and Barker’s works stuck with me long after I finished viewing them.
Coming from an artistic background where my mother painted and I drew endlessly as a child – I was instantly drawn into Barker’s visual style. His films, books and works in various media were always very visually charged like that of Guillermo Del Toro or David Cronenberg or to compare to Barker’s artistic influences – Francisco Goya. His stories were not about simple madmen with machetes but about madmen that cavorted with dark misshapen things that crawled out of the shadows and up from the sewers.
I had been raised on a steady diet of Universal monster movies where there were always townspeople armed with torches that would drive away the monsters at the end of the movie – restoring order to the land. In Barker’s works the darkness was perversely embraced and celebrated but never banished. Often the heroes would merge with the shadows along the way and barely escape their encounter with evil. This was an alien way of looking at horror to me because it meant acknowledging that darkness was something that could never be destroyed, only evaded and eventually succumbed to.
LORD OF ILLUSIONS (1994) TRAILER
Over the years, Barker’s works would always call out to me whether it was Rawhead Rex and his bloody maw on the cover of Fangoria or if it was going to see Lord of Illusions in the theater. I’m glad that I did see Lord of Illusions in the theater because it wound up being the final film that Clive Barker directed – to date. I add that final adjunct in the hope that Barker finds good health and perhaps the inspiration to one day return to his place behind the camera.
Nightbreed (1990) German one sheet
For now it seems as if he has hung up his camera for good as he stated in several interviews that directing was a very hard job. It is widely known that Barker was at odds with the studio over their handling of Nightbreed. The movie was re-cut against Barker’s wishes with more of an emphasis put on standard slasher and action elements ignoring the dark foreboding universe that was created within. Nightbreed was at the time lauded as being the Star Wars of horror films but it never did quite live up to that promise.
NIGHTRBEED (1990) TRAILER
The final cut of the film falls into generic action in the third act leading to a rather anti-climactic and predictable conclusion. But perhaps Nightbreed was more of a victim of it’s own success because the tapestry that it weaves and introduces in the first hour of the film is so baroque and layered that it is impossible for the finale to live up to its promise. For it’s production design and art design alone Nightbreed deserves to be the Star Wars of horror films. Never before and never since has a horror film tried to portray such a visually rich and mythologically layered universe as Nightbreed.
Two of the first books I ever bought about the subject of horror as both literature and an artform were edited or produced by Clive Barker; Shadows In Eden and Clive Barker’s A-Z of Horror. Back when I was still as struggling comic book artist instead of a struggling filmmaker, Barker’s books were some of the first non-comic book or superhero influence that I looked to for guidance. I couldn’t have chosen more helpful books as Shadows In Eden was a collection of almost ten years’ worth of Clive Barker interviews while A-Z of Horror was just that – a near encyclopaedic look at the horror genre in all it’s shapes and forms from classical literature to paintings to films to comics and beyond.
CLIVE BARKER JERICHO INTERVIEW
MVP MEETS CLIVE BARKER
And so it was with all this lifelong exposure to the multiplicities of horror that in 2003 I took up a camera and declared myself a filmmaker. It was then that I turned back to Clive Barker for guidance. I looked back at how his films were so dark, disturbing and horrifying to me.
It is in looking at Barker’s work that I begin to see the shape that uncanny horror can take. My journey with Clive Barker goes far beyond what I’ve shared with you today. I wound up being an extra in Hellraiser III, found the never released video of the BBC 4 program of Clive Barker’s A-Z of Horror and eventually met the master in person at Horrorhound 2010 for a screening of Nightbreed UNCUT! It was a one time event and something that only a handful of people shared with Clive Barker. I am lucky to count myself among that number.
I am even more fortunate to have found Clive Barker at such an early age so that he served as a Macabre Pied Piper to lead me down the paths of horror whether I knew it or not. Thank you for joining me in this discussion on how the uncanny horror of Clive Barker was such an influence upon my artistic sensibilities. If you have some experiences with Clive Barker and his work that you want to share feel free to leave a comment below.
With Craig Sheffer and Anne Bobby – the two stars of Nightbreed – coming to Charlotte for the Mad Monster Party in March, I anticipate having a lot more to say about Clive Barker, Nightbreed, and maybe even Nightbreed Uncut. Stay tuned to Mutantville.com to find out.
