Two Movies Clive Barker Hopes You'll Never See

© 1996 -- K. A. Laity

N.B.: This essay originally appeared in the "Trash" issue of Weird Times


"Being thoroughly fucked over as a creator by people who really didn't give a toss for what I did or could do or whatever else, it was sort of educative in my dealings with other people."

-- Clive Barker


It has to be tough. You're the toast of the town; Stephen King proclaims "I've seen the future of horror" and it's you; people offer you obscene amounts of cash to write them exciting and horrific screen plays--then disregard your hard work in the name of expediency, idiocy and sheer feeble-mindedness. It's enough to make you sell your soul for a chance to have it done right; and if you are Clive Barker, you sell "Hellbound Heart" for the chance to direct "Hellraiser"--and suddenly your movie career takes off.

Of course you have to live with the reality of dilution: the once-horrific Cenobites have become children's Halloween costumes, and there's nothing you can do to stop production of Hellraiser V or VI or even XIII. But Hollywood has seen the light, and now the suits trust you enough to grant millions for you to produce and direct films like "Candyman" and "Lord of Illusions." If only you could hide those older hideous children for the rest of your life--

But videotape is the plug you can't pull, however merciful the death might be. It resurrects misshapen spawn like "Transmutations" (originally released in 1986 as "Underworld") and slaps "Spine-Tingling Terror From 'Hellraiser' Author [sic] CLIVE BARKER!" on the front of the box and "New Terror from the author of "HELLRAISER!" [begging comparisons to "Oklahoma!" perhaps?] on the back with the hope of a few quick bucks. The stench from this one rose quickly: upon its U.S. video release in 1988 Stefan Jaworzyn wrote, "In conception, it's an ambitious melding of film noir, monsters and weird science. But the finished project sadly emerges as an unsuccessful bastard offspring of these ideas and a series of occasionally atmospheric but ultimately vapid rock videos." Barker remembers, "I finished the screenplay; they said it needed tits and car chases. They then took it off me and they wrote in tits and car chases. There were seven of my lines left." Hey, that could a new party game: locate those seven lines! Winner has to take the video home.

The late Denholm Elliot seems palpably embarrassed, though he still delivers his ridiculous lines ("I'm a doctor, not a pimp!") with conviction in this tale of mutants, call girls, gangsters and the required mad scientist. Appallingly bad music [by Freur: run if you ever see this name] drowns out much, but not enough. The wooden delivery of the majority of the cast (spot the young Miranda Richardson as a jonesing mutant) contrasts sharply with the overly frenetic soundtrack. A noticeable exception comes from the gleeful over-acting of Steven Berkoff as the villain Motherskille. His bombastic emoting ("I don't want her to come back in bits and pieces! Call it sentimental") completely overwhelms the leaden, expressionless Larry Lamb who "stars" as Bain, the ex-tough-guy-turned-artist (you can tell he's an artist--he wears a scarf). With one streak of grey and several of red in his hair, he goes in search of heroine Nicole (Nicola Cowper) who delivers her lines like a proud graduate of a post-ESL enunciation course. After the 103 minutes that at last bring you to the torturous climax [sic!] of "Transmutations," you'll say "I have seen the face of evil, and his name is George Pavlou." Here's one director whose name can be proudly listed among the likes of Alan Smithee; and to think he was once merely second-unit director on "Hart to Hart."

Some one once said, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me," but "thinking that lightning never strikes twice" as Barker said later, he agreed to a second adaptation for Pavlou. At least "Rawhead Rex" is a better film than its earlier Alpine Pictures sibling--though that's like saying a cut throat is better than a disemboweling. Even the video box safely avoids the need to figure out correct titles of those pesky written materials by sticking to "From The Terrifying Mind of Horror Genius Clive Barker." There are many things that are promising about this film: the music by Colin Townes does not (in and of itself) bring you to stupifaction; Broadway veteran David Dukes (no, not the ex-Nazi) makes a winningly sincere Howard Hallenbeck; moving the location from Kent to County Wicklow, Ireland adds to the atmosphere; there's a sort of pro-female ending of the film; the "golden shower" scene--though filmed as a very long shot--has not been cut; and the kid, mercifully, does get eaten.

But our friend George is at the helm, so something has to go wrong. And indeed it does, at about seven minutes and fifty-nine seconds into the film. Three suitably quaint Irish farmers are trying dig up a gigantic penile stone. Two give up; the third keeps at it until lightning strikes and up jumps...........a man in a big rubber monster suit, dressed like a GWAR roadie. Did the SPFX crew go pub crawling and leave trainee Gerry McLoughlin in charge? Surely inexperience--not just incompetence--created this immobile and vaguely simian "monster." Whatever else this film can offer--and it does have its moments scattered sparsely through its 89 minutes--you know here was the first of many serious compromises. It's difficult not to look for more: Are the mini-trailers used in place of houses to save cash? Is Kelly Piper's ghastly yellow woolly ensemble a gift from a well-meaning relative? Does Dukes choose to battle ancient evil in that Mr. Rogers sweater or was it product placement for the local Irish Woolens factory? Was the gratuitous boob shot meant to keep the mostly male crew going a few extra hours? You begin to hope, for the sake of cast and crew, that the catering, at least, was sublime.

Again, hammy over-acting is the one saving grace: Ronan Wilmot absolutely glows as the fabulously wacky verger Declan, recipient of the golden shower . He bonds with Rawhead in wicked delight, finally meeting his end in a gleefully orgasmic frenzy of gore. But it's too little too late to save this film from rubber-monsteritis; the cheap leave-room-for-a-sequel ending is the final, cutting indignitiy, matched only by the chutzpah of showing "Transmutations" on a TV during the trailer park rampage scenes.

"Something is always lost when words turn into celluloid," Clive Barker conceded recently while chatting with fans on America-Online, "Literature is a medium which invites a co-creation with a reader, whereas movies are always and inevitably literal." All too true, as these two films painfully attest. Maybe Barker had to sell his soul--and Pinhead and Kirsty and the Lament Configuration--in order to drag himself out from the mire around George Pavlou; but every time you see these two videos, you believe--no, you know--it was worth it.

Sources:

Transmutations, Vestron Video 1988
Rawhead Rex, Vestron Video, 1987
Clive Barker's Shadows In Eden, Stephen Jones, ed. Underwood Miller 1991.

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Clive Barker photo from Lost Souls, the official Clive Barker Fan Club Website.