Rawhead Rex (1986)

Choosing to remove an ancient standing stone that’s on your land might be viewed as a good decision in some parts of the world, but not in Ireland because it might just be a powerful seal keeping a savagely pissed-off and murderous part of the island’s pagan past trapped beneath it.
Rawhead Rex does a few things well. The elevated camera angles and tense music are excellent and if not for his stupid rubber face and joke shop eyes the creature would be a terrifying creation.
Unfortunately, the end result excised or downplayed most of the original story’s subtext, keeping just the aggression for the most part.

2½ jugular veins out of 5

NIGHTBREED:THE DIRECTOR'S CUT [2014]

Nearly 25 years after the cut of the original film, Clive Barker's dark fantasy/love story, Nightbreed is finally given the proper edit it's always deserved.
What we have here is a love story that takes place within the underground world of Midian which is inhabited by a gaggle of beautiful monsters, who would prefer to go unnoticed by the human eye.
The original suffered from 40 minutes of character development cut out of it and then replaced with 20 minutes of standard studio slasher flick crap which broke Barker's heart in the process.  This new cut shows us what the film was meant to be and it really fleshes out the relationships making the film's purpose clearer and more endearing.  There are a few jarring edits but I figure it's because there were never any establishing shots to make a smooth transition between scenes.
Small problems aside, the film is finally the wonderfully woven story it was always meant to be and I can't wait to revisit it again.

4 bad trips out of 5

HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II [1988]

Hellraiser creator Clive Barker assumes the role of producer & creator only for the 1998 sequel allowing director writer team Tony Randel & Peter Atkins to take over.

Hellbound dives deeper into the mythology and world of the Cenobites and their hilariously playful ways. Like the original film, it relies heavily on silly coincidences and mysteries that would be serve better solved rather than open to interpretation.  However, if you're a gorehound and love some twisted imaginative visuals & ideas then this film doesn't disappoint.  

3 morse code gods out of 5

HELLRAISER [1987]

Author Clive Barker directs and adapts his own novella, The Hellbound Heart, for the screen in the 1987 horror cult classic Hellraiser.

As a Barker fanboy it's difficult to give this a fair rating but one can't help but notice the terrible acting, dubbed voices, pointless filler scenes of questionable creepiness and sloppy editing.  However, the film excels in imagination, originality, make-up effects and Christopher Young's breakthrough musical score really raises the bar.  

Barker might not be a great film-maker but he certainly is a fantastic visualist.  

3½ dragon hobos from Hell out of 5

Candyman (1992)

I'll forever hold a grudge against Candyman for not living up to my childhood memories of it. It's a well-made, well-acted movie with a few very good scenes, but as a whole, it's just not that effective. It has a solid start and an interesting premise, but the writers seem to lose the plot early on, and never explore the most compelling story elements.

Tony Todd is terrific, and succeeds at making The Candyman iconic even when the script fails him. If not for him and Virginia Madsen, I'm not sure anyone would even remember this one. If it had been a better movie, he'd be considered one of the all-time greats. Candyman fails on a lot of levels, but makes the grade in a number of other ways, and I think it's worth watching at least once.

3 would be better without the tacked on second ending out of 5.

LORD OF ILLUSIONS [1995]

Clive Barker directs his own film adaptation of his Books Of Blood short story "The Last Illusion", fleshes it out and re-titles it Lord Of Illusions.
Barker cleverly combines Hollywood noir with dark fantasy but sadly it never really becomes much more than that.  The acting is boring, the plot is unfocused and the characters are pretty much paper thin.  Another Books Of Blood misfire.
Oh well.

2 Charlie Manson wannabes out of 5

QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY [1997]

Camp director Mick Garris has a lot of fun adapting two lesser known short stories written by horror authors Stephen King and Clive Barker.  

The Chattery Teeth segment, based on King's Nightmares & Dreamscapes story looks like it was more fun making it than watching it.  While Clive Barker's Books Of Blood story The Body Politic is actually really entertaining not unlike one of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's campier episodes.  Matt Frewer gets top points for taking it that extra step to make it better than it really is, while Christopher Lloyd seems horrendously out of place in a silly wig. 

2 reigning hands out of 5

DREAD [2009]

I've come to expect disappointment when it came to adaptations of Clive Barker's Books Of Blood short stories.  So Dread was a surprisingly more pleasant experience than the others.

Three college students study the fear of others for a school project and it gets deadly serious and that's about it.  The film begins to drag for a bit but it quickly picks up speed when it gets back on track with Barker's original intentions.  A little miscast, poorly directed and all around bumpy, Dread isn't as awful as the other BOB films but it's not as great as it could be.

2½ confusingly sexy birthmarks out of 5

BOOK OF BLOOD [2009]

Adapted from the intro & outro combined from Clive Barker's Books Of Blood anthology, Book Of Blood is a steaming pile of cenobite feces.

The direction, photography and execution is horribly amateurish which is all decorated with some of the most cringe-worthy acting I've ever seen, particularly from the lead, Sophie Ward.  There are next to no scares and what is supposed to be scary could have been done with some thought or originality but comes off as TV movie of the week fluff.  Terrible.  Just terrible.

1 Pinhead & Chatterers out of 5

THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN [2008]

Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura makes his American debut by bringing Clive Barker's Books Of Blood short story The Midnight Meat Train to the screen. 

A gruesomely bizarre tale about a photographer who becomes obsessed with hunting down a serial killer who fancies meat hooks on the New York subway.   It's stylish, moody and heavy on the atmosphere but sadly very light on character development, story pacing and riddled with terrible CGI blood.  

2 Barker paintings out of 5

Nightbreed (1990)

Viewing this with a fresh set of eyes, I now appreciate it for what it is: a vessel to showcase a variety of neat and gnarly creature make-up effects. I'm swept away by the classic Elfman score and the vast, expansive Gothic sets, but those elements alone do not a good film make. The problem is that the story, which was obviously intended to be the set-up for something larger, doesn't fully materialize and was not enough to hold my attention in and of itself. I know it's become somewhat of a cult film in the years following its release, but I for one find it a mess.

2.5 Hellraiser rejects out of 5

Note: I watched the theatrical cut that the director himself was unhappy with. Uncut versions have not yet been made widely available as of this posting.