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

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