(1985)
Dir - George Pavlou
Overall: MEH
The first full-length screenplay credit of Clive Barker's career was Underworld, (aka Transmutations), a film that has most of Barker's less desirable quirks in tow while forgoing his better ones. The aggressively B-movie quality is impossible to take seriously. Every aspect of the production from the set design, make-up, and special effects cannot hide the meager budget. That said, the synth-pop score from Welsh band Freur is kind of fun if also quite dated. Though it is certainly nice to see people like Ingrid Pitt or Denholm Elliott doing something on screen, the performances are universally hammy, theirs included. It is always odd that Barker's novels and short stories are virtually void of schlock when it comes to the dialog, but for whatever reason the hokiness rises to the surface when he is writing for the screen. That is certainly the case here. The plot is not particularly engaging anyway as it is meant to be kind of a sci-fi noir in tongue-in-cheek, somewhat bad taste. Barker would get to direct his next film vehicle with Hellraiser two years later, a movie that still showcased some of the author's more silly mannerisms but is an astronomically superior story at least. This one is really only of interest to Barker enthusiasts.
(1986)
Dir - Ken Russell
Overall: GOOD
Ken Russell proved highly adequate at crafting high-octane, feverish nightmares on screen at various times throughout his career and Gothic is a textbook example of the filmmaker's trademark, visceral style. Utilizing the historical context of Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dr. John William Polidori, and Lord Byron all vacationing and losing their minds on opium at the latter's estate, Russell depicts their complicated, horror-fueled imaginations as one trippy set piece after the other. Naturally, some of the images are gleefully grotesque and bizarre, (like Byron performing fellatio on a pregnant woman who miscarriages while he is down there, a set of animated armor with a giant, horned dildo, eyeball nipples, and Polidori trying to kill himself by drinking cyanide and then having insects frantically crawl out of his mouth), but these are usually the high water marks of Ken Russell horror movies anyway. Gothic has no room to be subtle and the performances, music, dialog, and cinematography border on parody, taking genre cliches to over the top heights. With any kind of caution to the audience's comfort thrown to the wind, it is an amusing and satisfyingly insane excursion that is clearly having fun with its macabre subject matter.
(1989)
Dir - Gérard Kikoïne
Overall: MEH
When watching any Jack the Ripper based movie, it is always laughable both A) how many prostitutes there are in London apparently and B) how many of them openly push for business when a madman is exclusively targeting them night after night. This cliche gets aggressively exploited in Edge of Sanity, a Ripper/Jekyll and Hyde combo that is equally clever and brutal in some instances while remaining just a bit over the top to a fault. Anthony Perkins is typecast once again playing a lunatic and he makes a splendid Hyde the Ripper while his Jekyll is the usual, overly passionate zealot who gets more and more difficult to sympathize with as things go on. The violent treatment towards women is more emphasized here than in most previous versions of these stories, with Hyde's physical and mental abusiveness getting kicked up the point where he even gets some opium-hooked accomplices to terrorize his wife and indulge in such vileness. Besides these more modern and nasty hooks plus an extra level of schlock brought to the proceedings, it is otherwise the same old story that we have seen dozens of times since the silent era. It is also bleak and goofy enough to approve of to a certain extent.
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