(1987)
Overall: GOOD
Clive Barker's full-length debut Hellraiser remains his most seminal cinematic work; a flawed though inventive, disturbed, visceral, fleshy, sexually-charged, over the top nightmare that spawned a hefty franchise. Barker adapted his own novella The Hellbound Heart where much of the dark, overt eroticism was toned down by studio heads to garnish a more acceptable R rating. The movie is still plenty unflinching in its gruesomeness though, with exceptionally wet and bloody visual effects rather stealing the show when they appear. Of course the design of the Cenobites is the most iconic; freaky S&M torture demons that are actually minimally used in this first installment compared to the others where they became the main attraction. Barker's inexperience behind the lens is impressively undetected, though his chosen style occasionally gives way to grandiose camp which he would lean into far more with his next two directorial efforts. The only other issues is the somewhat jarring American dubbing of British actors and the miscasting of Clare Higgins who looks more like a crotchety accountant than a sexy, evil accomplice. Otherwise, good stuff indeed.
(1990)
Overall: MEH
For his second film behind the lens, Clive Barker adapts his novel Cabal which is a much more ambitious endeavor than his debut Hellraiser, even if it ended up being less successful and enduring. Though Nightbreed was granted a sufficient budget which he puts to excellent use with top-notch special effects, monster makeup, and production design, the finished product was butchered in the editing room. Various cuts of the movie exist, with the theatrical release being nearly an hour shorter than the one Barker initially intended. This unfortunately emphasizes the movie's poorly structured plot which is made more frustratingly messy due to the slice and dice presentation. For better or worse, (depending on the audience member), there is an abundance of schlock, with vacantly-written characters, horrendous one-liners, and Danny Elfman's romantically bombastic score that plays uninterrupted throughout the entire running time. The movie is unmistakably over the top by design and visually stunning, but Barker's grandiose style seems more like a byproduct of studio tampering than a fully-formed realization of his own source material. At least we get to see David Cronenberg play a serial murderer with a silly mask though.
(1995)
Overall: MEH
The to-date final directorial effort from Clive Barker was the expanded adaptation of his "The Last Illusion" short story which appeared in the sixth volume of the Books of Blood. Here titled Lord of Illusions, it works within the budgetary confines of his previous film Nightbreed and similarly, it was given a theatrical edit by the studio that was not in keeping with Barker's initial vision. It is also bombastic, violent, homoerotic, and loud, with the schlock knob purposely turned up to eleven. On paper, the neo-noir/horror hybrid is an interesting one with Scott Bakula's private dick Harry D'Amour having previous run-ins with the supernatural, here getting drawn in ever deeper with dark magic, an alluring dame played by Famke Janssen, and an utterly evil, god-like super wizard raised from the dead. Some of the concepts and set pieces are inventive and the movie works visually when it is not hampered by horrendous digital effects, but the presentation is abundantly silly. Barker abuses jump scares, grandiose music, screaming, and hokey dialog, with nuance being nowhere in the cards. It becomes a bit of an accidental comedy too much of the time, failing to work as a chilling piece of macabre fantasy. Still, the ramped-up charm that is anything but boring at least.
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