A chronology of 26 things with Clive Barker’s name on them and what he thinks about that. *

* (Halloween countdown post #11/restored)

‘Salome’, 1973

‘Forbidden’, 1975

“I made two films which went on to be put on video: Salome, which I did when I was 18, and The Forbidden, which I did when I was 19. Both short, dark pieces. Salome is seven minutes long and shot on 8mm; The Forbidden was shot on 16mm, but we printed it in negative because we didn’t have the money to print it in positive. We designed the whole thing to be shot on negative. I was quite surprised to see how many people got something out of them on video. I mean, they’re 25 years old. Basically, I saw Anger’s movies at a very active little film society in Liverpool in the sixties. Liverpool was quite a place to be in the sixties. Ginsberg had come over and called Liverpool the Haight Ashbury of England. It was a place where poets and, obviously, musicians – the Beatles and all the many bands that followed in their wake – were active. So I saw all the Warhols and the Angers and the usual suspects at that time. One of the things it made plain was that all you really needed was a camera. These were not technically very proficient pictures. There was something rather homemade about them, and that was very important to me. At a certain point in your life, you think, “Oh, now, wait a second! I can do this!” And it worked.” — CB

 

‘Rawhead Rex’, 1986

“I think, generally speaking, the movie followed the beats of the screenplay. It’s just that monster movies, by and large, are made by directorial ‘oomph’ rather than what’s in the screenplay. I’d like to think the screenplay for Rawhead Rex had the possibility of having major thrills in it. I don’t think it was quite pulled off. The admirers of the movie, and actually there are quite a lot of them, like it as a sort of sixties movie made in the early eighties kind of deal. I don’t think the movie is bad, it had a lot more potential. I just don’t like it very much.” — CB

 

‘Hellraiser 1’, 1987

“I think in ‘Hellraiser’, we get away with a lot of stuff which I was kind of surprised by frankly. I was surprised that the MPAA was as accepting of some of that imagery, which is very seriously taken necrophiliac imagery, as it was. Maybe they didn’t get it, I don’t know.” — CB

 

‘Hellraiser 2’, 1988 (5:04)

“‘Hellbound’ is a sea of mythological images and allusions. There is the Frankenstein myth – the mad doctor who loses control. There’s certainly the theme of Orpheus in the underworld, the difference being that it is a daughter in search of her father as opposed to Orpheus searching for Eurydice. There is the classic imagery of the labyrinth, the Minotaur and a whole bunch of allusions to other horror movies. But I don’t think any of these things are essential to the picture. They are there for whoever wants them, but for those who want a good time on Friday night, the picture is a roller-coaster ride.” — CB

 

‘Nightbreed’, 1990

“The lesson I’ve learned [making ‘Nightbreed’] is that a lot of people don’t want anything different. They don’t want you to have a unique vision. But why make movies anybody else could have done? Well, I’ve paid the consequences, but I’m unrepentant. Again and again I listened to deprecating comments about low literacy levels. There was supposedly no point showing ‘Nightbreed’ to critics because the people who see these movies don’t read reviews, in brackets, even if they can read at all! Immediately it was disqualified from serious criticism. Therefore it had to be sold to the lowest common denominator. Nobody cares for the product I, and a host of other horror directors, make. One [old] guy at Fox never saw it through because he felt it was morally reprehensible and disgusting – the two very things it’s not. Their imaginations are limited and they have a very unadventurous sense of what to do. Someone at Morgan Creek said to me, ‘You know, Clive, if you’re not careful some people are going to like the monsters.’ Talk about completely missing the point! Even the company I was making the film for couldn’t comprehend what I was trying to achieve!” — CB

 

‘Hellraiser 3’, 1992

“When I first heard about Hellraiser III, it was clear the production company, Trans Atlantic Entertainment, didn’t want me on board for financial reasons. Head honcho Lawrence L. Kuppin wanted his stamp on it, not mine, and he didn’t want me hanging around. I was reasonably expensive and, frankly, I knew he wanted something cheap and nasty. So I did a deal with Miramax, not Kuppin, to remake and remodel the picture the way I wanted to. I added Terry Farrell’s bondage scene at the climax, the monstrous thing coming up through the floor in front of her, the extra computer graphics for the girl being skinned and many insert death scenes for the nightclub victims. Pete Atkins did all the extra writing. I threw in my ideas and everything was cut into the movie. The result is a pretty seamless patchwork, but a patchwork nevertheless. The best one can say about the movie is it’s abundant and there’s loads of fun stuff going on.” — CB

 

‘Candyman’, 1992

“I still prefer the short story to the movie, though I am still a great fan of Candyman. Film is the collaborative art. In that case, it was a story created by Bernard Rose and myself based upon the short story. In other words, a marriage of minds.” — CB

 

Motorhead ‘Hellraiser’ clip, 1992

“I did a Motorhead video – Motorhead versus Pinhead! And Doug was playing cards with Lemmy. It was a one-day shoot – seventeen hours – and towards the end he [Doug] came in and everybody was getting rather reverential. It was like, ‘The Lord of Hell is here’. The image carries a kind of potency. It’s almost impossible to shoot Pinhead and not have it look good. It’s one of those images – very, very cold!” — CB

 

‘Candyman 2’, 1995

“Bill Condon did a great job on Candyman 2, he really did. We’re really, really happy, and he was always the person I wanted to bring into the project. We had to go the most circuitous route past Propaganda to actually get him on the job, and once they saw what he was doing they wanted to hire him for everything.” — CB

 

‘Lord of Illusions’, 1995 (2:53)

“In Lord of Illusions, I got to do all kinds of shit that I wanted to do. The bondage stuff in there, the girl and the ape, all kinds of shit. It’s very funny because Frank Mancuso was head of MGM/UA at that time, and he didn’t like the movie at all. There was one shot of a dead child on the floor, and he said, ‘This shot will never appear in an MGM/UA movie.’ As it turns out, it did, because I took it out, and then when he wasn’t looking, I put it back in. I knew he’d never bother to see the film again.” — CB

 

‘Hellraiser 4’, 1996

“Hellraiser 4 is not very good. I think they are making another one. Oh God!” — CB

 

‘Candyman 3’, 1999

“Candyman 3, which I had nothing to do with, was shown to me a couple of weeks ago. I declined to put my name on it. I really don’t think I contributed anything to its creation and it seems entirely phony to plunk your name on it, take the money and run. I didn’t think it was a badly created movie, I just didn’t think it had anything to do with the mythology I originally created. I would have felt like a big old fake.” — CB

 

‘Hellraiser 5’, 2000

“Hellraiser 5 is terrible. It pains me to say things like that because nobody sets out in the morning to make a bad movie but you know these guys sent me a script and I said if you want me involved ask me let’s do a deal and get into business, but I really don’t think this works right now (talking about the script). They said we really don’t want your opinion on it we are going to make the movie. So they went and made the movie, and it is just an abomination. I want to actively go on record as saying I warn people away from the movie. It’s really terrible and it’s shockingly bad, and should never have been made.” — CB

 

‘Hellbound: Hellraiser 2’, 2000

“Excruciating. Not in the good way.” — CB

 

‘Undying’, video game, 2001

“In a way, [Undying] does go back a bit to the Books Of Blood, the feelings I had when I wrote those books, which was that there were no rules. There are some things in this game that are just outrageous. Ambrose, particularly in his transformed state, is really just disgusting. I also think, if you look at this game, it’s designed like a movie, it feels like a movie. It’s not brightly colored like a Pokemon game, it has sepias and grays and occasionally eruptions of red.” — CB

 

‘Hellraiser 7’, 2002

“We show it to Clive at his house here in LA and Clive loves it. He thinks it’s the best one since II. He gives us some notes on some added shots and inserts he thinks will help, mostly stuff in the third act of the film. At first we get a call from the exec at Dimension on the project and he screams at us for letting Clive see it. But five minutes later we get another call from a higher exec who just spoke to Clive and everything’s cool. They’re thrilled, and relieved, that he liked it. He wanted to give us a nice blurb on the box but he couldn’t for some contractual reasons.” — Rick Bota, the director of ‘H7’

 

‘Hellraiser 8’, 2005

“Haven’t seen it.” — CB

 

‘Hellraiser 9’, 2005

“Doug Bradley as Pinhead delivers the goods as per usual, and there are some great gore scenes. Throw in a few clever plot twists and devices and you have yourself a mindless quick little romp. The only problem being that the Hellraiser series has always been a fairly cerebral experience. Again, the feel of the series is just not there. Something is clearly missing from the formula.” — review @ Dread Central

 

‘Demonik’, video game, 2006

“It was never released for good reasons” — CB

 

‘Hellraiser: Prophecy’, 2006

“Oh, you know, fans made it. Fans are sweet. They’re sweet.” — CB

 

‘Plague’, 2006

“Plague was a screw-up. I trusted the director and I wasn’t going to do to Hal what had been done to me by interfering producers over the years; I had pretty much decided I would let him have his way and if we had to have an argument it would be in the cutting-room about the way the picture was cut – so he shoots the picture and then is absent from the cutting-room most of the time. He did a tough job on a very tough schedule but there were things that I begged for at the end, for the producers to throw in some extra money towards Hal so that he could go back and do a couple of extra days’ shooting but they shook their heads and that was the end of that. It is not a movie I am pleased with or proud of – it feels compromised and Hal got in his car and drove away before the picture was even locked” — CB

 

‘Valerie on the Stairs’, 2006

“This is a joke – Mick finds this incredibly funny – I wrote a 45-page closely-typed treatment for a 60-page script, so Mick said it was the easiest job he ever had in his life! It’s a story I’ve wanted to write for a very long time and suddenly I realised, ‘Ah, this is the place to put it.’ It’s a very, very heterosexual story, centred around an obscure object’s desire for this exquisite woman, Valerie” — CB

 

‘Haeckel’s Tale’, 2006

“It was, if you’ll excuse my French, fucking marvellous. Haeckel’s Tale is a story that I’m very proud of, and Roger Corman did a magnificent job directing it, particularly since it was a period piece and the FX are amazing. It’s pretty intense stuff.” — CB

 

‘Jericho’, video game, 2007

“I’m sure I’m a pain in the arse and I’m sure I’m a difficult man to please but on the other hand I think most people that are looking at the material right now are damned pleased they went that extra mile with it… I had right of veto for the music and in March of last year I got a version of the game with music on it, music that I’d never heard before or been asked to hear, or whatever. I went ape shit. Music is such an important part of an experience and this stuff was like going back to gay disco from 1982, which went down like a lead balloon. I knew what the music was. I knew what I wanted it to be. I even had a composer in mind, Chris Velasco, who ended up doing the music and did a fucking fantastic job. It really irritated me that somebody had tried to whisk this by me without my being told. I have my name on this game and I’m very proud of it and I’d have done whatever I needed to do and if that means being a pain in the ass – live with it bitch!” — CB

 

‘Midnight Meat Train’, 2008

“[Midnight Meat Train] isn’t special effects driven, but there are a lot of effects in the final reel – physical effects, not CGI effects. When they come up, they’ve got to be great, and Patrick [Tatopoulous] has a handle on all that… I’m seeing a lot of what I’ll call ‘soft horror’ around and not a lot of ‘hard horror’ – certainly not from American [filmmakers]. There’s a lot of PG-13s and ghost/apparition kind of stuff. I’ve always liked my horror harder and I thought this was a good time to say, ‘Hey, we’ve got this body of stories, let’s bring a different sensibility to horror audiences.’ ” — CB

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Lovely call and response, sir. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Yeah, the blog glitch was a little spooky, and it remains inexplicable, and I guess I’ll chalk it up to the Halloween season. Oh, how nice that Anita is back for a while. Do you wish you had known that back when you were apartment hunting, or has it all worked out just fine? I hope the publishers get back to with total positivity. That kind of job makes a lot of sense, obviously. It seems like it would be interesting for a writer to get to know how publishing works from the inside. The haunted houses, or the ‘home haunts’ I’m most interested in, are generally only open on weekends. A few will be operating this weekend, and then there will be a flood on the weekend of the 27th, 28th. How was your day? ** Marilyn Roxie, Hi, Marilyn! Lovely to see you, pal. Ha ha, do tell if interesting developments arise. How are you liking Manchester? ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Look forward to the interview. Everyone, here is Steve’s, and I begin to quote, ‘interview with Morten Traavik, co-director of the “Laibach in North Korea” (although to be honest, it’s mostly about him) documentary LIBERATION DAY.’ Yes, everything in the post you sent looks very spick and span. It looks amazing. I’ll get to setting it up, and I’ll let you when it’ll appear well in advance. I’ll probably schedule it for just post-trip at the beginning of November. Yes, I caught the post-Weinstein FB stuff. Predictably, within a day it went from a sharing of bravery to a war between factions about whose bravery was legit with the inevitable FB-generated acts of shaming disagreers left and right, and I bailed on paying attention at that point. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. It was weird. The only thing WordPress could guess its that the WiFi signal where I was staying in Berkeley blocked me from entering the blog, but it didn’t block me from any other site, and even WordPress said the only explanation they could offer made no sense at all. The return of YnY karaoke is a lovely idea. ** Armando, Hi. Yeah, I’m sorry it isn’t an easier process, for you, for me too. ** Bill, Hi, B. I hope you’re feeling better. I assume the air up there must at least be getting back to normal by now. I know, that pull quote was like, I don’t know, like grabbed out of a Language poem or something. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. I am. Back, that is. Oh, man, that is not, not good at all about LPS. Given his terrible upbringing as a child, it’s sadly not a huge surprise, I guess, but … It really sounds like he’s fallen in with ‘a bad crowd’, as they say, but how do you change that? I don’t know how. It sounds very serious. How do you make a kid in such denial understand how badly he is about to fuck up his life, that he would lose all the things he currently enjoys if he doesn’t wake up. I’m so sorry, George. Any positive developments at all? Love, me. ** Kyler, Hey, Kyler. Oh, damn, how incredibly stressful that must have been, and a gigantic whew that everything is okay. Obviously, enjoy every tiny aspect of your new lease. ** Jonathan Parker-Bryant, Hi, Jonathan! Long time no see. This is a boon! I’m happy that you’ve been out there keeping up and enjoying all this place’s attempts at worthiness. And that you’re writing diligently. That’s all you can do, and it’s plenty. Yes, my Cali friends are over the moon obsessed with the Dodgers’ straight line to the World Series. I can’t believe they didn’t crap out. I have no doubt that I’ll end up in living rooms cheering the dudes on before I head home. I love the new Sparks album. It’s my favorite of theirs in a while. Great news about the ongoing happiness with your boyfriend, of course. Awesome! Sure, email me a question. denniscooper72@outlook.com. Really great to see you, man. Take care. ** Jamie, Hi, Jamie. Yes, me too, but it really was some kind of technical mishap of a minor sort. Don’t think it’s related to the blog’s other weird issues, but, gee, I don’t know. I’m doing good, yes. The NN conference was excellent and fun too. And the reading with the great Eileen seems to have been a smash. She’s a very old friend, and we’ve read together a lot, and it’s interesting that, as different as her and my works are, and as differently as we perform them, the combo of us reading seems to always work really well. Her new dog book ‘Afterglow’ is really great. Still feeling bad? Oh, man, that so sucks. I hope at least there’s some kind of at least faint upward trajectory going on. Cool about the great seeming new director. Will you work closely with her? Yes, assuming the home haunts film idea sticks, and I’m hard at work on a first draft of a partial script, it’s going to be pretty cool and very different from ‘PGL’, which is a big goal. My in-flight movie marathon: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 2’ (irritating), ‘Alien: Covenant’ (kind of shockingly crappy), ‘Wonder Woman’ (I’m not sure why everyone is being so celebratory about the fact that a woman director is capable of directing just as mediocre a superhero movie as male directors are), ‘Fast and Furious 8’ (relatively speaking, it was refreshingly successful at providing the dumb thrills to which it aspired). May Wednesday (is it still Wednesday where you are, this vast time change thing is confusing) turn every trope in your vicinity into a fairytale’s conclusion. Ha ha, Bazooka Joe. Um, Kandy Korn Oreo love, Dennis ** Right. Today we take a hard right or left turn back into Halloween-friendly stuff as we enter the final stretch before the big day itself. See you tomorrow.