Rawhead Rex (1986)

A fairly solid point about Rawhead Rex is made in the accompanying press release for Arrow’s new Blu-ray edition. It’s long been said that Clive Barker, who wrote the screenplay from his own short story for director George Pavlou, was so appalled with the resulting film – not to mention their earlier collaboration, Underworld (AKA Transmutations) – that he decided he would no longer put his work in the hands of another director, and opted to personally take the helm on his next film, 1987’s Hellraiser. And given what a genre-redefining classic that turned out to be, it can be argued that Rawhead Rex is indirectly responsible for changing the face of horror in the late 1980s and beyond.

Of course, it may change things a little that in the extras Pavlou dismisses this as fan gossip nonsense, and that Barker’s plans to direct Hellraiser were already in place; and the timelines would suggest Pavlou’s correct there, given Hellraiser was into production within months of Rawhead Rex’s premiere. But either way, we get the impression that Rawhead Rex ultimately boils down to nothing more than a funny footnote in the annals of 80s horror. This may well be the case; but it’s a very, very funny footnote, never ceasing to entertain throughout every woefully, wonderfully misjudged minute of it. Whether this was entirely the desired effect is another matter, but hey, an enjoyable film is an enjoyable film.

Where Barker’s original tale from Volume 3 of the Books of Blood was set in a village near London, the movie shifts the action to rural Ireland (reportedly for tax reasons). We open on a farmer trying to shift an ancient standing stone from one of his fields. In so doing, he unwittingly releases the monster of the title, a carnivorous beast which has been buried there for untold centuries. Around the same time, American historian Howard Hallenbeck (David Dukes) is in the village with his wife Elaine (Kelly Piper) and their two children, conducting research. Hallenbeck suspects the local church was built on the site of a temple venerating something much older than Christ, something which the current clergymen would rather he didn’t find out about – and his suspicions would appear to be confirmed by the sudden emergence of a horrifying flesh-hungry giant terrorising the locals. But things are going to get a whole lot weirder and more personal before Rawhead’s reign of terror is over.

In common with most of the Books of Blood stories (of which it’s debatable how successful any of the film adaptations have been, Candyman aside), Barker’s tale was always going to be a bit of a challenge to bring to the screen. While Rawhead Rex is indeed a hulking monster with an appetite for human flesh, he’s also an ancient, sentient being once venerated as a god, whose desires and fears are dictated by primal sexual impulses. However, as we’ve seen from that other mid-80s UK literary adaptation Lifeforce (based on Colin Wilson’s The Space Vampires), translating such high-reaching literary ideas in a mass appeal horror movie may be easier said than done. Small wonder, then, that – not unlike Lifeforce – Rawhead Rex comes off as high camp B-movie horror with a bit of perversity and blasphemy thrown in just to tart things up a bit. Again, though, that doesn’t by any means render the film lifeless or dull; far from it. In the extras, actors Hugh O’Conor and Cora Venus Lunny, who played the Hallenbecks’ young children, state that even they were aware at the time that it was a somewhat ‘schlocky’ production. The mostly Irish cast reportedly features some of the most esteemed figures from the country’s theatre, and the bulk of them spend much of the film with vaguely bewildered expressions on their faces. No one seems to be having more fun than Ronan Wilmot as the deranged Verger Declan, driven mad by the influence of his new god Rawhead, joyous in his rejection of his old Christian ways. If there’s one scene in the film unlikely to be forgotten, it has be Declan’s – ahem – baptism as a devotee of Rawhead.

Above all else, though, it’s Rawhead himself that is the crux of the film’s appeal. Where Barker may have envisaged a ravenous, spiny, razor-toothed, nine-foot phallus (yes, he’s called ‘raw head’ for a reason – one wonders if this was one of the titles the author dreamed up whilst under the influence of special cookies), what we actually have here is actor Heinrich von Schellendorf (in his sole screen role) snugly squeezed into a rubber suit and mask with a fixed expression, swirly red LEDs for eyes, and heavy metal-influenced hair and dress sense, somewhere between a Power Rangers bad guy and a member of Gwar. Being an 80s horror movie, Rawhead Rex obviously doesn’t favour the less-is-more, keep the monster off camera approach: he’s on screen a lot from early on, and his whole presence personifies the film. He looks utterly ridiculous and clearly not real; but we all knew that as soon as we sat down anyway. Best to just embrace the absurdity and go with it. Again, this certainly seems to be what the cast are doing, and any attempts to inject some real pathos into proceedings (take David Dukes’ cries of paternal despair as he struggles valiantly with a turnstile) only serve to make the whole thing ever more ridiculous. Slap on a healthy portion of equally unconvincing gore and stunts, one of the most flagrantly gratuitous topless scenes from all 80s horror (yes, that’s saying something), and a finale which makes very little sense no matter how heavily under the influence the viewer might be, and it all adds up to some prime Friday night fun.

And now, to cut and paste the same line we’ve been slapping on the end of these reviews for the best part of a decade: it’s another great edition from Arrow Video. The film looks as good as you could hope, and we have a couple of commentary tracks (one featuring George Pavlou in conversation with Stephen Thrower), plus a bunch of interview featurettes with the cast and crew, comics artist Stephen R Bissette discussing an abandoned graphic novel adaptation of Barker’s story, plus the original trailer and an image gallery. The first pressing of the blu-ray will also be accompanied by a collector’s booklet written by Kat Ellinger.

Rawhead Rex is released to UK Blu-ray on 14th May from Arrow Video, and is available now on Arrow Video’s Amazon Prime channel.