10 Monster Movies That Totally Screw With Your Brain

Clive Barker’s seminal monster movie has always been a bit of a curate’s egg: an adaptation of his own novel Cabal, studio interference and recutting plagued the production, and the finished product wasn’t finished at all, merely… stopped.

Thankfully, fairly recent investigations have recovered a large part of the footage hacked from the film, and a Director’s Cut has been available for the last couple of years that goes some significant way towards fixing the problems of the original movie, specifically when it comes to pacing, characterisation and the film’s climax.

So: Midian, where the monsters live. If you were a fan of weird fiction, horror or fantasy in the late eighties and early nineties, you were probably a fan of Clive Barker.

Obsessed with difference and othering, and the extremes of pain, pleasure, sex and death, Barker’s novels, short stories and films (he wrote and directed Hellraiser, Nightbreed and 1995’s Lord Of Illusions) are lurid, captivating glimpses into the liminal, explorations of the threshold state and of the process of transfiguration of mind, soul and - inevitably - the consequences of that change upon the flesh.

Midian’s monsters aren’t friendly creatures. Beasts and beings of myth and legend, their persecution has led the remnants of all these disparate races to congregate together for mutual protection. Our hero Boone, fleeing from the nightmare his life has become, may just be the Nightbreed’s saviour. But first, he’ll have to die…

From Peloquin to Rachel, Baphomet to the Berserkers, Barker’s monstrous creations are breathtaking, evocative and daring: archetypes of faery tale and fable ripped from the unconscious and given new life. Nightbreed is an extraordinary, if flawed vision - but the new cut is well worth anyone’s time.