One night, in the Summer of 1988, I was sitting at a bar in downtown Charlottesville, Va with none other than the late legendary Charlottesville Saxophonist LeRoi Moore. LeRoi and I had previously on this evening smoked a joint in the parking lot near Miller’s Restaurant after some local musicians had performed jazz at Miller’s and we were now downing drinks together when LeRoi began one of his infamous and hilarious late-night monologues. Besides his stellar Saxophone playing, the world also missed out on LeRoi as a potential future podcaster or personality on a group podcast, his impromptu monologues were absolutely hysterical. He had a deep voice like an FM disc jockey and his monologue subjects could span from diatribes on world history involving White Christian Missionaries to the absurdity of the song “Bad” by Michael Jackson to lamenting the inflation rates of street-level Marijuana to more sobering tales of violence he witnessed on the streets of Philadelphia. Moore’s tales and accompanying anecdotes were the stuff of late-night campfire legends.
On this particular night, LeRoi began his monologue by addressing me directly. “Ian”, he paused, “I seen a movie that will fuck you up, mother-fucker….it’s some British shit, or some Irish shit, some shit.” He always told his stories with dramatic breaks to make sure his intended adressee was paying attention. He used his hands to describe action. “This mother-fucking creature has big-ass teeth and he just be chomping on niggahs”, LeRoi put his hands up like he was pretending to be a ravenous Bear. “He’s eating Black people? In Ireland?”, my innocent high-ass inquired. “No, man, that’s just a figure of speech….you need to hang around Black folks more often, get with my idiom.” He continued. “My boy had a copy of this movie, it’s some European shit, it’s a monster movie, except the camera don’t cut after the gruesome shit starts, you just watch mother-fuckers get eaten….this shit is gruesome, I’ve never seen anything like it. You want to see a movie that will give your ass nightmares, watch this shit, this shit is savage.” After a few minutes of this kind of banter, I asked LeRoi what was the name of this fine cinematic effort he was describing in such rich detail. “This shit was called ‘Rawhead Rex’ or some shit like that….this shit was gruesome.” LeRoi then proceeded to act out a giant creature gnawing on a dead body, it was quite the description.
When I happened to come across an HBO/Cinemax schedule later that same Summer, sure enough, on a Friday night, what did one of the late-night cable behemoths have scheduled at 2 in the morning? The very same film LeRoi had been going on about at the bar, “Rawhead Rex”. A buddy I graduated High School with and ran on the High School Track Team with had an apartment in town and a cable subscription and a fridge full of Milwaukee’s Best. I asked him if I could come over on a Friday night in the wee hours and watch this controversial creature feature. Sure, my friend Joe Horn replied, he said he might pass out on me since he had been working all day, but he was game for me to stop over and hang. I prepped myself with a couple of bowls of Mexican Sinsemilla I had copped from a local dealer and then Joe and I helped ourselves to some of his cache of sudsy low-budget brews to view this cinematic onslaught of creature crunchen und munchen.
A low budget shocker from 1987, “Rawhead Rex” is a grim Horror flick from the pen of future Horror movie dynamo Clive Barker. Barker’s “Hellraiser” hit American theaters in 1987 as well, but in 1988 my high ass was not aware of his name. Filmed in and set in a small village in Ireland, the film isn’t so much full of depth as it is packed with imagery, Barker and Director George Pavlou create a litany of sharp and barbarous moments that dwell in the viewer’s mind long after this is over. Even though this is almost a 40-year old movie now and numerous Horror epics since it’s release have surpassed it’s level of savagery and gore, it was extremely hard-hitting for it’s time and still comes off as fairly depraved and shocking. LeRoi was right, there are scenes where the creature bites into poor unlucky Irishmen with his big unbrushed Bi-cuspids and keeps chomping.
The film begins with an American family on Holiday, the Husband and Father of the family is played by David Dukes (the actor, not the White Supremacist wanna-be demagogue). His wife is played by Kelly Piper, she has important shit to do later in the movie. The Father, Howard Hallenbeck, is some kind of historian/professor, the movie does not go into a lot of detail, he’s a handsome Rock Hudson-looking rugged individualist who has dragged his family into the hinterlands of Ireland looking for travelogue-like anecdotes. Maybe he’s working on a book, I digress. At the same time as the American family comes to visit the quaint Irish village, some local rubes are clearing a field and happen upon a large stone statue, which looks kinda like a Stonhenge-type structure, except there’s only one tall-ass Rock edifice. When the other rural nitwits give up on clearing the obelisk, one unlucky chap stays behind to continue the unnecessary statue desecration, only to have a lightning storm intervene and topple the stone totem, releasing a beast who had been imprisoned beneath the rock structure for eons or centuries or millennia, a long fucking time.
Once released, the giant man creature beast with a face only a Mother could love and an orthodontic set-up that would require quite a deductible to repair goes on a murderous and carnivorous rampage that is not for the faint of heart. It is interesting to note that he seems more interested in eating Men than Women, it might just be a coincidence since he’s not exactly the shy type, or it might be a power move. While all of this mayhem and flesh consuming is going on in remote areas of the village, our American family friends are visiting a Church where suddenly the stain-glass murals on the windows seem to come alive and every time a shady Priest named DeClan O’Brien(played by Ronan Wilmot) puts his hand on the pulpit, his hand starts to burn and he has visions of hunting humans as if he is seeing through the eyes of the beast.
We learn that the beast is named “Rawhead Rex” and he may have been the brutal ruler of the village hundreds or thousands of years ago, before Christianity but maybe at the same time as Pagan Matriarchies. Besides his shitty and meat-eating disposition, he may have an aversion to girls because a Matriarchal society of long ago may have put him in the ground, Sisters weren’t just doing it for themselves, they were looking out for errybody. Once sexy Rexy is out of his subterranean digs and roaming the Irish countryside, devouring and beheading everything in his path, the movie splits into two narratives; one of the incessant carnage and the second of the American Father and others attempting to figure out what answers from the village’s past will come in handy to defeat the creature and send him back to hell from whence he came before he uses the menfolk in town as his own personal buffet. The town learns quickly he can’t possibly bite off more than he can chew.
For a low-budget Horror flick with a cast of virtual unknowns, “Rawhead Rex” is a B-movie in it’s pacing, but the dialogue (from a script by Barker) is fairly intrepid, there are a few throwaway lines here and there just to put the viewer at temporary deceptive ease, but for the most part the script is fairly crisp. The camera work by John Metcalfe is sufficient, the skies seem always grey in old Ireland and the night time scenes are light enough that you can clearly see what’s going on, but dark enough that you get a sense of spooktacular dread. There’s plenty of cliches here, but due to the fact that it its an English-Irish production, those cliches appear fresh to American eyes. Witnesses left alive are too traumatized to give Police details, the Police don’t believe the American Dad when he tells them of a late night spotting of the creature, the Church seems to know something about the existence of the Beast, but won’t talk about it, everyone in town seems to be on some kind of weird vibe once the creature begins his rampage, the Beast hypnotizes a couple of key community figures to further the agenda of his onslaught.
While some of the film’s scenes seem somewhat wooden, this isn’t a Robert Altman or Ingmar Bergman movie, this is “Rawhead Rex”, for crying out loud. The movie creates memorable tropes all on it’s own. In one scene, Dukes goes for a walk outside of his Village hotel at night only to spot big Rex standing on top of a hill in the moonlight, staring back at him in an unnerving scene of acknowledgement. In another scene, a pregnant woman is driven mad by Rex after he corners her in her house, then rips her clothing and touches her pregnant stomach with his calloused and talon-tipped paws. Once the violence gets rolling, which is quite early on, this is a vicious and relentless little picture until the very end.
The staging of some of the plot development scenes are fresh in that even though they are the type of cliche-ridden Horror scenes we have witnessed in Horror movie past efforts, they are creative variations nonetheless. Perhaps borrowing from American up-and-coming (at the time) equivalent Wes Craven and his use of terrorizing a family in a camper in “The Hills Have Eyes”, Craven sets two attacks at the same trailer park, although you would figure after the first attack the first night, nobody would be hanging around the park for the second. But no, they’re just laying around in their campers, drinking beers and just patiently waiting for some malevolent beast to storm onto the campground , tearing off people’s heads and Women’s braziers and cause murderous mayhem.
When Rex first rears his ugly head, no pun intended, the stain glass at the local Church has a depiction of him in one of the windows and the Red eyes of the depiction begin to glow. It’s a cool effect and it sets a very tense mood. As Barker does in his “Hellraiser” series as well as the higher-brow “Nightbreed” (Which stars Canadian Film Director David Cronenberg as a psychotic serial killer), Barker takes shots at organized religion, which may or may not be warranted, depending on your spiritual outlook, but having a take that organized religion is certainly fallible is not too woke for me; after decades of Silver Screen religious worship (literally and figuratively), films such as this, Tobe Hooper/ Stephen King’s “Salem’s Lot”, Ken Russell’s “The Devils”, Hammer’s “Twins of Evil” and Barker’s own “Candyman” throw shade at organized religion and why not. Centuries of morally corrupt behavior in some but not all religious institutions make them fair game for writers and certainly Horror writers. Barker also gives a shout out to Matriarchal societies and fertility cults, a subject I have no quarry with; neither had received much traction in Hollywood films to the point of the making of “Rawhead Rex” and beyond.
“Rawhead Rex” however, is in no danger of popping up on the Criterion Channel any time soon, this is gut bucket, turn your brain off and talk to your TV while watching this to tell the characters to stop doing stupid shit or they’ll get killed kinda movie. Amongst purveyors of serious cinema that I know, there are two kinds; ones that will watch exploitative, trashy and obvious flicks and those that won’t. There is Horror for intellectuals ( “The Witch”, “Don’t Look Now”, “Images”, etc,) where psychological concepts that relate to smart people work almost like therapy. This ain’t that sort of picture, but it’s higher brow and unusually refined for a monster movie that plays in some ways like a slasher flick. I found Barker’s “Hellraiser” films smart but unwatchable; they are so nightmarish and cynical, I can respect them, but only from a distance. “Nightbreed” is an underrated film, with elements of Fellini and an Italian Giallo. Barker’s “Candyman” is one of the great high-brow Horror movies of all-time. I am also a closet fan of Barker’s 1995 film, “Lord of Illusions”.
Where “Rawhead Rex” has a place for some is this very time of year. This movie has the look, it’s ominous, it’s scary, it’s gruesome, it’s gory, it’s sarcastic and mean-spirited, it has some supernatural elements to complete its’ spirit. Barker delivers his shocks in an old-looking delivery system, but his monster was new (for it’s time) and even though you know it’s just a big dude in a suit, it’s still effectual. (Even though, at one point, you see Rex is wearing boots…..like, really? He’s a thousands of years old beast-God and he was wearing boots for the last few millenia? He’s got like a pair of Belleville Army Surplus boots on.) Barker conjures up the kind of violence here that one might associate with getting high and imagining some crazy shit. One thing about Barker’s Horror films of the 1980’s and 90’s, he, like Cronenberg, added numerous touches from psychoanalysis and psychology that make the lasting terror effects of his films steeped in intelligence, but in a way, all are able to understand. Here, the only ideas that Barker may be providing generations with is a creature as an idea from Barker’s subconscious describing an ancient menace. The audactiy of Barker’s message though here is what caught my colleague’s attention to this movie years ago; Barker lets loose his nightmares on us, ones that we thought we had seen before and we had, in part, but never like this.
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