Rawhead Rex (1986)

Rawhead Rex (1986)

Dir. George Pavlou

Choosing to remove an ancient phallic standing stone that's on your land might be viewed as a good decision in some parts of the world, but in rural Ireland it might just be a powerful seal that was put in place to keep a savagely pissed-off and murderous part of the island's pagan past trapped beneath it. And if it's freed, not even the Christian God will be able to stop its thundering rampage.

Rawhead Rex is generally regarded as being pretty awful by many folks, but I don't feel it's as bad as all that. In fact, I would argue that it does a few things well. The elevated camera angles and tense music by Colin Towns are often excellent, and if not for the stupid rubber face and joke shop eyes then the creature would be a terrifying creation.

Unfortunately, the end result excised or downplayed most of the original story's subtext, keeping just the aggression, for the most part.

It was the first film to be adapted from a short story in Clive Barker's six-volume Books of Blood collections. Hailing from Volume 3, it had a screenplay that was written by the author himself, although he's since tried to distance his name from the resultant picture. If asked to compose a list of films that deserved a restoration and a 4K scan, Rawhead Rex wouldn't be near the top, but that's what it got and the Arrow Video Blu-ray edition looks and sounds great, in my opinion.

- A child's drawing or actual production sketches? -

Rawhead Rex was Dir. George Pavlou's second feature film to be based on one of Barker's works, having previously directed Underworld (1985) (aka Transmutations) from an original screenplay. Underworld is generally spoken of as being even more piss-poor than Rex, but I've not seen it, so I can't comment directly. However, it has Denholm Elliott and Ingrid Pitt, so I'll certainly give it a fair chance if the opportunity ever comes up.

Over the years a number of other stories from the Books of Blood have been adapted for the screen, the most notable being the first Candyman (1992) film. I've not seen most of the others, to date, except Lord of Illusions (1995) which I turned off partway through because it was shit.

- Why not visit Ireland? It's a lovely place. Really, it is. -