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Nightbreed

post #1 of 34
5/26/05 at 3:05am
Thread Starter 
I miss the days when there could be this level of creativity in horror. I remember when it came out it, as flawed as it was/is, it was still better than the cookie cutter sh*t in its peer group. I watched it tonight for the first time in a long time - I can't imagine a movie like this getting made today. Barker may have lost it at some point, but Nightbreed is a fun flick.
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post #2 of 34
5/26/05 at 3:57am
It's a great concept. I'd still like to see a director's cut, if it would improve some of the low points.
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post #3 of 34
5/26/05 at 4:10am
Nightbreed's biggest failing - apart from the butchery wrought on the ending by the studio - is that the budget just wasn't there to deliver the size and scope of Barker's vision, something that has blighted all his films - apart from Hellraiser which actually benefits from the claustrophobic location and sparse use of the Cenobites.

The Berserkers at the end of Nightbreed are a prime example - what should have been terrifying uncontrollable monsters just looked like men in lumpy brown latex suits.

Maybe with digital technology some of Barker's wilder imaginings would work - I'd love to see Weaveworld or Imajica realised in live action - but I honestly think his themes and imagery, or at least those from his best novels, don't work when taken off the page.
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post #4 of 34
5/26/05 at 5:35am
Man, I love Nightbreed. Even with its flaws (such as what Whitehead pointed out with the Berserkers; a let-down of epic proportions), it's still one of the creepiest, most imaginative and creative horror films ever made. Sadly, this kind of film only seems to get made when horror is unpopular, and is driven underground. The truly creative horror movies are made under the radar, with low budgets. Right now we're in the part of the cycle where horror is briefly hot, and the people making horror movies are doing so with mainstream success in mind. This almost never results in a good horror story. I eagerly await the passing of the current "golden age" so we can get some real movies again.
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post #5 of 34
5/26/05 at 5:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nigel St. Buggering
Right now we're in the part of the cycle where horror is briefly hot, and the people making horror movies are doing so with mainstream success in mind. This almost never results in a good horror story.
Or worse, it results in a neverending slew of remakes, such as we are going through at the moment.

As to the whole question of bringing Barker's vision to the screen, other than an adaptation of Weaveworld, the only other work of his that I would really love to see adapted is The Damnation Game. Dark and calustrophobic, like Hellraiser. His more recent stuff is just too self-consciously epic for my taste.
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post #6 of 34
5/26/05 at 5:50am
I'll restate my eternal interest in seeing his short story Dread from the Books of Blood made into a feature film. I hope Moriarty pulls that off.
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post #7 of 34
5/26/05 at 6:33am
Fingers crossed that Barker's Midnight Picture Show project will deliver the goods. They're claiming two new horror films a year, with Books of Blood providing at least some of the stories.

Quote:
According to Variety, novelist-director Clive Barker has partnered with producer Jorge Saralegui in the Midnight Picture Show, a venture meant to scare up two horror films per year. Most will be based on the prolific author's short stories published in the six volumes of "The Books of Blood," or on his original ideas.

Lakeshore Entertainment has been set to finance "The Midnight Meat Train," an adaptation of the Barker story about a Gotham-based photographer's effort to track down "the subway butcher," a search that leads to an unholy secret. The pic was adapted by Jeff Buhler and will be directed by Patrick Tatopoulos, a horror vet who has done extensive creature and production design work. Lions Gate will distribute and production will start in the fall.

Barker and Saralegui made an earlier alliance with Armada Pictures to finance "The Plague," a Hal Masonberg/Teal Minton-scripted fright film that will be directed by Masonberg this summer. Pic concerns an apocalypse that causes kids to lapse into vegetative states, only to awaken years later bent on murdering their parents.

Barker and Saralegui have set Anthony DiBlasi, an exec at Barker's Seraphim Films label, to adapt the Barker short "Pig Blood Blues," and John Heffernan to draft "New York Resurrection," from an original idea by Barker. They hope these pics will be made in 2006.

Next up will be the Barker short "Age of Desire," scripted by Charles Canzoneri, along with "Revelation," a pic that Lori Lakin is writing, based on her own idea.

The venture comes at a time when modest-budget horror pics, mostly remakes, continue to proliferate and prosper.

"We hope our advantage will come from my own body of work of really intense horror stories that are original," Barker said. "We will not be reheating old films, freshening up old ideas. ... Even forgetting the sequels we hope to make, I've got enough here for 20 movies of varying budget scales."

Since this is the Barker who hatched the gory Hellraiser and Candyman franchises, the teenage PG-13 set shouldn't expect him to cater to their lucrative demo.

"Jorge and I want to wind up with a library of pictures that will reflect my sensibilities, which are decidedly R rated," Barker said. "In fact, the moment I make a PG-13 horror movie, you can take me out and shoot me. Our desire is to leave you feeling that we're a little crazy."
Had to lift the news from MovieWeb as it hasn't shown up on the Corner...
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post #8 of 34
5/26/05 at 8:12am
I think the last adaptation from the Books of Blood was The Body Politic, in that godawful Garris fuckup Quicksilver Highway. Have there been any more?

I always liked In the Hills, the Cities. But it's a bit short to stretch to feature length.
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post #9 of 34
5/26/05 at 9:22am
In the Hills, In the Cities has no chance of geting made and not just because of the gay content. I'd love to see it made, though. I'd do it live action instead of CGI, with American Idol viewers and contestants playing the writhing masses of dying villages.

I love Nightbreed in my head and heart, but watching it now is excruciating.
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post #10 of 34
5/26/05 at 9:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Nunziata
[

I love Nightbreed in my head and heart, but watching it now is excruciating.
Ditto. It desperately needs the fabled missing footage.

yt- I can actually see Nightbreed getting better treatment today than back in '89. There's a lot of off-beat horror being produced thanks to the Japanese influence. Back in '89 horror had just died (it wouldn't be re-animated until Scream came along). This explains why Nightbreed was destroyed in post-production and abandoned like an It's Alive baby by Fox. They added more Dekker scenes and marketed it as a slasher flick.
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post #11 of 34
5/26/05 at 9:31am
Wasn't there talk of a remake within the past couple years?
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post #12 of 34
5/26/05 at 11:16am
We got this. Today's bunch get Boogeyman. I honestly don't know what to make of it save that nothing's ever perfect, but sometimes it's brimming with invention.

I have John McCartey's book The Modern Horror Film which pulls together 50 of his favourite pictures up to about 1990 and comments on them with unabashed joy (Nightbreed just misses out in that date bracket). I mean, I get a mild kick out of some of the horror pictures in very recent years, but I'm beginning to think we got the last truly golden age before ADD screwed it all up for us.
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post #13 of 34
5/26/05 at 11:25am
I've still got The Nightbreed Chronicle at home somewhere, with a not-bad essay on the making of the movie and the shooting script. Sadly, it features lots of "Scene Deleted" and I'd love to know what went in those gaps.
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post #14 of 34
5/26/05 at 1:28pm
...
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post #15 of 34
5/26/05 at 1:34pm
The irony in this thread is overpowering.
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post #16 of 34
5/26/05 at 1:39pm
How so ?
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post #17 of 34
5/26/05 at 1:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Volta
The ironing in this thread is overpowering.
Yes, yes it is.
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post #18 of 34
5/26/05 at 1:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by yt
I remember when it came out it, as flawed as it was/is, it was still better than the cookie cutter sh*t in its peer group.
Still true in my opinion. So very, very flawed, but so much good stuff in there! I would love to see a remake, but it would be damn near impossible to capture the originality and fix the problems.
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post #19 of 34
5/26/05 at 1:56pm
Right. Got it. We're all enthusing so greatly yet it tanked ?

Yet again, box office doesn't equate with quality, which often leaves decent - if flawed - pictures out in the cold. CHUD's a minority within the minority of the internet.
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post #20 of 34
5/26/05 at 2:23pm
I think, Strax, they are getting a notion that this thread is about remaking a film being praised for it's originality. Which is hardly the gist of this thread.
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post #21 of 34
5/26/05 at 2:33pm
Thread Starter 
A lot of the best horror movies, with a few exceptions, have tanked. The riskier and more imaginative the story, the less palatable it is to the lowest common denominator appeal that big hit movies seem to have.

BobClark, I don't think that Nightbreed would get better treatment today. It would be developed and developed and end up just as banal as most of the "horror" movies that get released today. Also: Japanese horror isn't as risky as something like Nighbreed because it's drawing on a tried and true technique that has been around forever. American filmmakers of today just don' t have the discipline or restraint some of them had in bygone eras to do it right. Which is a tragedy.

You can tell watching Nightbreed that it was totally chopped to shreds but I've never seen the director's cut. Is it out there?
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post #22 of 34
5/26/05 at 2:44pm
Nightbreed has that whole revenge of the nerds vibe that became popular in the 90's and still permeates popular entertainment today. Take that and the way the film lends itself to the kind of dreamy horrific imagery Hollywood has co-opted from Japan, and I still think this would get a fairer shake today.

Rumor has it there is about 45 minutes of edited footage sitting in a Raiders of The Lost Arc style warehouse somewhere. Fox has said it's not worth the time and money it would take to search for it.
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post #23 of 34
5/26/05 at 4:17pm
Thread Starter 
Wow. Maybe someday some enterprising horror fan executive will patch it all back together...
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post #24 of 34
5/26/05 at 11:01pm
I loved this film to small tiny pieces. I havent seen it in about ten years though and im a bit wary of doing so. I know everyone mentions its "flawed" but jesus wept, its better than just about everything that was being released at the time and since. I mean the fact that Nightbreed and I Still Know What you Did Last Summer even exist in the same genre is just amazing.
I think re-making the film is the dumbest idea I have heard today, and i have heard eight dumb ideas so far and its just turned midday.
Come on people...
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post #25 of 34
5/26/05 at 11:09pm
Thread Starter 
Well, just remember: If you're not 'Breed, you're Meat!
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post #26 of 34
5/27/05 at 1:12pm
I liked it not so much as a horror film because it wasn`t scary but because it was essentialy a super-hero World envisionned by Clive Barker.
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post #27 of 34
6/3/05 at 3:39pm
Nightbreed was pretty imaginitive, it wasn't perfect, but it Barker constructed a pretty ambitious R rated horror movie. I would love to see a director's cut, but I'm not optimisitic. Sadly, at the Box Office Nightbreed tanked, $8,862,354 in BO according to IMDB. I was there though, Clive and Co. got my $5 bucks. Can anybody else claim they saw this in the theatre?
LL
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post #28 of 34
6/3/05 at 3:43pm
Three times.
I think my friends and I contributed to half of it's box office total.
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post #29 of 34
6/3/05 at 4:37pm
I had to make do with renting it on good old VHS. Still love the movie, though haven't seen it for years.
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post #30 of 34
6/3/05 at 10:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by A-COD
Nightbreed was pretty imaginitive, it wasn't perfect, but it Barker constructed a pretty ambitious R rated horror movie. I would love to see a director's cut, but I'm not optimisitic. Sadly, at the Box Office Nightbreed tanked, $8,862,354 in BO according to IMDB. I was there though, Clive and Co. got my $5 bucks. Can anybody else claim they saw this in the theatre?
I'm proud to say I did. I've also owned it in three different formats: VHS, laserdisc, and DVD. It's one of those movies I anxiously await every time the next format hits.
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post #31 of 34
6/10/05 at 9:59am
So I went out and finally blind bought this movie. I liked it alot. Good story line and good acting. Is there a sequel to this? Will they have nightbreed vs nightbreed? That ending was neat and should lead to a very intresting sequel if there is one out there. If not, they should do one.
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post #32 of 34
6/10/05 at 10:12am
A sequel was planned. But alas, movies that make $63.78 at the box office don't get sequels greenlighted.
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post #33 of 34
6/11/05 at 12:57am
Clive Barker has a new production company now dedicated to putting out "hard" horror films to combat the tide of PG-13 dreck that's currently popular. It's always possible that he'll be convinced to revisit the Nightbreed universe. We can only hope.
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post #34 of 34
6/11/05 at 1:52am
Is it me or does Clive Barker just have one of the coolest imaginations? This movie kind of proved it to me. It's kind of sick, but it also has the wonderful fantasy element to it. He definitely has a way of meshing them together. I always wished there was a way of making Weaveworld into a movie. I always pictured it as this wicked and bloody version of Lord of the Rings.
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