Clive Barker has an odd legacy on film. He completely disowned the movie made from the first story he wrote, which was Underworld. No, not the picture you’re thinking of, but one George Pavlou directed in 1985 and which isn’t strictly horror. I find it strange Barker teamed up with Pavlou again just a year later for Rawhead Rex, given his disdain for their previous venture.
This films starts out promisingly enough. David Dukes has been travelling around Ireland with his wife (Kelly Piper) and their son (Hugh O’Conor) and daughter (Cora Lunny), as he gathers material for a possible book on the vestiges of neolithic religions there.
In what is an interesting folk horror aspect, he becomes fixated on a church that likely was built on pagan holy ground. That is something which often happened in real-life in Christianity’s introduction to the isles. One of the easiest ways for a new religion to move into an area is to build the new houses of worship right where the old ones used to be. This is an idea explored well in some other pictures, most notably in Borderlands (a.k.a. Final Prayer).
Unfortunately, all this serves here is as the springboard for what is essentially a slasher flick, except the killer is an age-old demon. And, by “demon”, I mean some beefy guy in a bad latex mask with expressionless eyes.
The other effects here are mostly gore. Fortunately, this isn’t among the goriest films I have seen. That said, this is still a very gross and unpleasant film. I normally despise the concept of the “trigger warning”, but I feel I must warn potential viewers a child is killed by the titular creature. I was not pleased by that development, though I do admire the film for taking a risk that might alienate an audience.
There is at least one other villain in the film, but their purpose was unclear to me. Ronan Wilmot plays a church verger who can see everything Rex (Mr. Rex to you) sees. For whatever reason, this convinces the verger to choose the demon as his new god. In one pointlessly gross scene, Rex pisses on Wilmot as a “baptism”. This is one of those rare moments in cinema where one sees something they have never encountered before, while simultaneously wishing they still hadn’t seen it.
There is some black humor here, but I’m sure how much of it was intentional. One moment I laughed at which I’m also certain was meant to be funny is when a girl thinks she’s fleeing from the demon while hand-in-hand with her boyfriend, only to discover she’s only holding his severed hand.
I didn’t like Rawhead Rex, and was surprised I found the subpar Underworld preferable in comparison. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the film is what I least expected, and that is how real and interesting Dukes’s family seems to be. I think there’s a better movie in this than what was delivered. I’ll take the family and the folk horror trappings. You can keep Rawhead.
Dir: George Pavlou
Starring David Dukes, Kelly Piper, Ronan Wilmot
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray