Review: Rawhead Rex (1986)

Directed by: George Pavlou
Starring: David Dukes, Kelly Piper, Niall Tóibín
Written by: Clive Barker
Music by: Colin Towns
IMDb

The film adaptations of Clive Barker’s fiction have been … less than successful, you might say, on the balance. One of the more critically panned attempts was George Pavlou’s version of the short story, “Rawhead Rex,” from the Books of Blood collection, about an ancient demon with shady ties to the church that’s accidentally set loose in rural Ireland. Given that the screenplay was written by Clive Barker himself, it’s a little surprising that his nuanced, creepy short story ended up as a very straightforward monster movie with a silly-ass monster. Barker would end up basically disowning this movie as a result of how much it differed from the source material, and move to directing his own adaptations of Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions. That was probably a decent idea, since all three of those movies are pretty, pretty good. But time has been kind to lil Rawhead, and it has found an audience thanks to cable television and a nice Blu-ray restoration from Kino Lorber a few years back. Now, this is most certainly a very straightforward monster movie with a silly-ass monster, but it’s also very entertaining and quite atmospheric. Its setting in the misty Irish countryside really does a lot to amplify those production values, and its more beautifully shot than you’d ever expect for a movie like this. Pavlou’s direction also isn’t bad and a number of sequences are adequately moody and suspenseful. And even Mr. Rex, with his crossed eyes, always-gaping maw with no articulation in the rubber jaws, and heavy metal mullet, still works on occasion, particularly when his face is obscured by darkness, with nothing but his glowing red eyes cutting through. The acting is not the best, but it’s also not distractingly bad. I feel like I say this a lot, but this is another movie that could have used a lot more of the old ultra-violence to help wade through the occasional slog. But most of those shortcomings are okay when the modest goal is 90 minutes of monster rampage. But with how strong some elements of this movie are, you’re left wishing the script had spent a little more time working through the demon’s ties to this community’s religion (as well as his hatred for preggers folk), that the ending wasn’t goofy as hell, and of course that the monster didn’t look like a rabies ape, because this might have been something pretty great. Instead, it’s fine and pretty fun, but severely flawed.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10