Clive Barker

When I was in High School a few of my friends were really into horror movies. I wasn't, but not because I had anything against them. I just hadn't seen a good one yet. I was more into Sci-Fi. Then one day I found myself over some one else's house watching Hellraiser II and loving it on a couple of different levels. First, it was scary as all hell (no pun intended). Second, it was a gross out that I thought looked cool instead of just gross (lets rewind to when Julia comes out of the mattress). Third, it was a collection of fantastic one-liners coming from all directions. It was interesting in that the obvious principal monster in what was essentially (at least to me) a monster movie was not really the bad guy. The bad guy was a normal looking guy.

I really liked the movie and not long after Larry and I rented the original Hellraiser. I liked Hellraiser II... I loved Hellraiser. Again, the obvious monster was not the bad guy. He and his monster cohorts were just four demons doing their job (and enjoying it). The real bad guys were a woman and her brother-in-law who had a fling behind the husbands back. It all kinda spiraled downhill from there for the two of them. It was exceptionally gross but not as bad as the sequel. Somehow the gore actually meant something. It wasn't just splatter for the sake of gross out.

I found out the movie was written and directed by an English guy named Clive Barker who was primarily known as a writer. He had started out writing short stories and then moved on to novels before taking a shot at films. I went to the Tewksbury town library and picked up a novel called Damnation Game. I read it over the course of a few days and was absolutely hooked.

Over the course of the next year or so I read everything I could get my hands on. If I found myself in a library or bookstore the first (and often only) place I went to was the Horror section and the authors whose names began with B. His short stories were unbelievably intense. Dread still sticks in my memory as the best of those. His novels were often hugely imaginative works where the world was transformed into something completely incredible. Weaveworld, Imajica, The Great and Secret Show, and it's sequel Everville all kept me glued to the page. I devoured them. I couldn't get enough.

Then he started losing me. He made a couple of movies that weren't all that great. Candyman was okay but his original story was infinitely better. The same could be said about Lord of Illusions. Neither movie was bad, but neither was all that wonderful either. He published two novels, Galilee and Sacrament that did absolutely nothing for me. He then published a couple of novels that were geared toward children, and a couple of collections of his plays (he wrote plays before turning to short stories). None of it was bad, but none of it was enough to rope me in. After a few years he wrote a novel called Cold Heart Canyon that was pretty good, but then he seemed to stop publishing new fiction.

He moved on, I moved on. My tastes changed a lot. I still enjoy a good horror movie these days, but I don't have a lot of interest in seeking them out. I still read as much as I can, but horror just isn't drawing me in much anymore. Many years have passed and (most) of the things that called to me when I was in my teens and twenties aren't calling to me now that I'm in my thirties. I am much more into comedy and action movies than anything else now, although the Sci-Fi is still a big draw. When I look at the books I've been buying over the last five years or so, most of them are histories or biographies, or even travelogues (and Sci-Fi). It has been ages upon ages since I've read a horror novel written by anyone other than Stephen King, and let's be frank here; The King's work isn't very horrifying and hasn't been for a long time.

What is the point of this, you may ask? Well, three things in recent months have happened that have very much surprised me.

First, I found myself in a movie theater with my step-son a few weeks ago. We were seeing the movie G-Force, the one about the hamsters working as secret agents. Before the movie started there was a little short film/PSA type thing that played. It was clips of reasonably famous people talking about dreams. There was one scraggly looking Englishman who said something about how his dreams might be nightmares to other people but they were fun to him. After a few other faces flashed on the screen another shot of this same Englishman came up and it had his name displayed. Clive Barker. I didn't recognize him at all. I was surprised by that. Granted, I hadn't seen his face in years, but still... he was my A+, #1 favorite writer, I should have recognized him.

A couple of weeks later Jen and I were in the Salem public library. We were wandering around the stacks looking at whatever was there. I happened to find myself in Fiction - B and looked for that familiar name. There he was. Much to my surprise, there was a novel there I had never seen before. Mister B. Gone. He had managed to sneak a new book out without me having any clue. There was a time when I knew of his upcoming releases long before they hit the shelves.

Today I was hit with a third surprise. He snuck a movie out right under my nose too. The Midnight Meat Train. It's based on one of his better short stories and the reviews look pretty good. I have read four or five and most of them agree that it is the best Barker film since Hellraiser.

I will probably read Mister B. Gone at some point. I have a lot of things I want to get to first, but it is on my to-be-read list for sure. The movie however is probably going to be missed. Watching movies without my wife isn't much fun for me and I don't think a movie about people being butchered (literally) on the New York subways is something she'd be all that interested in. If I find myself lying awake some night with you're-not-sleeping-tonight level tooth pain and it's on cable somewhere I might watch it, but otherwise probably not. It wouldn't be the first of his movies I didn't see, and the ones that really interested me the most were those he wrote and directed which is not the case here.

You don't really notice your own tastes changing. You don't really get to see your personality shift from interest to interest. Still... I have hard cover copies of The Great and Secret Show and Everville on our new IKEA bookshelf. Maybe a nostalgia read is in order. For old times' sake.

Thanks for the frights Clive.