Folk Horror is getting a kind of renaissance as of late, with the works of Robert Eggers and Ari Aster cultivating new ground in an oft-overlooked corner of horror lore. The rural ambiance, isolation, religion, and xenophobia create a web of what theorists call “pastoral violence,” a beautified, natural backdrop to the horrific atrocities committed in the narrative.
And while the obvious examples exist — The Wicker Man and Children of the Corn — there’s another layer of cult to these already cult-ridden flicks. Those deep-cut “we didn’t even really know they were folk horror” folk horrors. And it’s pretty apparent, knowing what we know now, Clive Barker’s Rawhead Rex is pretty much as cult folksy as it gets.
The 1987 Clive Barker adaptation lands firmly in B-movie cheese, a brute monster rampage through and through. For director George Pavlou and the producers at Alpine Pictures, that’s exactly what they were trying to do: make a monster movie.
The full latex bodysuit with hideous features and ‘80s hair metal mullet had a four-week deadline, an absurdly short period of time for a clearly very skilled FX team, but it left their monster lacking. Sure, he boasted a formidable silhouette against the rising moon, with permanent grue stuck in his teeth, but Rawhead was exactly that — raw. Buggy eyes and a head that didn’t turn on the neck. That didn’t seem to matter to producers whose money was in for that low-budget monster churn.
In the Irish countryside, writer Howard Hallenbeck and his family settle in the small town of Rathmore, looking for pre-Christian sacred sites when they are caught in the middle of raising one of the old gods. A farmer has unearthed the god from beneath a stone obelisk — one of the only phallic symbols remaining from Barker’s original ideas — and chaos ensues in the town. Authority figures are taken under Rawhead’s thrall, serving as his own personal Renfields as Rawhead casts a net of destruction. Howard is tasked with piecing together the mysteries of the old church, and Rawhead’s only vulnerability is hidden away inside the church alter.
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Barker himself adapted the short story from Books of Blood Vol. 3, and his script carried with it all the sociocultural trimmings of his original story. In the end, Barker felt they were left behind in favor of brutality and bloodshed. An odd statement considering the original story took much more creative liberty to dismember, but it never lost the plot. For Barker, what was missing was the phallus.
Rawhead Rex received poor reviews upon its release, citing the poor design of the monster and a relatively dull climax. The monster design was a pain point for Barker as well, desiring him to appear more like a monster-dong. Not that Barker is so upset that his penis monster didn’t make it on screen that he threw a tantrum, but more so because of what it represents: the symbolism of masculinity in its purest toxic form.
Barker has pretty much disowned the flick since its release. The stripping of subtext was too much for him. What was an incredibly visceral psycho-play of masculine and feminine, religion, and xenophobia in the original story gave way to a blunt and awkward monster movie. But, it led Barker to the director’s chair for his next adaptation. So, in a way, if Rawhead Rex had anything to offer beyond its schlocky superficiality, it was Hellraiser.
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Looking back 35 years later, Rawhead Rex is definitely a popcorn flick. Running a tight 89 minutes with supersonic pacing, it’s set-piece after set-piece of escalating mayhem. Reverend O’Brien goes insane and gets a baptism by urine, the entire police force goes up in flames, there’s plenty of individual maimings and torture, with the added shock of child murder. Where Rawhead Rex offers a very pure form of monstrous revelry, I would argue that despite Pavlou and producers’ best efforts, Barker’s script subtext shines through. You just have to be looking for it.
The proverbial meat is still there. Rawhead Rex falls into a much more nuanced and historically fraught genre of folk horror. And though it lacks the subtly of normal folk fair, it’s an example swimming with tropes and genre lore that can seduce discerning viewers into finding that underlying symbolism that Barker thought was desecrated.
First, there’s religion. Hallenbeck (the outsider of folk horror archetype) researches the pagan rites of this isolated town displaying the ignorance and disassociation of the Christian church with those precursor sects of worship. Whoever built the church wrongly assembled the stained glass. The first person to fall under the thrall of the beast is Reverend O’Brien — someone who should righteously be beyond corruption but ends up being the most vulnerable. It’s a statement not just on the burying of pagan tradition but the hubris of Christianity that it is “above” the natural gods and monsters that came before it.
Then, there’s the masculine and feminine of it all. Rawhead spends extra time destroying a farmhouse kitchen — a symbol of the house –feminine. He runs rather than rips through a pregnant woman, a symbol of “fear of what it [Rawhead] cannot be” (a very loose translation of the Latin on the church window). Then it is discovered that women — or more specifically, the power to create life — is Rawhead’s only vulnerability. Here we have the Christians stepping in and hiding the female power totem as well. Scared of what ladies can do with power, lads?
Folk horror has this relationship with the female empowered: tapping into that primal life force of Mother Earth, Gaia, and the life and death of it all. Where Rawhead is pure destruction, his downfall is pure creation — that of the Woman — which is why only when Elaine Hallenbeck helms the totem does Rawhead finally fall.
It seems the ideas that Barker drafted couldn’t be completely expunged from what everyone else called a “monster movie.” The best part of Rawhead Rex is that it really could be either. Whether you’re busting out the popcorn and popping it on with a group of friends just to watch the chaos ensue, or you’re binging out on the elevated world of folk horror and need to know what’s next on the list — Rawhead Rex checks the boxes.
While pretty much a forgotten gem of ‘80s cheese, complete with corny effects and soap opera acting, Kino Lorber resurrected this totem as a Barker classic with a special edition Blu Ray in 2017. Time has treated it well, in my humble opinion, with an appreciation for the silliness of the monster juxtaposed with respect for the attempts at grander ideas.
Or maybe Rawhead Rex is just so vacant of anything of substance that I’m projecting those ideas where they aren’t. Either way, it’s an enthralling romp of a big, dumb monster going berserk, and I’m always here for that. As O’Brien says, “He was here before Christ. Before civilization…” and perhaps he’ll be here after, as well.
One question regarding the power of the fertile woman totem,though. If it completely destroyed Rawhead,why did his battered but still-alive and still ferocious face pop out from behind a headstone as Neil(the murdered teenage boy’s younger brother)was leaving his brother’s grave? No one points out that he was still alive at the ending despite having been lasered and covered in dirt in an open grave.