CLIVE BARKER: Literary God. Movie Icon. Horror Hero.
- Aug 28
- 8 min read
With the Peacock premiere of Night of the Zoopocalypse happening this week, I thought I'd write a bit about the one and only Clive Barker.
Clive Barker is one of my favorite creative geniuses. Not just in the world of horror but in the larger world of literature, film, theatre, comics, visual art, and culture in general. He is a true renaissance man of the dark and strange.
He writes novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. He directs films. He paints, illustrates, designs toys, creates worlds. He’s worked in theatre, television, video games, comic books...you name it.
The guy’s imagination has no limits. He burst onto the scene in the 1980s and basically changed horror forever, giving us fresh, bold, visceral, transgressive material that set him apart from everyone else. Stephen King once said, “I have seen the future of horror, and his name is Clive Barker.”
And for once, that wasn’t hyperbole, it was dead-on.
Born in Liverpool in 1952, Barker had this fascinating, weird, formative childhood, his mother was a painter, his father a personnel director.
At the age of three, he witnessed French skydiver Léo Valentin fall to his death at an air show. Imagine being three years old and that’s the first big real-world trauma etched into your brain.
No wonder his work would forever be filled with death, flight, falling, pain, ecstasy, all those themes that would bleed into his plays, his prose, his paintings.
Barker studied English and philosophy at the University of Liverpool, and even then he was already staging avant-garde plays. In the mid-70s he formed The Dog Company with his friends (including Doug Bradley, who of course went on to become Pinhead), producing wild theatre pieces like The History of the Devil and Frankenstein in Love.
But it was the Books of Blood, those incredible short stories published in the early 1980s, that announced him as a new voice in horror. Uncompromising, filthy, brilliant, imaginative.
Stories like “The Midnight Meat Train,” “The Yattering and Jack,” “In the Hills, the Cities," they were grotesque, poetic, and unlike anything else.
And then came The Damnation Game, Weaveworld, The Great and Secret Show, Imajica, Sacrament, epic, sprawling novels of fantasy and horror that proved he wasn’t just about shock, but also about world-building on a mythic scale.
My personal favorite of his novels? Imajica. A masterpiece. He also gave us the Abarat books, blending children’s fantasy with his insane imagination, illustrated by his own paintings.
And then there was Hellraiser. Based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, Barker adapted and directed it himself in 1987, and boom, instant horror legend. Think about it: his first feature film gave us Pinhead and the Cenobites. That’s like Orson Welles dropping Citizen Kane as his debut.
It remains one of the best horror film debuts in history. Dark, gory, perverse, witty, and original, it cemented him as an icon.
He’d only direct two more features (Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions), but his influence spread far beyond. His short story “The Forbidden” became Candyman. He executive produced Gods and Monsters.
He created action figures (Tortured Souls) with full mythologies attached. He wrote for comics, designed video games (Undying and Jericho), created art for costumes, and still kept pumping out novels, poems, and paintings.
Personally, Clive Barker means a lot to me. I met him multiple times: at WGN Radio when he was promoting Hellraiser and Nightbreed, at conventions, at book signings. I’ve even had dinner with him.
And let me tell you, he is one of the nicest, most generous, endlessly creative men I’ve ever met. Some of my most treasured possessions are hardcover first editions of his novels with personal inscriptions and original sketches he drew for me inside.
That’s the kind of guy he is, overflowing with creativity, and willing to share it with fans. He was always a hero to horror lovers, but he also became a hero in the gay community.
His work has always had that subtext of forbidden desire, the queer experience, the margins of society, and when he officially came out, he embraced it fully in his art. He’s a god in horror, but he’s also a voice of representation, honesty, and personal bravery.
His health has been up and down (serious scares like toxic shock syndrome in 2012), but he’s still creating, still writing (he says he’s working on 31 manuscripts right now), still painting.
He’s slowed down on conventions and public appearances, but the body of work is already staggering. Plays like The History of the Devil and Crazyface. Novels like Sacrament and Coldheart Canyon.
Short stories that redefined horror. The Hellraiser comics, the Marvel Razorline imprint. His art exhibited in galleries. Even his Halloween costumes and toy lines have become part of horror history. The man is a machine of imagination.
And for me? He’s a hero. A mentor, even from afar. A creative titan whose work shaped my own love of horror and fantasy. I’m proud to say I’m part of the “horror tribe,” and Clive Barker is one of our leaders, our kings. His mix of horror, fantasy, sexuality, surrealism, and emotional honesty is unmatched.
So, with all of that, his life, his art, his theatre, his books, his comics, his paintings, his filmmaking, his struggles and triumphs, it only makes sense to now look at his movies. He directed only three, but they’re essential. His stories have inspired many more. Some he wrote, some he produced, some were just adapted.
And now I’ve put together my personal ranking: the Top 5 Essential Clive Barker Movies. These are the films that represent the best of his vision, his influence, and his legacy.
The 5 Essential Clive Barker Movies:
This is the granddaddy of them all. Written and directed by Clive Barker himself, based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, this is his directorial debut and still one of the best horror debuts of all time.
It’s the story of that mystical puzzle box that summons the Cenobites, sadomasochistic beings who can’t tell the difference between pain and pleasure. Andrew Robinson, Claire Higgins, Ashley Lawrence, and of course Doug Bradley as Pinhead (though he wasn’t called that originally, just “Lead Cenobite”) deliver performances that sear into your brain.
It’s sexy, weird, kinky, sadomasochistic, and wonderful. Barker directed it because he was pissed off about how badly earlier adaptations of his work had been handled, and he knocked it out of the park. With its jaw-dropping practical makeup effects, unforgettable monsters, and insane imagination, Hellraiser is an absolute stone-cold classic.
It spawned 11 sequels, a remake, and even some TV work, but nothing matches the raw originality of Barker’s vision. Funny, terrifying, disturbing, even erotic at times, Hellraiser is a masterpiece, one of the most important horror films ever made.
Written and directed by Barker, based on his novella Cabal, this is another astonishing blast of imagination. It’s about Aaron Boone, a troubled man who’s manipulated by his psychiatrist (played by none other than David Cronenberg!) into thinking he’s a serial killer. Boone discovers Midian, an underground cemetery where a secret tribe of monsters known as the Nightbreed live in hiding.
When it came out, Nightbreed was a commercial and critical flop, advertised like a slasher when it was really a fantasy-horror epic. The studio butchered it.
But even in its theatrical cut, it was more imaginative and daring than almost anything else playing in theaters. Then, decades later, Barker finally got the rights back, and in 2014 released the Director’s Cut, which is a masterpiece.
The creatures, the world-building, the allegories about being an outsider, the queer subtext, the sheer vision, it’s classic Barker. Cronenberg is chilling as hell as the doctor, and Craig Sheffer is great as Boone. The Director’s Cut is the one to watch. It is pure Barker, uncut, imaginative, and glorious.
This is Barker’s third and final directorial effort, based on his short story "The Last Illusion" from Books of Blood Volume 6. It’s a neo-noir supernatural horror film starring Scott Bakula as Harry D’Amour, Barker’s recurring detective character.
Harry investigates the dark side of magic, stage illusions, and cults, and crosses paths with the sorcerer Nix, who’s about as scary a villain as Barker ever put on screen.
The movie blends noir detective tropes with pure horror fantasy in a way only Barker could. Famke Janssen is fantastic, Daniel von Bargen is creepy as hell, and Kevin J. O’Connor (a Chicago guy and terrific character actor) steals scenes and later shared amazing stories about how great Barker was to work with.
Again, the theatrical cut was compromised, but the Director’s Cut is the real deal, darker, creepier, and way more effective. Sadly, after this film, Barker had enough of fighting studios and the ratings board.
He never directed another feature. But what a run: Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions. That’s a trifecta of horror/fantasy brilliance straight from his brain to the screen.
Directed by Bernard Rose but based on Barker’s short story "The Forbidden," this one is essential. Rose took Barker’s tale, transplanted it to Chicago (Cabrini-Green, specifically), and created a modern urban legend, say his name five times in the mirror, and Candyman appears with his bloody hook.
Virginia Madsen is superb, but this is the film that made Tony Todd a legend. His performance as Candyman is unforgettable, menacing, tragic, almost romantic in its sadness.
The story of a murdered Black artist, lynched for loving a white woman, is transformed into a gothic horror fairy tale with razor-sharp social commentary.
Barker gave Rose his blessing, and even though Rose put a lot of his own spin on it, Barker’s DNA is all over the film, in its forbidden love, its transgressive violence, its blend of beauty and horror. A Chicago classic, and one of the greatest horror films of the ’90s.
Based on Barker’s short story and produced by him, this one was directed by Ryuhei Kitamura and written by Jeff Buhler. It stars Bradley Cooper (yes, that Bradley Cooper, pre-Hangover) as a photographer who stumbles upon a subway butcher, played by Vinnie Jones, and discovers a horrifying secret world under the city.
This movie is nasty, gory, funny, and pure Clive Barker: hidden worlds, secret societies, monsters lurking just beyond our perception. Just like Hellraiser’s Cenobite realm or Nightbreed’s Midian, The Midnight Meat Train imagines a whole subterranean nightmare under our reality.
It didn’t get the release it deserved, but horror fans have since embraced it as a cult classic. With Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Brooke Shields (yes!), and a ton of gnarly kills, this movie is unforgettable. It’s another shining example of Barker’s twisted imagination brought to life.
Final Thoughts
So there you have it, the five essential Clive Barker movies. Three directed by the man himself, two more that sprang straight from his stories, all infused with his imagination, his obsessions, and his brilliance.
Clive Barker is a god in the horror community, a hero in the gay community, and a creative force whose influence stretches across novels, plays, comics, paintings, toys, and, yes, these unforgettable films.
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