Everybody has a secret face.
For his followup to Hellraiser (not counting Hellbound: Hellraiser II, which he produced but did not write or direct), Clive Barker took another one of his novellas, Cabal, and set about bringing it to the screen. The result, 1990's Nightbreed, was released 20 years ago today, which is why I gave it a second look tonight. (I saw it once a long time ago, but that was largely because of David Cronenberg's presence in the cast and Danny Elfman's work on the score. The film didn't make much of an impact on me beyond that.)
A decidedly schizophrenic affair, Nightbreed seems to want to explore the customs and history of Midian, the place "where the monsters go" and to which troubled young man Craig Sheffer is drawn by his dreams (which mostly revolve around what seem to be gibbering Cirque du Soleil performers), but it keeps getting bogged down in the story of a Calgary-based serial killer who turns out to be Cronenberg's soft-spoken psychiatrist, who frames Sheffer for his murders and arranges for him to be gunned down by the police. (If that seems like a spoiler, keep in mind Cronenberg reveals himself to be the man behind the creepy mask very early on, so it's not like Barker was trying to keep that a secret or anything.) Then there's Sheffer's bereaved girlfriend (Anne Bobby), who has trouble believing he's dead when he gets up and walks out of the police morgue one day. It's only when she follows him to Midian that their sanctuary, which the monsters have called home for many years, is threatened.
It's difficult to say what exactly went wrong with Nightbreed. It's a project that seemed to have enormous potential but somehow managed to squander most of it. It's tempting to lay the blame for its failure entirely at the feet of the studio, which forced Barker to cut the running time way down (which is why many of the scenes seem extremely choppy), but Barker has to take some of the heat since his script is marred by clichéd dialogue and cheesy one-liners, not to mention several over-the-top characters who detract from every scene they appear in. And while it's great that he wanted to tell a story about monsters who are sympathetic, he probably should have figured out a way to do so without having to blow a lot of shit up unnecessarily. Also, since the Nightbreed are all supposed to be shapeshifters, would it have killed him to throw in a werewolf, for Lon's sake? I don't think that's too much to ask.