No, this isn’t a good movie. It’s cheaply made, riddled with clichés and doesn’t come close to doing its source material, a 1985 short story by Clive Barker, justice. But RAWHEAD REX (1986) has a redeeming audacity; the sheer shamelessness with which it presents its monster-on-the-rampage story (yes that pretty much sums it up) is praise-worthy.
Clive Barker’s “Rawhead Rex” was contained in volume three of his legendary BOOKS OF BLOOD collection. One of BOOKS OF BLOOD’s undoubted highlights, the story, inspired by the 1925 M.R. James tale “An Evening’s Entertainment,” functioned as both an affectionate throwback to the B movies of old and a perverse deconstruction of same, with a prehistoric monster that functioned as a giant penis (an interpretation bolstered by the urination imagery that packs the tale, whose final line reads “A stream of urine pulsed from the corpse and ran down the road…After a few feet, it found the gutter and ran along it awhile to a crack in the tarmac; there it drained off into the welcoming earth”). An impressively rendered RAWHEAD REX graphic novel, created by Steve Niles, Les Edwards and Hector Gomez, appeared in 1994 (following an aborted attempt by Stephen Bissette, who details his labors on the Kino Lorber RAWHEAD REX Blu-ray).
Barker wrote the script for this British made film adaptation. It trailed the 1985 no-budgeter UNDERWORLD (TRANSMUTATIONS in the US), which wasn’t much of a success, although its creative team (which included Barker and director George Pavlou) put together this follow-up in extremely quick succession. Both films were released in the US by Charles Band’s Empire Pictures, with RAWHEAD REX faring slightly better at the box office than its predecessor. Barker, for the record, has done his best in the years since to pretend that neither film ever existed.
The phallic imagery of the “Rawhead Rex” story was played down by Pavlou, although the film does begin with a very penis-like monument being uprooted in a small Irish village. The culprit is an overzealous farmer who ends up becoming the first victim of Rawhead Rex (Heinrich von Schellendorf), a guy in a silly monster suit and cheap-looking mask a massive prehistoric creature with a full head of hair (thus nullifying its name) and hypnotic red eyes whose rebirth comes complete with cheesy lighting effects (Pavlou makes zero effort to obscure the critter’s appearance). Rawhead’s apparent aim: to destroy everything in sight and use its clawed fingers to slash up as many people as possible.
British films of the eighties and nineties were often headlined by Americans, a tendency that here takes the form of Howard (David Dukes), a Yank on a research trip. He’s with his wife Elaine (Kelly Piper) and two young children, who serve as potential victims for Rawhead Rex. There’s also Declan (Ronan Wilmot), a psychotic priest who after burning his hands on a magically-endowed bureau becomes Rawhead’s adherent, receiving a baptism by having the critter pee on him.
There’s little sense going into this film’s shortcomings (which are too numerous to fully categorize). Rather, I’ll enumerate the good things: RAWHEAD REX is, as mentioned above, audacious and completely without shame, making no apologies for the ridiculousness of its story or the cheapness of its special effects. There’s no irony or spoofery, which I say is a good thing, as the film doesn’t require intentional humor to generate laughter.
George Pavlou may not be the most stylish or imaginative filmmaker–those are things that aren’t required in RAWHEAD REX, whose simplicity is among its major assets–but he demonstrates real ingenuity in his budget-lite set-pieces. Included are a severed hand gag that was filched by JURASSIC PARK and a pyrotechnic-packed climax that directly foreshadows that of the later, and allegedly better, Clive Barker adaptation NIGHTBREED (1990/2014). I actually prefer RAWHEAD REX to NIGHTBREED, as the latter was made with much greater financial resources, meaning its shortcomings are far less forgivable.
I’ll give the final word to Clive Barker himself: “Give me B-movies or give me death!” A B-movie RAWHEAD REX very much is, and a mighty fun one.
Vital Statistics
RAWHEAD REX
Alpine Pictures/Green Man Productions
Director: George Pavlou
Producers: Levin Attew, Don Hawkins
Screenplay: Clive Barker
(Based on a story by Clive Barker)
Cinematography: John Metcalfe
Editing: Andy Horvitch
Cast: David Dukes, Kelly Piper, Hugh O’Conor, Cora Venus Lunny, Ronan Wilmot, Niall Toibin, Niall O’Brien, Heinrich von Schellendorf, Donal McCann, Eleanor Feely, Gladys Sheehan, Madelyn Erskine, Gerry Walsh, Noel O’Donovan, John Olohan, Peter Donovan, Bob Carlile, Patrick Dawson