Underworld, aka Transmutations, is the first feature length screenplay by Clive Barker, who reportedly hated the finished product. There’s no word on whether he has commented on (let alone seen) the version I’m reviewing today, which is the extended cut containing eleven minutes of footage not found in the poorly received theatrical version. Although I haven’t seen the film before, it’s immediately clear which bits have been spliced back in because they stick out like a sore thumb. The 35mm film from the theatrical version was scanned for the restoration, but all the extra stuff existed only on an old VHS. (Curiously, the same thing happened when Barker himself was involved with early restorations of Nightbreed.)

This patchwork of film and shitty VHS footage sounds more jarring than it actually is—and not only because the bitchin’ synth score ties it all altogether. The restored bits make Underworld more interesting from a technical point of view while slightly improving on the neo-noir mood the director was trying to establish. Above all, it’s an intimate look at what an editor actually does, showing how much freedom they have in shaping the final movie. We’re not talking about merely restoring some missing cutaways. There are entire conversations, scenes, and bits of character development restored here. Above all, the extended cut shows just how short-sighted the producers were to go through the trouble of hiring top-tier talent, just to turn around and attempt to normalize it for maximum profits. Worse, their edits were probably demanded for a shorter runtime, so I wonder: Why didn’t they cut the long bits where the hero plods through the least convincing sewer set in history?

All that meddling didn’t help. Though Clive Barker would work again with director George Pavlou on the superior Rawhead Rex, the experience ultimately led him to become a director himself with 1987’s Hellraiser. If anybody’s gonna screw up his work, it might as well be himself, right? Still, I think there’s just enough of Barker’s personality in Underworld to make it worthwhile for his completionists. Like too many supernatural detective films, this one is at its best before the mystery reveals itself disappointingly early on. Underworld’s noir elements are fine. Its horror elements are not.

The film opens with the kidnapping of a high class prostitute, which leads a rich business mogul to hire a private investigator to find her. It turns out that the detective is the prostitute’s old flame, which is hard to believe considering he’s so reluctant to take the job. Similarly, when the detective and his love interest reunite (the first time they share any screen time in the movie), their chemistry is anything but convincing. In fact, the hero has a stronger chemistry with another prostitute whose advances he keeps turning down.

The private eye, with his oddly streaked hair, bears some resemblance to David Vanian, frontman of The Damned, particularly during the group’s brief transmutation (see what I did there?) from punk to goth. No, he’s not a particularly strong actor, but he’s serviceable as a prototype for Clive Barker’s Harry D’Amour, the hard boiled detective played by Scott Bakula in Lord of Illusions. Another point in the film’s favor is that, even forty years ago, Barker was drawn to the denizens of his fictional underworlds. An early strand of Nightbreed’s DNA is woven throughout, particularly in the film’s dreamlike opening sequence and the comradery among subterranean freaks.

Among the supporting cast of character actors (Steven Berkoff, Art Malik, and Miranda Richardson) is Denholm Elliot. He’s easily the best actor in the film, but he’s reduced to playing a mad scientist who doesn’t gel with Barker’s more recognizable sensibilities. You’d expect themes of sadomasochism, bondage, and identity, not a routine villain with a grandiose plan to… well, what the hell is his plan? To get streetwalkers hooked on a drug that will ultimately deform them? That’s, uh… I fail to see the scientific merit in that, much less any kind of financial or power gain. Even so, the film’s goofy premise does explore something Barker is very much known for: body horror, but it just isn’t horrific enough to warrant interest.

Don’t let anyone tell you it’s an uninteresting movie. It’s not. Undercooked, perhaps, but it still offers a fascinating if not crude glimpse into Clive Barker’s psyche as a filmmaker. Check it out if you’re a fan of the writer’s early work. Skip it if you’re not.

Ah, Scanners. You may look high and low for a bigger fan of this flick, but you may not find one. It’s not just the candy bar scenes that draw me into David Cronenberg’s first masterpiece of many. It’s the quiet moments in between. Few genre filmmakers were great at these stretches of relative silence (John Carpenter and George Romero come to mind). I would argue almost no one actively making films like this are even allowed to try today. How could they when the most common note from studio execs is now “Keep repeating the plot because most viewers are staring at their phones”?

Scanners, with its liminal spaces and flatly shot subjects, is clearly made in a bygone era, reveling in the fact it isn’t a Hollywood movie rather than trying to mimic one. Its machined plot feels influenced by The Terminator, though it predates that film by three years, and it’s photographed like a utilitarian art flick. There are moments of goofiness—wonderful goofiness—and Cronenberg embraces that stuff rather than acting like he’s above it. Look, it’s a story about people who control other people with their minds. There’s simply no way for a movie to look cool when its performers are emoting such things. Can you imagine how fucking dull this would be if it brought out the leather coats and slow motion?

For the opener, a young transient by the name of Cameron Vale is captured by ConSec, a private security company, after psychically attacking a terrible woman in a shopping mall’s food court. The suits inject Vale with a tranquilizer that subdue his powers and calm the voices in his head, which are the unfiltered thoughts of everyone around him. In the next scene, upper level personnel gather to watch a demonstration in ConSec’s headquarters. There a man reveals himself to be a scanner: one of 237 known people on the planet who possess psychic and telekinetic abilities. When he attempts to demonstrate his ability on a volunteer (Michael Ironside), it turns out the volunteer is a much more powerful scanner known as Darryl Revok. Revok, which is a fantastic name for a fantastic villain, overpowers ConSec’s scanner and makes his head explode.

This is by far the greatest head explosion in movie history, which is why the film automatically scores full points on the Gore Meter. When I was a kid, I read that the scene had been accomplished not with professional pyrotechnics, but by concealing an actual shotgun in the dummy’s torso. (Naturally, I asked my parents if I could have a shotgun because I, too, wanted to shoot a scene like that on the home camcorder. For some reason they declined my request.) Due to the obvious safety concerns, I would be extremely surprised if any film ever features a more gnarly and meaty head explosion in the future. It may be impossible to reproduce the effect with standard Hollywood pyrotechnics, which the sequels seemingly prove.

ConSec executives gather in a boardroom the next morning to discuss the implications of their security breach. When one of the board members suggests ending scanner research altogether, Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) reminds them that they are in a cold war with Revok’s secret army of scanners whether they like it or not. Their only hope is to train a powerful scanner of their own, which they have recently acquired with their capture of Cameron Vale. Wisely, Cronenberg gives McGoohan, a classically trained character actor, the bulk of the film’s more outlandish exposition, which is at its most unbelievable when he explains that Vale can scan a computer as well as he can humans. The premise may have seemed plausible in 1981, but now, when literally everyone knows a computer does not have a nervous system analogous to humans, the explanation is the goofiest part of the entire picture.

What’s most interesting about the film is that Cronenberg chooses to depict his scanners as humans rather than superheroes. Most of the scanners had troubled childhoods. Almost none of them fit into society unless they learn to manipulate others at their will. Revok himself attempted to drill a hole in his own brain in an effort to quiet the relentless thoughts filling his head. Ironside lends a gravitas to the character that makes you believe he could genuinely become obsessed with a new world order, elevating what would have been a routine plot device into a solid character trait. So while its plot may sound like that of a generic genre film, it’s a very satisfying hybrid of wild fantasy and realism.

Scanners was a perfect primer for a memorable horror franchise. Indeed, it spawned four sequels, two of which I may have seen more than the original. That’s not to say they were any good, just that in the days before streaming movies, you kinda had to just live with whatever you taped off of Cinemax. I plan to feature a Scanners film each Friday this month so don’t miss out. At any rate, this is one of my favorite films of all time and it has never looked better on home video than it does right now.

Kicking off this year’s 31 Days of Gore is Stuart Gordon’s The Pit and the Pendulum, produced for Full Moon. Lance Henriksen plays the friar Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. I’m a little confused what Henriksen is going for here (certainly not historical accuracy). I get the feeling he wanted to create an intimidating impression of the torturer while Gordon pushed for a jovial atmosphere. The performance doesn’t really fit in Gordon’s universe, which is surprising because Henriksen is often the best part of films like this.

Gordon regulars stand out as Torquemada’s evil but gleefully stupid henchmen: Jeffrey “I gave him life!” Combs is the trusted scribe; Fortress’s Tom Towles portrays the chief enforcer; and Stephen Lee of Dolls fame plays the oaf who carts bodies out of the castle. One of the more interesting henchmen is Mendoza, played by Breaking Bad’s Mark Margolis. Unlike Henriksen, Margolis successfully finds a tone of seriousness that somehow works in the otherwise goofy picture. Unlike his peers, who only use religion as a loophole for torturin’, Mendoza is truly loyal to Torquemada’s plight to cleanse the earth of sinners. This despite the fact that Torquemada wrongfully accused Mendoza of crimes in the past, the punishment for which resulted in the partially healed stigmata bored through each of his hands.

Two young bread-makers, Antonio and Maria, are imprisoned when Torquemada accuses them of witchcraft. As is often the case in films like this, the woman whose beauty tempts self-righteous authority figures gets locked in the dungeon. Antonio makes a couple of impotent attempts to rescue her, only to find himself locked in another section of the dungeon, awaiting execution. Meanwhile, Maria meets an old hag played by horror’s favorite elder woman, Frances Bay. As it turns out, Bay’s character really is a witch who teaches Maria a few tricks, including astral projection, so that she can leave her body whenever the torture becomes too painful.

Oliver Reed adds weight as the cardinal who has been sent, on the pope’s orders, to bring Torquemada back to Rome. Torquemada refuses, choosing instead to seal the emissary in a void behind a wall. (It just occurred to me that Reed’s character should be alive at the end of the movie, after the bad guys are defeated, but none of the good guys think to release him. Oh well.) Although he ruthlessly projects authority, the cracks in Torquemada’s facade are spreading. He’s losing influence and he knows it. He invests too much energy in the titular pendulum which is saved—and underutilized—for the final act.

Producer Charles Band, the Roger Corman of the videocassette market, always struck me as someone who strove for consistency in his films by aiming at an easily achievable mark of quality. It was directors like Gordon who frequently raised the bar, but this isn’t Gordon’s best. In a 90s interview for Fangoria Magazine, Bruce Campbell lamented that the medieval setting in Army of Darkness stifled the improvisational creativity he and Sam Raimi enjoyed on earlier films; remote location shoots create restrictive schedules which don’t leave a lot of room for horsing around. I posit the same may have happened to Gordon here.

The film has an identity crisis, failing to gel its heavier elements (rape, torture, persecution) with its substandard swashbuckling and genuinely funny lines. At one point Combs says to the hag, “I’m sorry you couldn’t confess before we had to kill you.” To which she replies, “Oh, that’s quite alright.” That’s the playful Gordon we all know and love, but those moments are few and far between. If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you already know I would have preferred a funny horror film to a serious one, especially with this cast.

The Pit and the Pendulum is still a good time. More like a Dagon than a Re-Animator, I would rate it 2-1/2 Castle Freaks out of 4. I would have a hard time recommending it to casual moviegoers and I suspect those who would enjoy it half as much as I did have already seen it. I was late to the party on this one, but I’m glad I saw it. I’ll see much worse over the course of the next thirty days.

With 31 Days of Gore returning this Thursday, I decided to take a look back at the films that scored full points on the Gore Meter. Surprisingly, there have only been a dozen since I started the feature back in 2015 (though it should be noted I didn’t do it every year because I’m lazy I put the tradition on hiatus from 2018 to 2024). Here are the twelve goriest movies so far:

Basket Case 3
Blood Diner
Blood Rage
Deathgasm
Demons
Evil Dead Trap 2
Hatchet 2
The Lords of Salem
The New York Ripper
Pieces
Slime City
Tokyo Gore Police

I would like to take this space to remind you that the gore rating isn’t always an indication of the film’s overall quality. Plenty of the best movies score lower on the meter. This makes the entire exercise kinda pointless, but that’s what we do here at this blog: nothing important!

I’m often asked why more obvious flicks like the Evil Dead films and Dead-Alive haven’t been featured on 31 Days of Gore. That’s because I kicked the end of my crib out watching those movies on repeat. I’ve decided to let my memory fade so I could watch them again relatively fresh one day. I’ll get to them eventually, some time before I die, but for now I’m hunting movies I either never saw or saw so long ago I don’t remember much about them. Besides, it’s a lot more fun writing about movies that haven’t been analyzed to death in horror circles.

Rejoice, heathens! 31 Days of Gore returns October 1st! To all the authority figures who told me my love for horror movies would amount to nothing: Do you have a blog that nets tens of dozens of visitors every month? No? Didn’t think so, suckers!

As is customary, even I don’t know which movies I’ll feature until I actually watch ’em (making lists just feels like homework), but here are some of the traditions I developed over the years:

• SOV (shot-on-video)
• A melt movie
• J-Horror
• Italo-horror (my favorite)
• Slasher films
• Empire/Full Moon
• An anthology film

You can also expect me to suffer work my way through a horror franchise and its sequels each Friday (I used to marathon-watch a series in a single day, but I’m in my 40s now so you can GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN). This year, I decided what the featured franchise will be, but beyond that, I have no idea what I’m doing… like ever. Be sure to subscribe and get ready for a gross ol’ time starting October 1st! In the meantime, click here to see all the past 31 Days of Gore entries!

PS: This is my 666th post!

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Pumpkinhead opens in a nondescript farm town in the 1950s. Hillbilly Clayton is being chased through the cornfields by something supernatural. He races to a cabin and pleads with a fellow farmer to let him in. The farmer shouts through the locked door, “I can’t risk my family for you, Clayton. Now get away before I have to shoot you!” When the monster attacks, we catch fleeting glimpses of a creature design that should have become a lot more iconic than it ultimately did.

Fast forward to the 80s and the farmer’s boy is all grown up. Played by Lance Henriksen, Ed Harley has a son of his own now. The two of them operate a small store on the side of the highway. When Harley leaves to run an errand, the boy is accidentally struck and killed by a dirt bike rider. Harley returns, finds his son’s dead body, and seeks out the witch who can awaken the titular monster.

Do I need to point out that the witch’s makeup and the creature effects are fantastic? Pumpkinhead is the directorial debut of Stan Winston, possibly the most recognizable name in special effects ever. Unlike so many other movies I originally saw on VHS, Pumpkinhead doesn’t look worse under the magnifying glass of high definition. In fact, it looks better than ever. Stan Winston clearly shot the creature for the big screen, not consumer televisions of the time. Perhaps there are directors who know more about getting better performances out of their actors, but how many know more about photographing slimy creatures?

Speaking of the performances, they’re uneven but not bad by low budget standards. Henriksen goes big and is absolutely convincing more often than not. Buck Flower, though playing a hillbilly, isn’t cast for his usual comic relief and rises to the occasion. Flower’s son, played by Brian Bremer, has unusually strong screen presence; I had forgotten most of the movie since my last viewing, but his face seemed as familiar to me as the monster’s.

Pumpkinhead is a very fun movie despite its heart-attack seriousness. The monster’s sole purpose is to torment his prey like a cat toying with an injured mouse. It actually makes sense when he drags victims around like dolls instead of killing them swiftly. And the resolution reveals the film had a moral before leaving us with one final reveal. It’s an awesome movie that has only gotten better with age.

Tokyo Gore Police borrows shamelessly from Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop and 2000 AD’s Judge Dredd, presenting an absurdist/fascist Tokyo where the police force has become privatized and ultra-violent. A spunky reality TV host enthusiastically broadcasts the officers movements as they hunt down and execute criminals on live TV. The city’s worst criminals are the Engineers who are infected with a virus that causes their wounds to sprout Cronenberg-like weapons. Remember how the T-800 explained that the T-1000 was unable to produce complex weapons, only “knives and stabbing weapons”? Engineers, on the other hand, are capable of producing projectile weapons and chainsaws.

Guns have little effect on Engineers. While that won’t stop the police from pumping thousands of rounds into them, their ace in the hole is Ruka (Eihi Shiina). Ruka is highly proficient with a sword, which makes her the best Engineer hunter there is; the only way to kill an Engineer is to surgically extract the biomechanical key that is hidden somewhere in their bodies. On her free time, Ruka indulges in self-harm and broods over her murdered father.

I often complain about movies shot digitally. It’s not the medium itself I hate, but the kind of creators who adopted it early as an excuse to make terrible looking movies. There have been many digital productions that look undeniably great, from Michael Mann’s Collateral to the entirety of Better Call Saul. Yet, for the most part, the medium made far too many genre films of the 2000s nearly unwatchable. Thankfully, Tokyo Gore Police is an example of early digital done right. In fact, it’s amazing how often it avoids the usual trappings of its lazy contemporaries. In the world of early-2000s Japanese exploitation, there were many.

While I don’t hate digital photography, I do hate CGI blood. Karo syrup + red food coloring is the cheapest special effect there is (next to bare breasts, to paraphrase Jim Wynorski). There’s no excuse to cheat blood other than laziness. I dragged my feet on watching Tokyo Gore Police for nearly twenty years because I assumed it would be such an offender. So many movies around the time of its release had almost entirely turned their backs on practical effects—even Takeshi Kitano’s Blind Swordsman reboot had switched almost exclusively to digital blood.

Surprisingly, Tokyo Gore Police doesn’t follow the trend. There is some digital blood in it, but I’m going to give it a pass because I’m not sure how else you depict a man propelling himself through the air using the blood jetting from his freshly amputated legs. I honestly didn’t think I would like this movie, but I loved it. It’s so gory, I almost wish I had designed the gore meter to go up to five. If this isn’t one of the bloodiest enjoyable movie ever made, I don’t know what tops it. And yes, I have seen the director’s cut of Peter Jackson’s Dead-Alive/Braindead… it’s close.

* * *

So tomorrow is Halloween, which will bring this year’s 31 Days of Gore to a close. I always choose a banger for the final day—a movie I think is absolutely perfect for watching on Halloween night. Tune in tomorrow to see what I’ve picked. Same gore time, same gore station.