NIGHTBREED - DVD review

Writer-director Clive Barker's "Nightbreed," 1990, is a much more ambitious project than his "Hellraiser" had been, but the premise remains the same. He creates a smashingly fantastic, eerie, spooky environment populated by all sorts of weird and wonderful characters and apparently as an afterthought hopes to fill it with some kind of plot line.

He couldn't do it in "Hellraiser," which almost worked in spite of its lack of story, and he can't do it here, which just plain doesn't work at all. Too bad. There are some fascinating pieces of business around every corner in "Nightbreed," and the idea of featuring a brood of sympathetic monsters is really rather touching.

Here's the deal: Remember in "Hellraiser" the hero and heroine go into an old, dark house in the country and through the intervention of a mysterious puzzle cube they find an entrance into a hellish world inhabited by several very unlikable folk? Well, this time out, a young man goes out to an old, dark cemetery in the country and finds a mausoleum that takes him into a world of monsters.

Instead of finding a few grotesque demons with pins in their head, however, the newest hero and heroine find a whole colony of assorted uglies. The differences in the two films are that (1) these new critters are relatively friendly and just want to live in peace, away from the rest of the world; (2) there are more of them in more different shapes and sizes; and (3) their subterranean surroundings are built on a far more immense scale than the hallways and rooms with hanging chains in "Hellraiser." In other words, "Nightbreed" is, mainly, more of the same but larger, with a more compassionate attitude toward those who are different. It's far more a "message" picture than its predecessor, as well as more epic.

Barker based his screenplay on his own novel, "Cabal," gave it a good villain (played by fellow director David Cronenberg), and hired a musical expert in these weird films, Danny Elfman, for the background score. They all help, but not enough. The setting is Calgary, providing plenty of Canadian wilderness to get lost in. A young man named Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer) is having bad dreams of monsters and death. His girlfriend, Lori (Anne Bobby), is putting up with it, but barely. Boone has been taking his problem to a psychiatrist, the evil Dr. Decker (Cronenberg), who basically tells him that since his dreams have been identical to a series of horrendous murders that have occurred in the area--six families butchered in the past six months--he must be responsible for them. It takes the viewer about two minutes to figure out that the real serial killer is Decker, who needs a convenient patsy to pin the crimes on.

But that's just the beginning. It still doesn't explain why Boone is having premonitions of the murders. That was something I never did figure out, except that in his dreams he keeps seeing visions of the monsters returning to a place called Midian, and maybe he's in some way related to the people who live there. "It's the place where the monsters go." Before Boone can find out more about Midian, though, he's turned in to the police by Decker and killed. And it's here the real fun starts, because Boone doesn't stay dead for long.

He waits until his autopsy is almost complete, then jumps off the operating table and crashes through a window. He heads straight out into the countryside to an old, seemingly deserted cemetery, a city of the dead, called...wait for it...Midian. There he finds kindred spirits in a people known as the Tribes of the Moon, or simply "the Nightbreed." They are shape-shifters, the last of an ancient race long ago forced underground by the thoughtless persecutions, inquisitions, and exterminations of Man. After a brief initiation, Boone joins their cult. He's soon followed by Lori, who thinks someone has stolen Boone's body and taken it there, and by Decker, who is hell-bent on an inquisition of his own. They are followed by a whole town full of rednecks looking to kill them some monsters. Most of the action takes place in the tunnels beneath cemetery, concluding with a monumental battle between the Midian freaks and the human freaks. Bet on the Medians.

When all is said and done, "Nightbreed" is little more than an excuse to show off as many bizarre, misshapen beings as possible. There are monsters of all kinds, some with animal features, with horns, with tentacles, with snakes for hair, with heads in their bellies, with eight eyes, with porcupine quills, even one who's a variation of old Pinhead himself. It's also Barker's chance to point out that just because a person looks different, that doesn't make him bad, a rather obvious moral that's been done better before and less obviously. There are a couple of good shocks in the film but few moments of genuine fear or suspense.

There is, of course, the requisite amount of blood and gore spilled into the aisles--a man trying to tear his face off, miscellaneous stabbings, that sort of stuff--that earns the film an R rating.

Video:
I was quite surprised by the excellence of the disc's audiovisual qualities. I don't know why I should have been surprised; it's a fairly new film, only a decade old, and comes from a reputable studio. I suppose its subject matter led me to imagine a low-budget affair with dim lighting and grainy picture. Not so. The screen format may be a fairly standard 1.85:1 ratio, rendered in the transfer at 1.74:1, but it is quite appealing in color, definition, and sound. Hues are especially rich and deep, detail in the shadowy underworld scenes above average, with very few jagged edges or moiré effects.

Audio:
As for the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, it plays very loud and very deep without noticeable distortion, providing a wide front-channel stereo spread and a solid monaural signal to the rear.

Extras:
Too bad I couldn't have been pleasantly surprised by the disc's extra features. Instead, I found little to be surprised about. English is the only spoken language provided, with English, French, and Spanish subtitles. There is some cast and crew information but only for the director and leads. The bonus lineup is concluded with thirty scene selections and a widescreen theatrical trailer.

Parting Shots:
Not to be redundant, but I must repeat my major concern with "Nightbreed." Although Barker knows a good, eerie setting when he sees one, he can't seem to do anything with it. His idea of horror is too often having people or beasts hitting one another over the head or slitting one another's throats. Beyond that, it's a freak show, human and demon, and not much more. I don't personally ascribe to the notion that bigger is necessarily better, and for that reason alone I liked "Hellraiser" more than this outing. The fun of "Nightbreed" wears thin very quickly.