31 Days of Halloween: Nightbreed
Nightbreed feels like a fantasy film, with monsters and action, written and directed by Clive Barker. The music by Danny Elfman certainly does the job painting an otherworldly tone, with monsters living amongst us. Clive Barker’s initial cut of the film was heavily edited by the studio and released as a short 104 minute movie, but a director’s cut was later released with a 120 minute run time, showing the varied difference between the two visions. The film stars Michael Scheffler as Boone, a guy caught up in some unexpected changes in his life, for which he’s constantly in trouble and hunted down by David Cronenberg himself as the main villain.
Nightbreed serves as a general allegory for intolerance. At once, Boone is presented as a different kind of guy, a person who is resented by normal people led by Cronenberg’s villain, Doctor Decker. Boone then meets a collection of strange monsters living in a secretive land called Minion, possibly monsters who represent varied people with differences from normal society. The studio not only edited this movie poorly but also mis-marketed the film as a slasher, and released movie posters which confused general movie-goers. All this led to Nightbreed performing poorly at the box office, and disappearing from view more quickly than other films. Luckily, there was something there in Nightbreed which a lot of people have connected with since then and that’s why a director’s cut was released over 25 years later.
The monsters are the good guys. This kind of thing confused the studio and probably the audience too, as I don’t think anyone was ready to identify with protagonists like this. Maybe it could have worked with a different structure but as is, Barker’s unique vision never quite made it to the screen the way he wanted it to. It’s too bad. I think Nightbreed’s uniqueness influenced things later on, like the Beauty and the Beast television series, which had an underground of hidden people, and other movies brave enough to deal with differences. This goes back to the reason why people like monster movies, like Frankenstein, Dracula and even Halloween by extension—people like watching the monsters. They don’t care about the side characters or the next big thing, they want to see what Frankenstein is up to and what trouble he’ll get into next. In that way, they can sorta distance themselves from the monster, but when the monster is abused or attacked like in Barker’s film, it becomes a different story. It’s interesting. When the monster is “a monster” then it’s okay but when he’s suddenly humanized, then audiences have problems. Frankenstein does this humanization in small doses to deal with the preconceived notions audiences have, but the whole movie isn’t about that.
Overall, Nightbreed is a good movie. It has flaws, and that’s probably why there are a lot of cuts to this film released and available to watch, but it still has merit. The LGBTIQA community has adopted it as its own allegory, for the challenges they face in life, like Boone in the movie. This allegory and empowerment is really great, and it’s what more movies should be doing, but this interpretation isn’t really all that blatant and can be generally ignored if viewers see the movie only about monsters trying to escape abuse or whatever. David Cronenberg gives a surprisingly good performance as the evil Doctor Decker, so that’s a bonus because I didn’t really expect him to be a good actor. The director’s cut is the best verison of this movie to see, as the theatrical cut has cuts and edits which disrupt the flow and the tone, making it a much weaker viewing experience. Barker’s experiences with Hollywood made him frustrated and quit making movies, which is unfortunate because his unique vision is worth celebrating.
