by Matt Cardin
Oramus, Dominika. 2015. Grave New World: The Decline of the West in the Fiction of J. G. Ballard. Toronto: Terminal Press.
Sellars, Simon, and Dan O’Hara, eds. 2012. Extreme Metaphors: Interviews with J. G. Ballard. London: Fourth Estate.
BARKER, CLIVE (1952–)
Clive Barker is a celebrated horror author, a member of the Masters of Horror elite, a film and theater director, and an artist. He is best known in horror literature and film for his thematic blending of body horror and transcendence, frequently incorporating transgressive sexual symbolism and transformations of the body. His influential original creations are often bound up in twisted transfigurations of the flesh, the most infamous of which is the Hell Priest “Pinhead” from Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart (1986), adapted and directed by Barker for the screen as Hellraiser (1987). He attained acclaim in the mid-1980s in Britain for his unique short stories and novels that celebrate graphic body horror, as well as his unique S&M-style monsters, all of which combine erotic suggestion with the desire and torment of human transcendence. His novels and short stories are known for their lyrical descriptive prose, recalling H. P. Lovecraft’s style of describing the unimaginable. Barker is particularly interested in themes and motifs of gaining access to other worlds and hidden realms, doorways which are often concealed from view and discovered only by those worthy to glimpse their wonders.
Born in Liverpool, England, in 1952, Barker displayed a keen interest in art, drawing, painting, models, and puppets from an early age, and he soon began creating dark creatures and fantastical worlds. He was keen on detailing his own unique creatures and tales, which soon translated to an interest in theater. Alongside both former school friends and upcoming actors and writers, he formed an avant-garde theater group, the Dog Company, which served as his first foray into professional writing and stage work. The group earned some critical praise in London and Edinburgh for their avant-garde original plays and performance style. By the late 1980s, Dog Company members directly featured in or contributed to Barker’s films, both onscreen and off, the most notable of whom is Doug Bradley, who was cast as Pinhead of the Hellraiser franchise. Peter Atkins, another Dog Company writer, wrote the screenplays for the first three Hellraiser sequels—Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988); Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), and Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (1996)—which established his own screenwriting career in horror cinema.
A Selective Clive Barker Chronology:
Books and Films
Books
1984–1985
Books of Blood
1985
The Damnation Game
1986
The Hellbound Heart
1987
Weaveworld
1988
Cabal
1989
The Great and Secret Show
1991
Imajica
1992
The Thief of Always
1994
Everville
1996
Sacrament
1998
Galilee
2001
Coldheart Canyon
2002
Abarat
2004
Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War
2007
Mister B. Gone
2011
Abarat: Absolute Midnight
2015
The Scarlet Gospels
Films (as writer and/or director)
1973
Salomé (short film)—Director
1978
The Forbidden (short film)—Director
1985
Underworld, a.k.a. Transmutations—Writer
1986
Rawhead Rex (based on Barker’s short story “Rawhead Rex”)—Writer
1987
Hellraiser (based on Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart)—Writer and director
1990
Nightbreed (based on Barker’s novella Cabal)—Writer and director
1992
Candyman (based on Barker’s short story “The Forbidden”)—Writer and producer
1995
Lord of Illusions (based on Barker’s short story “The Last Illusion”)—Writer, producer, and director
Barker’s first success as an author came with the publication of an ambitious collection of horror short stories entitled Books of Blood (1984–1985). Published in six volumes over two collections, these imaginative and often visceral horror short stories enjoyed a strong critical reception, garnering Barker enthusiastic endorsements from such horror luminaries as Ramsey Campbell and, most notably, Stephen King, who described Barker in a widely circulated blurb as “the future of horror.” This rapid ascent in horror circles was followed by Barker’s debut novel, The Damnation Game (1985), set in 1980s Britain and celebrating Barker’s interest in traditional Gothic and horror tropes. This first novel rapidly established him as a major literary force in British horror literature; by 1986, two years after his publishing debut, he appeared alongside Ramsey Campbell and Lisa Tuttle in the horror anthology Night Visions 3, edited by George R. R. Martin. The story featured in the anthology, “The Hellbound Heart,” would become a signature piece in Barker’s literary and visual storytelling; republished as a separate novella in 1988 due to its successful screen adaptation, The Hellbound Heart foregrounded Barker’s style as one of fleshy horror and gore combined with body modification, exploring the intermingling of pleasure and pain as a wellspring of fascination and desire. According to Doug Bradley, Barker half-jokingly describes this macabre tale as “Ibsen with monsters” (Under the Skin, 2004), in that it is primarily concerned with the disintegration of a marriage by means of infidelity and murder, with monsters hidden in the attic.
Barker’s polymathic artistry also flourished with the rare opportunity to adapt and direct his novella into a feature-length film, retitled Hellraiser. Barker had previously directed two short films, Salomé (1973) and The Forbidden (1978), and had previous unsuccessful screen adaptations of his stories with Underworld (1985; released as Transmutations in the United States) and Rawhead Rex (1986), but this new feature-length project was grander in scope and budget, and, crucially, it allowed Barker to completely control its style and tone as director. Its most spectacular element was certainly the S&M-style Cenobites, “demons to some, angels to others” (Hellraiser 1987), infernal explorers of pain and pleasure that are striking in their visual design, with each member of the group bearing its own unique body modifications, which include bejeweled pins decorating intersections of precisely carved flesh, exposed abdominal gashes, surgical wounds, and chattering teeth, all made complete by the creatures’ bodies being sewn into sculpted leather clothing. The Cenobites, designed directly from Barker’s own sketches, also engender a ghostly and gothic contamination of domestic space, an invasion of the psyche made monstrous with forbidden appetites. Barker’s monsters peel back open flesh and sinew with bloodied chains and hooks, marking Hellraiser as a confrontational visual experience at the time. A striking combination of gory special effects makeup with a plot that evokes the theme of the Faustian bargain, Hellraiser is Barker’s most successful and widely known film as director to date.
There exists a certain branding tension between Barker’s authorial and directorial creations. His name had become synonymous with horror branding as early as 1986, but privately he was undergoing a transition away from his roots in graphic horror fiction. Hellraiser was released during this period of generic change in Barker’s writing style, which was characterized by a distinctive moving away from his established exploration of body horror in favor of dark fantasy storytelling. Rejecting rigid genre traditions and expectations, Barker describes his creations as “dark fantastique” (Winter 2001). This notable confluence of fantasy and horror is evidenced in Barker’s second novel, Weaveworld (1987), a tale of magic and power in a secret realm hidden in the filigree of a magic carpet. Weaveworld is better understood as an epic tale of dark adventure rather tha
n one of grisly horror or mutilation. The novel’s mantra, “that which can be imagined need never be lost” (Barker 1997, xvii), neatly sums up Barker’s thematic transition from his earlier visceral horrors and bleak tone. Released in the same year as Hellraiser, Barker’s Weaveworld began his generic transition in literature over the next decade, while his public (and film) personas were more explicitly wedded to his visceral horror creations. His next three novels, The Great and Secret Show (1989), Imajica (1991), and Everville (1994), crystallized his preoccupation with dark forces and human transcendence, as each tale grapples with themes of Manichean battles (that is, battles between absolute light and darkness) that ripple across time and dominions. For Barker, the fantastic enabled him to create parallel worlds of wonder and horror, glimpsed through a doorway in the everyday world and free from the constraints of any one genre.
Barker has had a mixed relationship with the film industry. His directorial debut with Hellraiser was positively received, soon spawning a successful sequel, which he produced. However, in 1990 he directed Nightbreed, based on his novella Cabal (1988), and the film received a mixed critical response and poor box-office returns. This disappointment left an indelible mark on Barker. Nightbreed is a tonally uneven film, but it also suffered from mishandling by Fox Studios that directly affected its box-office returns. Executives were reportedly baffled by the film’s insistence that the monsters were its heroes, and the studio rejected the director’s cut in favor of a shorter yet narratively confusing theatrical version. Further, Fox’s marketing department inaccurately sold the film as a slasher, despite its clear fantasy themes, all of which contributed to unfavorable critical responses and to Barker’s personal and professional disillusionment with the film industry. Nightbreed has remained a cult favorite with film festival audiences, and it underwent restoration and re-release as a director’s cut in 2014.
Barker’s final film as director, Lord of Illusions (1995), was loosely adapted from his short story “The Last Illusion” in Books of Blood, Vol. 6. Starring Scott Bakula as Detective Harry D’Amour, the film combines dark fantasy, stage magic, and horror, generically blending Barker’s fascination with trickery, evil, and immortality with strong film noir aesthetics. Garnering positive reviews from critics including Roger Ebert and the Hollywood Reporter, the film was more palatable to general audiences outside of Barker’s core fan base. However, today Barker avoids further directorial projects while remaining an influential producer through his production company, Seraphim Films, and he continues his contributions to filmmaking through extensive collaboration.
During the mid-to-late 1990s, Barker’s novels revealed much about his personal life, including his political and cultural interests beyond the horror genre and filmmaking. Following his relocation to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he published three “dark fantastique” novels—Sacrament (1996), Galilee (1998), and Coldheart Canyon (2001)—each of which leaves illuminating clues about his personal and emotional life. As an openly gay author, in Sacrament Barker articulates his concerns about the horrors of animal extinction and the 1990s AIDS crisis. Galilee draws inspiration from Barker’s then relationship with photographer David Armstrong in a tale of a mysterious and exotic explorer, the titular Galilee, caught between two warring families. Coldheart Canyon is a Gothic haunted house novel critiquing Hollywood’s vapid culture and scandalous past. Partially set in Barker’s Beverly Hills home, the novel heralded his explicit return to the horror fold, through which he vented his personal frustrations with Hollywood culture, including his place within it.
The inclusion of Barker’s original artworks in his novels emerged in the early 1990s and had steadily grown more prominent in his literary career. The Thief of Always (1992), his fable-like first published novel for children, included Barker’s own sketches, documenting the story’s many monsters and ghoulish sights as witnessed by young protagonist Harvey Swick. Abandoning the constraints of filmmaking for the expressive liberation of painting and sketches, Barker was keen to create tales lyrically and visually for young adult (YA) readers at a time when it was unorthodox for horror authors to target different audiences and demographics. The success of The Thief of Always prompted him to plan a series specifically addressing a younger readership. The Books of Abarat, an intended quintet of novels accompanied by Barker’s paintings, chart the tale of heroine Candy Quackenbush, who accidentally discovers a hidden magical realm of monsters and strange creatures scattered across an enchanted archipelago of twenty-five islands. To date, three of the five intended books have been published: Abarat (2002), Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War (2004), and Abarat: Absolute Midnight (2011).
A return to more traditional horror fiction was inevitable for Barker. His short novel Mister B. Gone (2007) plays with narrative form, as readers encounter the title character and demon Mister B., who wishes to break free from the very pages of the book. The novel is Barker’s personal testament to the power of horror literature. In 2015, in the midst of completing his Books of Abarat quintet and its accompanying artworks, Barker also published the long-awaited and much anticipated novel The Scarlet Gospels, a crossover tale reviving beloved characters from his earlier work. The Scarlet Gospels chronicles a battle of wits between Pinhead and Barker’s film noir–styled paranormal detective Harry D’Amour, as the Hell Priest journeys into the bowels of hell to claim its throne for himself. Ten years in development, the novel was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award in 2016. More recently, he has hinted on social media that he is preparing a new tale in which Pinhead revisits the character of Kirsty from The Hellbound Heart and Hellraiser for a final encounter. These developments suggest a desire on Barker’s part to return to the type of horror fiction, visceral and gory in theme and style, that originally established his reputation in the 1980s.
Sorcha Ní Fhlainn
See also: “The Beast with Five Fingers”; Body Horror; Books of Blood; The Damnation Game; Dark Fantasy; Lovecraft, H. P.; Splatterpunk.
Further Reading
Badley, Linda. 1996. “Clive Barker Writing (from) the Body.” In Writing Horror and the Body: The Fiction of Stephen King, Clive Barker and Anne Rice, 73–104. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Barker, Clive. [1987] 1997. Weaveworld. 10th Anniversary Edition. London: HarperCollins.
Brown, Michael, ed. 1991. Pandemonium: Further Explorations into the Worlds of Clive Barker. Forestville, CA: Eclipse.
Hellraiser. 1987. Written and directed by Clive Barker. New World Pictures.
Hellraiser. 2004. Special Edition Boxset. Anchor Bay Films.
Hoppenstand, Gary. 1994. Clive Barker’s Short Stories: Imagination as Metaphor in the Books of Blood and Other Works. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Jones, Stephen. 1991. Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden. Lancaster: Underwood-Miller.
McRoy, Jay. 2002. “There Are No Limits: Splatterpunk, Clive Barker, and the Body in-Extremis.” Paradoxa 17: 130–150.
Ní Fhlainn, Sorcha, ed. 2017. Clive Barker: Dark Imaginer. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Under the Skin: Doug Bradley on Hellraiser. 2004. Directed by Jake West. Nucleus Films.
Winter, Douglas. E. 2001. Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic. London: HarperCollins.
BARLOW, R. H. (1918–1951)
Best known for his work as an anthropologist, Robert Hayward Barlow spent his early years as a central figure in the Lovecraft circle, a group of weird fiction writers. Barlow befriended H. P. Lovecraft via correspondence at the young age of thirteen, and Lovecraft collaborated with Barlow on no less than six stories. They became so close that the latter named Barlow his literary executor upon his death. Unfortunately, this appointment drove a wedge between Barlow and the rest of the Lovecraft circle, effectively alienating him from the group and ending his career as a practitioner of the weird tale.
Barlow’s fiction more clearly resembles the fantasy tales of Lord Dunsany and Clark Ashton Smith than Lovecraft’s speculative realism. The bulk of Barlow’s writing is of
an amateurish quality, consisting largely of short vignettes and sketches rather than completed stories. However, this work shows the promise of a young writer learning his craft and reveals that Barlow possessed a wry wit and a keen sense of satire. These short pieces recount events occurring in fantasy worlds and are tied loosely together by theme and motif. They often depict the interactions between the gods and the societies that worship them, foregrounding the disastrous consequences of human hubris in confronting larger forces. Barlow also connects his tales through reoccurring characters such as the God Lord Krang, thus demonstrating the early stages of development of a mythos modeled on Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos.
While the majority of Barlow’s work feels unpolished, he produced at least two stories, “The Night Ocean” (1936) and “A Dim-Remembered Story” (1936), that demonstrate professional quality. “The Night Ocean” most resembles Lovecraft’s work and is the least fantastic of Barlow’s writing. While Lovecraft collaborated with Barlow on this story, his input has been proven minimal. The story, an excellent study in atmospheric horror, centers on an artist on vacation at a small seaside town, building tension through the artist’s ruminations on human insignificance next to the terrible vastness of the ocean. “A Dim-Remembered Story,” more in line with the rest of Barlow’s fantasy work, tells the story of a man who awakens in a seemingly medieval world, only to realize that he is actually eons in the future among the remnants of a fallen civilization. The narrator is then transported further into the future where, as a mere consciousness floating in space, he sees that the universe is completely altered, leaving no trace of humanity’s existence. The horror of the story develops from the recognition of human triviality in the gigantic flow of time.