Re-View: Nightbreed

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In November of 2015, Derek and Jake watched Clive Barker's Nightbreed, expecting Barker's rich, dark story of a man whose serial killer psychiatrist gets him killed, only to have him return as one of a mysterious group of beings known as the Nightbreed, explode across the screen. And while that was pretty much the story, it didn't so much "explode" as it did fizzle with kind of a wet fart noise. You can listen to the original show here.

This doesn't help! I can still smell it!

We could rehash the cast, but the only recognizable name would be director David Cronenberg, who did not direct this movie (Barker did), choosing instead to be the serial killer psychiatrist, Dr. Decker. He's messing with Boone (played by some dumb guy), whom Decker has convinced that Boone is the serial killer. When Boone gets committed, meets a guy who rips his own scalp off, and then runs off to find the mystical land of Midian, which is, for some reason, located under a cemetery in the middle of nowhere, the police and Decker track Boone there and kill him. Like, a lot. But not before he finds Midian, and it is not magical. It is, in fact, kinda bitey and mean, One of its denizens--a Rastafarian demon of some kind--bites Boone and makes him a Nightbreed.

Boone's girlfriend Lori (played by a poodle-haired bland woman), meanwhile, is trying to find out what happened to him. When she is visited by the police and asked to identify Boone's body, she stares blandly at it for a while and leaves. Almost immediately after that, Boone comes back to life and once again heads to the cemetery, where he meets some of the people there. They seem fun!

I told you, kid...The McFlurry machine is broken!

Lori meets up with a woman as she searches for Boone, whom she discovered is alive again, and the two of them go to the cemetery where Boone was killed. The woman gets killed by Boone's shrink, and Lori gets inside Midian, where she meets a Gypsy woman and her Chupacabra child, Mac Tonight, and the Rastafarian guy, who wants to bite her, too. But Boone appears and saves her!

From this point, it gets more confusing, and hard to follow. The one interesting character--Decker--hardly gets any screen time, despite his cool mask, and the rest of the cast talks silliness and jibber-jabber of the quality and quantity Mr. T would prefer to not have.

A visual example of just such jibber-jabber. Come. On.

Instead, we are forced to pretend we care about some of the most unlikable characters ever committed to film. And when it is clear that inundating the viewer with countless scenes of the Rastafarian guy yelling at everyone is not bringing on the sympathy, a gaggle of hillbillies (sanctioned by the local police) mounts an offensive on Midian, because they had the nerve to look different.

Where is the movie about this guy's journey?!

The hillbillies, armed to the gills by the police, show up and start shooting and blowing up anything that moves. Naturally, the inhabitants of Midian do not appreciate this, and they start attacking right the heck back, releasing horrible monsters that start tearing the hillbillies to shreds. It's pretty entertaining, in that respect.

But will they win? Will Boone and Lori get back together and work out the complications of sex between a consenting woman and her consenting corpse of a boyfriend?

Put your thing in my thing and do things, but don't let your rotting, desiccated
thing fall of while it's in my thing! 

And will that moon-faced guy ever get his chin worked on? Also, why is David Cronenberg acting?! He should be directing! You'll have to tune in to find out!

Larry is not impressed with this one. He did not care for the actors, the story, the editing, the sets, the makeup...Any of it, really. And he has every right to be unimpressed. This is garbage.

Jake used to love this movie when he was a kid. Older now, he has seen the error of his ways and has come to the conclusion that this is, as noted above, garbage. It's choppy and just awful.

Derek hates everything except Mac Tonight's makeup. And the Chupacabra daughter. The rest is a mish-mash of poorly edited uselessness. Nobody is good in this, and it's stupid and dumb and he hates it.

So, rather than subject yourself to the movie itself, learn from the guys' mistake in watching it twice and check out this week's episode!