Retro Raunch Revisit

RAWHEAD REX (1986)
David Dukes, Ronan Wilmott, Niall Toibin, Kelly Piper, Heinrich von Schellendorf, Niall O'Brien, Cora Lunny, Hugh O'Connor
Directed by George Pavlou
Released March 14, 1986 (Happy 40th Anniversary)
RAWHEAD REX is based on Clive Barker's same-titled short story from the 3rd volume of his 1984 'Books of Blood' anthology. [The story itself is based on a 16th Century English tale called 'Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones' sometimes aka 'Tommy Rawhead' with both renditions meant to frighten children. The mythos also has origins in the Missouri Ozarks, and a foothold in African-American roots]. Howard Hallenbeck is an American photojournalist who has traveled to the small remote countryside village of Rathmorne in Ireland with his wife and 2 kids to research sacred Celtic neolithic sites for his historical book. While he visits the church with permission to photograph in a cemetery, 3 local farmers are trying to raise a large phallic-looking megalith in a field. At its base are engravings but if the writing is some kind of warning that speaks of a curse, it is ignored. When 2 of the men call it a day, the other's on-going labor causes a sudden freak thunderstorm. Thick smoke begins pouring from the ground and gives rise to a jacked-up pagan demigod known as Rawhead Rex. Howard's wife, Elaine, is not enjoying the stay in town. Inspite of her Irish heritage, she's bored of the trip and would rather be shopping in Dublin. Daughter Minty(!) [who was obviously named after a spearmint gum commercial] and son Robbie are restless brats. When Howard stumbles across the murdered farmer, he tells the police who believe the deceased to have been slain in a revenge killing. After Howard first meets the Verger, the curmudgeonly Declan O'Brien, and is then introduced to the friendlier Reverend Coot, Declan experiences strange visions from touching an altar. Later, the son of an arguing couple in a forest, finds an earlier kill by Rawhead. Seen also by the parents, the fearful trio race out of the woods with only Mom & son making it out alive. Later, townsfolk Dennis Nicholson and his pregnant wife Jenny are in their cottage home and disturbed by a racket outside. Rawhed shows up from refuge in a barn, kills Dennis, and drags his body through the forest. As police are called to the Nicholson house, Rawhead stops infront of a trailer park.

Teenager Andy Johnson is getting frisky with his girlfriend and the young lovers head into the woods oblivious to the waiting danger. They are chased by Rawhead whom Howard, during a late-night stroll, later spots in the distance as the creature stands on a hill holding Andy's decapitated head. With Rathmorne's inhabitants panicked over the creature having massacred the trailer park caravan as well, the bumbling police (except for Detective Larkin) are not swayed by Howard's description of a monster on their hands, and Howard suspects that suspicious Declan is the culprit behind the slayings. As Declan grows unstable & hostile, Howard asks to look into the church's parish records which Coot allows to arrange. Following up with Coot, Howard is then told the parish records have been stolen, and has his camera broken by Declan, causing him to hit the road with his family. When their van pulls over so Minty can pee by a tree, her screaming brings both her parents while Robbie stays in the vehicle. Rawhead emerges killing Robbie and drags his eaten body into the forest. A devastated and furious Howard blasts the police for failing to get Rawhead, and he returns to the church seeking revenge where he is drawn to the cryptic stained glass window featuring the image of a faceless victor casting down a devilish creature. He concludes that whatever can kill Rawhead must be hidden on the grounds. When Howard leaves, Coot touches the altar and struggles to succumb to the temptatious visions he undergoes. Rawhead noisily arrives at the church and in the movie's pre-eminent WTF boffo scene, baptizes an insane kneeling Declan with a graveyard golden shower(!) [Hey, if Linda Blair can chunder pea soup and masturbate with a crucifix, hold my beer]... Shocked and disgusted by the sight, Coot flees into the basement as Rawhead trashes the church. Coot finds the missing parish records which feature a blueprint of Rawhead [which fails to explain his presence other than offering a vague ecclesiastical knowledge of his existence] but is found by Declan. The corrupted apostate turned zealot (who steps up in dropping f-bombs) forces Coot upstairs to be sacrificed by Rawhead.

The police arrive at the church ready to gun down the creature but hold off when they see Coot. The police eventually open fire resulting in Rawhead using mind control to hypnotize Inspector Isaac Gissing to douse gasoline around the police cars which he ignites during the shooting, burning all the officers and himself to death. Howard leaves Elaine & daughter to again return to the church where he finds a dying Coot telling him that Rawhead is scared shitless of an object in the altar which stands as the antithesis to evil. He finds Declan burning books, kicks his ass, and uses a candlestick to pry open the altar where he retrieves the weapon -- a holy stone carved as a pregnant woman. In the cemetery, deranged Declan snivels back to Rawhead and tells his angry master of Howard's find. Howard faces off with the creature but uses 'little miss preggo' unsuccessfully, and is tossed aside. Rawhead kills an orgasmic Declan by ripping his throat out as a terrified Elaine watches from having followed her hubby. When Rawhead tries to kill Howard, Elaine picks up the 'bun in the oven' figurine and in the vein of She-Ra, holds it above her head where it activates with a ray of light that beams onto the creature hurting it. It has to be a woman wielding the weapon to trigger its power. The spirit of a woman then materializes from the gravid gizmo along with zapping electric rays that pierce into a bawling Rawhead, knocking him to the ground and severely wounding him as he now endures hair loss, premature aging, and Howard hitting him with a shovel. Fatally ill from the magic laser light show, Rawhead collapses dead and falls back into the ground where he's crushed under broken slabs of tombstone, completely finishing him off. Elaine has dropped the weapon in with the creature and runs to Howard, with hubby & wife making their exit from the cemetery. Farewell once-impending Armageddon. Sometime later, a boy from the trailer park is putting flowers on Andy's grave and when he leaves, Rawhead pushes up in the foreground and roars in quick monstrous return.

Rewatching this over 30yrs later, RAWHEAD REX is not so much a truly terrible movie, as it is just not a very good one at all. The idyllic Irish landscape/ambience on display is made splendid use of, there are some effective scares, and a decent violent gore factor is in tandem with off-screen kills that were treading carefully in the then-surrounding UK controversy over video nasties. But the major negative outweighing the few positives is the lousy cheap monster design of Rawhead in rubber mask & Mad Max suit; played by muscle-bound Schellendorf (aka Heinrich von Bünau) in his only screen performance who was a 19yr old bodybuilder that would make Schwarzenneger proud. [Peter Mayhew aka Chewbacca was first approached for the role but he wanted too much money]. Equally cheesy and embarrassingly bad (and very laughable), the crux of the problem is that Rawhead unfortunately simply doesn't hold up. It was always a given from the short story that his physical form was imposing and unusual. And as a savage brute force of nature who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake, he may not be a typical slasher but he's not exactly out of place in the splatter arena either. Almost werewolf-ish, Rawhead looks like a shaved mutant ape on steroids with a near-mohawked mullet; an extended/exposed lower jaw sprouting fangs in fixed puppet expression; retractable fingernails; and has possible strabismus issues. Imagine what the offspring of Rammstein and Gwar would resemble -- a conceived penile demon-baby born out of a nightmarish hair metal hell fused of pyrotechnics and sorcery. That little bugger is an adult Rawhead. And the mind swirls wondering what Rawhead could have been in the hands of Tom Savini, Rick Baker, or Stan Winston. Vicious and fast in unleashing his carnal fury, Rawhead's animalistic killing spree is impressive and he shares a primal similarity with Molasar from THE KEEP: both are ancient pre-Christian hulking beasts that are close to 9-10ft tall; have glowing red eyes; are steeped in folklore superstition; and each ready to slaughter when unintentionally released from centuries of sealed imprisonment after the removal of a confining marker.

But just how unconvincing is Rawhead's description you may ask? Well, consider Barker's own words: He first said, "Basically, I wrote a story about a 10-foot prick which goes on the rampage." After seeing the portrayal, he called it "Miss Piggy in combat fatigues." At his core, Rawhead is a giant peeled & sunburnt walking erect penis with his very name of "rawhead" having a sexual tint standing for over-aggressive male libido that would make Manowar jealous. If we remove all of the masculinity and alpha cock symbolism ["Rex" incidentally being Latin for "king"], Rawhead is reduced to being a Halloween-dressed marauding menace in shredded shag carpet; a cartoonish badass berserker who with better artistic altering, would fit more in a setting of early Iron Maiden album covers. To the annoyance of many, the movie further deviates from the more elaborate short story and wimps out mainly in ditching a lot of religious subtext; moving the locale from London; changing the depiction of Rawhead's look; eliminating Rawhead's larger propensity for butchering children; leaving out Rawhead's inner thoughts explaining his ambivalence towards humanity; tinkering with the Hallenbeck family; and making Rawhead's death different. One exception that proves quite fun is the expansion of wayward Declan's breakdown into a full-blown lunatic disciple. He's hysterically over the top. There's also a curious gender & fertility observation going on here: a purity in the female weapon needed to defeat Rawhead when the whole while, none of Rawhead's victims were women as he has no dominion over them. And in keeping with the era's penchant for gratuitous topless moments, an attractive victim has her clothes flagrantly torn off. Barker would go on to have several of his baroque writings adapted into movies but vehemently and notoriously disowned this flawed film treatment (which was banned in Iceland) citing his hatred due to the improper representation of his screenplay being not just diluted but with plenty of what he envisioned being scrapped altogether. He wasn't even allowed on the set(!)

It was RAWHEAD REX's disappointing dumbed-down compromising, undermined translation, and poor reception that led Barker to have a more adamantly hands-on control in the director's chair when it came to later productions of his work. A remake was slated in the years after but abandoned as his involvement with the HELLRAISER franchise grew. [Oddly enough, Rawhead's leatherwear predates the Cenobites]. I wonder by 1987's PREDATOR, if that movie's creature fx, prosthetic, and costuming department had seen Rawhead and studied firmly what not to get wrong. In total, RAWHEAD REX is actually not unwatchable. If everything previously described makes it sound like a shoddy joke and painful mess, think of it more as a psycho cousin of LEPRECHAUN. It's just the kind of past recollection to pull from the shelf should you feel the need to breakout a dose of something rather peculiar -- especially a long unseen & less-celebrated hokey relic of the 80's that is impossible not to find ridiculous. So yeah, not garden variety but it deserves a revisit 4 decades later, and a recent blu-ray release from Kino with a 4K restoration does give it a sharper enhancement. It's nice to have the visibility looking cleaner than it ever has. Honestly though, while full of shortcomings and a misguided path which lost its way [the 1993 EC Comics graphic novel is more faithful to Barker's original story with an almost sympathetic Rawhead appearing Xenomorph/Slenderman-ish], the movie is not without justification for being an off-the-wall one trick pony hampered by budgetary pitfalls. Nevertheless, we can however particularly cut it some campy popcorn slack because it's still a glimpse from a then-upcoming new author whom Stephen King famously praised as the future of horror. And Barker's prolific output and memorable contributions of far better visceral titles to the genre, both in book & on screen (NIGHTBREED, CANDYMAN, LORD OF ILLUSIONS), were just around the corner. If RAWHEAD REX ever comes up for a reboot, maybe Guillermo Del Toro could give it a go.