After the success of Hellraiser, Clive Barker chose to adapt his 1988 novella Cabal for his sophomore feature. The setup of the novella was ripe for crafting expansive mythology from the ground up, one that posited monsters as the good guys and humans as the real villains. That the source story only briefly described the monsters in a mere matter of paragraphs meant it was open for creativity. What was envisioned as an epic romance in a world of sympathetic monsters eventually was trimmed down and marketed as a slasher thanks to the studio balking at new terrain.
Nightbreed flopped upon its theatrical release on February 16, 1990. Still, thirty years later, the core themes of Barker’s vision shine through and remain timeless, both in the profoundly altered theatrical release and his original version.
Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer) dreams of Midian, a place where creatures of the night live in hiding from the dangers of man. He’s so troubled that his worried girlfriend, Lori (Anne Bobby), urges him to seek help, which puts him in the clutches of Dr. Phillip Decker (David Cronenberg). Decker is a sadistic killer. He drugs Boone and convinces him that he’s the one responsible for the recent string of grisly murders. After an encounter in a hospital with a man named Narcisse (Hugh Ross), Boone is given the actual location of Midian, which sets him down a path to accepting his destiny, full of bloodshed and heartbreak, as the savior of the Nightbreed.
At the center of the looming war between man and monster is the enduring love between Boone and Lori. Throughout Boone’s evolution- the death of his human self and rise as new Nightbreed- Lori refuses to give up on him or their relationship. It’s Lori, a virtuous human descending into the epicenter of the catacomb-like Midian, who conveys the narrative’s message of acceptance and value of not judging a book by its cover. Many of the Nightbreed look “other” and are dangerous, but they’re the ones living in terror; man tends to destroy what it envies and fears.
As for the Nightbreed and the city of Midian, Barker enlisted his special makeup effects collaborator on Hellraiser, Bob Keen. In the beginning, Keen and Barker had full creative control on designing the Nightbreed and the story. Eventually, though, the studio got cold feet on a two-and-a-half-hour romantic dark fantasy that made the monsters the heroes and so they pushed to make Dr. Decker much more prominent. Planned stop motion animation sequences involving creatures in Midian were trimmed and scrapped, scenes were edited out entirely, and more scenes with Decker were added to expand his character and motivation. The idea? To make Nightbreed more of a straightforward horror movie.
Keen wasn’t the only Hellraiser connection, either. Doug Bradley plays Lylesberg, the Nightbreed’s lawmaker and leader. Nicholas Vince, known as the Chatterer cenobite, appears as Kinski, a crescent-moon faced creature that has a direct hand in Boone’s journey. There’s Simon Bramford, who looks the most human as Nightbreed Ohnaka, a far cry from his role as cenobite Butterball. Oliver Parker appeared briefly in the first two Hellraiser films as a workman or mover but stole scenes in Nightbreed as the memorable monster Peloquin.
Even with a heavily cut and altered theatrical version that emphasizes the humans over the Nightbreed, it’s easy to see the direction Barker was headed with his envisioned film trilogy for Boone. Whichever cut you watch, the newly changed Ashbury remained a dangling loose end for the Nightbreed to contend with, and their numbers drastically dwindled. Meaning that Boone’s journey to find these endearing monsters a new place to live, free from judgment and harm, would be an arduous and winding road.
Thanks to vocal and stalwart fans and champions of Barker’s initial vision, many cuts of the film have finally seen release. With it, numerous ways to discover a timeless tale of love and acceptance in a world of monsters. Barker and the original studio, Morgan Creek, are even working on continuing Midian’s story with a Nightbreed TV series, proving yet again the enduring quality of this unique universe.
Cool monster designs, sympathetic creatures, an enduring love story, and even an earworm score by Danny Elfman all make for a unique and compelling creature feature. It’s also one of the rare instances where if you don’t like one cut, there are numerous cuts of the film that change the tone and scope of the story. Even if the theatrical cut favors the slasher style of Decker, it’s still Boone’s prophecy and the denizens of Midian that make Nightbreed so special.
