Allow us a moment of indulgent horror fanboy geekery. Clive Barker's Nightbreed, his ill-fated follow up to Hellraiser and the horror genre's very own Magnificent Ambersons, has resurfaced as an uncut workprint. Huzzah! The film was drastically interfered with by its studio and has long been the subject of wistful could-have-been fan speculation, but the speculating is almost over. Let's hope we're not terribly disappointed.
An extremely ambitious adaptation by Barker of his own novel Cabal, 1990's Nightbreed was envisioned as a horror Star Wars: a spectacular cavalcade of mad creatures and monster action. Weirdly, it stars David Cronenberg as serial killing psychiatrist Dekker, and Craig Sheffer as his patient Boon, framed for his murders. Shot down by the cops, Boon is resurrected in the secret mythical city of Midian, where the monsters live, and joins them as they defend the gates of the city against the "real monsters" from the normal world.
A massive pantheon of creatures - both make-up effects and puppets - was assembled for the production, but only about a third of them made the studio Morgan Creek's final cut, which barely ran to 90 minutes. Barker had long feared the excised footage lost forever, but his 145-minute rough-cut workprint was finally uncovered last summer, and will debut in late March at Minneapolis' Horror Hound Weekend.
One screening only for the time being, but surely a home release can't be far off now...