A farmer is out standing in his field, wondering how he can possibly solve the problem of uprooting an ancient burial stone from his land. He has tied a cable around it and attempted to pull it free with his tractor, but to no avail. As a last resort, he tries to prise it free with a bar, but suddenly the overcast skies are alive with thunder and lightning and a bolt strikes the stone - and the farmer. That's not all, as while the stone topples there is a loud roar and a massive figure emerges from the ground, killing the man and stalking off into the countryside...
Back in the eighties, Clive Barker was going to be horror fiction's saviour, and his six Books of Blood displayed an incredibly fertile imagination for the medium, so it was natural that he should move into films and try to salvage the dwindling reputation of the once-proud British horror film genre. Alas, with his first two scripts he was none too impressed with the results, something that was matched by the public's reaction, but at least this led Barker to direct his own material and cult favourite Hellraiser was born. This does leave his previous two fright films somewhat orphaned, though.
Not counting experimental films (including that one where he danced around starkers and visibly aroused - best not to think about that) the first was Underworld, which nobody liked much, but the second has gone on to be appreciated by conoisseurs of eighties cheese, and that was Rawhead Rex. Drawn from one of the stories in The Books of Blood, it's mindset was apparently to beat those countless American rubber monster movies that the decade brought us at their own game, and the titular character is undoubtedly rubbery.
What he is not, is particularly scary, resembling the horror version of one of those costumed creatures you might have seen terrorising Doctor Who on television around the same time. He may attack his victims with gusto, but the overall unconvincing nature of the monster is more likely to elicit titters than gasps of shock. Barker may have included his usual preoccupations with the sacred and the profane, here summed up by a Catholic verger (Ronan Wilmot) who falls under Rex's spell and turns a bit funny, but when married to the reality of an embarrassingly fake-looking abomination, it's no wonder he disowned the entire enterprise.
So apart from followers of unintentional camp, who can be entertained by Rawhead Rex? Probably nobody these days, as much of the plot is taken up with the seriously uninteresting worries of a visiting American journalist (David Dukes) and his family combining his research with a holiday and, wouldn't you know it, uncovering the secret of what might put the bad guy back in his tomb. It says a lot that the film had to rely on that standby of British films, the imported American star, as if this was still the sixties or something, but it's all for naught as there isn't really one character you wish to latch on to, simply waiting for the next item of mayhem to pass the time. On a more sombre note, it was sad that the UK was reduced to this when it had previously been so strong with chillers. Things did look up, though, so it was not all bad. Music by Colin Towns.
