User reviews

So the year is 2011 and time has not been kind to poor old Rawhead Rex (1986) and the monster horror genre in general.

Anyone who has read Clive Barker's short story Rawhead Rex knows that this is a downright disturbing and wicked tale. The monster Rawhead has sexual issues, he hates women, he pisses on priests and has an appetite for eating small children/babies. However, all these awful things are what makes the story such a page turner and adds more depth to what would otherwise be a mindless monster work.

The movie Rawhead Rex (1986) suffers from a very low budget. The main offender is Rawhead's mask itself. Its cheap rubber with little to no animatronics and the rubber shakes as the actor tries to move quickly. A higher budget would have done this monster so much justice, if only a creature master like Stan Winston had gotten involved, this would have been a whole different movie experience.

I would love to see Rawhead Rex remade today with all the trimmings, but unfortunately Hollywood is a complete mess. Bad actors are thrown into quick PG-13 horror crap fests and CGI technology has become the only main focus of everything.

I think it's time for someone to step up to the plate and re-boot the monster movie genre. Rawhead Rex could be an action/monster movie extravaganza if remade correctly. Hollywood simply refuses to take any chances and because of this, the horror genre is more or less dead. In the end, Rawhead Rex is still an enjoyable monster flick for the bored late night horror buff. But it just doesn't measure up to the more well-made 80s monster classics like "Pumpkinhead".

As well as delivering some of the shoddiest straight-to-video horror efforts ever made, the 1980s were also notorious for making stars of the real brains behind most projects - the writers. Popular authors such as Stephen King and Dean Koontz saw their names frequently advertised above the movie's title, used as the main selling point over any actors attached or the director in charge of the adaptation. One of the biggest names to emerge in the decade was Clive Barker, whose pull-no-punches approach and love of the stomach-churning side of sexuality provided a racier alternative to the milder King and Koontz. He would really make his mark in 1987 with his directorial debut Hellraiser, but before that came Rawhead Rex, adapted from a short story from Volume 3 of his Books of Blood series.

Just why Barker seemed so intent on bringing Hellraiser to the big screen himself is made perfectly clear after watching Rawhead Rex, a cheap, schlocky monster movie which Barker himself wrote the screenplay for, but quickly disowned after seeing the final product. Set in Ireland, Rawhead follows American Howard Hallenback (David Dukes), who drags his whole family to the cold, wet countryside in a bid to discover his roots and research sites that may be of religious and historical significance. But little does he know that nearby, a farmer has moved a sacred stone and unleashed the snarling demon Rawhead Rex upon the world. The peculiar priest Declan O'Brien (Ronan Wilmot) starts to act even more bizarrely when he encounters a strange vision after laying his hand on the church altar. Soon enough, mutilated bodies are being unearthed and citizens are vanishing, and with the police seemingly clueless, it's left to Howard to uncover the truth and send the monster back where it came from.

Directed by George Pavlou, Rawhead Rex is a terrible movie, losing points on everything from the camerawork to the acting (although Dukes actually isn't bad). The monster itself looks like hastily clumped-together paper mache school project, with a permanent open-mouthed expression unable to disguise the clear signs that the actor inside is struggling to see where they're going. It's offensive to the Irish, and just about anybody else with reasonable taste in cinema. Still, like many horror movies from the 1980s that receiving a pounding from the critics before gathering dust in the local video store, this is tons of fun for anybody with a weakness for tongue-in-cheek trash. It has a sense of humour, and certainly isn't afraid to have the most helpless of victims be dragged away by the rabid beast when you really expect them to turn up alive. Barker was understandably embarrassed but this certainly doesn't damage his reputation, and is enough to tide us over until Barker hopefully gets around to his long-planned remake.

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The writer Howard Hallenbeck (David Dukes) is spending vacation in the countryside of Ireland with his wife Elaine (Kelly Piper) and children researching legends and myths for his book. Meanwhile, a farmer is trying to remove an old column on the field and accidentally unleashes the evil pagan god Rawhead Rex that begins a crime spree in the village where Howard and his family are lodged.

"Rawhead Rex" is a cult trash written by Clive Barker in the beginning of his successful career in the film industry. The plot is flawed and silly, but it is funny to see. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Monster - A Ressurreição do Mal (VHS)" ("Monster - The Resurrection of the Evil") / "O Senhor das Trevas (DVD)" ("The Lord of the Darkness")

Im the kind of person who alot of the time will buy movies before I have even seen them. That was the case with this movie. I loved this movie! People say it was cheezy, maybe a little but if you love cult horror, get this movie. Its defently a fun little satanic film and I would recomend it to anyone that are fans of the horror / cult genre.

If done the right way, this Clive Barker piece would be both extremely scary and possessed of wicked humor. But the monster looks stupid and not at all frightening, and the cast and Irish countryside are not used to full effect.

Every great once in a while, you see what the movie could have been. A backstory was obviously needed, and David Dukes, God rest his soul, was wrong for the part (although those playing the priests were spot on). This is not the action-every-minute movie that it needs to be. Think about it: a monster flick that is boring in spots, with the titular demon looking like some drunk at a company Halloween party.

I suspect that if a better director, higher budget, and more meaningful casting were used (keeping Ireland in play, which is an excellent locale for this type of cinema), this could be a monster hit.

Cheap pun, yes I know!

It's really simple: dire film, fantastic short story concerning entities older than organised religion, which also looks at the idea of the female as divine, without being preachy or even vaguely normal. Like all Barker horror stories; dark, twisted and original, if you don't own the Books of Blood, you should. For the uninitiated the Books of Blood (1-6) are collections of short stories. As well as containing the short story 'Rawhead Rex', the Books of Blood also contain the short stories 'The Forbidden'(which was filmed as Candyman), 'The Last Illusion' (filmed as Lord of Illusions), 'The Body Politic' (filmed as part of Quicksilver Highway)and 'The Yattering and Jack' which was also committed to screen as an episode of Tales from the Darkside. The only good thing about this film is that it prompted Clive Barker to start making his own text to screen adaptations, starting with Hellraiser.

Dull terror pic in which a big damn demon is released from underground and runs amok in a small Irish town. The make-up is rubbery, the pacing is awful, and despite two big fangs, the monster resorts to strangling and slamming people into walls to kill them (yawn). Or when he does bite, the view is from the back of his head, twitching back and forth to create the illusion of chewing. Far too many scenes of people investigating houses, or the woods, where they walk slooooowly and carefully for a good two minutes without anything happening. The only blood you see is stained on the victims clothes in the aftermath of the attack, as there is nearly zero gore here. Lots or restraint shown throughout, especially in the scene dealing with a pregnant woman, where the monster is about to tear into her exposed belly, but decides to spare her. And when he kills a young (though very jerky) boy, it's done offscreen. Clive Barker wrote this?? Technically it looks great for a low-budget horror from overseas, but its empty plot and lame action do it in. Apparently the demon has some sort of religious connection, which is discovered in some very annoying scenes set in a church. People's hands get possessed, then shows them something (the monster?) running past trees in a forest. Oh, and please don't miss the cheapo moment when it looks like the monster is kissing a victim. His mouth barely touches the guy's face, only to have 12 gallons of blood explode everywhere. Tsssss! You may enjoy the foul-mouthed priest or some nice atmospheric shots of the spooky countryside, but otherwise, this is useless.

Awful, awful, awful. I am so disappointed I wasted 89 minutes of my life watching this dross. I'm thinking of turning to mighty god and asking for those valuable minutes back. I remember wondering into the video shop with a mate asking for a video to 'scare us out of our wits'. He told us about Rawhead Rex, and the box read just what we were looking for. How could we not be scared by something described as Pure evil, pure terror and so on. We had hardly got comfy when the film had started and you saw the 'purely evil' Rawhead Rex in the first nano second of the film. So the suspense vanished in a nano second too. So from there the film, leaps from awful to disgraceful. I never thought that the most 'evil thing in history's' idea of being evil would be to trash a caravan by spilling sugar, smashing trinkets and generally making a bit of a teenage mess. If you do see this video nestling in some box at Oxfam, pay no more than 20p (give a £1 to charity) and are curious about it, I suggest you do watch it, just to see how bad it really is. Then dispose of the video promptly to stop anyone else being exposed to it. I wish I had protested at the time, to the maker and protested in the most serious terms about him taking up another career, and also asking for my £1.00 back. I did ask for that back from the video shop arguing that the goods were not sold as described. I suggest that you just watch the hell raiser films over again and again... and again.

OK, this is NOT going to be a spoiler review or something to entice you more so than you may already be interested. What I do have to say is that out of the 1,000 odd horror/sci-fi movies I have seen this is one of my all-time favorites. Not only because I found it eerie, but in comparison to all demons-monster-things out there, this is the King baby. The tag line from the cover says it all, and if you are a fan of creative stories (that is not holding the screen play to the original writings,)and powerful evil then this will be your cup of tea. Rawhead is pretty much the king of all demons in the movie universe and beyond! I recommend this above most of the stuff out there, if you can find it that is.

Apparently, writer Clive Barker was so incensed by this laughably bad adaptation of one of his short stories that he decided the next movie to be based on one of his books would be directed by himself (the result being the rather excellent Hellraiser!). I can't say I blame the poor bloke: for an author to see his hard work turned into such a dreadful movie must be a painful experience.

It's an experience, however, that fans of really bad horror movies will probably find quite pleasurable, thanks to the fact that it not only features some truly terrible acting, but also one of the least convincing movie monsters of the 80s: the titular monstrosity looks like a bargain basement 'predator' (from the Schwarzeneggar movie)—a bizarre combination of pro-wrestler, a Mad Max-style warrior, and a bog-eyed mutant pig with ridiculously huge fangs!

The film opens with an Irish farmer attempting to remove a huge, ancient, neolithic monument from his field (he's obviously a man not too concerned about his country's heritage); when he finally gets the stone to shift, Rawhead Rex, a monstrous, nine foot tall creature that had been trapped underneath, is set free...

The rest of the film is pretty much your basic 'creature on the loose' movie (dressed up with some nonsense about a church built on a site originally used in pagan, pre-Christian rituals) which sees the ancient beast creating bloody havoc in the rural community before finally being defeated by 'girl power'. Along the way, viewers are treated to some pretty cheap-looking gore, a funny moment when the church verger is 'baptised' in urine by Rawhead, a shocking performance by the actor playing the scared gypsy kid, and a wonderfully gratuitous spot of female nudity when a woman is dragged though a caravan window by the monster, causing her top to fall off!

This film just doesn't get the credit it merits, its a cheaply made film which inevitably relies on the viewer to accept the limitations of the genre and "go with it", just as an old tom baker doctor who episode never had anything going for it except the characters and storyline so it goes with rawhead rex,the story and characters are good enough to carry the film, the setting in celtic ireland and the roots of the beast from the underworld are classic horror fare and i just don't see what more you can expect from this genre, its a blast from start to finish with gore and an unusual baptism scene for good measure, I've seen much worse major budget films, some of the acting . particularly the irish priest is gloriously over the top and all the more entertaining for it, its funny and gory at the same time, it sort of meets hammer and the evil dead and comes up with an entertaining movie, i voted a ten to hype the figures lol but its a good seven if truth be told:)

Clive Barker is known for liking things bloody, but apparently he doesn't like them *raw* - and after seeing "Rawhead Rex" I can't say I blame him for wanting to maintain a safe distance between himself and this movie.

Rex was apparently ruling Ireland before all the priests turned up and managed to have him banished, which may explain why life before his reappearance reminds one strongly of Craggy Island. Unfortunately, some fool disturbs his burial ground and it's up to a tourist dabbling in amateur photography to try and minimise potential casualties. Not before Rex stomps about tearing limb from limb and seeming rather annoyed about the general imposition, of course...

So there we have your solid setup for what should become a decent enough monster movie. Crucially though, what we are lacking is a decent monster. Imagine the original King Kong's uglier cousin, lumbered with a costume creating movement that wouldn't look out of place in a 50's stop-motion Godzilla film. They were all serviceable effects in their day, but this was made in the '80's, and disappointingly things don't seem to have gotten better over time. Add to this some appalling acting - particularly from an evil priest who's brainwashed by his radioactive church into siding with Rexy - and it feels like you're watching a throwback that's unworthy of its place in Barker's oeuvre. Just to top things off, there's a ridiculous finale with effects that rival those of "Hawk the Slayer" in terms of pure naffness.

Admittedly, these are all elements that contribute to the entertainment in their own especially awful way, so "Rawhead Rex" is the type of film that might be good for laughs with some alcohol handy. It's just a shame that the crew also look to have had a few too many nips of poteen in its making, as well...

"Rawhead Rex" was one of several "unknown" films I prided myself on "discovering" during the late 1980s, when friends would visit for a day or four. I seemed to have a knack (seemingly lost, now!) to pick out videos I had never heard of, which turned out to be surprisingly quite good. Rawhead Rex was one of these.

I found it a quite riveting, scary movie. As with almost all horror movies, I thought a few things could have been done better. Still, Rex was infinitely more satisfying to me than a number of present-day "horror" flicks which center on someone hacking people up with a knife for no apparent reason or which drift confusingly between reality and halucination.

I thought the monster looked pretty convincing -- then again, I was weaned in the pre-Speilberg era. I have to agree with the reviewer who said the scene where Rex kills the farmer in the shed and the wife sees him from the kitchen window, then tries to hide, is quite scary. So was the boy glancing up from his comic books in the van, to see Rex standing outside.

I loved the touches with the stained glass puzzle & the chief detective's stunned "I'll be d****, the Yank was right" when he looks at the horrific crayon drawing made by the young survivor of the trailer park attack, too stunned to speak. (The severed arm was a very nice touch, too.)

Anyone who thinks Rawhead Rex was "hilarious," is no horror fan. It may not have been one of the genre's best efforts ever, but it was one of a number of very meaty horror flicks of the 1980s which are still have plenty bite today (pun intended)!

An Irish farmer ploughing his fields removes an ancient seal from it, to only release a demon and Howard Hallenbark an American historian on a working vacation in Ireland might be the only one who can put an end to its terrifying rage.

An over-the-top and daft, but deliriously entertaining monster (ancient Irish demon) on the rampage low-budgeted opus. "Rawhead Rex" is an adaptation of Clive Baker's short story, who he also penned the film's screenplay. The ideas covered by Baker are unhinged and fascinating enough, but the tacky and sloppy execution of it is hard to take seriously and this especially goes for the monster creation. It's simply looks like a mutated head-banger crossed ape with its rippled muscles, long black hair and googly red eyes attached to a rubber mask. Oh it's a sight --- just wait for its spectacular entrance and you don't have to wait long either! While toweringly imposing in presence I didn't think it created much fear, but it sure was aggressive and destructive when in action/and gnawing upon its victims. Little bit of gruesome gore is chucked in and some bright optical FX work within its climax, but it remains pretty cornball. Where it scored high points for me was the choice of locations, rich rural Irish backdrops were atmospherically brought across and it was professionally photographed. Even the sound effects had certain eeriness and the music score, while overcooked was forebodingly judged. Something about its air had a dark mythical (its religious outlook) / fairytale (good vs. evil) edge, which only cemented how unusual it was and within it had that old-fashion tailoring of older monster features. Only if it didn't succumb to its pulpy silliness, but director George Pavlou (who also previously directed another Baker adaptation "Transmutations") presented some ghastly and humorous moments along with few stunning images. The performances are reasonable, as David Dukes is committed in the central role. Niall Toibin, Niall O'Brien and Ron Wilmont offer fine support. Could have been better, but still trashy fun.

the original story upon which this film is based is an incredibly powerful raw piece of horror. and in writing the script for this film, clive barker managed to capture that, and write some of the best dialogue ive heard from a horror film in a while, just natural and real, without seeping into cliche and trashiness, and while there was not a lot of character development, the characters were again, not cliched. it also had the guts to push boundaries that are normally avoided, even in horror cinema, or should i say especially in horror cinema (but thats a different rant). however, the director deserves to be executed. the entire thing stinks of a dodgy cheap bbc doctor who episode. no imagination in the direction, and not even a documentary style, just a plain old no effort made for tv look, which really hurts the power of the script, totally removes it in fact. add to this the fact that the "monster" looks like something from doctor who as well, except doctor who usually manages to come up with horrors far more scary than this trash. with someone who could actually direct a movie in the helm and some actual effects as opposed to the childrens toy junk that is on offer, this could have been a classic of the 80s. but instead its just a nightmare for all the wrong reasons....

Cartoonish special effects, silly ending n wtf end credit scene but was passable for an 80s monster film. First saw this in the late 80s on a rented vhs. Revisited it recently. I thot the monster was half werewolf half Vincent Klyn aka Fender Tremolo from Cyborg (1989) but my 7 year old nephew called the monster a monkey gone wild. The setting is right with sweeping landscapes but the rubber mask n glowing red eyes is very laughable.

Like it or not the benchmark here is Hellraiser. And this one falls incredibly short of it.

The film plays out more cartoonish and comedic than what the subject matter asks for. With an antagonist looking more like a Saturday morning cartoon monster than a threat to Irish faith.

I am on the record by saying I've never read any of Barker's novels/short stories, but film wise blasphemy and sacrilege as a subject matter is done considerably better in the Hellraiser series.

If you're a B-movie buff then by all means watch Rawhead Rex (which in this case you've probably done so already). Otherwise, your time is better invested in other titles.

When a field is plowed in rural Ireland, the title demon is loosed from its imprisonment beneath the earth. Rawhead Rex (played by Heinrich von Schellendorf) proceeds to terrorize and slaughter various unfortunate souls. An American writer named Howard Hallenbeck (David Dukes), who's come to the country to do research, gets caught up in the gory goings-on, and in fact it will be up to him to piece together the story and learn the means of dispatching the fiend.

The extreme cheesiness of the monster can't help but diminish whatever horror that director George Pavlou might have otherwise created. As it is, this agreeably goofy creature feature has some great Irish atmosphere going for it, as well as a spooky music score by Colin Towns.

Scripted by the legendary author Clive Barker, based on his story, this often plays out like a standard American horror film. One cannot blame Barker for being disappointed, especially as this movie version sidesteps any sort of nuance in favour of clichés. (Such as the classic moment we've seen in countless genre films where the hero describes the monster to the authorities, and wearily intones, "I know how this sounds.")

That said, there is some nifty gore to go with the onslaught of cheese, as well as some capable supporting performances by Niall Toibin (as a priest) and Niall O'Brien (as a pig headed inspector). Hugh O'Conor ("Botched") and Cora Venus Lunny play Hallenbecks' likable children. Kelly Piper (the nurse from William Lustigs' "Maniac") plays Hallenbecks' wife. Ronan Wilmot is a scream as the crazed verger Declan O'Brien. And Dukes is a very amiable hero. Some of these people give this schlock better performances than it deserves, especially Dukes after tragedy has befallen him.

That's not to say that the movie isn't pretty damn entertaining, because it is. (If only because it's utterly laughable a lot of the time.) Still, there is some potency to the material here and there, and the tale being told has an excellent forward pace, allowing the movie to clock in at a reasonable hour and a half long running time.

The highlight? A "golden shower" scene with the monster.

Seven out of 10.

When a movie is titled Rawhead Rex, you already get a few indications as of what to expect: low production values, a silly premise and most likely some really bad acting. Having set my expectations accordingly, I have to say that this movie is a fun way of spending a rainy afternoon.

The plot of the movie revolves around an ancient demon who is set free from the underground prison where he was trapped, allowing him to go on a killing spree in the Irish countryside. Early in the movie, it is foreshadowed that the only person who might be able to stop him is an American photographer who is in Ireland along with his family, gathering material for a book he is writing. Their story lines are told in parallel until they collide, setting up a violent finale.

The monster itself is laughable. It looks cartoonish and is too lumbering to be even remotely scary. This is a direct consequence of the low budget – Predator came only one year later and its title character made for a much more believable monster –, but the silly monster is part of the charm the movie has. One particular scene that stands out is near the beginning of the movie when the monster attacks a middle-aged couple in their home, killing the man and then proceeding to thrash the house. The way it is shot and the awkwardness of the actor in the monster suit almost make this scene MST3K worthy.

Turning to the positives now, there are flashes of brilliance in Clive Barker's screenplay, with some one-liners that are particularly witty. The Irish setting is picturesque and the way tension is built in some scenes almost makes up for the obvious flaws the movie has in terms of direction. Acting wise, David Dukes delivers a decent performance as the leading character, but there is also the obligatory overacting from some of his counterparts, Ronan Wilmot as the possessed priest being the first that comes to mind.

Rawhead Rex is a well-paced movie that delivers on its silly premise. It provides solid entertainment for B movie fans, but all those expecting anything else might end up being disappointed.

The short story Rawhead Rex is a gory and stomach churning piece of literature appearing in Clive Barker's Books of Blood Volume 3. Reading it one sees the possibilities of a good old fashioned monster on the loose movie. Unfortunately, most of the graphic violence of the story is removed from the film that followed. Although many of the character details remain the same, except that the protagonist and his family are Londoners instead of Americans in the short story. The setting, score, a few actors and the occasional scare make the films worth seeing for true Clive Barker completists. Be warned, what does make the proceedings less alluring is the fact that Rawhead himself is a great disappointment; the direction somewhat poor and from a script by Barker himself I expected more. Not even in league with his superior Hellraiser, effective Candyman or intriguing Nightbreed. Though I must admit I must've seen this film about eight times since it was initially released.

Trivia note: The mother of the American Family is the actress who plays the nurse Joe Spinell skewers in Maniac.