NIGHTBREED!

Every now and then I actually end up enjoying the horror movie I'm reviewing. This, obviously, is good news for me while I’m watching the film, but bad news for me in the long run, because it means I don't have much to make fun of in my review, and long-time followers know that pointing out others' misfortunes is my bread and butter. This was sort of the case with Nightbreed. The movie wasn't bad at all, but all was not lost, for I had to look no farther than the movie's box to find that sweet lifeblood of the Shocktober Spectacular: unintentional hilarity. Here's what I'm talking about:

"A NEW REASON TO FEAR THE NIGHT!!!..."

...screams the movie poster, and it wasn't kidding! Right under that very warning stands a troupe of genetic atrocities so repugnant—so foul—that the very site of their deformed visages would turn even the hardest man’s soul black. Let's have a look:

Pictured, from R to L: Porcupine woman; Satan (aka "The Devil"); fat man with snakes living in his stomach; Lizard-Man (with parts of your little sister still probably stuck in his teeth from lunch); Craig Sheffer, girl with cat for half a head, man with….uh…wait a minute. Can we go back a couple of people? Craig Sheffer?!

What part of that dreamy coif and those chisled cheekbones give me a "new reason to fear the night?!" I know Craig must be tough because he's wearing a leather jacket, but I should probably point out one more time that standing behind him is A LIZARD-MAN!!!! That guy is a new reason for me to fear the night, the day, and pretty much any open spaces in general. Craig Scheffer?! He's a new reason for girls to cross out Jon Brandis's name on their Trapper Keepers, replace it with his, and surround it with tiny little hearts.

You know what my favorite part of this picture is? Imagining the fortitude Craig Sheffer's character must have had to stand in the company of these guys, right up front, in that pose, with that mad-dog look on his face, like he's actually the scariest one in this photo. Craig's never had a zit in his life! On the contrary, two people to his right is a man with a moon for a head.

I don't want to ruin things for Nightbreed fans, but I'm very excited about Nightbreed 2, in which the breed will be joined by two more reasons to fear the night:


Cindy Crawford, and


Elmo.

In all fairness, when Craig’s character gets angry, his eyes go red and he gets some lines on his face, but that’s when the real horror starts--when you realize that the monster Craig Sheffer is still better looking than you are.

Another thing about Nightbreed that had me rolling my eyes and uttering a heartfealt "What the hell?!" was the "mysterious" town of Midian. According to the movie's lore, "Midian" is a town inhabited by the abovementioned monsters. It's shrouded in secracy...while obviously dismissed by the sane as "myth," some people still beleive it to be real. Craig Sheffer's character has devoted his life to discovering Midian, but to no avail, which is why I thought it was absolutely hilarious that, later in the movie, Midian was INSTANTLY located by:

his girlfriend
a bar-hopping floozy (?)
Craig's psycologist
a backwoods store owner
a batallion of cops (?!)

I honestly believe you could put Stevie Wonder behind the wheel of a car and he could take you to Midian. Some seceret...hell, most people have a harder time finding the mall’s bathroom.

All kidding aside, I will now tell you what was really wrong with Nightbreed. It wanted to be more than it was, and, at some point, it very well may have been, but in the end, it wasn’t. The problem was, even after the end result, the director and the producer kept insisting it that it was, when we, the viewing public, had just watched the proof that said it wasn't. Get that? Clive Barker really wanted Nightbreed to be the one thing in the world that pisses me off the most: a horror movie metaphor. However, someone needs to tell Clive that just because you really want something to be something doesn’t mean it actually is, and no amount of jumping up and down and pointing at it and saying it is is going to actually turn it into one. Nightbreed wanted really badly to be legit, and at one point it actually almost achieved it. There’s a delightful scene in which one of the characters is decending into Midian, all the while glimpsing it’s grotesque inhabitants for brief seconds, each one more insanly disfigured than the last, but the scene wasn't frightening. With Danny Elfman’s score behind it, I'd go as far as to call the scene "playful." The monsters weren’t scary—it was almost as if creatures from Beetlejuice had accidently wondered onto the set of Nightbreed. This is due, in part, to the fact that the monsters were never really malicious in the first place, which brings us to the question the movie’s box itself asks, “In the battle of good versus evil, who is man, and who is monster?” I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that by the end I wasn’t rooting for the monsters, and I’d also be lying if I didn’t notice the irony of the movie’s real villain--a human who would don a horrifying mask to give him the face of a monster. Nightbreed was, in essence, a “it’s what’s on the inside that counts,” movie, but with one too many horror movie elements added. The end result was 50 percent horror movie, 50 percent not, and this undeciceviness created a distracting tone that made a possibly brilliant movie only mediocre.