October has long passed, and the spooky decorations that once proudly adorned buildings across campus are now collecting dust in storage. However, Halloween fans are still clambering for a fright. Even as time marches on and we move closer to the cheery, heartfelt holidays, many people still want to watch a bone-chilling television series or movie or read a book that will keep them up until the witching hour.
Luckily for horror fans, we all live at the same time as Clive Barker. Best known for writing original stories and screenplays for movies like the “Hellraiser” series and “Candyman,” Barker is the ultimate sleepover movie writer and an underappreciated icon of the horror genre.
Barker got his creative start in live theater as a playwright during his studies at the University of Liverpool. Later, he moved into theatrical work and wrote the short story collection series, “Books of Blood.” The series became popular enough to warrant adaptations of a few of Barker’s stories, yet he was not entirely happy with the outcomes. This led Barker to take a more central role in adaptations of his works and he decided to direct several movies based on his books and stories.
Barker’s peak of popularity coincided with the AIDS epidemic and the conservative Reagan and Bush administrations, and his work reflects the dark reality of being a queer person at the time. His 1990 cult-classic film “Nightbreed” was an allegory for how LGBTQIA+ people were often “othered” and how they created a community for themselves hidden away from heteronormative society. Although “Nightbreed” was critically panned, it remains a popular horror work for Barker’s fans.
Short stories published in the ‘80s, like “In the Hills, the Cities” and “Sex, Death, and Starshine,” explored themes of human desire and how that often conflicts with all types of relationships with gorey, terrifying twists. In interviews, Barker has been candid about the prejudice he faced in the creation of his art, especially around depictions of same-sex relationships.
“Creations in drawing form and writing form were not looked upon kindly by my father or my mother,” he told The Telegraph in 2020. “And then, when I got into publishing books, I found there was a prejudice. I was told, especially with 'In the Hills, the Cities,' ‘do not publish this – if you publish this, you’ll destroy everything you have.’”
Despite this prejudice, Barker continued to be an outspoken supporter of representation for LGBTQIA+ characters. Barker was an executive producer for the Academy Award-winning film “Gods and Monsters,” which told the story of James Whale, the openly gay director of classic horror movies like “Frankenstein.” He also pitched a remake of the 1932 classic, “The Mummy” with a transgender protagonist in the 1980s, decades before the Brendan Fraser-led remake.
In his own words, Barker expressed his desire to make his readers question their own tastes and preferences. In an introduction for a collector’s edition of his short story collection, “Books of Blood,” Barker wrote that he wants to “make (people) wonder, perhaps, if the line between what they feared and what they took pleasure in was not a good deal finer than they’d once imagined.”
His creative aesthetic was often influenced by this philosophy. Many of his own works, as well as their adaptations, take inspiration from the intersection between the leather community of Barker’s time with the gay community. Perhaps the most recognizable example, the leather-and-chain adorned cenobites that dominate the “Hellraiser” franchise, have proudly proclaimed themselves “demons to some, angels to others,” as they drag characters into their sadomasochistic underworld.
Barker’s contributions to horror have inspired many modern pieces of media. Everything from movies like “Mandy” which features a leather-wearing demon biker crew, to stylishly sexy and horrifying shows like “Fall of the House of Usher,” have all been influenced by Barker and his works. Even pillars of mainstream horror like “American Horror Story” have been affected by Barker’s literature and films. Since his directorial works in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, Barker has been a producer on remakes of his films but focuses more on his literary career.
While Barker is not a household horror name like Stephen King or John Carpenter, he plays a huge role in the horror world with his prolific storytelling about love, loss and how it feels to be an outcast in society. The next time you feel like wearing something edgy or watching a horror movie, make sure to think of Clive Barker.
