Review of Nightbreed (1990) by Dan G — 26 Mar 2009

Nightbreed is an awesome, underappreciated, misclassified film. Yes, it is a gory film about monsters. However, while parts of it are pure slasher film, once the story proper gets going it's really a class vs class action film with monsters vs humans.

And the monsters are the good guys. "WHAT A TWIST!" The film stays true to Barker's book in most ways, but some notable changes have been made, but as Barker adapted it himself, and in my opinion improved the story by making some of these changes, this is a good thing.

There is much to love in this film. The directing is stylish, the acting is decent (there are a bunch of lovable supporting characters), the gore is fantastic, the effects are great and it features one of Danny Elfman's all-time best (though lesser known) musical scores.

Oh, and it has headtrip afficionado film director David Cronenberg in it as the villain in a REALLY creepy appearance. Honestly, I only have 2 problems with this film. One is that the male and female leads both have terrible late 80's hair that dates the movie.

The other is that the movie isn't available in a special edition. It needs sound remastering and a commentary track, and I have a feeling there is a lot of archive behind the scenes stuff for it lying around somewhere as they did at one point publish a photo book all about the makeup of all the monsters.