Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut
Director: Clive Barker, Russell Cherrington
Writer: Clive Barker
Based on: Clive Barker‘s novel
Cast: Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg, Doug Bradley
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
Aaron (Craig Sheffer) dreams of Midian, the place were all the monsters go to live in peace and forgiveness. He believes that this place is real and his girlfriend Lori (Anne Bobby) is worried about him, that’s why he’s seeing a psychotherapist, Dr Decker (David Cronenberg). But Decker uses Aaron’s lability to blame the murders Decker himself commits on Aaron, pushing Aaron to look for Midian. And he does find it and gets in touch with the monsters living there. But it’s actually not that clear who the monsters really are in this story.

I haven’t actually seen Nightbreed, so I can’t say anything about the differences between the original version and the Cabal Cut, apart from what I heard about it. But looking at the movie without all the history attached to this cut, I did think that it ran a little too long. But it was intriguing and I’m very willing to delve a little deeper into the world.

For those of you not aware of the history of this film, let me explain: When Barker made the movie in 1990, the studio pretty much re-cut it and changed the film’s entire meaning – away from a story where it turns out that the humans are the bigger monsters than the so-called monsters, to a story about a human serial killer. This mutilated and much shorter version was what got released, much to Barker’s dismay. But recently a video tape was uncovered with a rough cut of the film as it was supposed to be.

And Russell Cherrington took that tape and the original script to restore the movie. The version that was shown now sticks completely to the script (and the novel it’s based on), but they weren’t yet able to get at the original footage, so the material varies in quality from normal 35mm to a digitized video tape between the scenes. (They are working on it to get everything in good quality.)

With the image quality as it is, the film was a little hard to watch. Also, it’s clear that this entire re-cut is a fan’s labor of love. And for me, who has neither seen the original film, nor read the book, the Cabal Cut in its current state was not the ideal way to get into this.

But David Cronenberg was amazingly creepy and the soundtrack was really cool, and I did enjoy Midian and its inhabitants. So I think I’ll just need to start over with the whole thing – read the book, watch the old film and then watch the Cabal cut again, when it’s released in a proper quality.

Summarising: For fans. But the film’s history alone is fascinating enough.