Making Pumpkinhead look like an intellectual...

Rawhead Rex

     A little history: I first read this story somewhere around 1988-1991 in one of Clive Barker's Books Of Blood. That series  of books also spawned Cabal (aka Nightbreed), Midnight Meat Train,  and  The Last Illusion (Lord of Illusions). Each of these stories made it to film, but it was years before I knew that Rawhead Rex had also been adapted.  Each of these films had a questionable quality, and clearly a super low budget, but I still enjoyed them (mostly). I was never really motivated to watch this one because nobody, and I mean NOBODY has much good to say about it. But I've chosen this as the year to watch it...

     So I guess it's an Irish thing to bury immortal tooth-faced beasts under phallic pillars in the middle of fields. In the first scene, we're treated to a handful of farmers (?) trying to remove this centuries old pillar with the help of a tractor and, I can only assume, a bottle of Jameson. After tugging and wiggling, smoke starts spewing from underneath, and Rawhead jumps out. Rawhead Rex looks like this:

Toothy bastard would have ruled the WWE.

     Next we meet our protag, Howard Hallenbeck,  an American traveling around Ireland doing research on holy places and such. He's brought the whole family with him, I might add. That proves to be a mistake as Rawhead eventually tires of mature human flesh and puts some focus on human veal in the form of Howard's son. From there, we have a man hunt (or Rex hunt, as it were) involving a not-quite convinced police force, and one creepy Deacon that's in love with Rawhead. Enough so, that he willingly partakes in "water sports" with Rex in some sort of baptism.

Giggity.

     After some useless scenes of people running around, doing nothing urgently, we're treated to a climax in the graveyard of the local church featuring a rock as the deus ex machina. But as always, there's rules to this sort of thing and that means the 'God rock' will only work in the hands of a woman. Good thing Howard's wife ignored his pleading to 'stay someplace safe'. If it weren't for her, glowy worms wouldn't have shot out the of the rock and turned Rex into an old, gray, dusty corpse.

Despite the simple effects, simple plot, un-charismatic cast, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was by no means great, the only scene you're likely to remember is the pissing baptism, but it has its place in the deep dark corners of the horror film archives.


 For another take on this, Ms. Gucci has covered this movie here : http://sghorrorfest.blogspot.com/2013/10/ireland-will-never-be-same.html

Thursday: This happened both before and after I graduated from High School....