Thursday, November 18, 2010

Clive Barker's Salome/The Forbidden

(1973)*1/2

Two short films that Clive Barker put together in film school. Introduced by a woman dressed like a black chicken, this is one weird assemblance of film. The black chicken lady tells us all about the films we are about to watch. She does so while tongue kissing another oddly dressed female and flashing close up shots of naked breasts with weird colored nipples.


This intro strangely makes sense when you figure out that the two films are dialog free and loaded with genital obsession. Pardon my crappy pictures but I couldn't find any pictures online so I had to snap a few shots off my tv.


I wish I could tell you what the films were really about but they just appeared to be exactly what they were, film school projects. You can see some of Barker's talent and creepiness in the use of shadow and light. Both shorts are black and white and one of them has a lot of scenes inverted to negative.



Basically the whole sordid mess was 78 minutes of what the fuck is going on in this thing. Barker and Doug Bradley(Pinhead) also star in the films. My advice, leave this one on the shelf.

3 comments:

Octopunk said...

Clive Barker is a hack and I knew it the minute I started reading his work. Which I've read a bunch of, I'll admit, because he does have some good ideas. But as an artist he's a bit of a mess.

However, he did direct the first Hellblazer, a job of his I can't fault at all.

JPX said...

I seem to recall it being called Hellraiser, unless you're referring to cigarette smoking John Constantine (sorry, couldn't resist).

I don't know what to make of this at all, b ut for some reason those pictures make me want to check it out post haste...

Octopunk said...

Crap! I can't believe I made that mistake.

JPX is right, folks. For once.

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