Cabal, the novella Nightbreed is based on, is the best thing Barker ever wrote. And the movie was a passion project, he intended to film the entire story line for line, but it did end up being a movie made by committee. The amount of studio interference was staggering: script pages, dialogue, and scenes were cut daily, and the theatrical cut (which Barker had nothing to do with) makes less sense than the "directors" cut, which Barker also had nothing to do with. All that said, it's a favorite movie of mine. I wish he could remake it today with only his vision, with modern effects and a better budget. It's really sad knowing what that movie could have been.
Honestly Cabal leans so hard on what is not-seen and impossible to understand that a movie was about as likely to work as a movie of To Have Done with the Judgment of God.
@@irlikingpie Arguably all of the movies Barker directed are Art Films - with the possible exception of Candyman which is a really solid ghost story but not particularly surreal. I think it's just that surrealism is not well understood within mass culture, especially surrealism in literature and film. It's not all melting watches. In fact it's mostly not melting watches.
In HS I was reading Cabal, the book Nightbreed is based on, and the weird kid in class told me “hey I’ve got the movie based on that book on laserdisc if you wanna come watch it in my garage” and so I did and to this day Nightbreed is the only movie I’ve watched on laserdisc
There has never been a review that made me want to throw the book the movie is adapted from at somebody more because how the Nightbreed are (not) described in the book is a real key to understanding how difficult it would be to do them in a movie. lol
I love this movie tbh, and think it makes a lot more sense if you've read a lot of Barker's writing. I think the fact that the nightbreed are legit monsters, some of them actively predatory and not just misunderstood is also a kinda good way for it to present them not as completely sanitised wholesome victims but a dangerous and endangered underground community with internal turmoil like has basically been reality anywhere communities are pushed underground, but still with the fact Decker is trying to outright genocide them being awful.
That's a common problem with how mainstream culture views and responds to oppressed communities; unless they're perfect and wholesome and lack any of the problems that often characterize oppressed peoples, they're not considered "good enough" to sympathize with, and those problems are used to justify continued oppression. It's also one of my favorite horror films, despite the flaws. The director's cut definitely fixes some of the more egregious studio meddling with the film.
I can confirm as somebody who has read a LOT of Barker that this is the case. Cabal (and Nightbreed) go to some dark places thematically and have no interest in creating owo cuddly protagonists. I mean even look at Lori. My interpretation of her (drawn principally from the book) was that her encounter with the Breed awakens a desire in her to be different - that there's a queer alterity to Lori that presents through her body dysmorphia, her fantasies about death and her relationship with Boone - and that her desire to become a monster is more central thematically to the book than Boone's becoming a monster. But I've also seen other critics who approach her (reading from the movie) as being a straight tourist who invades queer spaces and directs a straight Gaze toward an Other that she finds beautiful and enticing but still fundamentally alien. And the mind-blowing thing is that Barker, who wrote BOTH Loris could very well have been saying both things about her. She contains multitudes.
Great points made here by everyone +also they're monsters. They're not oppressed minority humans. They're literal monsters. They don't need to be a perfect metaphor. It's a goddamn story, not a didactic fable.
@@ThisIsYourGodNow And, like I was getting at when I wrote on Cabal, one of the things they represent is a distilled sort of alterity - the potential to be capital-O Other that exists within people and circumstances. They are simultaneously a reflection of oppressed minorities and on the fear of infection and the death drive all at once. As Barker put it, the sack of humanity unpicked and sewed back up with the moon inside.
“Ayyy, I’m not just a metaphor for grief anymore, I’m also a cereal mascot! Those crazy kids are always tryin’ ta steal my Magic Spoon! What’re ya gonna do, hah?”
I saw this movie in high school and have two things to say about it: 1) For the longest time, I mentally merged Cronenberg's character in this film and Jeffrey Coombs' character in *The Frighteners* into one character 2) There is a moment where a country cover of Oingo Boingo's "Skin" plays, and I find that absolutely hilarious. I picture Barker and Elfman in the scoring session going "Well, we need a song for this scene. What do you think?" "My band?" "No, not your band." "Someone else covering my band so I still get songwriting royalties?" "PERFECT!"
I'm glad the thoughtslime channel doesn't have sponsored ads but it somehow feels okay in scaredy cats? Also the chemisty between Matt and Bobby Duke just makes for ADVERTISING GOLD.
To me it's that for the thoughtslime channel it kind of undercuts any anticapitalist messaging to do a sponsor segment, but I also inherently know that none of these sponsored segments from any youtubers are genuine (well, almost none of them. There are a handful of science/engineering youtubers who get sponsorships from stuff like KiwiCo, that I can genuinely believe support it, but for the most part), so when I see it on a scaredy cats video, and it's not really contradicting the core thesis of the vid, it's easy to slide into my usual "dudes' gotta eat" mentality, and just treat it the same I would with any other ad.
"In real life gay people are seldom cannibals or murderers" Thank you Jeffrey Dahmer, for singlehandedly making that statement true most of the time instead of a guarantee
Whenever the topic of sexual predators who target men come up, I tend to think about this quote from the Shawshank redemption, in reference to a group of rapists who start to target the main character Andy Dufresne: “I don't suppose it would help if I told them that I'm not homosexual.” Red: “Neither are they. You have to be human first. They don't qualify.”
...that's fucking dumb though. Idk if you noticed, but gay people are *gasp* people. And people are, sometimes, cannibals or murderers. Jeffrey Dahmer was not the only gay murderer. In fact, Fritz Haarmann would be the go-to gay cannibal serial killer for me. Dude got a way more creepy story to him than Dahmer, to the point that there's legitimately a creepy children's song about him (that was not fabricated by a horror movie or something. It's the legit only example I know of a creepy children's song actually existing and not just being a horror trope).
And the British serial killer Dennis Nilsen. After it became public that he'd been killing a bunch of young menafter having sex with them, his family disowned him... but for the gay bit, not the murder bit! Not hard to work out how he grew up to be a monster with no empathy coming from that.
WHOA WHOA WHOA. Are we really gonna forget the extremely important Candyman here?? Don't make me go back to the tier list video and discover you haven't seen Candyman :0
Thanks again to Magic Spoon for hooking us up with that variety pack. We almost ran out of cereal before filming! Click my link magicspoon.com/ScaredyCats and use code SCAREDYCATS for $5 off your order!
Best sponsorship promo I've ever seen in a YT vid. And in keeping with the tradition of this channel, it was definitely the wettest. Edit: extra props for getting a food product related sponsorship on a somewhat gross video from an inherently gross Channel. That's moxie. That's BDE.
I literally just panicked a little and thought I forgot to show up to work yesterday. But no... this is indeed Monday not Tuesday. Getting a Monday Scaredy Cats was a nice surprise and treat to help through Garfield's least favorite day.
I have class on Tuesday and my routine is to watch scaredycats while I check that my homework was done. I got SO scared it was Tuesday already because I still needed to finish that homework
My Dad saw I was watching the start of this as a teenager and went "Oh, Nightbreed! Pretty much just a special effects reel, it's dumb but you'll like it" I think he may have missed the subtext a wee bit.
Bromg 🤣 You call Clive Barker horny while you eat cereal like that?! I've been online for most of my adult life, and don't think I've ever seen something so obscene. Best ad for a cereal yet. Count me in!
You're breaking my heart, Matty! I love Nightbreed! Don't be mean to my monster babies! I'm sad you didn't talk about Narcisse, the man who carved away his face so he could join the Breed by revealing his "true face" only to emerge as a Breed with only his human face in tact, his earnest desire to embrace his otherness being the one true thing he carries forward. Also the ending isn't supposed to lead into a sequel, it's just open. The book ended the same way, the breed in exile and exodus.
The book makes it much clearer that it's a deliberately ambiguous ending and not sequel bait by shifting the prose language into a kind of mythic register. As if what we'd seen was the origin story of a god and it ends with the prophecy of acts not yet done.
This has been one of my cult favorites for years. The director's cut, released a few years ago, is still wacky, but there's a bit more "plot" to it all. Also, Clive Barker may not have a lot of success with movies, but he's a prolific and skilled writer with a heap of amazing stories.
Weaveworld is the one I generally recommend to people who have never read Barker before. But aside from Cabal I'd say either Hellbound Heart and Imajica are his best.
Here, paraphrased from what I heard from some of the cast and crew at a con one time, is why Nightbreed feels like it was made by committee: They were making Clive's film and the studio was like "haha no if you're not careful the audience will sympathise with the monsters" and Clive was like "yes" and the studio was like "no" and then everything went dark
I hate to be the Book Is Better guy but I guess here I am. Its called Cabal and its technically a short story collection which also comes with the Lord of Illusion story the movie is based on.
The director's cut and the book are practically indistinguishable. There are some aesthetics features of Barker's depictions that couldn't be translated to the big screen due to their sexual nature or extremely fantastical essence(such as Boone's metamorphosis), but aside from that, is pretty much identical
Scaredy Matt: "Nighbreed, FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU DO! You had the whole summer to think of it!" Nightbreed: "But Matt-" Scaredy Matt: "DON'T TALK! THE MOUTH DOESN'T MOVE! IT LOOKS FAKE!"
One of my favorites. The lure "Hellraiser meets X-Men" just makes me want to watch it more. Every negative you mentioned can be brushed off with the question "But is it fun"? And the answer is Yes.
Dude, you can not disrespect Clive Barker like that. He is a horror icon! Just because you can't read novels with more than a hundred pages doesn't mean you can just shit on the guy. Clearly you've never gone outside his work in films but even if you had considered only films he still created two of the best horror villians ever (Pinhead and Candyman). Saying he has done nothing but Hellraiser and naming Midnight Meat Train is a huge disservice to Clive Barker, to his many years in the industry, and to the people he inspired.
Clive Barker did nothing else? What about Candyman? Also the sponsor is absolutely perfect. It’s not just like it fits, it feels essential to the video.
The big standout for me has always been Button Face. His creepy af mask design was what drew me to the film initially. Also as for other good Clive Barker films, I really liked Lord of Illusions? I could be biased though because I saw it as a kid and it had Scott Bakula in it.
I knew a bloke who once got his hands on Cronenberg’s mask prop. It was made to fit him and is apparently *noticeably* small which means, even though it doesn’t seem so on film, David Cronenberg’s head is weirdly tiny.
On a Clive Barker side note...A week ago. I made the mistake of re-reading part of Books of Blood before going to sleep. DO NOT read Books of Blood before going to sleep.
There's actually (kind of) three cuts of Nightbreed: the theatrical one, the director's cut and the Cabal Cut. To my understanding the Cabal Cut is the longest one at 145 minutes, while the Director's Cut is 120 something minutes though I believe the director's cut contains more new footage. It's a film I hold dear to my heart. I recommend checking out the comic book adaptations as well for another angle. For a more thorough breakdown on the different cuts of Nightbreed: www.clivebarkercast.com/2020/04/09/all-the-versions-of-nightbreed-explained/ .
@@tesseracht LUCKY!!!! I knew about it, as I kept up on Clive Barker's hunt for the cut footage. What I wouldn't have given to be able to be there. This is a very special film that I've loved since childhood. I could watch it a thousand times and still be moved by it. Of course, that could be because of my love for Barker's work, both in novels and films alike.
@@mermaid_at_heart213 If it makes you feel any better, the Director's Cut that's easily available now is the superior version of the film. The Cabal Cut was a really rough, "proof of concept" in order to drum up support for the Director's Cut. Most of the footage was pulled from video archives and was very hard to see and a lot of the scenes ran on way too long. The actual Director's Cut is a much tighter film.
Hey Scaredy Matt I missed this one, and it's important for me to dunk this here because I know it's a joke but, Clive Barker's work is fucking fantastic. Dude starts to make a children's book series, and turns it into a Dark Fantasy series. The Abarat Series is a great book series, and it has hand-painted illustrations by Clive Barker, showcasing how characters canonically look, and moments of the story. It involves an otherworldly archipelago where the hours of the day are different islands, including new hours and dead hours. There's an ancient history as the dimension bridges with Earth every so often. I know it's a joke but I'm a fan of his work and want to shill an underrated FANTASTIC work by the man.
This is one of my favorite horror films, despite the flaws. And the flaws were definitely the result of a good deal of executive meddling with the film's production; Barker didn't get to do everything his way. The director's cut fixes a lot of problems with the original theatrical release. Haven't see the unofficial Cabal Cut, but I've heard good things about it.
The Cabal Cut and the director's cut are very close to the same and are effectively the same structurally. Both are far better than the theatrical cut but this is all kind of the problem with converting a surrealist book into a movie. Pontypool Changes Everything / Pontypool managed by jettisoning 90% of the weird stuff. Barker refused to do that and the end result is... well... surreal.
Hold up! Clive Barker wrote a lot of good shit after Hellraiser. The Great and Secret Show, Imajica, Galilee, Hell, he even wrote a children's book, The Thief of Always that was so good I was hoping for a goddamn sequel. His books and graphic novels were always solid. He just didn't do anything in films or video games that was even remotely worth a fuck after Hellraiser hit theaters.
There is a longer version out there, THE ULTIMATE CABAL CUT - containing all known existing and restored footage (3hrs, 19mins). It makes the previous versions seem like teaser trailers. Theatrical Cut - 1hr 41mins Director’s Cut - 2hrs 00mins Integral Cut - 2hrs 13mins Leaked Cabal Cut - 2hrs 25mins Official Cabal Cut - 2hrs 25mins (different footage to the leaked version) ULTIMATE CABAL CUT - 3hrs 19mins. Thank me later 👍 #occupymidian #cinemageddon
I have it on good authority (as in, I heard Noah Caldwell-Gervais say it) that Clive Barker is an exceptional short story author and also that Undying is pretty neat
Clive Barker absolutely, desperately needs to have a chance to work on a reboot for this. A single film does not do any justice for this concept. Could seriously imagine it expanded as a miniseries.
I remember seeing this in the theater. Along with the ticket they handed out a pamphlet explaining the characters. I knew I was wandering into a mess when I realized there was pre-viewing reading work to do to make any sense of it.
Scaredy Matt! I've been spending the last month trying to convince a horror friend to watch your channel, and you go and upload a negative review of his favorite piece of horror media of all time! You're killin' me here!
I think you hit the nail on the head with the line "suggest meaning but not to actually posses meaning". But that is part of what I always loved about the movie and still do. It seems to operate more like a poem than a story. leaving you feeling something if not necessarily ever understanding anything.And that thing you said about It being an allegory. If you stop trying to find any meaning in it at all, it goes over better. And the monsters come off more like sympathetic hedonists.
For real cereals really good especially if you can't have carbs. A word of warning though it sticks to your teeth because it's basically made out of powdered milk. But it really taste like sugar cereal.
I had friends back in the early 90's who were just absolutely OBSESSED with this movie. Around here, with the more early pop-culture, nerdy types (At the time this movie came out, the pop-culture, media, nerd was more hidden, and were still considered society outcast, basement dwellers like they thought D&D players were. It's not like today, where those types of people are mainstream.), there was a subset of them where this movie became THEIR ultimate, defining, movie.
I remember seeing an ad for the movie at the end of the book and thinking: "how would they put all this in a movie? There's too much going on." And if you thought the movie was thirsty, the book talks about Decker getting an erection when he kills people and he call it his "Murder hard". Also the climax literally has boon climax in front of the statue of baphomet or on a skull or something... i dunno it's been a while since i read it. Also also, the video games are hilarious shit shows.
It's almost as if the movie one wants to see is just out of the reach of ordinary perception, like a phantasm. By the way, if you haven't seen it, definitely check out Dominic Noble's video on the adaptation of Nightbreed from its source material.
The fact that there are some monsters that are murderers or violent doesn't mean that they all are that way. Actually, that is part of the point. They are mishapen, deformed, evil monsters to the regular people eyes, but they are not that, not all of them. And then you have this crowd of god loving, law abiding regular people, getting together to go to an underground city to find a guy and his friends, that was unjustly accused of murders (murders that were committed by a regular human being, by the way)Imagine if some higher more powerful race judge all mankind based on what Hitler, Torquemada or Bin Laden did, and try to kill us all because of that. Are you starting to see the point? This is a story in which the actual villain is not a deformed monster, a cosmic god or a dream demon. The villain here is human nature, the horror comes from that, from some of the features of human essence. In the case of Hellraiser was the deep and dark desires and how far we are willing to get to satisfy them. In Nightbreed is the prejudice. And as a critic to human nature it couldn't depict the monster as a parabola of gay people or any other minority you want to consider as perfect or fully victims, because they are humans as well, hence they have the same flaws. Making the script as you want them to make it would be the actual contradiction given the sense of the story and not the other way around
So Clive Barker wrote Cabal (the book Nightbreed is based on) in 1988. It's impossible to separate the concept of being gay in the 80s from danger, death, and ostracism. It's impossible to not see your own sexual desire as a dangerous urge that makes you a pariah and threatens not only your life but the lives of those you love. Watching Nightbreed as a metaphor for being gay during the AIDS epidemic brings a lot of it into clearer focus; it's a fever-dream about being terrified of yourself, your need for love and/or sex, and the community you're joining. Yes, you feel at home here among people like you...but this community is also full of death. And people who are carrying death inside them and may spread it to you. And once you're infected, you might spread it to others...especially people you love. Hell, they only took homosexuality out of the DSM in 1987, a year before Cabal was written. It's easy to see why gay men in the 80s would see psychiatrists as gaslighting killers who convince you you're evil and hurting people. A LOT of Barker's work makes a lot more sense through this lens.
YES thank you - i was amazed he didn't mention this. it was blatantly obvious to me the allegory behind this entire movie and the novella, and i'm absolutely certain that cishet folks don't quite get it because the memory of _all that_ doesn't constantly haunt them.
Wait.... have you not read any other Barker?! Movies, sure. Iffy. But come on. Imagica? Aberat? If you have a P.O. Box, I'm going to mail you all the books.
I was away from my desk so I only heard the ad, but I think it's a testament to Matt's style of humor and video atmosphere that I couldn't actually tell if the ad was a joke or not, because at any time I was expecting something whacky and unexpected to happen
I always feel that the X-Men allegory works best when it's vague and not specific to one group. Also when the characters exist in a universe with other superpowered people who aren't persecuted despite having similiar powers
I have seen this movie and I remember approximately 2% of it. Just some of the running around in the graveyard. I don't remember Cronenberg's parts at all, which is weird because that is a very distinctive mask. Maybe the version I saw had that cut out?
Nightbreed was a huge mess because of studio interference with how they thought it should be edited. It was also supposed to be a trilogy, so there was a lot of set up that went nowhere. The director's cut that fit more with Clive barkers vision. Using footage that was literally lost for 25 years. It's called the cabal cut, after the story it was based off. It's not perfect, and a lot of footage was still never recovered, but it makes a lot more sense than the original theatrical release.
The book this is based on, "Cabal", does a much better job expanding and explaining the ideas that are all over the place in the movie, which makes sense cause it's a whole ass book and Barker is a novelist first and foremost. But it's been so long since I read it I don't actually remember if it handles the themes better?
This review was very illuminating, though I had some issues with it. I took the time to make a video response to the issues raised. See what you think.
so delightful video, very happy to learn of this new weird fun time but also "they agreed for that to be the premise of the video!" might be my favorite Bobby Dook line so far like, I get it's a way for Matt to express surprise that a sponsor might be okay associating with Clive Barker in any way but I really like it in that frame of corporate nightmare, like, this goofy Machiavellian talent scout / agent is so shocked by their willingness to sponsor something so clearly un-family-friendly or un-marketable or whatever, that he can't help but express that in like an almost sarcastic way. He claims to care about nothing but cold, hard cash, but maybe he also kind of cares about the pro-corporate ideology that has led him to accumulating the cold, hard cash he's accrued so far, He would never admit to being offended by the carelessness of a sponsor in endorsing Scaredy Matt's nonsense, especially because it benefits Bobby Dook personally. But his disbelief is so great that it very nearly reaches that level of personal offense that must be voiced. Also, this video got me much closer to buying Magic Spoon than Sam Seder's ad spots have so far, though Sam's have built up familiarity and brand recognition. I don't listen to ads in general as a rule, so dollars spent placing paid promotions in Scaredy Matt videos and Majority Report broadcasts are reaching ears that are otherwise hard to reach. And I have been looking for new breakfast cereals since discovering that even goddamned Raisin Bran has like 26% of my recommended daily intake of added sugars. twenty-six goddamned percent, Kellogg brothers. I know one of you would be cumming at the thought of your companies profits, and the other must be rolling in his grave at both the thought of his cereal having flavor and the thought of his brother garnering sexual pleasure from those profits, but even my delight at that conflict cannot suppress my outrage at the idea that my basic-ass breakfast would contain over a quarter of the sugar i would be having for the entire day. that is not why i would eat raisin bran. fuck you, kelloggs.
It took me a while to realize that Magic Spoon was a real sponsor and not a weird bit.
Would have felt the same, but I've seen them sponsor other things. I'm craving cereal now.
I'm still not sure. I thought the other sponsors were all weird bits.
same here lmao
I was sitting here like "Oh wow, Matt went all out with this one he designed and printed cereal boxes" lmao
Same. Even when I went to the website I was thinking "Wow, they want all out for this bit"
Scaredy Matt: Nightbreed is hostile towards coherence
Every Italian Horror film from 1960 to present: hold my beer
Herk Harvey: I'm about to end his whole career.
Eh, there were some coherent ones, like The Beyond, or Cannibal Holocaust.
Cabal, the novella Nightbreed is based on, is the best thing Barker ever wrote. And the movie was a passion project, he intended to film the entire story line for line, but it did end up being a movie made by committee. The amount of studio interference was staggering: script pages, dialogue, and scenes were cut daily, and the theatrical cut (which Barker had nothing to do with) makes less sense than the "directors" cut, which Barker also had nothing to do with.
All that said, it's a favorite movie of mine. I wish he could remake it today with only his vision, with modern effects and a better budget. It's really sad knowing what that movie could have been.
Honestly Cabal leans so hard on what is not-seen and impossible to understand that a movie was about as likely to work as a movie of To Have Done with the Judgment of God.
@@simonm223 Yeah, fair enough. It would have been an Art Film, but better than the crazy mashup of art and slasher that it ended up being.
@@irlikingpie Arguably all of the movies Barker directed are Art Films - with the possible exception of Candyman which is a really solid ghost story but not particularly surreal. I think it's just that surrealism is not well understood within mass culture, especially surrealism in literature and film.
It's not all melting watches. In fact it's mostly not melting watches.
@@simonm223 Just imagine the total mess The Great and Secret Show would (will?) be...
@@irlikingpie is this a thing somebody is trying to adapt? Why???? LOL
In HS I was reading Cabal, the book Nightbreed is based on, and the weird kid in class told me “hey I’ve got the movie based on that book on laserdisc if you wanna come watch it in my garage” and so I did and to this day Nightbreed is the only movie I’ve watched on laserdisc
Long live LaserDisc!
Matt to Nightbreed: "DON'T COME OVER BY ME!!! Don't TALK!!! The mouth on the costume doesn't move it looks FAKE!!!"
There has never been a review that made me want to throw the book the movie is adapted from at somebody more because how the Nightbreed are (not) described in the book is a real key to understanding how difficult it would be to do them in a movie. lol
That’s a Chunky
You didn’t even flip the thing!
I made the board I know where all the chunky are
I love your conient so much!
🎵They came from underground, and all over🎵
I love this movie tbh, and think it makes a lot more sense if you've read a lot of Barker's writing.
I think the fact that the nightbreed are legit monsters, some of them actively predatory and not just misunderstood is also a kinda good way for it to present them not as completely sanitised wholesome victims but a dangerous and endangered underground community with internal turmoil like has basically been reality anywhere communities are pushed underground, but still with the fact Decker is trying to outright genocide them being awful.
That's a common problem with how mainstream culture views and responds to oppressed communities; unless they're perfect and wholesome and lack any of the problems that often characterize oppressed peoples, they're not considered "good enough" to sympathize with, and those problems are used to justify continued oppression.
It's also one of my favorite horror films, despite the flaws. The director's cut definitely fixes some of the more egregious studio meddling with the film.
I can confirm as somebody who has read a LOT of Barker that this is the case. Cabal (and Nightbreed) go to some dark places thematically and have no interest in creating owo cuddly protagonists. I mean even look at Lori. My interpretation of her (drawn principally from the book) was that her encounter with the Breed awakens a desire in her to be different - that there's a queer alterity to Lori that presents through her body dysmorphia, her fantasies about death and her relationship with Boone - and that her desire to become a monster is more central thematically to the book than Boone's becoming a monster.
But I've also seen other critics who approach her (reading from the movie) as being a straight tourist who invades queer spaces and directs a straight Gaze toward an Other that she finds beautiful and enticing but still fundamentally alien.
And the mind-blowing thing is that Barker, who wrote BOTH Loris could very well have been saying both things about her. She contains multitudes.
Great points made here by everyone +also they're monsters. They're not oppressed minority humans. They're literal monsters. They don't need to be a perfect metaphor. It's a goddamn story, not a didactic fable.
@@ThisIsYourGodNow And, like I was getting at when I wrote on Cabal, one of the things they represent is a distilled sort of alterity - the potential to be capital-O Other that exists within people and circumstances. They are simultaneously a reflection of oppressed minorities and on the fear of infection and the death drive all at once.
As Barker put it, the sack of humanity unpicked and sewed back up with the moon inside.
Agreed.
Candyman is based on a Clive Barker story. That film is legendary.
Yeah, but Clive Barker was only a producer on that one. The film was written and directed by Bernard Rose.
@@damianoakes2592 but to say he didn't do anything of note other than Hellraiser is a short sell.
Bobby Duke has sold out in the most loveable way possible and I'm all for it
“Ayyy, I’m not just a metaphor for grief anymore, I’m also a cereal mascot! Those crazy kids are always tryin’ ta steal my Magic Spoon! What’re ya gonna do, hah?”
Bobby’s pronunciation of “cereal” made Siri open on my iPad.
yes! making bobby duke do the sponsor bit is just brilliant!
i thought it was a bit until bobbybobbob started talking about sugar content XD
I saw this movie in high school and have two things to say about it:
1) For the longest time, I mentally merged Cronenberg's character in this film and Jeffrey Coombs' character in *The Frighteners* into one character
2) There is a moment where a country cover of Oingo Boingo's "Skin" plays, and I find that absolutely hilarious. I picture Barker and Elfman in the scoring session going "Well, we need a song for this scene. What do you think?" "My band?" "No, not your band." "Someone else covering my band so I still get songwriting royalties?" "PERFECT!"
Another fun little background detail: Cronenberg has the steps to the Time Warp as an art print on the wall of his office.
I'm glad the thoughtslime channel doesn't have sponsored ads but it somehow feels okay in scaredy cats? Also the chemisty between Matt and Bobby Duke just makes for ADVERTISING GOLD.
To me it's that for the thoughtslime channel it kind of undercuts any anticapitalist messaging to do a sponsor segment, but I also inherently know that none of these sponsored segments from any youtubers are genuine (well, almost none of them. There are a handful of science/engineering youtubers who get sponsorships from stuff like KiwiCo, that I can genuinely believe support it, but for the most part), so when I see it on a scaredy cats video, and it's not really contradicting the core thesis of the vid, it's easy to slide into my usual "dudes' gotta eat" mentality, and just treat it the same I would with any other ad.
"In real life gay people are seldom cannibals or murderers" Thank you Jeffrey Dahmer, for singlehandedly making that statement true most of the time instead of a guarantee
Whenever the topic of sexual predators who target men come up, I tend to think about this quote from the Shawshank redemption, in reference to a group of rapists who start to target the main character
Andy Dufresne:
“I don't suppose it would help if I told them that I'm not homosexual.”
Red:
“Neither are they. You have to be human first. They don't qualify.”
...that's fucking dumb though.
Idk if you noticed, but gay people are *gasp* people.
And people are, sometimes, cannibals or murderers. Jeffrey Dahmer was not the only gay murderer.
In fact, Fritz Haarmann would be the go-to gay cannibal serial killer for me. Dude got a way more creepy story to him than Dahmer, to the point that there's legitimately a creepy children's song about him (that was not fabricated by a horror movie or something. It's the legit only example I know of a creepy children's song actually existing and not just being a horror trope).
Gacy was into dudes too.
There always has to be that one asshole who ruins it for everyone.
And the British serial killer Dennis Nilsen.
After it became public that he'd been killing a bunch of young menafter having sex with them, his family disowned him... but for the gay bit, not the murder bit!
Not hard to work out how he grew up to be a monster with no empathy coming from that.
Me watching wet puppets: not disturbing
Me watching milk drip off Matt's chin: aghhh no stop it please!!!!
Congrats Matt and Bobby on the sponsor 👍
So I'm not the only pegounigalaphobe in the audience?
Turns out Matt was the real wet puppet all along
WHOA WHOA WHOA. Are we really gonna forget the extremely important Candyman here?? Don't make me go back to the tier list video and discover you haven't seen Candyman :0
Thanks again to Magic Spoon for hooking us up with that variety pack. We almost ran out of cereal before filming!
Click my link magicspoon.com/ScaredyCats and
use code SCAREDYCATS for $5 off your order!
Best sponsorship promo I've ever seen in a YT vid. And in keeping with the tradition of this channel, it was definitely the wettest. Edit: extra props for getting a food product related sponsorship on a somewhat gross video from an inherently gross Channel. That's moxie. That's BDE.
hi Scaridy, need a scaridy movie night
I just love that you got a sponsor. It's just awesome
@@c0d3m0nk3y what sponser is that, very cool he deserves it
So, I'm confused, does it come with a spoon or not?
Damn it, Scaredy Matt! You made me think it was Tuesday for a moment there!
I literally just panicked a little and thought I forgot to show up to work yesterday. But no... this is indeed Monday not Tuesday. Getting a Monday Scaredy Cats was a nice surprise and treat to help through Garfield's least favorite day.
I have class on Tuesday and my routine is to watch scaredycats while I check that my homework was done. I got SO scared it was Tuesday already because I still needed to finish that homework
@@auroraeve3327
Sounds like you responded like some form of Scaredy Cat
Yup me too!
My Dad saw I was watching the start of this as a teenager and went "Oh, Nightbreed! Pretty much just a special effects reel, it's dumb but you'll like it"
I think he may have missed the subtext a wee bit.
Bromg 🤣
You call Clive Barker horny while you eat cereal like that?!
I've been online for most of my adult life, and don't think I've ever seen something so obscene.
Best ad for a cereal yet.
Count me in!
You're breaking my heart, Matty! I love Nightbreed! Don't be mean to my monster babies!
I'm sad you didn't talk about Narcisse, the man who carved away his face so he could join the Breed by revealing his "true face" only to emerge as a Breed with only his human face in tact, his earnest desire to embrace his otherness being the one true thing he carries forward.
Also the ending isn't supposed to lead into a sequel, it's just open. The book ended the same way, the breed in exile and exodus.
The book makes it much clearer that it's a deliberately ambiguous ending and not sequel bait by shifting the prose language into a kind of mythic register. As if what we'd seen was the origin story of a god and it ends with the prophecy of acts not yet done.
This has been one of my cult favorites for years. The director's cut, released a few years ago, is still wacky, but there's a bit more "plot" to it all. Also, Clive Barker may not have a lot of success with movies, but he's a prolific and skilled writer with a heap of amazing stories.
Weaveworld is the one I generally recommend to people who have never read Barker before. But aside from Cabal I'd say either Hellbound Heart and Imajica are his best.
Yeah! I loved Abarat as a kid, his YA books
@@simonm223 I am shocked Imajica hasn’t been turned into prestige premium subscription content yet. Seems like it’s begging for it. I loved that book.
I usually recommend The Damnation Game. It has just enough of Clive's world building without stopping the story to do it. I like the characters, too.
Barker is my absolute favorite writer.
Here, paraphrased from what I heard from some of the cast and crew at a con one time, is why Nightbreed feels like it was made by committee: They were making Clive's film and the studio was like "haha no if you're not careful the audience will sympathise with the monsters" and Clive was like "yes" and the studio was like "no" and then everything went dark
"...made nothing else good ever."
You gonna throw Undying under the bus, just like that, Matthew?
Also apparently books don't exist?
and CANDYMAN?!?
Well half of Undying was real good
This guy has no idea what he is talking about. His points against the movie don't make any sense
"Fuck the law, I want meat!" is a helluva line
I hate to be the Book Is Better guy but I guess here I am. Its called Cabal and its technically a short story collection which also comes with the Lord of Illusion story the movie is based on.
Lord of illusion is pretty good
The director's cut and the book are practically indistinguishable. There are some aesthetics features of Barker's depictions that couldn't be translated to the big screen due to their sexual nature or extremely fantastical essence(such as Boone's metamorphosis), but aside from that, is pretty much identical
"Do a complete 360." Matt has the same math skills as TikTokers dancing to Dua Lipa.
i was willing to think this was a reference to Last Action Hero, but, who knows.
Plot twist: Bobby Duke was invented solely to do brand deals and Matt just had to make us love him first
Scaredy Matt: "Nighbreed, FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU DO! You had the whole summer to think of it!"
Nightbreed: "But Matt-"
Scaredy Matt: "DON'T TALK! THE MOUTH DOESN'T MOVE! IT LOOKS FAKE!"
Also, DEEEEEEP irony that I head over hear from Thought Slime, but gleefully jump on the cereal offer. I'm a bad pinko.
One of my favorites. The lure "Hellraiser meets X-Men" just makes me want to watch it more. Every negative you mentioned can be brushed off with the question "But is it fun"? And the answer is Yes.
All these scenes of him eating were filmed while he was CLEARLY under the control of the Eyeballs.
Scaredy Cats Grading Rubric:
No Puppets = No Thank You
Dry Puppets = Dry Plots
Damp Puppets = Dampened Enthusiasm
Wet Puppets = Wet's My Apatite
Sopping Wet Puppets = Sopping Wet Undergarments
I can't explain why I am really happy that Scaredy Matt got sponsored, but I'm very happy.
Dude, you can not disrespect Clive Barker like that. He is a horror icon! Just because you can't read novels with more than a hundred pages doesn't mean you can just shit on the guy. Clearly you've never gone outside his work in films but even if you had considered only films he still created two of the best horror villians ever (Pinhead and Candyman). Saying he has done nothing but Hellraiser and naming Midnight Meat Train is a huge disservice to Clive Barker, to his many years in the industry, and to the people he inspired.
Clive Barker did nothing else? What about Candyman?
Also the sponsor is absolutely perfect. It’s not just like it fits, it feels essential to the video.
I think he means that he LITERALLY made the movie. Of course, people forget he directed Lord of Illusions too.
The big standout for me has always been Button Face. His creepy af mask design was what drew me to the film initially.
Also as for other good Clive Barker films, I really liked Lord of Illusions? I could be biased though because I saw it as a kid and it had Scott Bakula in it.
And Candyman. Hellraiser. Hellraiser II. Rawhead Rex.
I knew a bloke who once got his hands on Cronenberg’s mask prop. It was made to fit him and is apparently *noticeably* small which means, even though it doesn’t seem so on film, David Cronenberg’s head is weirdly tiny.
On a Clive Barker side note...A week ago. I made the mistake of re-reading part of Books of Blood before going to sleep. DO NOT read Books of Blood before going to sleep.
There's actually (kind of) three cuts of Nightbreed: the theatrical one, the director's cut and the Cabal Cut. To my understanding the Cabal Cut is the longest one at 145 minutes, while the Director's Cut is 120 something minutes though I believe the director's cut contains more new footage. It's a film I hold dear to my heart. I recommend checking out the comic book adaptations as well for another angle.
For a more thorough breakdown on the different cuts of Nightbreed: www.clivebarkercast.com/2020/04/09/all-the-versions-of-nightbreed-explained/ .
Thanks for that link!
Holy crap, I was at the first Cabal Cut screening, I had no idea it hadn't been screened publicly before!
@@tesseracht LUCKY!!!! I knew about it, as I kept up on Clive Barker's hunt for the cut footage. What I wouldn't have given to be able to be there. This is a very special film that I've loved since childhood. I could watch it a thousand times and still be moved by it. Of course, that could be because of my love for Barker's work, both in novels and films alike.
@@mermaid_at_heart213 If it makes you feel any better, the Director's Cut that's easily available now is the superior version of the film. The Cabal Cut was a really rough, "proof of concept" in order to drum up support for the Director's Cut. Most of the footage was pulled from video archives and was very hard to see and a lot of the scenes ran on way too long. The actual Director's Cut is a much tighter film.
Hey Scaredy Matt I missed this one, and it's important for me to dunk this here because I know it's a joke but, Clive Barker's work is fucking fantastic.
Dude starts to make a children's book series, and turns it into a Dark Fantasy series.
The Abarat Series is a great book series, and it has hand-painted illustrations by Clive Barker, showcasing how characters canonically look, and moments of the story.
It involves an otherworldly archipelago where the hours of the day are different islands, including new hours and dead hours. There's an ancient history as the dimension bridges with Earth every so often.
I know it's a joke but I'm a fan of his work and want to shill an underrated FANTASTIC work by the man.
I can't control magnetism but I do have ADHD, which is kinda like a super power except it sucks.
I love this movie! It was one of the first "Scary" movies I ever saw! Thank you so much for doing a video on Nightbreed!
This is one of my favorite horror films, despite the flaws. And the flaws were definitely the result of a good deal of executive meddling with the film's production; Barker didn't get to do everything his way.
The director's cut fixes a lot of problems with the original theatrical release. Haven't see the unofficial Cabal Cut, but I've heard good things about it.
The Cabal Cut and the director's cut are very close to the same and are effectively the same structurally. Both are far better than the theatrical cut but this is all kind of the problem with converting a surrealist book into a movie. Pontypool Changes Everything / Pontypool managed by jettisoning 90% of the weird stuff. Barker refused to do that and the end result is... well... surreal.
Hold up! Clive Barker wrote a lot of good shit after Hellraiser. The Great and Secret Show, Imajica, Galilee, Hell, he even wrote a children's book, The Thief of Always that was so good I was hoping for a goddamn sequel. His books and graphic novels were always solid. He just didn't do anything in films or video games that was even remotely worth a fuck after Hellraiser hit theaters.
Candyman?
@@ChicaneryBear Damn. I stand corrected. I totally forgot about that. Which is odd because that movie was fuckin' dope.
Gotta love magic spoon paying a vegan to promote their dehydrated egg product.
Err, milk, not egg. Where’s the edit button on here?
There is a longer version out there, THE ULTIMATE CABAL CUT - containing all known existing and restored footage (3hrs, 19mins).
It makes the previous versions seem like teaser trailers.
Theatrical Cut - 1hr 41mins
Director’s Cut - 2hrs 00mins
Integral Cut - 2hrs 13mins
Leaked Cabal Cut - 2hrs 25mins
Official Cabal Cut - 2hrs 25mins (different footage to the leaked version)
ULTIMATE CABAL CUT - 3hrs 19mins.
Thank me later 👍
#occupymidian
#cinemageddon
I have it on good authority (as in, I heard Noah Caldwell-Gervais say it) that Clive Barker is an exceptional short story author and also that Undying is pretty neat
Doug Bradley's character is named Lylesberg
Doing the sponsor bit with Bobby doing the most infomercial-style delivery possible, makes me feel like you've finally found his true calling.
I laughed out loud so many times in this review. I love you, Matt, you make my life better
Clive Barker absolutely, desperately needs to have a chance to work on a reboot for this.
A single film does not do any justice for this concept. Could seriously imagine it expanded as a miniseries.
I remember seeing this in the theater. Along with the ticket they handed out a pamphlet explaining the characters. I knew I was wandering into a mess when I realized there was pre-viewing reading work to do to make any sense of it.
Scaredy Matt! I've been spending the last month trying to convince a horror friend to watch your channel, and you go and upload a negative review of his favorite piece of horror media of all time! You're killin' me here!
A "grain-free cereal"? Is the FDA asleep on the job or something? That makes about as much sense as Nightbreed, and it's just as frustrating.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the line "suggest meaning but not to actually posses meaning". But that is part of what I always loved about the movie and still do.
It seems to operate more like a poem than a story. leaving you feeling something if not necessarily ever understanding anything.And that thing you said about It being an allegory.
If you stop trying to find any meaning in it at all, it goes over better. And the monsters come off more like sympathetic hedonists.
I had to check, today's Monday. Scaredy Cats really living up to the name. Thought I missed a whole day
Bobby Duke sure knows how to sell stuff, I want that cereal now
For real cereals really good especially if you can't have carbs. A word of warning though it sticks to your teeth because it's basically made out of powdered milk. But it really taste like sugar cereal.
I realy do have a soft spot in my heart for this movie and book.
I had friends back in the early 90's who were just absolutely OBSESSED with this movie. Around here, with the more early pop-culture, nerdy types (At the time this movie came out, the pop-culture, media, nerd was more hidden, and were still considered society outcast, basement dwellers like they thought D&D players were. It's not like today, where those types of people are mainstream.), there was a subset of them where this movie became THEIR ultimate, defining, movie.
Getting Bobby Duke to do the sponsorship parts is a BRILLIANT idea!
I remember seeing an ad for the movie at the end of the book and thinking: "how would they put all this in a movie? There's too much going on."
And if you thought the movie was thirsty, the book talks about Decker getting an erection when he kills people and he call it his "Murder hard".
Also the climax literally has boon climax in front of the statue of baphomet or on a skull or something... i dunno it's been a while since i read it.
Also also, the video games are hilarious shit shows.
Matt forgot Candyman
I liked his book Imajica a lot, would be interesting to see that adapted to a movie.
It's almost as if the movie one wants to see is just out of the reach of ordinary perception, like a phantasm. By the way, if you haven't seen it, definitely check out Dominic Noble's video on the adaptation of Nightbreed from its source material.
Well I know what I'm watching next now...
ETA: It was good.
The comics are pretty dope though. The Hellraiser crossover was really enjoyable.
That was some Grade-A cereal eating acting right there, that was
Matt is really killing that cereal. If only there was a snappy name to call people who are killing cereal.
Disgusting
Scaredy Matt: Decker's mask is bitchin'!
Me: That can't be right. It mixes buttons and zippers. PICK A LANE, SERIAL KILLER MASK!!!
The fact that this came out on a Monday keeps making me think it's a day later than it is this week.
"And pretty much made nothing else good ever." I really like his novella Mr. B Gone and his masters of horror episode "Haeckel's Tale"
The fact that there are some monsters that are murderers or violent doesn't mean that they all are that way. Actually, that is part of the point. They are mishapen, deformed, evil monsters to the regular people eyes, but they are not that, not all of them. And then you have this crowd of god loving, law abiding regular people, getting together to go to an underground city to find a guy and his friends, that was unjustly accused of murders (murders that were committed by a regular human being, by the way)Imagine if some higher more powerful race judge all mankind based on what Hitler, Torquemada or Bin Laden did, and try to kill us all because of that. Are you starting to see the point? This is a story in which the actual villain is not a deformed monster, a cosmic god or a dream demon. The villain here is human nature, the horror comes from that, from some of the features of human essence. In the case of Hellraiser was the deep and dark desires and how far we are willing to get to satisfy them. In Nightbreed is the prejudice. And as a critic to human nature it couldn't depict the monster as a parabola of gay people or any other minority you want to consider as perfect or fully victims, because they are humans as well, hence they have the same flaws. Making the script as you want them to make it would be the actual contradiction given the sense of the story and not the other way around
Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne, carrots for the Sterling!
I enjoyed Clive Barker's books of blood anthology book series
I remember watching this and thinking it seemed incomplete.
I remember the game adaption for Amiga 500. The characters and atmosphere were fascinating but i had no idea what i was doing in the game.
Listening this kept me thinking you should talk about Blood Quantum.
Again?
The true horror was the sponserships we made along the way
So Clive Barker wrote Cabal (the book Nightbreed is based on) in 1988. It's impossible to separate the concept of being gay in the 80s from danger, death, and ostracism. It's impossible to not see your own sexual desire as a dangerous urge that makes you a pariah and threatens not only your life but the lives of those you love. Watching Nightbreed as a metaphor for being gay during the AIDS epidemic brings a lot of it into clearer focus; it's a fever-dream about being terrified of yourself, your need for love and/or sex, and the community you're joining. Yes, you feel at home here among people like you...but this community is also full of death. And people who are carrying death inside them and may spread it to you. And once you're infected, you might spread it to others...especially people you love.
Hell, they only took homosexuality out of the DSM in 1987, a year before Cabal was written. It's easy to see why gay men in the 80s would see psychiatrists as gaslighting killers who convince you you're evil and hurting people.
A LOT of Barker's work makes a lot more sense through this lens.
YES thank you - i was amazed he didn't mention this. it was blatantly obvious to me the allegory behind this entire movie and the novella, and i'm absolutely certain that cishet folks don't quite get it because the memory of _all that_ doesn't constantly haunt them.
Wait.... have you not read any other Barker?! Movies, sure. Iffy. But come on. Imagica? Aberat? If you have a P.O. Box, I'm going to mail you all the books.
Thanks, Bobby duke, you just reminded me I have some very sugary delicious cereal in my cupboard I want to eat before bed
So that terrible, cliffhanger ending was forced in by the studio, no one else wanted it to end like that. I hope that explains why it sucks
...how can you have “grain-free cereal”...
...cereal is literally grass cultivated for its edible grains...
...it’s grain by definition...
Hey Matt if you ever feel like making a video about Midnight Meat Train I’d be super down for that, that movie is pretty great.
I was away from my desk so I only heard the ad, but I think it's a testament to Matt's style of humor and video atmosphere that I couldn't actually tell if the ad was a joke or not, because at any time I was expecting something whacky and unexpected to happen
you missed the aggressive horny slorping
Great video, enjoying the recommendation of film. Definitely seems right up my alley
I hate that I live in the timeline where every horror franchise has 20 sequels but there is only one nightbreed
I remember renting this ages ago, expecting it to be like "Hellraiser." I was confused and a little turned off by how goofy it was at times.
What I remember of the comic book was pretty good
Ooh, do I get to be the first one to make the pedantic "it should be 'complete 180', not 'complete 360"" comment?
You make commercials so funny I kinda wish you did them for Thought Slime too.
The Nightbreed are bizarrely passive - they object to numerous violations of their sacred rules and customs but then just let them happen.
It is my favorite Clive Barker movie by far.
I loved every second of it.
I always feel that the X-Men allegory works best when it's vague and not specific to one group. Also when the characters exist in a universe with other superpowered people who aren't persecuted despite having similiar powers
I love The Thief of Always, it's surprising there isn't a movie yet!
I have seen this movie and I remember approximately 2% of it. Just some of the running around in the graveyard. I don't remember Cronenberg's parts at all, which is weird because that is a very distinctive mask. Maybe the version I saw had that cut out?
Nightbreed was a huge mess because of studio interference with how they thought it should be edited. It was also supposed to be a trilogy, so there was a lot of set up that went nowhere. The director's cut that fit more with Clive barkers vision. Using footage that was literally lost for 25 years. It's called the cabal cut, after the story it was based off. It's not perfect, and a lot of footage was still never recovered, but it makes a lot more sense than the original theatrical release.
I don't mind Scaredy Cats having ads, I just found this one in particular upsetting. Sorry.
nightbreed is indeed kind of a mess but that doesn't stop it from being #47 in my top 100 favorite movies
The book this is based on, "Cabal", does a much better job expanding and explaining the ideas that are all over the place in the movie, which makes sense cause it's a whole ass book and Barker is a novelist first and foremost. But it's been so long since I read it I don't actually remember if it handles the themes better?
This review was very illuminating, though I had some issues with it. I took the time to make a video response to the issues raised. See what you think.
so
delightful video, very happy to learn of this new weird fun time
but also
"they agreed for that to be the premise of the video!" might be my favorite Bobby Dook line so far
like, I get it's a way for Matt to express surprise that a sponsor might be okay associating with Clive Barker in any way
but I really like it in that frame of corporate nightmare, like, this goofy Machiavellian talent scout / agent is so shocked by their willingness to sponsor something so clearly un-family-friendly or un-marketable or whatever, that he can't help but express that in like an almost sarcastic way. He claims to care about nothing but cold, hard cash, but maybe he also kind of cares about the pro-corporate ideology that has led him to accumulating the cold, hard cash he's accrued so far, He would never admit to being offended by the carelessness of a sponsor in endorsing Scaredy Matt's nonsense, especially because it benefits Bobby Dook personally. But his disbelief is so great that it very nearly reaches that level of personal offense that must be voiced.
Also, this video got me much closer to buying Magic Spoon than Sam Seder's ad spots have so far, though Sam's have built up familiarity and brand recognition. I don't listen to ads in general as a rule, so dollars spent placing paid promotions in Scaredy Matt videos and Majority Report broadcasts are reaching ears that are otherwise hard to reach. And I have been looking for new breakfast cereals since discovering that even goddamned Raisin Bran has like 26% of my recommended daily intake of added sugars. twenty-six goddamned percent, Kellogg brothers. I know one of you would be cumming at the thought of your companies profits, and the other must be rolling in his grave at both the thought of his cereal having flavor and the thought of his brother garnering sexual pleasure from those profits, but even my delight at that conflict cannot suppress my outrage at the idea that my basic-ass breakfast would contain over a quarter of the sugar i would be having for the entire day. that is not why i would eat raisin bran. fuck you, kelloggs.
Wait, I thought Mildred was vegan? Magic Spoon is made of dairy.