X-Entertainment | Rawhead Rex.

Rawhead Rex.

New Movie Review: It's one of the earliest flicks to have Clive Barker's name stamped on the box, and I'm not sure he's all that happy about it. Rawhead Rex is the story of Satan on Earth, or something close to it. Rex, looking like some kind of mutant hyena biker man, unleashes Holy Hell on a small town. Nobody knows how to stop him, and he keeps eating the locals. What will they do? The answer might surprise you. Also features the first scene I've reviewed where a priest gets a golden shower. Enjoy.

Posted by Matt on 06/19/2003. E-mail me!

Discussion Thread: 46 comments

« Previous 1 2

everyone!! x-entertainment gets a mention…[not once, but TWICE] at http://www.theaterhopper.com , a totally kickass movie comic. he links to the article about the hulk hands.
pretty awesome!

Chestnuts roasted by candice @ 06/20/2003 5:05 PM

I think the national volleyball association and Stan Lee should get together and sue Spike Lee.
Quantum Leap rules. Sliders is a cheap rip-off that stars the fat kid from Stand By Me.

Chestnuts roasted by squee4242 @ 06/20/2003 7:16 PM

I think its time to review some Punky Brewster episodes, live-action or animated, doesn’t matter. That’d be fun for everyone.

Chestnuts roasted by Bunny Pop @ 06/20/2003 8:35 PM

How creepy! You post this article right when I’m in the middle of Weaveworld. Before tomorrow, of course, when I wallow in Harry Pottery goodness. Yep, I’m-a goin’ to a midnight Potter Party and I ain’t afraid to admit it!

Chestnuts roasted by Freezair @ 06/20/2003 9:56 PM

Was I the only one to see HOLY CRAP. HALLENBACK=HELL AND BACK! DON’T YOU GET IT!?! HELL AND BACK! HA HA HA COUGH!

Chestnuts roasted by Mr. Mr. Mr. @ 06/20/2003 10:23 PM

i’ve seen this , rawrex movie on beleave it or not the sci fi channel it was a couple of years ago i guess , i wasn’t the worst movie i’ve ever seen , look at one called a crack in the floor

Chestnuts roasted by the one @ 06/21/2003 4:08 AM

"What makes Fat-Kid fat? Fat-Kid?" I’m jonesing for a "Monster Squad review".

Chestnuts roasted by The Yeti @ 06/21/2003 7:00 AM

Ah, Rawhead Rex….what a stain on Barker’s otherwise great career.

As for Freaked, it has to be the greatest movie ever made. It’s got Randy Quaid, Mr. T as a Bearded Woman, Brooke Shields, a Cow and Worm man, and all sorts of other weird crap to mess you up late at night when you stumble upon it on cable.

Chestnuts roasted by RedBaron @ 06/21/2003 7:35 AM

What’s so "raw" about Rex’s head? It looks medium rare, at best.

And that whole Spike Lee thing has got to be the most annoying story of 2003. He actually believes that if people hear the word "spike" they automatically think of him. Where did this guy get his ego from? Certainly not from the success of his movies, which probably barely cover the cost of his Knicks season tickets.

Chestnuts roasted by Johnny Moodis @ 06/21/2003 1:13 PM

I saw like 10 minutes or whatever of Rawhead rex when it was on cable when I was a kid. My sister made me turn it off when she saw the pregnant woman. I probably would have turned it off sooner or later since I always changed the channel when it got scary.

unsolved mysteries gave me nightmares.

Chestnuts roasted by lseuyfv @ 06/21/2003 5:33 PM

I wish I received all those channels you American people do, the ones we have show far too few bad horror flicks and most of them are just low-budget affairs of the past several years. I had a great older nephew whom I was really close with (like a surrogate brother to me, really) who had quite the collection of VHS tapes with crappy movies. He died years before I’d become interested in them, though, so they’ve also gone the way of the dodo…

On a lighter note: have you ever thought of reviewing the ’80s remake of The Blob, Matt? It’s pretty silly, but it had some surprisingly decent special effects plus someone being pulled through a kitchen sink to boot (which is arguably even better than the puppet-through-door shot at the end of Nightmare on Elmstreet).

Chestnuts roasted by JC @ 06/21/2003 6:57 PM

orchalcyon:
Bonus points for you for doing some research, unlike most of the trogs here.
There are multiple legends like this, most with names like "rawhead" "bloodybones" "rawbones" "assnose" etc. All were basically local supernatural bogeys, very powerful – but by no means the source of all evil [i.e. Satan].
As for the plot, it was a very sketchily done three-way cage match of battling belief-systems. xtianity -v- goddess worship -v- local mythos.
Here the christfools hid a totem of a goddess inside their church (metaphor for the way xtian hoilidays are hijacked celebrations from other systems??). Christ worship is ultimately a hollow system and can do nothing, hence the piss-on-th-priest.
Barker has done other comparative-religion pieces; for a good example read or reread "Imajica"

Break into groups and discuss.

Chestnuts roasted by -feral (peoplewhoreadharrypottershouldbeshaton) @ 06/21/2003 8:05 PM

I vaguely remember freaked, doesn’t he end up as a siamese twins or something…I thought it was a comedy, is my memory hazy? Oh well, some people do Freaked and some people do the Matrix Reloaded, but seeing as I wasn’t that impressed with the Matrix, maybe Freaked was a good career move, by the way didn’t Alex Winter have an MTV sketch show where he was a hippie playing football until he gets the crap beat out of him?

Chestnuts roasted by whitemale_98/competent soldier @ 06/21/2003 8:07 PM

Yeah! The Idiot Box! What a great show. Eddie the Flying Gimp was the best.

Chestnuts roasted by Johnny Moodis @ 06/22/2003 1:08 AM

Nothing will stand up to MTV’s The State.

Chestnuts roasted by Kiften @ 06/22/2003 11:05 AM

Freaked was a masterpiece.
I love the part with the thirteen milkmen.

Chestnuts roasted by Taco @ 06/22/2003 5:20 PM

"Two-hundred and forty dollars…worth of pudding, oh yeah."

Chestnuts roasted by The Yeti @ 06/22/2003 9:21 PM

Taco, 12 milkmen IS theoretically possible. Thirteen milkmen is just outrageous. Squirrell!

Chestnuts roasted by Bansheex @ 06/23/2003 3:21 PM

According to IMDB, Heinrich von Schellendorf played good ole Satan in this flick… and doesn’t appear to have had another movie roll in his life.

Go Heinrich!

Chestnuts roasted by PaloPinto @ 06/23/2003 11:51 PM

Best…movie review…ever. *sniff*
One of my favorite things to read on here is actually the movie reviews, just because you know its the same thing most of us are all thinking, watching these awful movies (sadly, I’ve seen uh, most of them. Ahem.) And Matt’s running commentary is actually a lot funnier than my inner monologues (which usually go something like Ha ha! what a loser, that guy’s a…a total loser. I hope he dies. Cool, he died!). SO I guess what I meant to say was…keep it up! I love this site to pieces, I really do. First article I read was the Nads hair removal article. Any man brave enough to eat Nads is ok in my book, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Oh yeah, and I’ve also actually gone and rented some of the reviewed movies I hadn’t seen. Masochistic? Yes, probably. But man, I had to see Jacko in action.

Chestnuts roasted by crackwhorlioni @ 06/24/2003 3:25 AM

Hey, Matt… Having read the book, here’s a little 411 on Rawhead. First, he wasn’t Satan, just a very strong warrior imbued with dark powers. You know, the usual "I’ll get ugly, and slaughter in evil’s name if I can be near-unbeatable and have life eternal" shizz. Next, Rawhead was bound by rules. He was forbidden to attack women during the "blood moon", who were pregnant *or* who were menstruating, because they were deemed to be "unclean" at these times. Finally, the "ceramic poon" you refer to is actually an ancient fertility goddess statuette, representing the female in full bloom of fertility/woomanhood (i.e.: preggers) and was blessed at some point by powerful priests or druids for the purpose of containing Rawhead (if memory serves from the novel). Last, the priest and the golden shower… Well, Clive Barker is as gay as the day is long, so knowledge of "watersports" wouldn’t be beyond his ken

Chestnuts roasted by Gunnm @ 06/25/2003 9:58 AM

« Previous 1 2

Add A New Comment!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2003 at 6:42 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.