Rawhead Rex Blu-ray

At the time of Rawhead Rex's original, somewhat limited release, the boisterous, Clive Barker-penned preternatural pagan monster movie was somewhat indifferently received, merely earning 5 measly skulls in Chas Balun's immortal Deep Red Horror Handbook, but happily the recent 4K Blu-ray restoration blood-spatteringly belies its beastly reception to riotously reveal a head-rippingly gory, old school monster movie about a hellaciously hefty sinfully-spawned pre-Christian deity hell-bent on the sanguinary slaughter of any poor unfortunate anthropoids that fatefully come under the diabolic, red-eyed thrall of his murderous majesty King Wrong, Rawhead Rex, one of the most monstrously majestic B-Movie behemoths to so gruesomely disgrace the silver scream! Capable director George Pavlou's grossly undervalued, full-blooded monster movie benefits greatly from being set within the evocative, old world environs of rural Country Wicklow, Ireland, and celebrated horror icon Clive Barker's quality text, while not always consistently scintillating, is pacey, playfully blasphemous, and generously replete with richly animated characters, especially fascinating is the delectably villainous verger Declan, maniacally performed with a bravura Klaus Kinski-esque intensity that is both hysterical, and palpably macabre, his increasingly febrile madness making a delightful foil to his sinisterly silent, skull-crushing master, the sabre-toothed terror titan Rawhead Rex, who, once freed from his Monolith-weighted grave lustily embarks upon a gratuitously gory, gut-rippingly relentless rampage, part 50s Drive-In rubber monster movie schlock, part fearsome folk horror with the grisly good, super splattery set-pieces given additional pep by maestro composer Colin Towns tremendously effective, sadly underappreciated score. 'Rawhead Rex' (1986), while admittedly somewhat flawed, is far from declawed, still proving to be quite the feral B-Movie beast!