Rawhead Rex, le monstre de la lande

Im the kind of person who alot of the time will buy movies before I have even seen them. That was the case with this movie. I loved this movie! People say it was cheezy, maybe a little but if you love cult horror, get this movie. Its defently a fun little satanic film and I would recomend it to anyone that are fans of the horror / cult genre.

"Rawhead Rex" was one of several "unknown" films I prided myself on "discovering" during the late 1980s, when friends would visit for a day or four. I seemed to have a knack (seemingly lost, now!) to pick out videos I had never heard of, which turned out to be surprisingly quite good. Rawhead Rex was one of these.

I found it a quite riveting, scary movie. As with almost all horror movies, I thought a few things could have been done better. Still, Rex was infinitely more satisfying to me than a number of present-day "horror" flicks which center on someone hacking people up with a knife for no apparent reason or which drift confusingly between reality and halucination.

I thought the monster looked pretty convincing -- then again, I was weaned in the pre-Speilberg era. I have to agree with the reviewer who said the scene where Rex kills the farmer in the shed and the wife sees him from the kitchen window, then tries to hide, is quite scary. So was the boy glancing up from his comic books in the van, to see Rex standing outside.

I loved the touches with the stained glass puzzle & the chief detective's stunned "I'll be d****, the Yank was right" when he looks at the horrific crayon drawing made by the young survivor of the trailer park attack, too stunned to speak. (The severed arm was a very nice touch, too.)

Anyone who thinks Rawhead Rex was "hilarious," is no horror fan. It may not have been one of the genre's best efforts ever, but it was one of a number of very meaty horror flicks of the 1980s which are still have plenty bite today (pun intended)!

So the year is 2011 and time has not been kind to poor old Rawhead Rex (1986) and the monster horror genre in general.

Anyone who has read Clive Barker's short story Rawhead Rex knows that this is a downright disturbing and wicked tale. The monster Rawhead has sexual issues, he hates women, he pisses on priests and has an appetite for eating small children/babies. However, all these awful things are what makes the story such a page turner and adds more depth to what would otherwise be a mindless monster work.

The movie Rawhead Rex (1986) suffers from a very low budget. The main offender is Rawhead's mask itself. Its cheap rubber with little to no animatronics and the rubber shakes as the actor tries to move quickly. A higher budget would have done this monster so much justice, if only a creature master like Stan Winston had gotten involved, this would have been a whole different movie experience.

I would love to see Rawhead Rex remade today with all the trimmings, but unfortunately Hollywood is a complete mess. Bad actors are thrown into quick PG-13 horror crap fests and CGI technology has become the only main focus of everything.

I think it's time for someone to step up to the plate and re-boot the monster movie genre. Rawhead Rex could be an action/monster movie extravaganza if remade correctly. Hollywood simply refuses to take any chances and because of this, the horror genre is more or less dead. In the end, Rawhead Rex is still an enjoyable monster flick for the bored late night horror buff. But it just doesn't measure up to the more well-made 80s monster classics like "Pumpkinhead".

I don't know what the hell the other critics on this movie are talking about but I loved this movie!! I thought there could have been more blood and more plot, but all in all I thought this was a very good movie.

If you've got some time to kill, go ahead.

The short story Rawhead Rex is a gory and stomach churning piece of literature appearing in Clive Barker's Books of Blood Volume 3. Reading it one sees the possibilities of a good old fashioned monster on the loose movie. Unfortunately, most of the graphic violence of the story is removed from the film that followed. Although many of the character details remain the same, except that the protagonist and his family are Londoners instead of Americans in the short story. The setting, score, a few actors and the occasional scare make the films worth seeing for true Clive Barker completists. Be warned, what does make the proceedings less alluring is the fact that Rawhead himself is a great disappointment; the direction somewhat poor and from a script by Barker himself I expected more. Not even in league with his superior Hellraiser, effective Candyman or intriguing Nightbreed. Though I must admit I must've seen this film about eight times since it was initially released.

Trivia note: The mother of the American Family is the actress who plays the nurse Joe Spinell skewers in Maniac.