Take a Ride on the Midnight Meat Train
Media / 9/22/2008 9:26:04 PM
Guest writer Jude Mire is back to bring us one of two Clive Barker articles coming your way this month. You can never have enough of Clive. Grab a seat and prepare to dodge the splatter!
The
Midnight Meat Train is a hell of a story. It's one of the first out of the gate
in the wickedly inspired series "The
Books of Blood" by Clive Barker. If you boil the tale down to brass tacks, it's simple.
Two characters are introduced in the first few pages, they collide, one man
changes, another dies, and we get a peek into the ghastly underbelly of the
world. Some authors would have milked the concept into full length novels, but
Clive distills it down to a potent concentrate of venom.
So, of course, I was mixed with both excitement and trepidation when I heard it
was being turned into a movie, directed by Ryuhei Kitamura. The
original story is little more than two scenes and the flavor of Barker's work isn't an
easy thing to capture. The opening date was pushed, and then pushed again. When
Lions Gate Entertainment finally released it, they did so to a hundred
second-run dollar theaters away from all major cities. For whatever reason, they
were hiding this movie. Now, Hollywood does not typically hide movies that are
bad. Quite the opposite in fact. They tout them out with posters and advertising
to squeeze the lemons as best they can. It couldn't just be that Meat Train was
bad. I had to see this movie.
It was an almost three hour drive to the Midway Drive-In and the
Flashback
Weekend Horrorfest in Sterling, IL. Judging by the audience (and the abundance
of tattoos and piercings) I wasn't the only one who made the trip. I couldn't
help but be struck by nostalgia as the sun set, I eased my seat back, and images
began to flicker on the big screen, stars visible all around in the clear sky.
This was where horror movies were born, in the drive-in theaters.
Thankfully, the Midnight Meat Train is a hell of a movie. Leon Kauffman (Bradley
Cooper) is a photographer with an itch. At the urging of art critic Susan Hoff
(Brooke Shields) he delves into the New York night looking for pictures of the
city's soul, much to the dismay of his girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb). What he
finds is Mahogany, played with brutal perfection by Vinnie Jones. He's a serial
killer/butcher who lurks the late night subway and empties out full trains with
a slaughterhouse hammer and a meat hook. The gore is slippery wet on plastic and
ladled everywhere. One scene in particular has the most creative decapitation
cinematography I've ever seen. Fans of the original text will be pleased that
the tone and ending are largely intact. Barker's version takes the story around a
semi-Lovecraftian corner and, despite the fact that most of the movie feels
"real world", it stays true to its source and doesn't shy away from shifting to
the otherworldly.
It's about time we had a good full blown horror spectacle that doesn't follow a
normal pattern. It's unfortunate that Lions Gate didn't get behind this project,
but the company seems to be shifting in another direction. They've had a
management change and Peter Block (Executive Producer of Saw, Devils Rejects,
Fido...) was replaced by Joe Drake (Executive Producer of Harold and Kumar go to
White Castle, Juno, The Grudge...). Looks like another company going for the
PG13 cash cow over the true terror of an adult R. Too bad.
Fortunately, Midnight Meat Train seems destined to be a cult midnight show,
championed by hordes of devoted Barker fans! Find this movie in a theater if you
can!
Even if you have to take a train.
Jude W. Mire
Jill's p.s. Craving the original "Books of Blood"? A fresh copy awaits you at our Killer-works Store. Browse around for other Clive Barker books and films.
p.p.s. Here at Killer-works we're not
alone in not being fans of PG13 horror, here's what Clive has
to say about it in an interview to
MTV.
