Filmography/Poster Gallery

 

HELLBOUND, 1988. This is the Italian one-sheet, and I'm starting with it rather than the US or UK posters for one very simple reason; the credits aren't dark-blue on a darker-blue background. Which means they're readable. Which was very important to me in 1988 because it was my first movie and I wanted to be able to see my name. I know, I know, what a fucking baby. It bothers me a lot less now, but anyone who tells you that that sort of thing wasn't a big deal to them when they were starting out is a saint or a liar.

This was the US Teaser one-sheet, which first alerted the world to the fact that the brains trust at New World's marketing department saw this as the perfect Christmas movie.

The US one-sheet. Blue on blue. See what I mean?

The UK quad (which was still the regular size and shape for UK posters back then).

Asian one-sheet. Ashamed to say I don't know if it's Korean, Chinese, or Japanese.

This one, I'm assured, is Japanese. It's also wild as fuck. (But I fear, sadly, may be a fan-art fake.)

HELL ON EARTH, 1992. The US one-sheet. (The movie's actual opening date was September 11th, which makes the presence of Manhattan's Twin Towers in the background unfortunate and a bit creepy.)  

The UK quad.

UK Video art

The Pakistani quad (courtesy of the lovely Jose Armando Leitao, of The Clive Barker Podcast). 

A Japanese one-sheet (though maybe for a later video release). The only poster featuring me as Barbie. Featuring me as Barbie twice, in fact; he's also the one slumped on the wall a bit higher up.

HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE, 1996. The US one-sheet.

The US Teaser one-sheet.

I don't know what this is. US video release, maybe? I certainly didn't see it at the time, though I think the Pinhead-and-dove image was used on a European poster or two.

Pretty sure this is fake. Later fan art? A DVD reissue? No idea. But Angelique looks cool AF, so what the hell.

WISHMASTER, 1997. The US one-sheet.

The UK quad.

Japanese one-sheet.

A US newspaper ad for Hellbound.

And now ... The Ghana Gallery!

Turns out that from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s there was a cottage industry in Ghana for one-off hand-painted posters. The West sort of 'discovered' this around the turn of the century (it wasn't a secret, it was just that nobody'd been paying attention) and many a website and at least one coffee-table book has since been produced celebrating these idiosyncratic and undeniably bizarre treasures. I'm thrilled that four of my movies have made it into this semi-exclusive club and, though I've not located a BLOODLINE one yet, my fingers remain firmly crossed.

[EDITED TO ADD 6/15/2024] Though I've still not seen an 'official' BLOODLINE, I did notice that a later Ghanian poster for the first movie incorporates both Princess Angelique (from BLOODLINE) and Doctor Channard (from HELLBOUND), so I've added that to the gallery as an honorary addition. 

Hold hard, I hear you say. What's that last one, Pete? Well, since you asked:

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, 1995. Look, I don't care what you think. Here's what I think: I got to hear CLOCKWORK ORANGE's Little Alex -- the great Malcolm McDowell -- deliver dialogue I'd written. So shut the fuck up. (Also, when we were talking on set, he told me he was a fellow Scouser, which I hadn't known and just made it all even better.)

PRISONERS OF THE SUN, 2013. Please don't watch this movie. Ever. Tony Hickox and I first wrote it in 1994 or thereabouts and it was picked up by the briefly-revived Hammer Films when they were based at Warners. Richard Donner and Lauren Shuler-Donner were attached as star-name producers, and all was going well...

... and then Hammer collapsed again and the script reverted to us. It was re-optioned a couple of years later by the US office of a big German production company and, though they never got around to actually making the fucking thing, they paid us option-renewal money every year for seven years, so I can't really complain about that. What I can complain about is that, after the script had once again reverted to us, the company that next picked it up (in 2006) did go ahead and make it. And what they made was an irredeemable piece of shit. 

They only had about $6 million for the budget (as opposed to the $80 million that Hammer/Warners had been planning to spend more than ten years earlier), but that's not the problem. The movie doesn't look bad -- it's got some halfway decent CGI in it -- and the cast includes talented performers like Joss Ackland and John Rhys-Davies (and Charlie Chaplin's granddaughter, which is kind of cool). No, the problem is Storytelling 101. Whatever the failings of Tony's and my script -- and I'm sure there were plenty -- it was structured as a supernatural mystery with (we hoped) a gradual building of tension and occasional revelations and surprises to keep the audience intrigued and entertained. So opening the movie, as these morons did, with a scroll-card giving away the entire back-story is not the smartest move. They also replaced my Chthonic Gods rising from their millenia-long sleep with the usual tired Erich Von Daniken shit about Aliens building the fucking pyramids. The result is a leaden 100 minutes long snore-fest in which the audience is always ahead of the plot and wondering why they're wasting their time watching it. Don't waste yours. 

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TV

INSIDE OUT (1991-92) was a co-production of Propaganda Films and The Playboy Channel. Commissioning producer Alan Poul short-handed it to me as "The Twilight Zone with Tits". Tony Randel and I co-wrote two episodes (which Tony directed), THE LEDA and THE FREAK. The show was available on VHS and Laserdisc, but I'm not sure it ever made it to DVD. 

Well, at least somebody's reading this nonsense. The lovely Phil & Sarah Stokes of the Clive Barker Archive got in touch after seeing that last paragraph and let me know that the show did indeed get a DVD release - and kindly provided some images from their porn stash research library: 

From 'The Twilight Zone with Tits' to another show that sounds like it's soft-core porn, but isn't:

PERVERSIONS OF SCIENCE, 1997. An HBO one-season spin-off of TALES FROM THE CRYPT and based on its sister EC comic WEIRD SCIENCE (they couldn't call the show WEIRD SCIENCE because they'd licensed the title to that 80s Kelly LeBrock movie). I wrote an episode called PLANELY POSSIBLE, which was directed by Russell Mulcahy. No official US or UK video release for the show, but it's all over YouTube.