It features Scott Bakula as a New York PI, investigating the occult antics of Daniel van Bargen and his crew of ‘Puritans’. Lord of Illusions 1995 Lord of Illusion 1995īarker took up the directorial reins for this loose adaptation of ‘The Last Illusion’, from Books of Blood Vol. The food deprivation sequence, in particular, requires a strong stomach, for the characters and audience alike. When one member of the trio takes things too far, the ensuing chaos makes for uncomfortable reading.Īnthony DiBlasi’s adaptation isn’t too faithful to the story, but does capture the escalating paranoia of the central characters, as things get way out of hand. Of course, they’re not without their own deep-seated traumas. It centres on three university students, who conduct a psychology experiment to understand the source of people’s repressed fears. Dread 2009 A scene from Dread 2009ĭread is an especially bleak and unsettling highlight from Books of Blood. Nevertheless, it’s more gripping than your average downtown commute. It ends up as a much sillier splatterfest than Barker’s grimy, thought-provoking tale, set on a subway train. Adding English footballer-come-Hollywood hardman Vinnie Jones into the mix helped as well. One of the challenges of extending Barker’s short, punchy tales into feature-length movies is all the fleshing out that has to happen.ĭirector Ryûhei Kitamura’s solution for The Midnight Meat Train – one of the nastier, more violent stories in Barker’s collection – was to dial up the gore and just hit repeat.

The Midnight Meat Train 2008 Vinnie Jones in a scene from The Midnight Meat Train 2008 There are some memorable moments, most notably when a young couple flee hand-in-hand through the woods, only for the girl to glance down and realise she’s actually holding her dead lover’s severed hand.īut the film doesn’t delve deep enough into the monster’s mythology and Barker, who wrote the screenplay but disliked the directing, has all but disowned this one now.

The forbidden clive barker short story