Clive Barker

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Clive Barker in 2007 at the Sci Fi Museum in Seattle

Clive Barker (born October 5, 1952 in Liverpool ) is a British writer , graphic artist, painter and director of the horror and fantasy genre . Recently he wrote more and more books for young people. Barker has lived in Los Angeles for years .

biography

The beginnings

Even in his school days, Barker came up with small plays in which he participated as an actor and director. Often his works were designed in a comedic and / or gloomy manner.

While studying at the University of Liverpool, he founded the Dog Company theater group , named after one of his plays. In this group, which consisted mainly of Barker's circle of friends, he worked as a director and designer. As a young adult, Clive Barker often visited a film club in his hometown of Liverpool, where he discovered films such as The Chelsea Girls by pop artist Andy Warhol and Flesh by Paul Morrissey, as well as the works of Kenneth Anger , which had a lasting impact on him . Under the influence of such underground films, which showed him that you can create great works of art with simple means, Barker decided to take up the camera himself. In 1975 he began work on the experimental film The Forbidden , with which he tried to realize a Faustian parable. The Forbidden remained incomplete for the time being until it was released on video some time later as a newly revised version along with his second short film Salomé , which is loosely based on the drama of the same name by writer Oscar Wilde . In terms of design and visual aesthetics, the two short films are similar to films of a similar nature, such as Eraserhead by David Lynch and Begotten by E. Elias Merhige . In order to stimulate his personal world of thoughts, Barker uses the Bible as an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

After the Dog Company disbanded after five years of collaboration, Barker started working as a writer. In the subsequent period he wrote several horror short stories, which were published in the first volume of Books of Blood in 1984 . His stories were a great success and won several awards, including the 1985 World Fantasy Award . Also in 1985 he received the British Fantasy Award for In the Hills, the Cities . After a total of six volumes of the Books of Blood wrote Barker game of perdition ( The Damnation Game ) his first major novel , which soon became a classic of the genre.

On the road to success

After the journalistic successes, the first film adaptations of his literary works followed. In 1985 the horror film Underworld appeared , for which Barker wrote the script. A year later, the Rawhead Rex, based on a short story, followed . Since Barker was disappointed with both works, he took over the directing work for the next film himself. In 1987 the film Hellraiser - Das Tor zum Hölle was made , the plot of which is based on the recently completed novel The Hellbound Heart . Barker only had a small budget of just over a million dollars available from the production company New World Pictures . Despite the small budget, he managed a nightmarish, disturbing and bloody horror film, the movie monster Pinhead, played by actor Doug Bradley , became an icon of modern horror film . Although the work met with little enthusiasm from the censors and critics, this did not detract from its success. The production company then decided to shoot a sequel. Barker had n't actually planned another part of Hellraiser , but since he had already assigned the rights to the material, a continuation was inevitable. He did not direct Hellbound - Hellraiser II , instead he was only active as a co-producer and screenwriter.

A little later he devoted himself to his second film project Cabal - The Brut of the Night , which, however, could not be realized according to Barker's wishes due to some requirements of the studio. Shortly afterwards he intervened one last time in the re-shoot of Hellraiser III , as the production company was not satisfied with the first result from director Anthony Hickox . Further excursions into the film business were the two strips Candyman's Curse (based on the short story Das Verbotene ) and Candyman 2 - The Blood Vendetta, for which he designed the plot. He did not direct again until Lord of Illusions , which was created in 1995 after the short story The Last Illusion . Another film was recently released based on an idea by Barker: Saint Sinner . Walt Disney is currently filming his current novel concept Abarat .

Despite his forays into the horror film business, Barker sees himself primarily as a writer of fantastic material. After the success of his short stories in the books of the blood (Clive Barker's Books of Blood), and his first two novels game of perdition (The Damnation Game) and Cabal (Cabal) the bare horror elements were crossed with bits and pieces of fantasy. This was followed by Beyond the Evil (The great and the secret show) and Gyre (Weaveworld) and led to an epic fantasy tale that is often compared to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings : Imagica (Imajica). City of Evil (Everville) is intended as a sequel to Beyond Evil and the second part of his previously unfinished trilogy , the Books of the Art. In The Sacrament (Sacrament), Barker moves away from the fantastic motifs. At the same time as the novel was published, he came out as homosexual , which the reader of the novel did not miss. In 1997 the novel received the Lambda Literary Award . Galileo (Galilee) is an elaborate family chronicle that manages almost entirely without fantastic motifs. Most recently, Barker writes children's books, The House of the missing years (The Thief of Always) and most recently the unfinished Abarat , the work of a total of five volumes. His last adult novel is again about ghosts and other supernatural phenomena, and Barker's experiences with the film industry are also incorporated. Coldheart Canyon (Coldheart Canyon - A Hollywood Ghoststory) was published in German in September 2004. In March 2012, Barker announced that he would expand his novel and the film based on it, Cabal - The Brood of the Night, into a television series. In 2014 Fahr zur Hölle, Mister B. was awarded the Vincent Prize for “Best International Literature” . In the same category, Barker won The Scarlet Gospel in 2015 .

Computer games

There are a few computer games that Clive Barker has worked on and thus greatly increased his level of awareness, especially among the younger generation, including:

Clive Barker's Undying

In the spring of 2001, a horror-style first-person shooter titled Clive Barker's Undying for the PC and Mac was released, which despite positive ratings and - for the time - good technology and a huge outside world, not to mention the oppressive and gloomy atmosphere, only Almost 25,000 copies sold worldwide and the publisher Electronic Arts (EA) put off the idea of ​​a sequel. Despite many scenes of violence, Undying was approved for the German market from the age of 16.

Demonics

In the meantime, Clive Barker was involved in the Demonik project, which was discontinued in 2006. The third-person shooter with a horror scenario was developed by Terminal Reality, the makers of BloodRayne . Barker was one of the creative minds behind the project and wrote a. a. the history. The publisher gave up Demonik for financial reasons .

Clive Barker's Jericho

Barker worked on the 2007 first-person shooter Clive Barker's Jericho , which was developed by Codemasters . The horror writer was involved in the backstory and design of the characters. The plot of the game revolves around a mysterious city in the middle of the desert of Africa. You can switch between a total of seven characters in order to solve team-based combat tasks. The game was released for PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The USK initially refused to give the game an age rating due to scenes that were too brutal, so that the game could be indexed by the Federal Testing Office for media harmful to minors. Codemasters then decided to only release the PC version in unchanged form in Germany on October 26th and decided not to use the console versions, as this is not permitted under the license conditions of Sony and Microsoft. In the meantime, the BPjM has refused the indexing, it now bears the USK-18 seal in the uncensored, but German-dubbed version after being re-examined by the USK. The trade press gave mediocre ratings for the horror shooter.

Awards (selection)

Literary works

Filmography (selection)

Director

script

production

Web links

Wikiquote: Clive Barker  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Video interview with Clive Barker as the introduction to the short film Salomé , 27 minutes, included in the bonus material of the five-disc bluRay box Clive Barker's Hellraiser Trilogy , Disc 5: Clive Barker's Frühwerke, 2018, Turbine Medien GmbH, Münster + Lakeshore International, Beverly Hills ( UNITED STATES)
  2. ↑ Video interview with Clive Barker as the introduction to the short film Salomé , 27 minutes, included in the bonus material of the five-disc bluRay box Clive Barker's Hellraiser Trilogy , Disc 5: Clive Barker's Frühwerke, 2018, Turbine Medien GmbH, Münster + Lakeshore International, Beverly Hills ( UNITED STATES)
  3. ^ A Light, Hidden
  4. ↑ http://www.gamespot.com/news/clive-barker-and-john-woo-get-demonik-6123865
  5. ↑ http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/demonik/
  6. ↑ Dennis Schirrmacher / Hartmut Gieselmann: USK refuses horror game the age classification. In: Heise online. Verlag Heinz Heise, September 24, 2007, accessed on October 11, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Barker, Clive
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and director
DATE OF BIRTH 5th October 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Liverpool , England