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owlbelly · 8 months

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found an 80s hardcover of Cabal in the thrift store & grabbed it because i had completely forgotten i'd ever read it (which tells you something!!!) & thought "oh yeah i love Nightbreed, i should really read this one"

truly incredible how much the movie is just exactly the book, except you get a little more interiority for Lori & more interesting descriptions of the monsters - i love the practical effects & costuming in the movie but they just couldn't pull off what Barker actually wrote. but oh man this story in either form just epitomizes my love/hate relationship with the dude's work. it's got so much potential. it's so, so bad. Cabal (1988) / Nightbreed (1990) spoilers ahead

i mean come on: queer monster misfit sanctuary vs. the "real monsters" of policing & carceral mental health systems (that enable & provide cover for sadistic humans)? fuck yes. vivid descriptions of wild genderfucky polyamorous kinky mystical creatures living in their huge necropolis? all day long please

but Clive's brilliance is only matched by how much he sucks so we get an incredibly bullshit portrayal of mental illness (what's Boone's deal? we'll never know. it doesn't matter, it only matters that he's Beautiful and Tortured) & a fairly confused sense of the moral standing of various characters/systems. like. are at least some of the Breed not also sadistic killers? what exactly makes them better than Decker or the cops - is it just that they admit to what they do & they're more sexually liberated? would Decker have been accepted if he came to them looking for belonging? also are we meant to think Decker is "mentally ill" - and what does that mean for the narrative - or is the Mask literally a separate entity & does that make him/it a Breed-type monster too?

Boone calls Ashberry a monster (non-pejoratively?) for being secretly some kind of trans ("a crossdresser" but there are some other vague gestures towards gender stuff, Clive doesn't know or care) & then Ashberry, who has been trying to stop the massacre, appears to genuinely want to accept himself & join the Breed, but when he comes into contact with Baphomet (who should recognize his gender stuff!) he gets rejected & fucked all the way up instead. why?

the queerness in this story is all over the place but critics seem weirdly obsessed with a queer reading of Boone/Decker, which i just don't see at all - in the movie there's NOTHING backing that up, in the book there's some bits of narration around them being "like lovers" in terms of their mutual dependence/obsession - but Boone & Lori's very straight relationship is pretty centered! i would be super interested in a queer and/or trans reading of Lori, who actually has some dysphoria (around looking "sweet") & thinks about herself when she's jacking off (iconic...), i just don't think there's anything interesting going on with Boone. obviously the Breed as a whole are a queer allegory & in the movie & background of the book, there are some obviously queer people/relationships, but honestly why tell this queers vs. the straight world story by focusing on an apparently straight, extremely lackluster "tortured man & devoted woman" romance??

and good lord the sex scene. the reason i remembered i HAD read it is that the phrase "he threw his fuck up into her" was burned into my mind & activated me like a sleeper agent when i read it again. honey no. also Boone ejaculating on Baphomet's severed head...oh Clive.

the funniest thing i'm taking away is that i forgot that Boone is supposed to be a bewitchingly gorgeous man with a face no one can resist & the guy playing him in the movie looks like THIS

#nightbreed #cabal #clive barker #queer horror #in the night in the dark #<- my horror thoughts/reviews tag

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