Originally published at: Where Midian is | Boing Boing
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Wow, that is some serious time-traveling whiplash I’m experiencing. Totally forgot that film existed, and I had a friend who really, really loved it. We watched it all the time on VHS, must have been 1991?
Literally remembered nothing about it, except one scene… somebody important is giving a speech, one of the sidekicks lights a cigarette or something (an interrupting noise), and everyone looks over at him. “Ooh, sorry, go on…” he pantomimes.
Very strange to read the Wikipedia entry. Some of the scenes I remember really clearly. Others… huh. It’s just not there. Well, it was fun to remember a thing I had utterly forgotten. Thanks!
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You were reading Barker as a kid?
Yikes.
Even his YA stuff like Abarat is rather intense.
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It would have been when the movie came out, so I was 12 or 13
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I think I started reading Barker around the age of 16 or 17; Books of Blood featuring Rawhead Rex spring to mind…
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I’m on the corner of Walk & Don’t Walk, I can’t find it this Midian thing.
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Next up, the money bag from Fargo.
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Oh oh oh! I know where it is, it’s on the side of a highway in the Mid-West somewhere. Hope that helps!
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But on which level of the Tower, though?
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I probably watched Lord of Illusions a dozen times. Saw it again in he 21st century and can’t say it held up well. The short story it was based on has though. Clive Barker might be my favorite overall short story horror writer of all time, though that’s coming from someone who isn’t a big horror buff.
“Do you like Scott Bakula?”
“Sure, he was in Lord of Illusions.”
“Do you like Dean Stockwell?”
“The guy from The Langoliers? Certainly. They should get more work.”
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For some reason, I’ve seen that movie more than once, even though I didn’t like it all and I am a horror buff. (I’ll blame cable tv.)
I think Barker does better in the short story genre, and his material doesn’t translate well to the screen.
Like I was telling the Regular Mutants™ recently, I read the novella that Hellraiser was original based on, the Hellbound Heart, and it was so much better than all the Hellraiser films, put together.
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Yeah, they (Sci Fi Channel IIRC) ran that movie a lot. I think it caught it in disjointed snippets over multiple viewings.
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I remember seeing it unedited as a teen/young adult; so it had to have been on HBO, SHO or Cinemax.
(I don’t ever watch movies that have been edited for tv; drives me nuts.)
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Under the ice scraper. Duh.
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Next to a bob-wire fence.
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As an angsty teenager, I was in love with Nightbreed and Cabal and fantasized about living with the misunderstood denizens of Midian and when I too tried to figure out exactly where it was I discovered it could be anywhere within hundreds of miles. This article go far beyond my attempts at locating it. Very cool!
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That’s about the age I was when I discovered Barker, although I didn’t read Cabal until decades later when I finally found out there was a sixth Book of Blood. My first book was The Inhuman Condition bought at K-Mart.
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My favorite Nightbreed inspired Techno song:
I read my first Barker book around the age of 12/13. It was a YA book called the Thief of Always. This was a solid decade before Abarat came out (which is just a beautiful book). Thief of Always was the first time I ever read a book in a single sitting.
That said, I read The Great and Secret show when I was 15 or so and definitely felt like I was a bit young to be reading the book (but loved every minute of it).
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Wow, I spaced; I totally forgot I own that book and even gave a copy to my teen!
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