I will always watch an extended version of a movie, even the 2 /12 hour director’s cut of Uwe Boll’s In the Name of the King. There’s always the fantasy that you’re seeing some secret treasure, the good stuff they kept from you. Usually it’s not. Adding 42 minutes was not the solution to Nightbreed’s problems. If you loved Nightbreed, The Cabal Cut will give you more of what you loved, but it fixes none of the film’s shortcomings. It may even emphasize the film’s story problems, because now that it’s at epic length, the lack of effective motivations is even more palpable.
First of all, Cabal is still the story of a psychiatrist, Dr. Decker (David Cronenberg) who frames a former patient, Boone (Craig Sheffer) for the murders Decker himself is committing. That’s pretty contrived. Any world building of the monster world of Midian that Clive Barker was trying to achieve is still hamstrung by forwarding this Alex Cross knock-off type plot. The only reason it’s not resolved halfway through is that a deus ex machina keeps Boone from killing Decker the first time he catches him. I’m even sketchy about that frame job, because an ER doctor tells Boone the pills he was given weren’t Lithium, but a hallucinagen. Wouldn’t Decker’s name be on the prescription bottle so they could tell he tricked Boone into taking something else?
Decker would have gotten away with it if Boone hadn’t found the monster city of Midian and been bit by a monster. Now Boone survives a police shooting, and the elders of Midian reluctantly accept him. Boone’s girlfriend Lori (Anne Bobby) comes looking for him, forcing Boone to choose between monsters and men.
I get it. If you’re the author of the book, writer of the screenplay and director of the movie, you feel every scene is vital. Sometimes a studio or editor is right to cut the fluff. Sometimes they are misguided, but I don’t think this is one of those cases. I don’t even see what a studio would object to in the additional content. Except for two scenes in the denouement after the big battle, nothing different happens in the extended cut than happened in the theatrical. Things just happen in between, or take longer to happen. A lot longer.
The extended scenes come from a VHS work print found in Barker’s house. The VHS footage holds up surprisingly well on the big screen, and it’s helpful to see the quality shift to let us know what is new. Where the film has not been altered they just play the released version of the film, which seems to be DVD quality at best. The plan is to restore the whole thing from original elements, but for now this is actually the most helpful version for me to review the film. Some of the work print scenes are not entirely new. Some are, and others are longer versions of existing scenes.
I suppose the intention is to deepen Boone’s struggle with claiming his monsterhood. In actuality, this only manifests as repetitive scenes in which he says, “I don’t want to be here. But I belong here. But I want to be with Lori. But I can’t go outside.” Or, even more redundantly, when the humans attack, Boone has several arguments with Lylesberg (Doug “Pinhead” Bradley), the leader of Midian, about: “We have to fight back.” “We can’t fight back.” “No, we have to fight back.” In one of the new scenes, some of the humans basically say, “Maybe we’re the monsters.” So if you like your metaphors totally on the nose, then this version of Nightbreed is for you.
There’s more on Lori’s bond with the Nightbreed child she saved, and more of her trying to convince Boone to come back with her, but that was all in the theatrical cut. I haven’t seen the movie in 20 years and I still remember I got that from the 102 minute cut. It’s just longer here. There’s a scene where Lylesberg tries to stop Lori from entering Midian, but he can’t stop her so that’s a pointless scene. There’s a lot more exposition about the Nightbreed’s rules. I really think “What is below stays below” pretty much covers it. Anything more is redundant. I like the scene where Lori sings a full song at a nightclub though. It’s a catchy tune and I would totally buy the soundtrack for Danny Elfman’s full score and Lori’s song.
One of the new scenes is a police press conference. Do you really feel the story of Cabal needs more information on the police investigation? There is a lot more with the cops. There’s a subplot with a priest that pays off in the new ending, but along the way his claims that Midian is holy ground are also very on the nose. Because, you see, their religion is just as important as ours! I was just thinking it’s a good thing Midian was in the same city as Boone and Decker, or it would’ve been a bitch to book flights to resolve this story. We do get to see a few more background creatures in the Midian scenes, so that’s always nice, and a quick flashback to Midian’s history will please the fans. Did we see Baphomet in the original cut? That I don’t recall, but he’s in here.
I believe the world of Midian is supposed to be a haven for misunderstood, persecuted benevolent outcasts. They did not land that, and still don’t. First of all, half the Nightbreed still kill people and eat them. Even the good ones don’t really do anything. They just hang out in their caves. Midian is basically a dorm. The orgy scene in Matrix Reloaded did more to establish the cave as a place worth saving, and I am not defending the orgy scene in Matrix Reloaded.
For one of the masters at creating monsters, Barker’s Nightbreed characters look really limited. I’m glad they’re old school makeup creatures, but they’re all too humanoid, because it is still a dude in makeup. Only the tummy guy at the end has an interesting, different shape. Otherwise it’s people with either head extensions or carvings in their faces, some of which just look like open sores. The transformations are really cheesy. This isn’t Rick Baker doing American Werewolf here. If it were made today, we’d be stuck with CGI masses but the point is, this isn’t a world of wondrous creatures. It’s just another ‘80s movie (well, 1990) trying to land the cover of Fangoria.
The film’s problem with dialogue is painfully apparent in the additional scenes. Was the book Cabal as literal and direct as the screenplay is? When Lori says, “This is too weird,” that is not an authentic reaction to the stuff she is witnessing. That is a writer intellectualizing what a reaction to the supernatural would be. When you read it, does it feel more metaphysical than it sounds when actual humans speak it? Maybe no one can say “blood of Baphomet” and sound legit. The dialogue also include characters making plans. Lori invites a barfly to check out Midian with her and this extraneous character says, “I’m not doing anything tomorrow.” I’m really glad that was restored into Barker’s original vision for Cabal. There are lots of extra scenes of Boone and Lori sloppily kissing each other.
The extended ending is the most significant change and that is worth sticking on the film. I’m not against having the long version of Nightbreed, I’m just keeping it real. Show us everything that was shot and what the ultimate version of the film could be, but in the end we still get to decide whether it worked or not.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
