The San Diego Traveler

Seeing master of horror Clive Barker at Comic-Con should surprise no one. He’s been here 4 or 5 times before. This year he came to promote his newest adventure in terror Midnight Meat Train. 

It was the scariest trailer I’ve EVER seen. EVER! (I wish that I could share it with you, but this really was a sneak preview only for the San Diego audience at Comic-Con, and there’s nothing available online yet.)

The premise of Midnight Meat Train starts out pretty straight-forward. Leon, a photojournalist (played by Bradley Cooper) takes pictures of people on trains and realizes that he has pictures of someone who was just reported missing. He believes that he may also have pictures of her killer, and becomes obsessed with tracking down what turns out to be a serial killer. (This is based on the short story, The Midnight Meat Train by Clive Barker.)

The girlfriend is played by Leslie Bibb (who’s also in Marvel’s upcoming film Iron Man). Bibb admitted to being “a bit of a pansy” when it comes to horror films, and said that when she sees clips from this film, it makes her throw up a little bit in her throat. Her recommendation about the film: “It will scare the pants off you, and you’ll throw up a little bit in your throat.”

Vinnie Jones brings the villain, Mahogany, frighteningly to life. Seeing him quietly sitting there, smiling, even up on stage, was absolutely creepy. Even without his little Mahogany bag of tricks, he has quite an unnerving presence.

Although director Ryuhei Kitamura has many films to his credit, he told the Comic-Con audience he was part of the audience last year, and he couldn’t believe that he’s up on stage now. He also expressed great respect for Barker’s films Hellraiser and Candyman, and said that his goal was to try to make something better.

If you’ve heard Clive Barker speak recently, you’d remember. It’s not that he’s scary, it’s that his voice has taken on such a gravelly timbre that you find yourself leaning in to hear him. He then spins a tale that will take you hither and yon, and just when you think that he’s lost, he’s reminded of where he was going and comes back with a poignant thought that was worth the wait.

Barker’s also very amusing. When asked how he came up with the title for Midnight Meat Train, he said that he is bad with titles…and not good with marijuana. See the rest of his answer for yourself:

At the -Con, Barker was also asked what scares him. His answer was surprising. He said that he’s a huge animal lover; he’s passionate about them, and he thinks about hamburgers and how the meat becomes hamburgers; he thinks about that sense of powerlessness that an animal feels. His nightmares are about that.

More along the lines of an answer you might be expecting from Barker, he admitted that he was most frightened the first time he embalmed someone and his first time at a slaughterhouse.

 Clive described Midnight Meat Train as “very close in tone” to his short story, found in the six Books of Blood that started his career. He described this as “a dark, dark movie” and said that it’s “very, very intense… There are no jokes in this movie.”

Barker mentioned that director Kitamura was kind enough to use a couple of his paintings in the film and the actors had a bit of fun describing the paintings – the LARGEST penises imaginable!

If you’re wondering what Barker will be working on next, he said that he has a bunch of movies in the works. He’ll be shooting more of the Books of Blood, which he says appeal to him because the ghosts get payback. To those unfamiliar with the stories, a charlatan of a medium is hired, who fakes his visions. The real ghosts come after him and write their stories in shards of glass on his skin. The stories they write are the Books of Blood.

Barker went on to describe another story in the series, Pig Blood Blues, about a huge sow that eats adolescent miscreants.  He took some glee in telling us about “her.”

Although I loved so many things about Comic-Con this year, I’d have to say that Clive Barker was my most delightful surprise, and even writing those words, I have to admit that he’s not at all what I’d imagined.

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