'Rawhead Rex' (1986) – George Pavlou.

At the time of Rawhead Rex's original, somewhat limited release, the boisterous, Clive Barker's boisterously preternatural pagan monster movie was somewhat indifferently received, merely earning 5 measly skulls in Chas Balun's immortal Deep Red Horror Handbook. Happily, the recent HD restoration blood-spatteringly belies its beastly reception to riotously reveal a head-rippingly gory, old school monster movie cult classic! A hellaciously hefty sinfully-spawned pre-Christian deity hell-bent on the sanguinary slaughter of any poor unfortunate anthropoids that fatefully come under the diabolic, red-eyed thrall of his murderous majesty King Wrong, Rawhead Rex! This bloodthirsty behemoth remains one of the most monstrously majestic B-Movie bezerkers to so gruesomely disgrace the silver scream!

 George Pavlou's undervalued, full-blooded monster movie benefits greatly from being set within the evocative, old world environs of rural Country Wicklow, Ireland. Celebrated horror icon Clive Barker's lurid text, while not always scintillating, is pacey, playfully blasphemous, and generously replete with richly animated characters. Especially fascinating is the delectably villainous verger Declan, maniacally performed with a bravura Klaus Kinski-esque intensity that is both hysterical, and palpably macabre. His increasingly febrile madness making a delightful foil to his sinisterly silent, skull-crushing master, the sabre-toothed terror titan Rawhead Rex. Once freed from his Monolith-weighted grave lustily embarks upon a gratuitously gory, gut-rippingly raucous rampage, part 50s Drive-In rubber monster schlock, part fearsome folk horror. The grisly good, sensationally splattery set-pieces given additional pep by maestro composer Colin Towns tremendously effective, sadly underappreciated score. 'Rawhead Rex' (1986), admittedly flawed, is far from declawed, still proving to be quite the feral B-Movie beast!