VHS — Blog — The Clive Barker Archive

Time for a periodic look back at some of the things we’ve added to our shelves here in recent months!

Foreign editions of movies include recent releases of Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions in France as well as older VHS releases of Hellraiser III and Candyman from Hong Kong and South Korea respectively.

Guy Astic, who also appears in the French Lord of Illusions Blu-ray extras, has two books of essays on horror, featuring Kirsty and the Chatterer on the cover of volume one.

Amongst the magazine format publications come two career overviews of Clive’s work - in the French Mad Movies and the Italian Nocturno - while Candyman features in HorrorHound and Shock Horror. Lire magazine in France interviews Clive whilst Darkside Books continue publishing beautiful editions of Clive’s titles with The Forbidden and the first Books of Blood volume from Brazil.

Scared Sacred is a collection of essays on religion in horror films published by House of Leaves Publishing and sports a foreword by Doug Bradley.

A couple of photos from the August 1995 Los Angeles premiere of Lord of Illusions sit alongside one of the October 1986 cast of the London production of The Secret Life of Cartoons.

Daniele Serra’s new art book has an introduction by Clive and, at the back, Cemetery Dance’s lettered The Damnation Game is an impressive new edition.

The print at the back of Exiled Mummy is one of more than 25 available now in Clive’s Threadless store at https://clivebarker.threadless.com/ along with shirts, mugs and more…

It’s been a quiet year in publications from us and Clive but we have our collective heads buried in a number of projects that we’re looking forward to having more news on in coming months!

With Spring sunshine tinting London with its energy, the Archive is all set for new projects over the next few months. As we take stock of recent acquisitions, we realise it’s over a year since we shared some of the things that have been added to the shelves here, so there’s much to catch up on!

The handsome Beardless Warriors / Brothers in Arms set arrived on our doorstep from Gauntlet Press just this week, bearing Clive’s cover art on the second volume, and over past months we’ve seen an ever increasing number of publishers with local language editions of the Shining in the Dark anthology, containing Pidgin and Theresa. Cemetery Dance also produced a chapbook of artwork by Erin S. Wells, inspired by the stories of the anthology.

Non-fiction additions include Jon Towlson’s take on Candyman (including an interview with Bernard Rose), ESC / Bragelonne’s Hellbound Heart translation which includes an interview between Clive and Pete Atkins and accompanied its release of Hellraisers 1-3 on Blu-Ray, and Manchester University Press offers a collection of pieces focussed on various aspects of Clive’s work edited by Sorcha Ní Fhlainn.

But it’s often some of the older, ephemeral things that become uncovered - often with thanks to friends of the Archive - that are most unusual: as Hellraiser debuted on VHS rental in 1988, New World produced a promotional standee featuring the box office data from The Hollywood Reporter on the back; and a set of Murray Close’s black and white contact sheets for Hellbound has happily found its way to the Archive some thirty years after they were created.

Promo VHSs for Gods and Monsters and Lord of Illusions sit next to a much more recent DVD release of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which features Clive’s art on the walls of the Academy of Unseen Arts throughout, and the new Blu-ray release of Candyman.

Of course, Clive’s own notes and working papers form the backbone of the Archive and his manuscript of Heaven’s Reply and a hand-amended Tortured Souls screenplay are new additions.

The growing complexity of the Abarat plot demanded that, whilst writing the third volume, Clive kept a firm track of characters and places by creating a pinboard of index cards, each one devoted to a plot point - these two cards were recently rescued from a water-damaged storage area deep under his library. Once dried off, they could be safely added to others in the Abarat papers, together with the proofreader’s marked up pages for Absolute Midnight.

More news on upcoming projects to follow!

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