Roy Bain (Larry Lamb) would rather spend his days painting than getting involved with old, bad influences like gangster-turned-industrialist Motherskille (Steven Berkoff). However, when Bain’s old flame Nicole (Nicola Cowper) is kidnapped by persons unknown, Motherskille hires the former gumshoe to take one last case.
The investigation leads Bain to Pepperdine (Ingrid PItt) an exclusive brothel and its madame, to Bianca (Irina Brook), an escort who knows more than she’s willing to talk about, and finally to Savary (Denholm Elliott), a doctor with a penchant for designer, experimental drugs that act as euphoric dream machines, but also twist their users.
Nicole is the prisoner of Nygaard (Paul Brown) and his gang of mutants who have made a home for themselves in the underground, far from the eyes of normal human beings. He intends to find out why she can take the drug without being afflicted as others are. However, a bond forms between them and Nicole wants to see the villainous doctor pay.
However, there’s more happening here than a simple missing person case. Motherskille has an agenda of his own, and Bain’s sleuthing is a key element in that. Once the mutants are identified and located, then he will unleash his psychopathic henchmen Fluke (Art Malik) and Darling (Brian Croucher). And all hell will break loose. George Pavlou helms a creature feature that merges gangsters and body horror in the oddball dark fantasy flick Underworld (1985).
When he was making his transition from actor and director for the stage to other artistic endeavors, Clive Barker dabbled not only with short fiction but also with film. Of course, he would go on to direct Hellraiser in 1987. Before that, he helmed a couple of short films (1973’s Salome and 1978’s The Forbidden) and sold two scripts to be directed by George Pavlou.
Hopefully, Clive Barker made a few bucks with the early script work he did both on Underworld and Rawhead Rex (1986), since the finished products are … well, let’s be generous and say compromised.
Underworld (which would also appear under the title Transmutations) ended up being rewritten by James Caplin, losing much of the material Barker wrote (at least according to the author).
There are still concepts that would appear in later and in much more refined ways in Barker’s future works. The attention to dreams as a shaping tool seem to feed into the Quiddity that flows throughout the Books of the Art (The Great and Secret Show and Everville), the unique drug addiction is something that would appear in his short story The Age of Desire, the interplay of afflicted, “monstrous” but sympathetic people with cruel human beings would appear in disparate works like “Skins of the Fathers” and (of course) Cabal and its adaptation Nightbreed (1990). The entire storyline of the detective delving into a strange world feels like a trial run for the concepts and beats that would later form the superlative Lord of Illusions in 1995. There are cool underpinnings to Underworld that are hard to dispute.
What’s not difficult to dispute are the choices made during the actual execution of those ideas. The look of the thing is intensely 1980s, often like a New Wave music video gone mad—much of which I rather enjoyed—though the saturation makes things like words on computer screens somewhat indecipherable. The music is generally good, but the editing often cuts dramatic moment tracks off with a startling suddenness instead of letting them play down. The end result is a somewhat disjointed experience. The realization of the drug addicts’ transforming bodies takes full advantage of the period’s practical effects and makeup (though not necessarily the expensive geniuses for making them look good on camera), but they don’t feel particularly rooted to the themes of the story itself.
And yet, taken not as Barker’s first stab into the feature length film world but as a standalone horror flick, the movie is not terrible from first shot to last. A tad painful to watch at times, it nevertheless has a terrific sense for pace, a solid cast (many of whom prefer to perform in as unconvincing and bombastic a manner as possible, which kind of goes with the over-the-top lighting choices and set designs), and a surprising level of restraint when it comes to sex, violence, and gore.
For better or worse, Pavlou handles the material as though it’s a 1940s noir picture, a cheapie that indulges the audience’s eagerness for fights and transgressions but still is incapable of bringing itself to show the sorts of nudity and bloodletting that had become the norm for this era. So, one woman putting on garters and another whose costume is a tattered looking bridal gown is a tease for the sex other movies would flagrantly display. Fistfights and gunfights are seldom met with squibs (or worse), though there is a rather clever practical effects demise in the picture’s big finale.
Denholm Elliot gets top billing, but he’s perhaps the least convincing evil mastermind I’ve seen on celluloid. He tries his best, bless his heart, but ultimately a mix of the mild mannered look, the vocal patterns, and the mannerisms lend him a more comic appeal that a mad scientist’s one. Perhaps this is because he is forever cemented in my brain as Marcus Brody, the man who got lost in his own museum, in the Indiana Jones series. What he does sell is his devotion to the idealized Nicole his character carries in his head and heart. That feels utterly real, and when he is bringing that to the forefront, he’s stellar. Nevertheless, it’s a pleasure to see the actor here, even if he is rather miscast.
The big bad from Beverly Hills Cop (1984) is here, as well. Steven Berkoff who played Victor Maitland in that Eddie Murphy vehicle, plays Motherskille here, and he’s just as charismatic and slimy in both pictures. Poor dude was typecast in this era. Over a decade earlier, he was a sneering cop in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971). However, he does put his sinister grin and false cheer to good use here.
Blink and you’ll miss Miranda Richardson, who appears as one of the mutants, Oriel. I wish she’d been given more to do, but whenever she talks, it’s hard not to hear her gleefully calling for someone’s head to roll as Queen Elizabeth I in Black Adder II (1986). She’s gone on to bigger, better things (including a turn as Shax/Madame Tracy in the recent Good Omens series), and it’s fun as hell to see her in these earlier roles.
In fact, the women in the movie don’t get to do much. Most active of the lot is Ingrid Pitt’s Pepperdine, who still winds up slapped around by tough guys Fluke and Darling. Oriel has attitude in a scene early on, but she’s reduced to a cowering character later on. Bianca is a clue-giving exposition machine when she isn’t eye candy. And Nicole herself pretty much stands around like a breathing mannequin. Sad, really.
The Kino Lorber release for the picture appears under their new Kino Cult line. It certainly fits that bill especially well. In addition to a solid 4K scan from the 35mm original camera negative, the 4K UHD/Blu-ray edition includes the eleven-minute longer Transmutations cut, archival behind the scenes footage, and a feature length commentary track with Stephen Thrower and director Pavlou. Most interesting of all is the image gallery of stills storyboards, and whatnot, which also includes some of Baker’s designs.
Although the latest release of the picture sticks Clive Barker’s name atop the title, Underworld is best taken on its own merits. It’s not representative of that author’s strengths (though his passions are nevertheless hinted at throughout), and taken as a Clive Barker movie it is disappointing AF. As a horror flick distributed by one of Charles Band’s companies and helmed by George Pavlou, there are fun moments aplenty. It’s uneven, but brisk. It looks crazy, it behaves crazy, and it’s more than a tad batshit all told, but it’s an intriguing though flawed creature feature oddity from the ‘80s.
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Underworld is available in DVD and 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo editions.
On Monday, we will take a look at The First Omen. It is currently playing in theaters, but it will likely become available for order in DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD editions eventually.
Writing for “You Are What You Dream: Underworld (1985)” is copyright © 2024 by Daniel R. Robichaud.
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