Clive Barker is certainly a storyteller worth his words and all the blood and guts. Rawhead Rex is a piece that I could rave about for quite some time. It's certainly worth the praise. Rawhead Rex is a monster worthy of fear, not just for being nine feet tall with two rows of teeth and its insatiable appetite for the flesh of children. Rawhead Rex possesses intelligence, not just instinct.
Rex is an ancient creature, older than the Christian faith as stated by Father Coot. This does add another level to Rex. How does one go about putting an end to such an ancient monster? Rex has weaknesses, of course: bullets can damage him, as can fire. Rex understands his own weaknesses, which adds a truly terrifying aspect to him.
A monster can be only as frightening as its visage and its cruelty, right? Wrong. Rawhead Rex is a monster with an intelligence, granted that intelligence in limited. What is also outright frightening about Rex is that his intelligence could be greater than what is seen in in the story. The reader is given an insight into the mind of a monster, a monster which adapts to its environment. Rex is a monster with human qualities.
Barker does something similar with his other work, Hellraiser. In it, evil is ancient and seems to be beyond the ability of humanity to understand through the context of religion. Rex and Pinhead aren't even fazed by a crucifix, but by other objects, like Lemerchand's Box and the Talisman used against Rex. What contrasts these stories is how each of the antagonists are defeated.
In further comparison, Lovecraft does something similar. Lovecraft removes the context of Christianity from the horror tale, something Barker does to a degree. However, Barker gives Christianity limitations. A cross wouldn't slow Rex down, but fire and enough bullets could. This is were the comparison ends, unfortunately. Lovecraft was heavy handed in his madness, Barker is not.
Rating: 5/5
This story was awesome! I enjoyed how you went for the more human side of Rex than the monster, so to read about the weaknesses, some I actually forgot about, was interesting to hear because this is, indeed, a pure monster story, so great job with that. His weaknesses and the knowledge of them does give him more humanity, but I will say that I found his demise to the peasants to be very unsatisfactory for such a cool and brutal creature. But don't get me started about the film version, because that was just awful. And he did have a very original and intriguing weakness to that pregnant statue. And I also would agree that I feel Barker may be more grotesque than Lovecraft, he isn't as mad or embraces it to that degree.
ReplyDeleteFunny how you spoke so much about his human qualities. When I read the story and imagined it in my head, Rex was just a giant human in my imagination. Yet, when I looked the story up on line later, reading other reviews and opinions (bad habit of mine to compare my theories with others)I saw all these crazy pictures of monsters that looked alien, like something from H.R. Giger. So Barker did an amazing job humanizing him because that's exactly how I saw him.
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