Toxic: Where did you get the idea for the underground city of Midian?
Barker: There is a long tradition of underground adventures, going all the way back to the Greek Heroes. There's a classic convention of the quest into dark places—hell even. Dante goes down into hell. So for me, I like the imagery of the descent. The idea for the city itself came out of a desire on my part to find a place for my monsters to live.

Toxic: In what ways does Nightbreed differ from Cabal? (Barker's book upon which the film is based)?
Barker: It is much more specific about the creatures. The book is very impressionistic, merely postulates about the creatures. The film is more about the monsters, whereas the book is about the human beings—and I think you can tell that even from the difference in the titles.

Toxic: Was it your idea to change the title from Cabal to Nightbreed?
Barker: Uh-huh. I love monsters, monster make-up and the like, so that would be better for the film.

Toxic: There are over 130 different creatures in Nightbreed. Where did you come up with the idea for so many?
Barker: Well, I took a lot of drugs and...no, no, no, just joking. A lot of the credit has to go to Bob Keen of Bob Keen's Image Animation who built the monsters. The challenge was that these monsters are supposed to be good guys. The monsters couldn't be chilly and remote like the Cenobites in Hellraiser. They had to be traditional, yet a half twist on tradition. It took a lot of brainstorming, but I think we've achieved that. We've got monsters who change shapes. We've got children who can transform themselves into animals. We've got freaks, and all kinds of shit. (Laughs.)

Toxic: A lot of your work tends to have religious undertones. What was your religious upbringing, and how did that affect your work?
Barker: Maybe, it's the fact that I didn't have any religious upbringing. The family joke is that they took me to church to be baptized, the water boiled, and I never went back again. Yet, you are exactly right. There is large, sweeping religious imagery in my stuff. And that's true of a lot of horror. One of the principal components of this sort of material is the conflict between the holy and the unholy, the sacred and the profane. That kind of imagery wanders through the classics like Frankenstein and Dracula. These are books that deal very much with the holy and the unholy, with what is God's work and what is the Devil's work. I think it's always been there in the genre. Only lately has this stopped being true—because people don't believe in these religious icons anymore. Now we have a lot of movies where the vampire can reach out and grab the cross and not be burned by it. This was true in Fright Night. A movie based on one of my stories, Rawhead Rex, has a priest devoured by a creature who is completely unimpressed by the Christian iconography. I think that reflects a new audience cynicism concerning religious matters. The days are gone when the Van Helsing character can pull out some holy water or a crucifix and the force of evil will automatically retreat. To get back to your question, the religion in my work is inherent in the genre. Now the trick is to make the religious aspects fresh for an audience that is often reluctant to deal with it. In Hellraiser, for example, the Cenobites form a weird sort of priesthood. At least, that's how they come across. They have their rituals, they have their rites, they have their bag of tricks. Pinhead comes across like the High Priest of Pain. Theirs is a perverse religion, but nonetheless a religion.

Toxic: You said in a recent interview that you feel more possessive about the characters in Nightbreed than about those in Hellraiser. Why is that?
Barker:Well, for one thing, I sold the rights to Hellraiser so that others can now do with those characters what they will. I felt like there wasn't anything more I could do with those characters without diluting them. (Of course, I could be wrong. Now that the new Hellraiser comic book is coming out, I see that they are using the Cenobites in a lot of different contexts. There is a Western story, a modern story, a Gothic story, and so on.) In Nightbreed there are many monsters that I feel a lot more sympathetic towards. I feel that, with these new creatures, there is a lot more to examine and explore—so I want to hang on to them.

Toxic: How did David Cronenberg come to be cast in Nightbreed and what was it like directing a director?
Barker: It was a joy. He is a wonderful gentleman. The only problem I had was with directing an idol of mine. I tried to be responsive to him, and I paid a lot of attention to his input. He was responsive to me also, and he gave me everything I asked of him. He gave a chilling, detached performance.

Toxic: That's not a surprise...
Barker: No. His work is chilling and detached—but in real life he's a very passionate man, quite in contrast to what you might expect. His performance is a great contrast to the raging, screaming lunatic killer that we've come to expect in horror films. It worked real well.

Toxic: Who's idea was it to put him in the film?
Barker: It was mine. I asked him, he said yes, and here we are a year later—still talking to each other.

Toxic: How does the creative process for you differ from when you are writing to when you are directing?
Barker: The thing about writing is that it is so solitary. It cfan be a lonely business -- but that, in a way, is part of the joy of it. If you are on a roll, there's nothing more pleasurable that setting aside a morning and writing, knowing that no one is going to interrupt you and take you out of your inner world. The converse of that is when you are not on a roll, you can lock yourself in a room and stare at a piece of blank paper for twelve hours. In movies, you've got to do it and you've got to do it now. The money people are always on your back making sure that you deliver—so the pressure is up all the time. Nightbreed is only the second film I have directed, so I'm only just not a virgin but it's a highly pressured and stressful job.

Toxic: How did the move to being a movie director come about?
Barker: Well, I wasn't satisfied with the movies that were being made of my stories. I figured there were a couple of ways I could deal with this. I could take the money and run, and not even bother to see the pictures. Or I could go to the pictures and whine and bitch a lot—or I could try making the movies myself.

Toxic: You made a courageous decision...
Barker: Youth has its folly.

Toxic: Did Hellraiser have trouble with the MPAA?
Barker: Some. Hellraiser II had more. I anticipate some problems with Nightbreed. They are getting tougher.

Toxic: What is your opinion of that organization?
Barker: Well, I think they are doing the job they are getting paid to do. I just don't think it's a job they should have to do. The problem is that films are so expensive to make that investors are concerned about getting their money back. Our film cost $10 million to make, and that's only about half of what the average film costs. If you can't get advertising or distribution for an X-rated picture, then you have to make cuts until you get an R.

Toxic: It seems unfair to lump Hellraiser with Deep Throat II...
Barker: I couldn't agree with you more. It's nonsense. They say it's not censorship, but if you get an X rating and no one will show the picture, it is by implication censorship.

Toxic: Who are your literary and cinematic heroes?
Barker: Jean Cocteau, James Whale, Alfred Hitchcock, Brian DePalma, Dario Argento. Argento isn't really known here, although I hear Suspiria is coming out...In the literary world, I have been influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradubury. Of the non-genre stuff that has influenced me, I'd have to include Peter Pan. I love The Wizard of Oz. Disney cartoons have influenced me greatly. They contain some of the most wildly imaginative stuff...

Toxic: And often quite frightening...
Barker: Extremely frightening. I think sometimes we get so familiar with the Disney animated movies that we forget how strong the element of fear is in them.

Toxic: What's the one movie you wish you could have written or directed?
Barker: Bride of Frankenstein.

Toxic: What frightens you more than anything?
Barker: Failure.

Toxic: You have a book of your art work coming out. Tell us about that?
Barker: Eclipse Books has decided to gather together several hundred of my drawings and it's going to come out soon in a book called Clive Barker—Illustrator.

Toxic: Did you always want to be a writer?
Barker: Well, I always wanted to be a professional imaginer—although I wasn't sure as a child how that was going to manifest itself.

Toxic: Maybe you still aren't...
Barker: That's true. Whether it's writing or drawing or working in the theater or making movies, I am doing what I want to do. Imagining things, and then finding ways to put it in front of people. I deal with things that most people don't want to deal with, so the challenge is to make it palatable. You have to find a balance.

Toxic: How old were you when you sold your first piece of imagination?
Barker: Well, I worked in the theater through my twenties. I sold my first piece of writing when I was 31. I was a late starter.

Toxic: How old are you now?
Barker: Thirty-seven—so I made up for it. I was never concerned with what would sell or how well something would sell. I was always concerned with how well I was expressing my imagination. My favorite review of Hellraiser said, "The movie was great, and it should give people lots of ideas for decorating their dungeons."