As promised in our last post, we’re going to celebrate this Pride month focusing our posts around people in the LGBTQA+ community who’ve impacted the three genres we love: Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy. When we began to ponder on an author to choose for our horror-themed we both agreed that the first name to come to mind was none other than Clive Barker. With iconic and morbidly twisted classics of the genre in his arsenal, Barker was an obvious and well-deserved choice.
If titles like The Hellbound Heart or The Forbidden don’t ring any bells, their film adaptations probably will: Hellraiser and Candyman.
Author, playwright, artist, and film director, there is no arguing that Barker is a man of many talents. Upon the initial release of Books of Blood in the mid-eighties, genre heavyweight Stephen King was quoted as saying, “I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker.”
Barker, who explains that his sexual orientation was never something he kept a secret, officially came out as gay to the public in the 90’s around the time he was publishing his first novel featuring a gay protagonist, Sacrament.
Have you read any works of Clive Barker’s or watched any of the adaptations of his work? Which is your favorite?
sugarandscream.wordpress.com 
Oh wow, I didn’t realise those films were inspired by his work! Good to know & great choice 👍
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Thank you. He is a favorite. Such an amazing mind. 🙂
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Met Clive at a comic-con many, many years ago – he was an absolute gentleman! Favourites of his works would have to be the Books of Blood anthologies and the Candyman movie (Tony Todd is sooooooo good in that) 🙂
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I actually just bought Sugar (Moth) Books of Blood for Christmas. 🙂 I personally just watched Candyman for the first time over a year ago. It was really good.
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Books of Blood is so good, a fantastic pressie for Ig-Moth my friend. 🙂 So glad you enjoyed Candyman, a creepy classic that holds up really well today (Tony Todd’s best performance still, though I do enjoy his presence in all the movies of his I’ve seen especially Hatchet!)
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I have not seen Hatchet. Probably should add that to my list!
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It’s a fantastic throwback to the Friday the 13th style of movies, with the villain of the piece actually played by Kane Hodder – the man behind Jason’s mask in close to half of the F13 movies. A fun gory romp, you’ll love it! 🙂
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Sounds like it’s right up my alley! Now I will for sure watch it one day. 🙂
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How in the world did I not know Clive Barker is gay? Also, I pictured him as an old, old man by now because he’s been around for so long. . . unless he ages like Tom Robbins, who is in his late 80s and looks like he’s in his 60s. I’ve seen Hellraiser, Candyman, and Midnight Meat Train. My favorite tale of Candyman is that Tony Todd had it in his contract that for every bee sting he got, they added $1,000 to his paycheck. They actually had a bee handler on set. How in the world does one get into such a line of work??
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I didn’t know that about the bee sting contract. I wonder how much he made off of that alone. Very clever of him to include it though. Hollywood is weird, they have a line of work for every bizarre thing under the sun lol.
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I believe it was $23,000.
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Love Clives work, I’ve just never liked the name Clive. I had a landlord called Clive once and he was an absolute knob.
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Haha You know, now that you mention it, I’ve never actually met someone named Clive. At least now I can assume I have a 50/50 shot at it being a creative genius or just a shitty landlord when that time comes. 😛
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