Clive Barker shares recipe for 'Midnight Meat Train'

July 26, 09:19 PM

With a name like Midnight Meat Train, the story behind that title has to be good ... but the unsuspecting fans at this year's Comic Con didn't realize it would be delicious as well.

Horror/dark fantasy writer Clive Barker was a little too forthcoming about the genesis of the imaginative title of his short story, which director Ryuhei Kitamura adapted for the big screen in a film starring Vinnie Jones, Alias star Bradley Cooper and Leslie Bibb.

"I am very bad with the titles of movies and I am also not very good with marijuana," Barker told a laughing crowd, "unlike our ex-president."

At this point, when talk turned to Monica Lewinsky and cigars, I spotted one mother removing her child from the exhibit hall.

"I had a bunch of short stories and a bunch of titles missing," he continued. "And a friend of mine named Simon Bamford ( who played Ohnaka in Nightbreed) ... Simon brought these cookies to a party, and I have a very sweet tooth. And I was like, 'Ah, freshly made cookies. How great.' And I devoured these cookies and I felt strange. I felt very, very strange."

Is it necessary to explain that these were very special cookies?

"And eventually I ended up with 11 titles for the first three Books of Blood in that night, and one of the titles was Midnight Meat Train."

The horror master also shared several other tidbits about his life, his mind and upcoming projects:

- What gives him nightmares: "I'm a huge animal lover ... signed on with PETA and all those organizations which deal with the terrible cruelty that is visited on, not just the unwanted pets but [also] how the hamburger got into your hamburger and how much it hurt. And so I am passionate about that sense of powerlessness that animals feel. And when I have nightmares, they are entirely ... I often find myself in the psyche of the animal, in the heart of the animal, in the belly of the beast."
- Influences: "The three most important experiences for me as a writer of horrorfiction were my first autopsy, my first embalming, the first time I embalmed somebody (and I didn't blow her up) and the first time I went to the slaughterhouse. And the slaughterhouse experience absolutely and this is thanks to this me informed powerfully, incredibly powerfully The Midnight Meat Train.
- His take on this film: I was blown away ... You won't find any gentle, soft and entertaining, 'just for the sake of it' horror here. This is the real thing. This is the best adapation, and I'm including my own work in this, this is the best adapatation of my short fiction that has ever been made.
- Another planned adaptation from the Books of Blood: A story about how ghosts get back at a charlatan medium who uses cold readings to take advantage of people in mourning. "It's a big old sham. That the ghosts are going to do if they have a chance for payback, write story on shards of glass on the flesh of
- Pig Blood Blues - About a huge sow who eats adolescent miscreants. Shooting at the turn of the year.
- Bonus trivia: Two of Barker's paintings, featuring rather large male appendages, can be seen in the gallery scene of Midnight Meat Train.