Clive Barker spoke to MTV and said something you hear rarely these days — he’s all for the remakes of his movies Hellraiser and Candyman. He feels that so long as there’s a good story to be told, why not go and re-visit these characters we know and love?

The writer/director goes on to say that the last few Hellraiser movies went and just used the character to make money with no story, so they didn’t work, but if the story is great, he’s excited for the new ones.

Barker also touched on the dreaded PG-13 rating and its place in the horror genre. What he says is pretty much identical to my views on it, so I’m quoting as much as I can get in hopes that maybe Clive Barker throwing it down will be a little clearer to all of those people who say, “They can get away with a lot of stuff in PG-13 these days, so it’s no concern.”

Amen, brother. Amen!

Clive Barker is now my new hero!

There’s so many different sub-genres buried within the over-all horror genre: ghosts, monsters, slashers, realistic, psycho killers, torture porn, and so on. None of these has shown me that they can successfully surpass the “thriller” and reach “horror” with or without gore and naked college girls running around with two big exceptions — Poltergeist and Jaws — which are great, great horror movies that were made when it was either PG or R. The plain and simple fact is that these days, there’s a certain tone that you can only accomplish with an R-rating and it hurts me to have watched the embarrassing fall of the genre that’s taken place.

Let us also not forget that an R rating doesn’t guarantee a good movie. Most of the R-rated horrors we get are violence-based with a terrible story, as Mr. Barker mentioned earlier. For example, movies like The Hills Have Eyes, which was so bad I would have actually rather watch some awful PG-13 horror like One Missed Call.

Man, I never get sick of bitching about Hollywood short-comings.