Nightbreed’s “Alternate Extended Cut” by Filip Önell

Over at The Swedish Cinemasochist blog, Filip Önell, who saw Nightbreed for the first time in 2010, is putting his editing talents to the test by cutting his own version of the movie. After watching the Theatrical Cut DVD, attending a screening of the Cabal Cut in Germany, and finally the Director’s Cut Blu-Ray from 2014, he felt the need to reconcile the materials from all three into one super “alternate extended” cut that will move scenes around, add new music, re-edit some scenes and make it as close as possible to the original novel’s story structure and also using the second draft of the Nightbreed script.

He’s also trying to recruit the help of some of the original cast actors to possibly redub some scenes, and I’ve been lucky to have been witnessing this process almost from the beginning. It’s been a really cool trip deconstructing the story, disassembling the movie and putting it back together in a new shape that may satisfy some expectations out there. Of course, this is a non-profit, fan-made edit, so it’s hard to say if or when it will become available (he plans to release on Vimeo when it is complete) but the important thing is that it’s being made. On the @Barkercast, I had mentioned my desire to see people tackling their own fan edits of Nightbreed as soon as the Blu Ray of the Director’s Cut was out, and now that a version of the Cabal Cut has finally leaked onto the internet a few months ago (very quietly, and may be even gone at this point), the materials are there for fans to play with and reconstruct as they see fit. There’s several different shots, there’s different endings, and there’s stuff that even people who have the DVD and Blu-Ray have never seen, if they happened to miss one of the rare dozens of Cabal Cut screenings. Filip says:

My goal with this fan-edit is to make a version of Nightbreed that will be a faithful adaptation of the novellaCabal, and a (close as possible) reconstruction of Clive Barker’s original cut (before all the studio interference.) The film now will hopefully have a much stronger narrative drive and pacing than the previous cuts. Character motivations and aspects of the first act make more sense now. The tone of my cut is quite different as well; the third act of the film is now much more dramatic, epic and scarier when the humans attack Midian. It’s a massacre instead of an overlong action sequence like in the Theatrical Cut. More like Schindler’s List thanRambo. It’s a horror movie now… but a horror film where we are scared of the humans and we fear for the monsters.

We’ll keep you posted on this new fan-edit of Nightbreed as it progresses.

via The Swedish Cinemasochist blog.