George Pavlou’s Transmutations (also known as Underworld) occupies an awkward, largely forgotten corner in the canon of Clive Barker–related cinema—a curiosity rather than a cornerstone, a footnote rather than a foundation. Released two years before Hellraiser would redefine Barker’s place in the genre, this early attempt at translating his sensibilities to the screen delivers more frustration than fascination, offering only faint glimmers of the nightmarish imagination that would soon reshape horror.

The premise holds the embryonic outline of Barker’s obsessions: flesh in flux, identity undone, desire twisted into mutation. A missing sex worker, a wealthy puppet master, a mercenary ex-lover, and a secret colony of chemically altered outcasts living beneath the city—on paper, it’s unmistakably Barker. But while the ingredients are present, the alchemy is not. Pavlou’s direction lacks the atmosphere and transgressive conviction needed to bring Barker’s script to life, resulting instead in a confused stew of sci-fi noir, body horror, and crime thriller clichés.

What should feel mythic and grotesquely operatic instead feels oddly anaemic. The underground mutants—conceptually ripe territory for Barker’s fascination with monstrous otherness—never rise above rubber-suit awkwardness. Their tragedy is undercut by clumsy execution, their menace diluted by incoherent world-building. Even the film’s central hallucinogenic powder, a classic Barker motif of transcendence through sensation, slips through the story like an undeveloped idea.

For Barker admirers, the film is primarily interesting as a “before the storm” artifact: a glimpse of themes and images he’d later refine with far more confidence, from the eroticised metamorphoses of Hellraiser to the urban-myth underworlds of Nightbreed. Transmutations hints toward these futures but never manages to articulate its own identity. It’s a film caught between genres, visions, and expectations—ultimately satisfying none.

As a mid-1980s horror oddity, it has its moments of charm: a grubby London atmosphere, a handful of practical effects that almost work, and a pulpy energy that occasionally threatens to spark to life. But as part of the Barker cinematic legacy, Transmutations remains a minor and often misguided experiment—one that underscores how vital Barker’s own directorial control would become in shaping the stories he imagined for the screen.

The Prognosis:

A relic for completists, a curiosity for scholars of Barker’s filmography—but for most viewers, it’s easy to see why this particular mutation never evolved.

• Saul Muerte