Nightbreed is a 1990 American dark fantasy horror film written and directed by Clive Barker, based on his 1988 novella Cabal.

It stars Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg, Charles Haid, Hugh Quarshie, and Doug Bradley.

The film follows an unstable mental patient named Aaron Boone who is falsely led to believe by his doctor that he is a serial killer.

Tracked down by the police, his doctor, and his girlfriend Lori, Boone eventually finds refuge in an abandoned cemetery called Midian among a tribe of monsters and outcasts known as the "Nightbreed" who hide from humanity.

[5][6] Over time, Barker expressed disappointment with the final cut approved by the studio and always longed for the recovery of the reels so the film might be re-edited.

In the ruins of Midian, Ashberry stands in front of Decker's corpse and states that he wants vengeance on Baphomet and the Breed.

Meanwhile, Captain Eigerman wanders the underground remains of the cemetery where he stumbles upon the transformed Ashberry, who longs for revenge after his burning by Baphomet.

In 1997, author Harry M. Benshoff called it, "One of the first horror films to make an explicit connection between monsters and the activist politics of the queer community".

[8] Filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky called Nightbreed "the first truly gay horror fantasy epic", explaining how the unconsummated relationship between doctor and patient is in his view the central theme.

[9][10] In 2015, Tyler Coates of Decider called Jodorowsky's interpretation of the characters' relationship as being "only the tip of the iceberg and, I'd argue, a red herring"; Coates focuses instead on the presence of queer subtext "blatantly seen in the Nightbreed's culture", writing that, "Because normalcy is subjective and based solely on how the majority defines it, it's important to establish mini-societies and cultures with people like you.

wrote that the director's cut of the film "places on display the full scope of a narrative that is a broad and potent allegory for the persecution of the queer community.

[14] Bramesco argued, "They were blind to the subtext of this community as a home for misfits, where the placeless Boone—who doesn't seem all that interested in sex with his torch-singing girlfriend—can find an accepting family.

The monsters in the book are represented impressionistically over two or three paragraphs and the challenge Barker faced was to visualize them in much greater detail for the film.

[23][24] For the film, Barker used three soundstages at Pinewood Studios shooting some scenes on location at Wexham Park Hospital, Slough, Berkshire, UK over several nights and in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

[25] Towards the end of principal photography, Barker brought Star Wars concept artist Ralph McQuarrie in to paint mattes for the Necropolis sequences and design the history of the Breed in a symbolic way on an enormous mural across a 60-foot space on the set at Pinewood to be used in the opening credits.

The press release cited "the complex demands of the film's ground-breaking post-production optical effects", but this also included McQuarrie's mural and matte paintings, and a week of additional shooting in late August that would see key parts of the narrative re-shot.

[28] The score was composed by Danny Elfman and conducted by Shirley Walker, who also wrote the additional cue "Charge of the Berserkers" for the film's climax and received an onscreen credit.

The great joy in the score for me, other than working for Clive Barker, was being able to use the children's voices and a whole slew of ethnic drums and instruments together with an orchestra, in an attempt to bring a unique musical tone to the film".

[34] In an article on Elfman, described as a rising composer in Hollywood who had just scored Tim Burton's Batman and was about to score Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy, Entertainment Weekly's Ron Givens noted that Nightbreed wouldn't get as much attention as these two big-budget movies, yet Givens praised Elfman's "needle-sharp crescendos and creepy choral plainchants" and added: "Seldom has scary-movie music been so spiritual".

[28] Looking back, Barker realized that Fox was better at promoting films like White Men Can't Jump but "not so good at selling the quirky stuff".

The site's consensus states: "Nightbreed's imaginative world-building and startling creature designs are no match for its clumsy, uneven plotting".

[45] In his review for the Toronto Star, Henry Mietkiewicz wrote "Nightbreed might have been a monster movie milestone, if Clive Barker's directorial abilities had kept pace with his skill as a master of British horror fiction.

Barker piles on more subversive subtext than his story can bear — it's a monster movie, after all — but his daft, Grand Guignol vision has real power.

The comic book continued to run past the end of the film, ultimately stretching to twenty-five issues before it was cancelled.

[59] Nightbreed, The Action Game was released for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and MS-DOS.

[73] An extended 159-minute cut version, from another VHS found in July 2009, premiered on March 27, 2010, as part of the HorrorHound Weekend in Indianapolis.

The cut runs 155 minutes long and was shown at that year's "Mad Monster Party" in North Carolina with actors Craig Sheffer and Anne Bobby attending.

[78] This release utilized then-restored footage from the Director's Cut and the pre-existing VHS copies, for a total length of 145 minutes.

Handled by Morgan Creek and Seraphim Films, the Cabal Cut Blu-Ray was released in a limited quantity through Clive Barker's online store.

[82] Shout, with Morgan Creek Entertainment, located the original film elements in the Warner archives to newly restore the sequences.