Underworld

Underworld (1985)

Transmutations

A horrible experiment. A criminal empire. One thing in common...

When high class hooker Nicole is kidnapped from her brothel, Rich businessman Hugo Motherskille hires her ex love Roy Bain to find her. Investigating the disappearance, he eventually finds traces that lead to Dr. Savary, who has produced a strange white powder that's coveted by a race of deformed human beings who live in the underworld in the sewers below the city.

Date of release
1985-11-29
TMDB
3.9 / 10 (38)
Runtime
1h 43m
Genres
Horror, Action, Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller
Director
George Pavlou

Casting

Interesting facts

Underworld, also released as Transmutations, is a 1985 British science fiction horror film directed by George Pavlou and written by Clive Barker and James Caplin, from a story by Barker. It stars Larry Lamb, Denholm Elliott, Steven Berkoff, Nicola Cowper, Miranda Richardson, Art Malik, Ingrid Pitt and Irina Brook. The story combines film noir, science fiction and horror, following a former criminal searching for a woman abducted by mutated humans living beneath London.

Production

Underworld originated after director George Pavlou approached Clive Barker about developing a feature film. Barker had begun attracting attention for his horror fiction and was interested in working in film. According to Barker, Pavlou asked him to write a screenplay and the project developed from their discussions.

Barker initially wrote a treatment in 1982. Producer Kevin Attew later recalled that Pavlou brought Green Man Productions a synopsis for the project before Barker's books had been published and that the company saw the project as an opportunity to develop Pavlou as a filmmaker.

The project was not approved for production until late 1984, with principal photography scheduled to begin in January 1985. Barker interrupted work on his novel The Damnation Game to develop the earlier treatment into a screenplay. James Caplin subsequently shared screenplay credit with Barker.

Barker conceived the film as a mixture of horror, film noir and fantasy rather than a conventional slasher film. He described its subterranean setting as a meeting point between the respectable surface world and its monstrous counterpart, while deliberately making many of the ostensibly normal characters morally corrupt.

Pavlou cited several cinematic influences on the film's visual style, including Dario Argento, particularly Suspiria and Inferno, as well as David Cronenberg. Pavlou encouraged Barker to think in highly stylised visual terms while developing the screenplay.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended