Writer/director Clive Barker had a following with his "Books of Blood" volumes and the less-than-satisfactory UNDERWORLD and RAWHEAD REX (respectively, an original screenplay by Barker and an adaptation of his own short story) before being dubbed "the future of horror" by Stephen King with HELLRAISER, but the appearance on videotape in the mid-nineties of his two seventies shorts SALOME and THE FORBIDDEN provided a look at his beginnings as a filmmaker at a time when his short filmography seemed increasingly gentrified and compromised compared to his more audacious works elsewhere in the arts. The less interesting SALOME (1973) is a loose, silent telling of the biblical story shot in the basement of a florist shop with an early appearance by Pinhead himself Doug Bradley more of a novelty than the glimpses of nudity. Not to be confused with Barker's short story "The Forbidden" - the basis for CANDYMAN - the 1978 experimental film THE FORBIDDEN actually anticipates themes and imagery from Barker's novella "The Hellbound Heart" which he would then adapt as HELLRAISER. In a cell (prison or monastic), an artist (Barker associate Peter Atkins, HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II) designs or recreates a mosaic which seems to summon forth entities both sensual and demonic who proceed to tattoo the same design onto his flesh and peel it away. Although the closing shots of the skinned man is effectively realized through printing the image in negative, the film is perhaps most notorious for featuring Barker himself dancing around with a bouncing erection.