Clive Barker's rise from cult author to world-selling fantasist-in-chief has been meteoric. The time between the Books of Blood and his current position as supremo epic fantasy writer, filmmaker and crown prince to King's kingdom is short. In 1994, a scant ten years after his first work hit print, he received the ultimate British arts recognition - a visit from Melvyn Bragg.

His South Bank Show attempted to trace the roots of Barker's bizarre and fertile imagination, delving into his pre-book days in independent, alternative theatre, and publicly revealing for the first time two short films the teenage Barker and his circle made in the basement of a Liverpool florist in the early 70s, and since kept under the bed. Such was the interest engendered by the druggy, hallucinogenic 8mm fragments that UK specialists in the aberrant and absurd, Redemption, acquired the rights, worked with Barker to complete editing on the unfinished second film, and have now released this fascinating cassette onto the market.

Upfront, fans of Barker's later work expecting more of the same will run screaming from his take on the Salome legend and later reworking of Faustian myth, The Forbidden. The most obvious reference points (confirmed in the useful post-match interviews with Barker himself, Doug Bradley and Peter Atkins) are the short films of Warhol and especially Kenneth Anger. They are silent (there are useful electronic scores by Adrian Carson, reminiscent of former Barker sparring partners Coil) telling whatever stories are told through fragmented, grainy images. They do at certain times rather betray 1960s roots - both films contain extended, suggestive dance routines, and The Forbidden in particular - shot as it is in negative - does seem on occasion to be going for some kind of post-2001 trippiness that sits uneasily twenty or so years on.

The fact remains that, coming from such rudimentary origins, these films are extraordinarily creative. The style is recognisably Barker's - his manner and technique is all over the set designs, for sure. And the nascent director shows a remarkable grasp of filmic method for one so young. The use of Kabuki-style make-up, extreme close-up, framing, high contrast, directed lighting, and, in particular, primitive special effects is an education. Luck plays its part certainly, but working on low-to-no budgets, innovation replaces financial expertise, and the results, it has to be said, far outstrip anything Barker managed with the clumsy, blunderbuss approach of the multi-million dollar Nightbreed (1990).

Remarkable also is how much of his feature debut, Hellraiser, emerges in embryonic form from The Forbidden's negative world. A simple nailboard presages the celebrated Pinhead Cenobite; a cryptic puzzle-book recalls the later Lament Configuration; and the film ends with an overlong but striking sequence in which Atkins is deprived of his flesh, anticipating Frank's gelatinous skinned torso in the 1987 film.

This, then, is a rare example of a past being exhumed and something unusually distinctive being brought to light. Genuinely surreal, occasionally disturbing, Salome and The Forbidden serve to place Barker firmly in the tradition of British avant garde painter-directors, alongside Jarman and Greenaway, whose work these shorts occasionally resemble. While his books become ever less interesting, this is the most intriguing piece of the Barker industry to emerge in several years.

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