Underworld is a 1985 British horror film

Horror film

Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

, written by Clive Barker

Clive Barker

Clive Barker is an English author, film director and visual artist best known for his work in both fantasy and horror fiction. Barker came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories which established him as a leading young horror writer...

 and James Caplin, and starring Denholm Elliott

Denholm Elliott

Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE was an English film, television and theatre actor with over 120 film and television credits...

, Miranda Richardson

Miranda Richardson

Miranda Jane Richardson is an English stage, film and television actor. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards, and has won two Golden Globes and a BAFTA during her career....

, Steven Berkoff

Steven Berkoff

Steven Berkoff is an English actor, writer and director. Best known for his performance as General Orlov in the James Bond film Octopussy, he is typically cast in villanous roles, such as Lt...

, Larry Lamb

Larry Lamb (actor)

Lawrence Douglas "Larry" Lamb is an English actor who has worked frequently in television. He is best known for playing one of the greatest villains of British soap Archie Mitchell in the BBC television soap EastEnders, Michael Shipman in the BBC television show Gavin & Stacey and Mischievous...

, Ingrid Pitt

Ingrid Pitt

Ingrid Pitt was an actress best known for her work in horror films of the 1960s and 1970s.-Background:Pitt was born Ingoushka Petrov in Warsaw, Poland to a German father of Russian descent and a Polish Jewish mother. During World War II she and her family were imprisoned in a concentration camp...

 and Art Malik

Art Malik

Art Malik is a Pakistani-born British actor who achieved international fame in the 1980s through his starring and subsidiary roles in assorted British and Merchant-Ivory television serials and films...

, in which a mad doctor

Mad scientist

A mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, specifically science fiction. The mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral, and whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, mad scientists often work with fictional technology in order to forward their schemes, if...

 keeps mutants underground. The film was directed by George Pavlou

George Pavlou

George Pavlou is a London based British horror, science fiction and thriller film director. Pavlou directed three feature films of which two were based on material from British horror writer Clive Barker....

.

Plot

Dr. Savary, a sinister biochemist, has created a subhuman species who dwell in the city's underground. Addicted to Savary's mind-expanding drug, they suffer from grotesque disfigurement. Their only hope for an antidote lies in kidnapping Nicole. A fearless adventurer in love with Nicole is hired to save her.

Release

After a quick theatrical run in the UK, the film was given a limited release

Limited release

Limited release is a term in the American motion picture industry for a motion picture that is playing in a select few theaters across the country ....

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 by Empire Pictures in April 1986. Two years later, the film was released on videocassette by Vestron Video

Vestron Video

Vestron Video was the main subsidiary of Vestron, Inc., a home video company based in Stamford, Connecticut that was active from 1982 to 1992. It is considered to have been a pioneer in the home video market....

.

The film has never been released on region 1 DVD.