The "Mad Monster Party" projection of the Cabal Cut led to a renewal of interest among fans, especially on the Internet.

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. Rumors of a surviving extended cut circulated for decades and finally materialized when a VHS bootleg of the workprint was discovered and added to the reshoot footage to create a 159-minute extended cut, dubbed The Cabal Cut . There's still loads of issues of course (the editing is still all over the place and I think they tried to do too much with not enough budget) but I'll always love the ambition and scope - such a unique and creative mix of dark fantasy, superhero comic book (really reminds me of X-Men) and horror with so much interesting subtext. The extra directional effects are sometimes a little rough and overstated (the clapping during a barroom concert is way too loud, for example), but generally blends with the stylized immersion found in the original tracks. 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.The original press release claimed that the deleted footage was only available on the VHS bootleg and that it would be put through a ‘high-resolution digitization process’ to best match the properly-scanned film footage. For the first time on home video, you can experience Clive Barker's original director's cut of Nightbreed with over 40 minutes of new footage, all mastered in high definition from the original camera negative! This director’s cut, despite not including the complete 159 minutes of Cabal Cut footage, is a superior film to the 102-minute theatrical release. The Answer supplies flesh-crawling suspense, sudden fear, a colorful Danny Elfman score and a creepy array of shape-shifting beings. For years, Barker dreamed about finding it and creating a director's cut, and finally, Shout Factory provided him that opportunity.

The studio argued that there was no point showing Nightbreed to critics because the people who see horror films do not read reviews.Hellraiser is an all-time horror classic, while Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions both have loyal cults of worshipers.