On May 13, 1994, Johnny Carson was on Late Show with David Letterman, his final televised appearance. Times were rolling on, guards were changing. That same day Miramax, an indie studio recently purchased by Disney, had their biggest opening ever with a bitter R-rated comic book adaptation. While boomers were preparing to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Woodstock, here was a movie with a soundtrack full of Lollapalooza bands, their names underlined on the poster, above a 1-900 number you could call “for music CD preview.” That particular demographic hadn’t really been cinematically catered to so directly, and they showed up, as did others. It was even well reviewed by critics, who were unlikely to be comic book nerds or Nine Inch Nails fans in those days.
Now THE CROW is 30 years old, further in our past than Woodstock was at the time. Jesus christ, man. I wrote a review of it 15 years ago. Time flies when you’re getting old, I guess. In 1994 this movie seemed amazing and important – it not only felt so new in its style, but was part of a collective mourning and/or discovery of this exciting actor who had lost his life making a movie about losing his life. Maybe I was falling for the ads asking us to “EXPERIENCE THE MOVIE EVENT OF THE YEAR” and “Take the journey. Experience the phenomenon.” But I went solemnly into a dark theater, the movie washed over me, I could just feel it more than think about it. Watching it now it’s more a movie I find interesting than a movie I can love. But I don’t mind that it’s style over substance. That’s why it works. Evocative imagery and effusive, unexamined emotion – that’s what goth is about, as far as I can understand. That’s what being a teenager is about. I used to be one of those.
You may disagree, but I think the movie’s untouchable reputation today is at least 90% based on the extra weight given to it by Brandon Lee’s tragic death. In an ideal world he’d still be alive and THE CROW would just be another oddball, flawed-but-enthusiastic comic book movie of the ‘90s. Don’t take that as a dis, because it’s a category I hold in high regard.
It’s been years, but from what I remember Alex Proyas’ only previous feature, SPIRITS OF THE AIR, GREMLINS OF THE CLOUDS (1988) wasn’t very big on narrative. Most of his experience was in short films and in music videos for artists including Yes, Crowded House and Mike Oldfield, where music, mood, and style are required, storytelling and characterization are optional. Here he was armed with two other up-and-coming visual heavy-hitters: production designer Alex McDowell, who had done some Madonna videos and THE LAWNMOWER MAN, and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, who had only done NIGHTFALL and ROMEO IS BLEEDING. Both have gone on to work primarily with directors who insist on their movies looking really good (Terry Gilliam, David Fincher, Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton and Zack Snyder for McDowell, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, Gore Verbinski, Burton, Robert Zemeckis and David Michod for Wolski).
Though at times a little chintzy with its ‘90s dissolves and distorted bird-POV shots, THE CROW is overall an impressive exercise in style. It admirably follows that BATMAN-spawned ethic that comic book movies should always take place in stylized settings. This gloomalopolis is supposed to be Detroit, but it might as well be Gotham or another fictional urban hell. The model buildings look fake in a fun way – I love the whiplash of zooming into the window of a miniature to find full-sized live action inside – but the equally stylized alleys are real, and the term “urban gothic” rarely fit anything so perfectly. This was a time when if you were a comic book not made for kids you damn well better have a scene set at a gothic church at night. I don’t make the rules. I just enforce them. There’s such a sense of place – the heavy rain, the overcast days, the little outdoor hot dog stand where Sergeant Albrecht (Ernie Hudson, COLLISION COURSE) likes to eat. (He puts ketchup on his, I’m reporting him to Dirty Harry. Easily the darkest and most fucked up part of the movie, that he can’t have the comfort of a hot dog with the proper condiments.)
Albrecht is a supporting character, I suppose, but also the point-of-view. He was on the scene after Eric Draven (Lee) was shot and thrown out the window, and we’re later told he was at the hospital with Eric’s fiancee Shelly (Sofia Shinas, TERMINAL VELOCITY) when she died. A year later he’s taken on the couple’s role as supportive adult friend to wayward skateboarding teen Sarah (Rochelle Davis). He’s also a witness to resurrected-and-now-wearing-mime-makeup-and-stolen-trenchcoat Eric, eventually is visited by him in his apartment, talks to him like he’s a living human, has the beginnings of a buddy-cop relationship. I guess the idea of Albrecht is that he’s seen and done all kinds of crazy shit in this job, might as well add bird-related goth ghost murder spree enabling to the list.
The movie needs Albrecht and Sarah to ground you because it doesn’t put you in the shoes of the character going through this. Can’t, really, because they had to do the crucial parts without showing his face. It took me 30 years, luckily, but now I can’t help but see the seams, the clunkiness of having to work around missing 3 days of filming with the lead actor. Maybe it’s because now I know who Chad Stahelski is, I’ve seen his long hair and lanky movements in BLOODSPORT III, I can’t unsee that that’s him in the long section where Eric has first returned from the dead, returns to his apartment, runs around on roof tops, always in shadows or turned away from us or with his hair hanging down over his face. They did a great job with what they had, the handful of digital composite shots are really convincing, it’s by no means GAME OF DEATH. But we don’t have a real scene with Lee until 20 minutes in.
Unavoidable, of course, but it really underlines the main problem I have with the movie, one that might have been somewhat in the cards anyway, because it’s similar in the comic book version: we only have the barest cliches about Eric and Shelly’s lives and love before all this. We never know them as people. We only know Eric as a delighted-with-himself psychopath on a rampage, who hints at humanity by being nice to a teen and making a few jokes with a cop.
The simplicity of the revenge story is part of its appeal. You got normal life, then some motherfucker does something horrible that ruins it, so a survivor plans and then executes a violent revenge scheme. This is that same story, but skipping most of the steps. When it begins, the normal life and horrible thing steps are already done, we glimpse them only in tiny blips. And then he doesn’t really make a plan, he just finds out he can heal from bullet wounds, so he goes to find those guys and kill them, only facing resistance at the end when they discover that killing the crow makes him vulnerable. Whether through design or unfortunate circumstances, the whole structure of the simple formula is thrown off.
I would like to bring up, just because it wasn’t the kind of thing many dudes thought to ask in 1994: if Eric and Shelly were killed together, why did only Eric come back “to make things right”? Why does Shelly – who was raped and then saw her fiance murdered and then continued to suffer in the ambulance and hospital – apparently find peace in the afterlife, but Eric has unfinished business? If it’s only possible for one of them to come back, shouldn’t it be her? Is it that Eric is a psycho with violence in him and Shelly never would be? Or is it the DEATH WISH paternalistic attitude, we must protect “our” women from violation, which is a crime against our pride as men?
I’ve read interviews with the author/illustrator of the comic, James O’Barr, and he seems like a thoughtful guy who’s very aware of Eric being similar to the people he kills. He did the comic to try to exorcise his feelings about his fiancee being killed by a drunk driver, found that it only made him feel worse, then became good friends with Lee during the making of the movie and felt tremendous guilt over his death.
I feel for the guy. But to me the movie is a big improvement on his book, in part because the actors impart at least some humanity into the one dimensional villains. And it was smart to add the outrageous element, the weirdo witchcraft shit. Gravel-voiced Michael Wincott (ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES) as Top Dollar, sporting long straight hair, introduced with two naked women, one of them his sister (Bai Ling in her first major American movie), the other one dead, and they cut out her eyes and smoke them in a little cauldron while enjoying a SCARFACE-sized pile of cocaine. Depicting a landlord as a depraved warlock who sends a gang of rapists to evict tenants for standing up for their rights might be the most truly poetic touch in the movie. Also I enjoy when a villain has a vault that opens out of a wall and contains a collection of fancy swords.
I like seeing Top Dollar and his most socially acceptable enforcer Grange (Tony Todd in his followup to EXCESSIVE FORCE which was his followup to CANDYMAN) in the penthouse getting worried while the spectre of righteous anger and pretentious quotes cuts through his street guys with “jolly pirate nicknames,” Tin Tin (Laurence Mason, TRUE ROMANCE), Funboy (Michael Massee, TALES FROM THE HOOD), T-Bird (David Patrick Kelly, also in CROOKLYN, released the same day) and Skank (Angel David, TENEMENT). And of course Jon Polito (HIGHLANDER, THE ROCKETEER) was perfect to play Gideon, the pawn shop owner who yells “SHIT ON ME!” when Eric breaks in to terrorize and interrogate him. The idea of Eric digging through a bin of engagement rings to find Shelly’s assuming they’re all people who were murdered [citation needed], then firing some of them out of a shotgun to ignite a gasoline trail, is the story’s most inspired stalking technique.
For me, though, the older I get the less rewarding it is to watch him just scare and murder guys. Makes me glad he occasionally pursues other interests, like curing Sarah’s mom Darla (Anna Levine, NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES, WARLOCK, UNFORGIVEN) of her morphine addiction. The film’s most colossally corny line, “Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children,” is verbatim from the comic, where he says even more shit like that, and quotes the Bible and stuff, trying to sound deep. It would be hard for me to think a guy walking around talking like that is cool, even if he wasn’t carrying an electric guitar as a prop. If this was a guy you met in real life you and your friends would make jokes about him for the rest of your lives (unless he killed you). But I will try not to hold it against him, in the spirit of him not holding it against Darla that she sleeps with Funboy and works as a waitress at his criminal-oriented bar The Pit (sister organization to The Pit in PCU, I believe). Her subplot is worth it for the sweet scene where she shocks Sarah by making breakfast.
What if instead of killing people, The Crow just played a guitar solo so beautiful it made them all repent and become good people? And then he throws the guitar into the crowd like Prince did at the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of fame and disappears? Just an idea.
Jeff Imada (who also did IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS and DOUBLE DRAGON that year, plus stunts for three VANISHING SON movies, ON DEADLY GROUND, NAKED GUN 33 1/3 and THE PUPPET MASTERS) is credited as stunt coordinator and co-fight-choreographer along with Lee. The stunt crew also included the legendary Buddy Joe Hooker and future directors Stahelski and Ric Roman Waugh. But the emphasis of the action is more on guns than martial arts, so it doesn’t feel like a Brandon Lee action vehicle, which I’m sure was part of the appeal to him, since he wanted to be seen as a serious actor more than action star. I’d question whether this is really a more complex character than his others, but it’s certainly a more colorful register of acting that you can imagine could be more fulfilling for him. And there’s something to be said for his dedication to bringing the poses in the comic book to life.
But I’m not Brandon Lee so I don’t have to have the same priorities as him. I don’t agree with the assumption that “real acting” is of greater value than the roles that required more intensive choreography. There are way more people who could’ve played Eric Draven than could’ve starred in RAPID FIRE or LEGACY OF RAGE. A movie done in this style but with fight sequences like RAPID FIRE – that might’ve become my religion! I guess Eric would’ve had to run a small martial arts school instead of playing guitar in a band.
Despite my misgivings about the movie, it seems the question about whether or not it should’ve been finished and released have been answered definitively. It was supported by his family, but seemed a little iffy at the time. A 1993 Entertainment Weekly article reported that original studio Paramount dropped it, not wanting to look like they were exploiting Lee’s death. Then they had trouble finding another studio to pick it up, due it being depressing and violent. Warner Brothers passed because they thought it would get an NC-17. Miramax picked it up, made it a hit, made it a cursed franchise that never worked without Lee. And though I wish THE CROW didn’t so thoroughly eclipse the rest of Lee’s filmography in the public consciousness, it has inarguably kept his memory alive.
The credited screenwriters are David J. Schow (LEATHERFACE: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III) and John Shirley (RoboCop cartoon), but the EW article said new scenes were being written by Walon Green (THE WILD BUNCH, SORCERER, ROBOCOP 2) and Terry Hayes (ROAD WARRIOR, BEYOND THUNDERDOME, DEAD CALM). It sounds like the deaths of Eric and Shelly being in “dreamy flashback” was a change from what was originally planned – it must’ve been too upsetting to see the full scene play out knowing what happened. The narration by Sarah and the idea of killing the crow replaced scenes where Michael Berryman as a supernatural character called “Skull Cowboy” would warn Eric he’d lose his powers if he interfered in the affairs of the living. Lee hadn’t filmed all his scenes with Berryman, and Proyas didn’t think it was working anyway. Sounds cool though.
Even without the Berryman bump, THE CROW opened at #1 and became the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children. Its biggest legacies are the memory of Brandon Lee and changes to gun safety practices on film sets, but it also spawned the popular soundtrack album (which made it to #1 on the Billboard chart and has been certified triple platinum), the unpopular sequels (THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS, THE CROW: SALVATION and THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER), one season of the Canadian TV series The Crow: Stairway to Heaven starring the great Mark Dacascos, and many years of trying to do a remake which is finally in the can and due this August. None of those things have ever come close to overshadowing or marring the reputation of the first THE CROW. It has proven to be one of the most lasting films of summer ’94.
May 16th, 2024 at 5:21 pm
I’ve not seen the movie for a really long time, although I was one of those who are very fond of it since its release, and I’m even listening to the soundtrack as I’m writing this. Although I understand your qualms, which I might even share (and I will be finding out if I do once my 4K Bluray copy finally arrives in a few weeks), but I think the movie worked because it just hit all the right beats of a typical revenge flick and differentiate itself enough from one to make it fresh and memorable. The mystic gothic urban nihilism accompanied by one of the greatest soundtracks ever made, and of course Brandon Lee’s charismatic performance made it a classic despite its flaws.