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I'm learning to live with a lot of things
So if no one has told you anything about Darkman (1990) before the lights go down, except for a brief mention by your husband that it was badly mismarketed and among other things positioned as a successor to Tim Burton's Batman (1989), it is a really pleasant surprise to discover that the experience is essentially like watching a mashup of five classic Universal horror movies,1 only with widescreen cinematography, color film, and the degree of splatter that comes from being on the other side of the '80's. There are more montages in this movie than in anything I've seen made since the '40's. There's also the time-slipped quality I associate with Jeunet and Caro, where Peyton Westlake's Polaroid-scanning, skin-synthesizing technology is futuristic, but everything else about the nameless, industrial city is either perfectly contemporary, like the villain being a rapacious corporate developer, or just a little retro, like Julie's mourning veil or the colorful thugs Durant commands. Trenchcoats are in, and so is an eventually noir sensibility where illusions exist to be walked away from, not cherished. And yet I find myself thinking of the movie like a comic book, just this side of black comedy despite the weird outcroppings of ultraviolence and a genuinely upsetting premise. In an objective sense, it was probably not the best film to see during a year when my teeth are in all the wrong places and my speech is damaged and my smile feels painful and alien and even the set of my jaw is different because of the positions into which my back teeth have been moved; I have enough trouble even without looking into mirrors these days, I'm not sure it was strictly necessary for me to watch a fictional character break down in tears over the casual, comfortable, taken-for-granted physicality that was brutally stolen from them and is never coming back. Subjectively, fortunately, it's a terrific midnight movie and I'm not at all sorry to have seen it. It's nearly the youngest I've seen Liam Neeson and the first role where I noticed how seriously big the guy is. He's not just tall and lanky, his hands are huge. Watching him with Frances McDormand, it's like he's simply built a size and a half bigger than she is. And it makes him very effectively menacing even before he changes his body language, this towering presence in what ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel dubbed a "trenchcloak" and a broad-brimmed hat, like the Phantom or the Shadow or reaper Death. He's good with pathos, too. I am trying not to feel like an idiot for needing IMDb to remind me that I saw him first in Schindler's List (1993). In tenth grade, I really didn't know any actors unless they danced in Hollywood musicals or appeared on The Muppet Show.
I have now seen three films by Sam Raimi. Eventually I'll get around to The Evil Dead (1981).
1. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Invisible Man (1933). Some are explicit shout-outs, like Peyton wrapped in disintegrating bandages or crouched between two gargoyles; others are more evocative, like the mad science bric-a-brac of Peyton's makeshift lab or his mental state slowly eroding within his transformed body. I mean, this is also a movie in which fingers are clipped like cigars and our hero receives his dubious superpowers thanks to crazily radical surgery at the most irresponsible hospital on the planet—seriously, my only explanation is that those people are all mad scientists and just experiment on the homeless population without really mentioning it to anybody. License and latitude of the Pre-Code era notwithstanding, there's much about this film that could only have existed in the last quarter of the twentieth century. But the older films are there, their famous monsters reinterpreted in allusion rather than straightforwardly remade, and I think their echoes are really what sealed the deal for me. Also, I must admit it, the montages.
derspatchel dubbed a "trenchcloak" and a broad-brimmed hat, like the Phantom or the Shadow or reaper Death. He's good with pathos, too. I am trying not to feel like an idiot for needing IMDb to remind me that I saw him first in Schindler's List (1993). In tenth grade, I really didn't know any actors unless they danced in Hollywood musicals or appeared on The Muppet Show.I have now seen three films by Sam Raimi. Eventually I'll get around to The Evil Dead (1981).
1. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Invisible Man (1933). Some are explicit shout-outs, like Peyton wrapped in disintegrating bandages or crouched between two gargoyles; others are more evocative, like the mad science bric-a-brac of Peyton's makeshift lab or his mental state slowly eroding within his transformed body. I mean, this is also a movie in which fingers are clipped like cigars and our hero receives his dubious superpowers thanks to crazily radical surgery at the most irresponsible hospital on the planet—seriously, my only explanation is that those people are all mad scientists and just experiment on the homeless population without really mentioning it to anybody. License and latitude of the Pre-Code era notwithstanding, there's much about this film that could only have existed in the last quarter of the twentieth century. But the older films are there, their famous monsters reinterpreted in allusion rather than straightforwardly remade, and I think their echoes are really what sealed the deal for me. Also, I must admit it, the montages.
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Just the first two Spider-Man films with Tobey Maguire. I've been informed there were signature Raimi camera angles all over Darkman, but I was not properly equipped to recognize them. Also Bruce Campbell's cameo was not perceptible to me as a cameo—I thought he was just another face. I'm slowly learning, but my knowledge of pop culture is still mostly composed of blind spots.
Thanks for the recommendations! I haven't even heard of The Quick and the Dead.
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Speaking of cartoony horror pastiche, has anyone ever pointed you at camp tv classic The Hilarious House of Frightenstein? It's an artifact of my misspent Canadian youth, along with other gems like Rocket Robin Hood.
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So I haven't seen either of those movies, but yes, absolutely, the prevailing mood of Darkman is right out of pulp comics. It didn't remind me very much of Tim Burton, but I tend to associate him more with a kind of brightly colored Gothic, except when he makes movies like Ed Wood (1994) or Big Fish (2003), which I really love.
The other thing that really makes Darkman work is that it doesn't undercut itself. Peyton's response to a foot chase escalating into a helicopter battle is the perfectly reasonable "You've got to be shitting me!" but the film isn't winking at its source material; when it goes for demented operatic grandeur, that's what it gets. I feel very strongly that it should be possible to celebrate things without downplaying or ironizing them. A version of Darkman that constantly reassured the audience of its melodramatic implausibilities would have been doomed.
Speaking of cartoony horror pastiche, has anyone ever pointed you at camp tv classic The Hilarious House of Frightenstein? It's an artifact of my misspent Canadian youth, along with other gems like Rocket Robin Hood.
No one has ever mentioned either of these things to me! I assume Rocket Robin Hood is basically what it sounds like, in space?
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Those are in fact my two favorite Burton films. I recently ran back into the person who introduced me to the Burton milieu back when we were in our early teens. It's really nice to have his faintly macabre and cheerful sensibility back in my life. He's written a short piece called Railroad to Zanzibar that might appeal to you. He's also become, unsurprisingly, a moderately successful artist. His anatomical portraits are particularly fine. When I'm properly at a computer, I should send you a link.
Wow, that was quite a tangent.
The other thing that really makes Darkman work is that it doesn't undercut itself. Peyton's response to a foot chase escalating into a helicopter battle is the perfectly reasonable "You've got to be shitting me!" but the film isn't winking at its source material; when it goes for demented operatic grandeur, that's what it gets. I feel very strongly that it should be possible to celebrate things without downplaying or ironizing them.
Yes! Things ought to be able to glory in what they are. I think that's why the whole "liking things ironically" idea never appealed to me. I defend my right to be unabashedly cynical, but likewise my right to romanticism, sentimentality or schmaltz as the impulse strikes.
A version of Darkman that constantly reassured the audience of its melodramatic implausibilities would have been doomed.
While I do like films that are aware enough to wink at the audience, I definitely adopt the attitude of, "no, bring it on. If we're going there, let's -go- there."
No one has ever mentioned either of these things to me! I assume Rocket Robin Hood is basically what it sounds like, in space?
Not even in space so much as with jetpacks. As I recall it took place on a forested planet, probably called Sherwood. Hilarious House had the distinction of actually featuring Vincent Price in segments that were apparently all filmed at a go in one opportunistic afternoon.
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. . . I will have to see this someday.
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Yes to both of you on that!
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Evil Dead 2 is a Three Stooges film (Raimi came up with the term Fake Shemp during the filming of Evil Dead since he had to keep hiding the fact that his actors couldn't make most of the shoots) and Army of Darkness is a sword-and-sorcery adventure.
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Thank you! I liked it a lot, which I hadn't necessarily been expecting to.
I like noir rather a lot, though, so I liked this film much more than anyone else who saw it with me.
I can see how that happens. I suspect it also helps if you like pulp crime novels.
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"Trenchcloak" is a great word.
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The protagonist being almost unrecognizably disfigured in ways it will not be possible for him to heal from and damaged mentally and emotionally by the ramifications of the surgery undertaken at the most irresponsible hospital on the planet. It's not out of the scope of things that happen in comics, either to heroes or villains, or even in any number of films that are either horror or verge on it, but it hit particularly close to home right now. Under the circumstances, I consider it a tribute to the film that I both liked and enjoyed it.
"Trenchcloak" is a great word.
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