Sam Raimi’s fourth feature as a director was this nutty superhero pastiche, released in August 1990. Back then, as you may recall, superhero movies weren’t nearly as prevalent as they are now, meaning DARKMAN, which wasn’t comic book inspired but was authentically comic book-ish (more so, even, than 1989’s BATMAN), had the field to itself. That explains, in part, why the film was successful, grossing $48 million on a $14 million budget and spawning two straight-to-video sequels.
Another explanation for the film’s success was the marketing campaign created by Universal. That campaign updated a tactic utilized on BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986), which Twentieth Century Fox attempted to sell to viewers with a still of the film’s Kurt Russell essayed hero Jack Burton and the tagline “WHO IS JACK BURTON?” The collective answer: “Who cares?” With DARKMAN, though, that tactic actually worked, with billboards and bus stops adorned, effectively, with the line “WHO IS DARKMAN?” over an indistinct figure. Raimi himself has admitted that “the marketing made the movie a moneymaker.”
Its inception was the Walter B. Gibson created 1930s pulp hero THE SHADOW (brought to the screen in 1994 by director Russell Mulcahy and star Alec Baldwin), but Raimi was unable to secure the rights, leading him to create his own SHADOW-inspired character. The film’s development began in 1987, with Raimi’s brother Ivan, ex-Navy Seal Chuck Pfarrer and the sibling team of Daniel and Joshua Goldin all helping to flesh out the script.
Dr. Peyton Westlake, played by a pre-stardom Liam Neeson, is an ambitious scientist who’s created a type of synthetic skin that decays after 100 minutes. Before Peyton can fix this defect he’s ambushed by agents of the local mob boss Robert Durant (the late Larry Drake), who blow up Peyton’s laboratory and render him a hideously burned shell of his former self—although there is a silver lining to his condition, in the form of an experimental medical treatment that leaves him physically superior and unable to feel pain.
Peyton flees the hospital and becomes Darkman, using his skin grafting technology to assume the guises of his killers and infiltrate the Durant mob. He also manages to recreate his old face, and so is able to reconnect with his girlfriend Julie (Francis McDormand); the problem is he can only assume his guises for 100 minutes at a time before the skin decays.
Viewing this film after thirty-plus years, I find there’s one rather glaring problem: its tone. Raimi has stated that he sought to “explore a man’s soul” and to “get into the characters’ heads and follow them as real human beings in extraordinary circumstances,” which isn’t evident in the overtly cartoony, quasi-comedic aura. Not that this was something that went without notice in 1990, as anyone who saw this film in a theater will have likely noted a lot of derisive laughter in “serious” scenes like the explosion of Peyton’s laboratory, which sends a flame-engulfed Peyton soaring through the air, and a bit in which Peyton breaks the fingers of a snarky carnival employee that concludes with a three way swish pan of the employee, Peyton and Julie, all of them screaming. Those scene are creative, yes, but also excessive to the point of parody.
The film is consistently fun to watch, with visuals that could double as comic book panels and an excess-happy Danny Elfman score that was evidently conceived in a manner similar to Raimi’s filmmaking. The special effects, which were state of the art in 1990, are of immeasurable help, as is the cast, whose exaggerated acting style is quintessentially comic bookish; included are several Raimi cohorts, among them Josh Becker, Scott Spiegel, Ted Raimi and Ethan and Joel Coen, as well as Bruce Campbell in a last-minute cameo that was functions as a sly in-joke (Campbell having been Raimi’s original choice to play Darkman).
Raimi, FYI, managed to tone down his hyperbolic tendencies in later, statelier films like A SIMPLE PLAN and THE GIFT, but I say DARKMAN, tonally discordant or not, is the most interesting of the three.
Vital Statistics
DARKMAN
Universal Pictures
Director: Sam Raimi
Producers: Robert Tapert
Screenplay: Sam Raimi, Chuck Pfarrer, Ivan Raimi, Daniel Goldin, Joshua Goldin
Cinematography: Bill Pope
Editing: Bud S. Smith, David Stiven
Cast: Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, Colin Friels, Larry Drake, Nelson Mashita, Jessie Lawrence Ferguson, Rafael H. Robledo, Dan Hicks, Ted Raimi, Dan Bell, Nicholas Worth, Aaron Lustig, Arsenio “Sonny” Trinidad, Said Faraj, Nathan Jung, Professor Toru Tanaka, John Lisbon Wood, Frank Noon, William Dear, John Landis, Stuart Cornfeld, William Lustig, Scott Spiegel, Bruce Campbell, Jenny Agutter, Josh Becker, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen