Sep 291994
 
two reels

A year after Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his fiancée were murdered, Eric is brought back from the grave to act as an avenging spirit.  However, the city’s crime boss, Top Dollar (Michael Wincott), wants to steal Eric’s power and only police Sergeant Albrecht (Ernie Hudson) can help the ghost.

This review is going to get me nasty notes.  After all, this is the ultimate Goth film (and I know lots of Goths).  There’s an angst-ridden ghost in minstrel makeup; everyone wears black and tosses around vague spirituality to dark wave music.  How could you get more Goth than that?  Well, easily, by making a less chatty ghost.  When he recites poetry, everything is on track, but the grandeur of the avenging spirit goes out the window when he talks and talks (and drinks a beer, and pauses in his revenge to play a guitar solo).  This is a soul brought back due to pain and half the time he’s having cocktail conversations, and much of the rest he’s tossing out one-liners.

The potential for a good film is here (not great—great require a significantly more complicated story), but as is, it’s just a smartly shot, well designed version of The Wraith.  Who knows what might have been made had Lee survived filming (then again, without Lee’s death, The Crow may well have been forgotten as just another revenge flick).  At least the trite voiceover from the street waif, added to explain things that couldn’t be filmed without Lee, would be missing.

It might help if any of the characters had motivation for what they do or made sense.  The pawnshop owner sees that Eric can heal wounds, is a supernatural creature, and yet he yells at him that if he goes out on the street, he’ll be killed.  Why would he think that?  Or say it?  Similarly, why would he insult the sociopathic Top Dollar?  And why does Top Dollar do anything that he does?

The action is reasonably exciting, and that’s enough to make this a good background film, but it should have been more.

Back to HalloweenBack to Ghost Stories