Donkey: There are a lot of things about growing up that suck. Eating an entire meal consisting of candy is discouraged. Kicking and screaming in a department store until someone buys you a toy will earn you some strange looks, possibly even criminal charges. And in certain countries, coloring outside the lines is punishable by gang rape. But there are certain things that do get better with age, and one of those things is the ability to handle disappointment. When I was a kid, I sat in my bed one Christmas Eve and silently decided that what I wanted most in the world was a Chewbacca action figure. Of course, making that decision on the spot meant that I hadn’t shared that information with my parents, and for some reason I decided that because I had been good that year, if I didn’t get Chewbacca then Santa Clause didn’t exist. Don’t ask me why I had suddenly jogged down that path of reasoning, but nevertheless, there I was. So the next morning when I woke up and there wasn’t a Chewbacca to be found, I truly came to realize that Santa Clause didn’t exist. Of course, if I had paid closer attention, there were actually a lot more telling signs of the truth than that. Like the time that my mother told my younger brother that Santa wasn’t getting him the Play-Do Barbershop set that he wanted because, and I quote, “Santa thinks that’s stupid.” Or even more obviously, if I had bothered to look carefully enough I would have noticed that all the tags on our gifts had “From Santa” written on them in my mother’s handwriting. But regardless, the sting of disappointment is crippling when you’re young and a dream is destroyed.

That’s a sting that I felt again some years later, when I first laid eyes on this week’s movie, Darkman. Having never heard of it when it was in the theaters, which wasn’t surprising as I didn’t go to the theaters much as a child, the first time I laid eyes on it was in a video store. After being enticed by the cover, I read the synopsis on the back of the box and saw a lot of promise, deciding then and there that I had to see this movie. I mean, come on. Look up at that cover. Pretty bad ass, huh? But this was back in the day when video stores were actually really popular and didn’t carry 4,276 copies of most new movies, so getting your hands on a copy took a lot of dedication. But I stuck it out, checking weekend after weekend until I finally managed to finally grasp it in my eager paws and convince my parents to rent it. Needless to say from the tone of this diatribe thus far and the fact that it made an appearance on this site, the movie turned out to be one massive punch in the balls. And while I’ve developed a thick, cynical, yet highly exfoliated skin since that day which would allow me to handle this all too frequent stomach-churning pain, I was undeniably devastated. So before we get started, I’d just like to say from the bottom of my heart: Fuck you, Darkman.

Whew. That feels a little better. But that being said, it’s time to share my disappointment…

The Plot:

Donkey: After becoming unknowingly entangled in the dark underworld of a zoning commission bribery scandal so shocking that it wouldn’t be deemed worthy of even a three sentence blurb next to the tranny escort ad section at the back of a local newspaper, Dr. Peyton Westlake is attacked and left for dead by a gang of ruthless, bloodthirsty thugs, so common in the real estate development world. Horribly burned, mentally unbalanced, and unable to feel pain – which comes in handy not only in battling enemies but also in protecting him from the sting of his own horrible acting – Peyton is fortunate enough that he just happens to be performing research in the field of synthetic skin at the time. Morphing into the shameful lovechild of The Watchmen’s Rorschach and The Saint, Peyton is reborn as Darkman, the masked enigma out for revenge or possibly large quantities of aloe.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Exhibit A: Evil Rides The Short Bus

Donkey: The movie begins with an introduction to the story’s dim-witted face of terror, that which is supposed to stand for all things despicable and cruel. So kind of like the Rush Limbaugh of the film, if you will. And filling the role of sheer evil in this case is…the retarded guy from LA Law? I guess Jimmy Smits was too busy rolling his R’s in an attempt to remind people that he has more ethnicity than a tub of vanilla yogurt to take the part. Anyways, this dude plays a criminal mastermind named Durant. After rolling up to a warehouse meeting with what appears to be a group of evil longshoremen, he and his small gang are frisked and stripped of all their weapons, which happens to include brass knuckles and nunchuks. For those of you keeping score, yes, that means that this gang should then consist of a retard leading a 1920’s street hoodlum and a ninja, but sadly that is an image that will have to stay doodled in the notepad that I use during meetings at work as it’s not the case here. Once determined to be clean, they’re taken inside to meet the black businessman leader of the longshoremen who happens to be named – awesomely – Black. He declares that he has no intention of selling his property and kindly offers to remove the gangs’ balls for them. In response, Durant motions to one of his thugs, a man who looks kind of like Jerry Cantrell if Jerry had dedicated his life to the skin-flute rather than the guitar. Jerry in turn pulls the wooden leg off of one of the other thugs and reveals it to be a hidden gun, which he starts firing randomly. After waiting for a dozen or so of his men to be gunned down, Black yells for his crew to “take them down”. Suddenly two cars bust out of massive wooden crates that are just sitting in the middle of the warehouse and starting tearing around the place, driving with no particular purpose as more crusty dockworkers fire Uzis out their windows. So just to be clear, those were just sitting in there the whole time? “Killer and Bonecrusher, you two patrol the perimeter today. Ice and Jawbreaker, you two pull the Chevys into the crates and just…wait.” After an incredibly brief and confusing firefight, all the longshoremen, who clearly outnumbered Durant’s men by over ten times, are dead while not a single man in Durant’s gang is sporting so much as a paper cut. But to end the scene in style, Durant has Black dragged over to him where he proceeds to cut his fingers off one by one with his cigar cutter.

Exhibit B: The Recipe For A Hero, Now With 25 Percent More Ass

From there the movie has us sit through a standard roll of introductory credits, which appear over the finest fog that a Hollywood smoke machine budget can buy while a theme song by Danny Elfman reinforces the Batman rip-off image of this film so blatantly that Darkman’s nemesis might as well have been called The Not-Joker. We’re then introduced to the title character, Peyton “Darkman” Westlake, played by Liam Neeson, who for some reason spends the entire movie trying to shed his Irish accent by coupling a ridiculous voice with acting that alternates between animated, manic cheer and spine-shattering rage, almost like Grover with a Meth addiction. He begins in his laboratory where he’s carrying out research on manufactured synthetic skin, producing it with the sweetest unrelated computer displays and holographic technology available in 1990. In other words, he’s spliced together a SNES, a modified version of Sega’s arcade game Time Traveler, and one of those shitty Pin Art toys found in novelty shops to create rubber masks. Thrilling! But his success in creating the skin is short-lived as its cells consistently rupture after 99 minutes causing them to melt like ice near the flaming wreckage of Joey Lawrence’s singing career.

But when you work hard, you’ve got to play hard, so after Peyton and his lab assistant scratch their balls in confusion for long a few moments, the movie jumps straight to that evening where he kicks back and watches a slideshow with his girlfriend Julie, played by Frances McDormand. I’m not exactly sure what would possess two people to voluntarily engage in an activity usually seen as a torture that’s inflicted by visiting relatives who want to share their horribly depressing vacation memories, but somehow it gets the two of them so turned on that they make the semi-passionate yet hip-sensitive love of a bored elderly couple watching the hours slip away in a retirement home. Tasty. But the plot wastes no time in thickening, as the next morning while they get dressed, Julie yammers to someone on the phone about a memo that she found and suspects that she wasn’t supposed to see. And just as is so obviously going to happen, she departs for work and accidentally leaves it by Peyton’s bed, laying on foreshadowing that couldn’t any thicker if the title of that memorandum had been “YOUR ASS WILL GET KILLED FOR HAVING THIS: A 30 Caliber Corporate Report On Capturing Market Share”. Following her out as she tries to catch a cab, Peyton suggests that they get married with as much romantic flare as he would probably use to suggest that they order a pizza or she gets checked for herpes. Understandably unmoved by this, Julie she says she has to think about it, leaving Peyton to continue the streak of abject failure that he’s established so far.

Our tour of Obvious Periltown, USA continues in the next scene as Julie arrives at work and practically begs to be killed by confronting her boss, a slimy little man named Strack, by saying that she had found the memo detailing bribes paid to the zoning commission. As a brief side note, that might just be evidence of the dumbest goddamn crime that I’ve ever seen someone implicated of in a movie. Seriously, I would have preferred if Strack had been a politician accused of gerrymandering, because redistricting your constituency for personal gain couldn’t possibly be any less interesting than this, plus it would give me a more credible reason to use the awesome word “gerrymandering” rather than just sneaking it into a paragraph twice with flimsy justification. Suck it, bitches! But Strack treats this matter as seriously as it deserves by immediately admitting to the crime with less guilt in his voice than if he were detailing how he had extra bacon with his breakfast that morning, asking her to understand that his dream of a massive real estate development down by the city’s old waterfront is worth facilitating with the occasional distasteful act. So in other words, he’s telling her that he’s sucked a lot of dick lately. But rather than just shutting the fuck up and letting the issue drop like any rational person would, Julie insists that doesn’t change the fact that she’s holding the evidence of a crime before going on to let him know that she left it at Peyton’s place. Trying one last time to make her see reason, Strack warns that he’s just trying to protect her from a rival named Durant, a drug dealer/real estate developer, who is competing for the riverfront property and will do anything he can to get it. Of course, if we’re to go by the precedent that Strack has set, this threat probably won’t amount to much more than a strongly worded letter or possibly a motion with City Council, but we’ll just pretend it sounds pretty menacing anyways.

Having established the extremely mild, not entirely noteworthy threat that Peyton has unwittingly stumbled onto a collision course with, the wait for the resulting flaming wreckage turns out to be a relatively brief one. Later that night a mishap with a fuse results in Peyton and his lab assistant discovering that light is the catalyst that is destroying their fake skin. But before they can celebrate their rather modest accomplishment with high fives, awkward glances, and clumsy reach-arounds, Peyton turns to answer a ringing phone and comes face to face with Durant and his gang. Surprisingly, rather than offering to resolve their differences through non-violent conflict mediation as so many villainous gangs in movies are apt to do, the gang instead decides to beat Peyton within an inch of his unremarkable life while demanding that he reveal the location of the memo. But of course, Peyton doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about since he was too busy that morning scrubbing medicated chap-stick and Ben-Gay off his junk to notice the memo that Julie left behind. Eventually they manage to find it on their own anyways, but just like strangling a hooker in the back of a cargo van, once you’ve started the job, you might as well take it all the way. So after attempting to perform a root canal on the lab assistant using a revolver, electrocuting Peyton’s hands with the most glorious claymation I’ve seen since a box of dancing raisins sang Christmas carols to me, and pushing his face into what appears to be a vat of corrosive acid that I can’t imagine any credible reason for having, the gang finally leaves Peyton broken and battered to grapple with a homemade bomb. But just to make things as unnecessarily complicated and unlikely to succeed as possible, the “bomb” in this case is a drinking bird toy that is seconds away from striking a lighter next to a spewing gas tank. As Peyton crawls towards the idiotic apparatus of doom, Julie approaches the building along the street outside, convincing herself to marry this retarded muppet just as a massive explosion rips through the lab above her. She stands in stunned silence, too busy mentally cancelling all the wedding invitations to notice the screaming, flaming form of Peyton that rockets out of the goddamn blaze and lands in the river across the street. I can’t quite describe the hilarity of this moment, but rest assured that we were forced to skip back and watch it several times while laughing our asses off while making the attempt.

After employing the most exceptionally mediocre effects that could be found in 1990 to morph Julie from standing before the flaming building to standing in front of Peyton’s grave, the movie briefly glimpses at Peyton’s funeral that quite noticeably does not have a single person in attendance other than her, indicating that Peyton must have been a far bigger taint stain than we had suspected. I mean, shit, even a psychotic pedophile that smelled like burnt cheese is still probably going to be mourned by the guys down at the candy shop and clown costume boutique for having been their best customer. But with that peek into the distinct lack of mourning of his passing, the film turns back to the screaming rocket that was Peyton, bandaged from head to toe and strapped into a rotating bed in a hospital after having been dredged from the river. A young doctor explains to a group of students observing him that Peyton was brought in without any ID and has burns over 40 percent of his body, so to prevent him from screaming constantly or becoming enticed by the Honey Mustard barbeque smell of his own extremities, they have severed strategic sensory connections so that he can longer feel pain or smell deliciously cooked meat. But the doctor continues by discussing some of the side effects of this procedure, warning that a lack of tactile sensation causes the brain to amplify other inputs, resulting in him being susceptible to heightened rage, loneliness, and spurts of adrenaline that give him super strength. So just to be clear, they have decided to bring him back from the brink of death to carry out the rest of his very limited existence as a manic depressive flame-broiled chicken wing on steroids. What a goddamn treat! I guess the best we can hope for is that they washed the KY off their hands from butt-fucking their Hippocratic Oath before they operated on Peyton, or he might also end up with a nasty case of Pink Eye. And just to prove my point, the doctor walks away with her students in tow, joking that she’d “give him a 9 on the buzzard scale”. But that mocking stirs something deep within Peyton, whose eyes snap open to experiences a whacky series of visions, prompting him to break out of his restraints and escape out a nearby hospital window.

Lost, confused, and doing his best impression of an Egyptian Mummy that has recently attacked a family cookout, Peyton wanders through a torrential downpour, stumbling through an alley where he finds a trench coat that most assuredly smells like a chemical toilet on Undercooked Indian Food Night before walking out onto the street where Julie is very conveniently strolling along by herself. But of course when he stumbles up and grabs her from behind, what was supposed to be a heartwarming reunion that touches our heart more profoundly than the episode of Full House where Uncle Joey teaches the girls about sharing through mullet-fueled mishaps is shattered when she cries out in terror, somehow unable to recognize him through the jacket, bandages, and 11 herbs and spices. Of course, it doesn’t really help that his speech is more slurred than a rabid bulldog with a mouthful of cottage cheese. Dejected, Peyton takes refuge in an alley that night, choosing for some reason to sleep directly beneath a downspout that’s hitting him with so much water that you’d think he was auditioning to be a mesquite scented Slip-N-Slide. I realize that he can’t feel pain, but that’s not going to stop him from choking up a deep-fried lung during a fatal bout of pneumonia.

With the full realization that life as he knew it no longer exists, it’s time for Peyton to transform from an exceptionally underdeveloped and unsympathetic character to the masked crusader of mentally challenged vengeance, Darkman. And to do that, he’ll need to follow the same basic steps that all truly great and exceptionally asstastic heroes abide:

Step 1: Set Up A Base Of Operations, Preferably Outside Of Your Mom’s Basement

After waking up and exploring the ruins of his old lab the next morning, Darkman salvages through scorched equipment that, by right, shouldn’t function in any capacity. Seriously, I’ve accidentally bumped an external hard drive off a two inch drop and had it stop working, so computer equipment that has burn holes in it should fail at every task so badly that it can’t even catch on fire again. Regardless, Darkman loads all of it into a rickety shopping cart, or the Darkmobile, if you will, and hauls it to what appears to be an abandoned industrial factory. With a nod of satisfaction, he begins the process of setting up his shitty version of the Batcave, which we would call…the Darkcave? That’s so fucking stupid that even Aquaman would be ashamed to call it home, which sounds just about right. After managing to get electricity flowing again by throwing a few switches, which is quite a feat since you’d think any power company not run by a team of chimps in business suits and Richard Greco would have stopped supplying power to an abandoned building a long time ago, he attempts to construct a mask of his own face using a damaged photograph. But in order for his machine to complete the mask using the incomplete image, he must replace the damaged section of his face by mirroring the other side, a task that would take a modern computer about two seconds. True to the reality of 1990, his machine tells him that it will take 571 hours to complete the process. Sweet. Just don’t try to check your email while it’s working or that shit will lock up for another 3 months. With nothing but time on his hands, Darkman returns to his research into maintaining the synthetic skin’s integrity in the sunlight as random objects fly around him in the background for no goddamn reason. Apparently Sam Raimi takes the concept of time flying by just a little too literally. But just when we think that life will return to normal for this loveable chemically imbalanced charcoal briquette, he has a little breakdown in the middle of his research when his hand accidentally catches on fire after coming too close to a nearby open flame that he keeps running for reasons I can’t imagine. Looking down at his flame-broiled paws, he begins to blubber about how they took his hands, crying out dramatically. Yikes. If he gets that upset when noticing that his hands have been ravaged by fire, I don’t want to be there when he looks down the front of his pants.

Step 2: REVENGE!

Victim 1 – Nepotism: While spying on Julie, and possibly trying to rub out a batch of baby batter, at an absolutely random formal dress party where she confesses to Strack that the bribe memo that they had discussed earlier was TOTALLY NOT SUSPICIOUSLY destroyed in the fire at Peyton’s place, Darkman notices the presence of Durant and one of his henchmen, played by Ted Raimi. I love Ted Raimi. Without appearing in his brother’s movies, Ted Raimi’s film career would be such a runaway success that he’d have to fight tooth and nail to be stocking feminine hygiene products part-time at a Wal-Mart. But upon seeing the villains again for the first time, Darkman has another brief series of flashbacks of his near death experience. Enraged, he follows as Ted wanders out into an alley alone for some reason, before grabbing him by the face and taking him down into the sewer. Unless Ted’s got a scat fetish or is in fact a Ninja Turtle, things aren’t looking good for him. But even we couldn’t have seen what was coming, as after interrogating him for all the information he can pertaining to Durant’s crew, Darkman smashes Ted’s head up through a manhole, holding his screaming face at street level until he’s eventually hit by a car. Wow. Even if you believe that Darkman could manage to muster the strength to pop off a manhole cover, the force of the impact would smash Ted Raimi’s head as flat as his acting abilities. And here I thought death by drinking bird was as turderiffic as it could possibly get.

Victim 2 – Generic Fat Guy: Soon after his first successful hit, Darkman witnesses two other members of Durant’s gang swapping a briefcase of money with one another over lunch. It’s confusing enough that they’d be handing money to themselves, but they take it even further and prove to be criminal masterminds by not only exchanging large sums of money in a public place while seated right next to a fucking window, but also compounding their brilliance by discreetly swapping briefcases under the table on the goddamn window side, making it perfectly visible to Darkman as he takes pictures of the exchange using random camera equipment that we have no idea how he managed to get his hands on. Formulating an unnecessarily complicated plane, he focuses in on the recipient of the money specifically, a short fat Telly Savalas-looking motherfucker named Pauly, snapping off enough pictures of him for both the skin replication process and his vigilante scrapbooking seminar. After successfully creating a mask identical to Pauly’s face and sneaking into his apartment to drug him with ether while he sleeps, Darkman then stands by a mirror, taking off his bandages to reveal not only that he looks exactly like Pauly, but also what may be the single biggest flaw with this movie. Even if you overlook the fact that he somehow manages to mirror the voice of his victims perfectly, which is already bullshit on a stick, how does a guy who is 6 foot 4 inches tall put on a simple mask and suddenly have not only the identical face but also body of a fat dude just over 5 feet tall? Regardless, he returns to the same restaurant again and takes part in an identical cash exchange, with no one being the wiser as to his true identity. Naturally, Durant notices some time later that the cash has gone missing, so he breaks into Pauly’s apartment and demands to know where the money is just before finding two first class plane tickets to Rio, registered to Pauly and the already deceased Ted Raimi. Pauly, who wakes up on his bed fully clothed in a leisure suit, of course pleads ignorance before being tossed out the window and falling to his death.

Step 3: Shallow Inflection Followed By Half-Hearted Attempts At Redemption

After an absolutely horribly blue screen shot of Darkman sitting on a rooftop between two gargoyles while reflecting on the monster that he’s becoming, because apparently a basic nighttime roof shot is too goddamn hard to film without the use of shitty special effects, Darkman returns to his lab to continue his research before spazzing at a random stray cat and dancing the most hated-filled jig that he can muster. I would describe this jaw-dropping display as ridiculous, but then I just remember Toby McGuire’s dance scene in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, which is about as painful as being attached by schizophrenic drifter wielding a rusty chainsaw laced with hepatitis C, making this look far more reasonable by comparison. But his Temper Tango does little to sate his bloodlust, so be begins smashing random shit with a pipe, all the while having more flashbacks, until finally reigning himself in long enough to notice that his super computer has finally completed the reconstruction of his own facial image. Finally able to look like himself again, at least for 99 minutes at a time, Darkman immediately seeks out Julie, finding her while she’s visiting his grave. He approaches her, revealing that he’s not dead, and after some initial hesitation, they embrace as he mumbles some incoherent nonsense about needing time. From there they end up sharing a hot cup of insanity at an outdoor café where, using all the power of terrible, terrible acting, Peyton asks what she’d do if the explosion had left him horribly scarred before ignoring the fact that she dodges the question and giggling like he’s watching Hey Vern! It’s Ernest.

Step 4: More Fucking REVENGE!

Victim 3 – Well, Nobody Actually: After that brief romantic interlude that makes a strong case for abstinence, Darkman returns to his quest for blood, once again using methods that really beg an explanation despite not getting one, as he taps into Durant’s home phone line to listen in on a call about collecting on a debt in Chinatown the next day. But rather than just knocking on his door right at that moment and killing Durant with insanity-fueled super strength, it’s time once again for a needlessly complicated plan as the movie cuts to a security camera in a random convenience store that captures Durant clearly identifying himself directly into the camera while robbing the clerk. Predictably, the cops show up at Durant’s door the next day and arrest him while Darkman takes his place, joining the rest of the gang as they visit a man in Chinatown who claims to be unable to pay the money he owes. And while the real Durant finally posts bail and rushes to catch up with the rest of his crew, Darkman sits and listens to this Chinese guy ramble on and on incessantly, unsure of what he should do. By the time the old man finally finishes blabbering, Darkman sits down and simply demands the money by the time he finishes a cigar, cutting it down to a mere nub before holding a the match under his hand and burning himself without flinching. Somehow this convinces the old man, who is standing with his own bodyguards, including the guy who played Professor Sub-Zero in The Running Man, to relent and agree to hand over the cash rather than simply shoot them all in the head. Moments later as the real Durant jumps out of a cab and runs into a revolving door on his way into the meeting, Darkman attempts to exit out of the door at the same time. This leads to a few seconds of comic hilarity that hasn’t been fresh since the silent movie era as the two Durants (or Durant Durant, if you will) look at one another in confused silence before jumping out of the door and grappling in a predictable and stale “don’t shoot me, shoot him” scene. But after slapping down the real Durant and reprimanding the other gang members for not shooting when told to, Darkman’s ruse comes to an end when his stopwatch strikes the 100 minute mark and face begins to melt. With no other choice, he simply runs like hell, vanishing in a crowd and leaving the gang very confused as to what the hell the point of all that was. Fucked if I know.

Step 5: Don’t Forget To Try To Get Laid

At that point the movie turns to a carnival where Darkman is showing Julie a delightful, fun-filled afternoon, provided that you would consider laughing like a lobotomy patient at nothing in particular to be fun. Realizing that the time he has left in his face skin is quickly running out, Darkman declares that he should go to. But for reasons I can’t imagine, Julie begs him to stay, pleading for them to have more time together. But before Darkman even bothers to come up with an excuse as to why he can’t stick around for much longer, he’s distracted by a freak show a short distance away. After some careful inflection, he shifts gears faster than a NASCAR driver with a cocaine addiction, deciding to win her a doll at a nearby carnie game. After knocking down the stack of bottles and asking for a pink elephant as a prize, the carnie shrugs him off, saying that he was disqualified because he wasn’t behind a line painted on the ground. At that moment the scene starts to get abruptly dramatic as Darkman begins to rage internally, like he just walked in on someone raping his mom. And yet the tension that his behavior attempts to build is completely undercut by the carnie’s ridiculously calm dismissal of him, creating this drastic juxtaposition that only highlights how irrational both characters are. But the moment comes to a head seconds later when the carnie calls Darkman a weirdo. This sets off, quite literally, an explosive response inside Darkman, who responds by grabbing the carnie’s hand and breaking his fingers. Or at least that would be what he was doing if it weren’t horribly fucking obviously a rubber hand that he’s simply bending. As he, the carnie, and Julie all scream at the completely uncalled for level of aggression, Darkman finishes his ‘roid rage by tossing the carnie through the back wall of his game shack before ramming a stuffed animal in Julie’s hands and cursing at her for good measure. But before she can react to his clear insanity, he reaches the 100 minute mark of wearing the mask and his face once again begins to melt, prompting him to run off into the crowd while screaming for her to forgive him. Apparently quite willing to enter into an abusive relationship with a smoked turkey bone, Julie chases him all the way back to his factory lair where he runs in blubbering like a school girl who just found out that unicorns aren’t real. And once she enters the building behind him, she finds his equipment and his Peyton mask, looking around desperately for him as Darkman sulks quietly behind a nearby stack of crates. Before giving up her pursuit, she yells that he should have told her, that she could have helped him. Lady, unless you’re into getting punched out by a walking corpse in a clown wig, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t help him.

From there Julie heads straight back to the office where she tells Strack that she can no longer see him as Peyton is now back in her life. This of course, implies that the two of them were seeing one another up to this point, which in turn means that her moral standards were so strict that she couldn’t ignore this dude bribing a zoning commission, but she’d still fuck him despite it. That kind of hypocritical integrity makes me grow a big rubbery one. But as Strack steps away for a moment to answer a phone call, Julie snoops around his desk and finds the cursed memo. Yes, that’s right. The villain in this movie is enough of an intellectual powerhouse that he not only drafted the details or bribery that he was carrying out into memo form, but after having someone killed to retrieve it, he then just left said memo sitting around on his desk despite the fact that he knew damn well what his new girlfriend would think the moment she saw it. Trust me; try to follow the logic necessary to see his motives and you’ll end up shitting your pants while repeatedly singing the chorus of David Lee Roth’s Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody. But to his credit, at least Strack as consistent in not bothering to hide the slightest detail of his scheming, as he once again openly admits to everything, explaining that he had Durant and his men kill Peyton so that word of his bribery would not leak and jeopardize his development project. And to needlessly emphasize his point, he opens a set of retractable blinds covering a huge bay window to reveal the construction of his site, with several skyscrapers almost complete. She looks out in awe like she’s never seen this before, despite the fact that you couldn’t get within several miles of the building that they’re standing in without seeing the construction of multiple skyscrapers a short distance away. With nothing left to say, Julie flees as fast as possible, leaving Strack to call Durant into the room to deliver the news that Julie has discovered their alliance and that Darkman is still alive.

Step 6: No Seriously, Even More Fucking REVENGE!

Victim 4 & 5 – The Random Leftovers: With nowhere else to turn, except for maybe to the police or pretty much anyone else would could actually help, Julie returns to Darkman’s lair, yelling up at him as he watches from a window. But just then, car loads of Durant’s men suddenly surround her as goons start firing up at him. They grab Julie and throw her in a car, taking off as Darkman runs along rooftops trying to keep up. But before he has the chance to undoubtedly fail in his pursuit, Durant shows up in a helicopter, firing a grenade launcher at Darkman, apparently not the least bit concerned that his lack of subtlety should likely draw the attention of every cop not shoving a doughnut down his throat within a 300 mile radius. After managing to outrun explosions for a rather ridiculous amount of time, Darkman finally ducks back inside his factory lair just as two of Durant’s goons come in to get him. He decides to fuck with minds a little bit, running around and laughing at them from the non-shadows that shouldn’t really be able to hide anyone since it’s the middle of the afternoon. Finally he lunges down on one of them, leaving only the Jerry Cantrell wannabe. But as Jerry stands nervously looking around, a man wearing a mask that is I guess is supposed to look like him comes running in his direction. Jerry knocks the mystery dude down and pulls off the mask to reveal what is supposed to be Peyton. But after shooting the supposed Peyton dead, Jerry realizes that this dude is wearing yet another mask. When he pulls it off, he finally sees that it was actually his fellow gang member, bound with duct tape over his mouth. As Jerry stands back up to absorb the situation, Darkman wanders up in yet another Jerry mask, smiling at the real Jerry like a child molester before finally containing him and leaving him to die in a fiery explosion.

Victim 6 – The King Of The Special Olympics: While all this is going on inside Darkman’s lair, Durant has his pilot land the helicopter and is about to get out when Darkman starts to grapple with him. The helicopter rises back into the air just as Darkman gets kicked off, falling to his doom only to catch a random hook that the helicopter is hauling around at the end of a long cable. I’d ask why the fuck that would possibly be there, but at this point that would be like complaining that the corn inside the shit you’re eating was canned instead of frozen. Anyways, Durant spends the next 10 minutes flying all over the city, making incredibly lackluster attempts to shake Darkman off the hook or ram him into shit. This scene goes way too long and is completely unremarkable until finally they lower the helicopter low enough that Darkman is forced to run along the roof of an truck head towards him in oncoming traffic while Durant begins to fire grenades down at him. But the idiocy comes to a crashing end moments later when Darkman manages to the hook to the trailer of a random truck, just before it’s about to head into a tunnel. With no chance of escape, the helicopter smashes into the entrance of the tunnel as Durant himself meets a fiery end.

Victim 7 – The Real Estate Developer Of Madness: That night a very healthy looking Durant meets with Strack and Julie at the new construction site, heading up to a high, unfinished floor that is nothing more than a steel framework. As they all jump around on steel girders, Strack yanks the mask off of Durant to reveal Darkman before delivering a speech conforming to the exceptionally high level of ridiculousness that we’ve come to expect from the film and then revealing that he brought Darkman up there to recruit him. But of course Darkman’s response is to lunge at Strack, initiating a struggle that only last a few seconds before the one random thug that accompanied them tosses Julie off the side of the building. She falls several floors, but before she can meet her much deserved end, the ropes used to bind her hands together catch on some steel rebar, leaving her dangling like a damsel tied to a set of train tracks. Getting down to business, Darkman takes out the random goon using one of the many random hooks that happens to be hanging on ropes. But as he turns to face Strack, he discovers that Strack has managed to get his hands on a rather massive rivet gun, which he begins firing at Darkman while slowly approaching him. I have such a hard time believing that Strack could actually lift a rivet gun like that, let alone actually fire it without flying off his tenuous footing from the recoil, that he might as well have been firing guinea pigs at Darkman and I wouldn’t have found it to be any more idiotic. But finally as Strack closes the gap, he hits home, riveting one of Darkman’s hands to the Steel beam behind him. But then of course Strack makes the mistake of passing on the opportunity to put a rivet right between Darkman’s eye, opting instead to taunt him about being a freak. And since we know that basic taunting is the trigger that sends Darkman over the edge into a blind rage, he rips his hand free and begins to attack, but is forced to cut his attack short when he’s interrupted by a scream from Julie as her rope binding gives way and she begins to fall. Jumping into action far too slowly to possibly save her, Darkman swings over on another random hook rope just in time to catch her. He then swings back while Strack renews his rivet barrage and kicks Strack in the chest, flipping him backwards and catching him by the foot. As he dangles there by a single Hush Puppy, Strack tries to convince Darkman that he can’t drop him, lest that it make him as bad as he is, which is a fact that Strack doubts that he could like with. Darkman drops him, saying simply that he’s learning to live with a lot of things.

Step 7: Realize That You’re Too Cool For School

With his quest for revenge at an end and his basic purpose on this Earth essentially nullified, Darkman and Julie then share an uncomfortable elevator ride down to the street floor, passing the time with awkward chit chat where she assures him that he’ll perfect the synthetic skin and everything will be alright. But Darkman responds that there’s more to it than that. He’s changed, become a monster. That’s a fact that he can live with, but he doesn’t think anyone else can. She gives him one last hug before he finally walks away and assures her that Peyton is gone. Still not wanting to accept the goddamn obvious, Julie chases after him only to find herself running headlong into a crowd of sidewalk commuter traffic. You know, considering it was pitch black when Darkman dropped Strack to his death, it sure got to be morning awfully fucking fast. Either that’s a much longer elevator ride than I would have ever guessed, or they stopped to play back to back games of Risk and Monopoly to pass some time before coming down. But as she tries in futility to find him in the crowd, we see that Darkman has slipped into a quite random face, looking back before fading away into the crowd. It turns out that he’s a monster alright; He’s Bruce Campbell. But as he makes his exit, Darkman gives one last narration, declaring that he’s everyone and no one, everywhere and nowhere. Call him…Darkman. Or Ash. Or a Fifth Degree DoucheKnuckle. Either way, really, since you’ll never see him again regardless.

The Verdict:

Donkey: Watching this movie again, years after the initial pain, hasn’t done much to lessen the blow. This movie is still one massive disappointment. With a concept that should have been rather interesting and a character that could have had some real depth, this movie delivered on absolutely none of its potential. The story is a Tour de Force of goddamn boring, with villains that range from completely forgettable to ridiculously inappropriate. I mean, a real estate developer? Really? I think that’s giving bloated sacks of a inadequacy like Donald Trump far too much credit. And the hero of the film vaults between completely underdeveloped and intensely dislikable. What did we even know of Peyton before his tragic turn? Was he a wife beater? A drooling child molester? An avid World Of Warcraft gold farmer? Who fucking knows. And while I’m generally a fan of Liam Neeson’s, his portrayal of this part was astounding, acting like a man who was too busy huffing laughing gas to notice that he got his dick caught in his zipper. Overall this movie isn’t good enough to actually enjoy on its own merits and isn’t bad enough to give us too many laughs. I give it two jigs of rage out of five crushed rubber carnie fingers.

What We Learned:

Donkey: Violently insane homeless people might, just might, be super heroes. Think about that the next time they ask you for change.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: a week off to pack our bags in preparation for an amazing adventure the following week in a tropical paradise filled with incorrectly-used nunchuks, soft-core porn, and contaminated snakes. But get ready to pay a steep price, as admission only comes with the purchase of a…HARD TICKET TO HAWAII.

Back To The Main Page.