The Crow

I bought The Crow on DVD specifically for this project, mainly so I could write about my strange relationship with this film through the years.

The Crow is an adolescent revenge fantasy, which is exactly the kind of film that will win over a disaffected 20-year-old, which is more or less what I was when I saw The Crow for the first time in 1994ish.

To understand the impact of The Crow on our nation's youth circa 1994, consider for a moment how many people between the ages of, say, 18 and 25 cite The Boondock Saints as not only their favorite film, but the best movie ever made.

The Crow is like that, but five years older and with a better soundtrack.

Other than the late Brandon Lee, The Crow starred mostly lesser-known character actors, including the black Ghostbuster and Rochelle Davis, who played the young girl, Sarah, and who has not appeared in a film since. (Davis has appeared at cult movie conventions and has her own Myspace page, which looks pretty much like anybody's Myspace page gone to hell with all sorts of animated bits, bells, and whistles. Visit the page at your own risk — it'll probably crash your browser.)

The Crow was my favorite film once. Brandon Lee died on set, during filming, on March 31, 1993, from an accident with a prop gun. His fate did more for this film than any amount of marketing or clever "Alternative Nation" soundtracking.

People my age were drawn to The Crow because of the Brandon Lee tragedy, but I wonder how much Kurt Cobain's suicide also contributed to the morbid curiosity of the fanbase. Cobain killed himself on April 5, 1994, almost a year to the day after Lee's accident, and only a few weeks before The Crow premiered in theaters on May 13, when Brandon Lee visited us from beyond the grave.

I found myself looking at the officer's report from Kurt Cobain's suicide just the other day. I'm not sure what led me to that. More morbid curiosity, perhaps, or maybe just that Hole released a new album and — you know, I'm not even sure why I care about any of this shit anymore, but I do.

I'm the only person I know who ever went through a "Brandon Lee phase," during which I watched every Lee film I could find, which ended up just being Showdown in Little Tokyo and Rapid Fire. They were the only two films I could find at the Muncie Public Library and, somewhat coincidentally, the most I could tolerate because both films are total pieces of shit.

In 1994, The Crow was bleeding edge for digital effects work. That Alex Proyas was able to finish The Crow after Brandon Lee's death is astounding, and even now, I find myself struggling to tell the difference between the body doubles and Lee. Proyas' smoke and mirrors tricks still hold up. Slick editing, lighting, and visual effects saved this film.

Visually, this film is still remarkable, even though some of the digital effects are showing their age (though no more than any other film from this era, and less so than films from before). I can forgive a lot with The Crow.

However, the acting is piss-poor. Brandon Lee's stilted line readings and the antics of T-Bird, Tin-Tin, Skank, and Fun Boy are all horrible. How come this didn't bother me before?

Who thought the Thackeray line "Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of all children" was anything less than pretentious ass-hattery? Probably the same person who thought quoting John Milton wasn't a bad move either.

I re-watched this film in 2005ish and found myself laughing at the acting. I ridiculed the quote "Fire it up! Fire it up!" because, well, it's stupid. The clothing, the hair, the music — basically I re-watched this film with just enough distance from the '90s to realize, wow, what a pretentious bunch of assholes we were then, in our layered post-industrial clothing and black boots.

(Even tonight, my wife couldn't watch. "There's some really bad acting in this film!" she said, not long before she just gave up and went to bed.)

And yet, I can't dislike this film. I understand why I liked the film in 1995, and I understand why I didn't in 2005, and that lets me enjoy this one all over again in 2010. This film affected me, and millions like me, 15 years ago. Now that I have even more distance, I can re-appreciate The Crow not just as a morbid curio, but as an important film not just to me, but to '90s youth culture. Revisiting that is fun now.

One can't contemplate The Crow without making note of the classic soundtrack, with songs from The Cure, Helmet, Stone Temple Pilots, Rollins Band, Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine, and several others. This soundtrack was pretty much was the most amazing thing ever when I was 20. I still consider the Brandon Lee rooftop run to Nine Inch Nails' cover of Joy Division's "Dead Souls" one of the most badass sequences of the 1990s.

One last thing: I still have this poster, which hung in my college apartment for years, creeping out every woman I who ever came over (which really wasn't that many).

The poster came with a cardboard backing, so I never unwrapped the thing. I just put it on top of stuff or taped the whole thing to a wall. After college, I moved out of that apartment and back home, where I put the poster — cardboard backing and all — in a closet. There the poster stayed for almost 10 years, until I finally decided to get the very last of my belongings out of Dad's house. Now the poster sits in a closet at my house, and probably won't hang anywhere anytime soon. (See previous remark about creeping out women.) The poster is still wrapped in its original plastic.

What can I say? I hang on to things.