Darkman – Blu-ray Review

The Film:

I remember back on the weekend of August 24th, 1990 my uncle and I attended a showing of Darkman, a film from a then-budding young director who just got a little studio help to deliver a horror-camp-filled superhero film. Of course, then I was barely in 6th grade, so I sort of liked everything, but the one thing I remember was exclaiming “Look! There’s Ash!” at the end of the film, when Darkman used Bruce Campbell’s face as he disappeared back into the crowd of people when Frances McDormand went after him. Hey, so what? I grew up on Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. But as I kid, I really connected with this character of Darkman, even having my uncle one Halloween spending a ton of money, for a black trench coat, hat, gauze, and elaborate make-up so I could take the gauze off and reveal my burnt face!

Darkman isn’t a particularly original or even great movie, but it’s a lot of fun, perhaps memorable for its zaniness, and a film I doubt Raimi will ever make again.

There’s something bittersweet about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man successes. On one hand, it’s neat to see him rise from an aspiring Michigan boy who grabbed a camera and shot a movie, to messing around with huge studio budgets, but on the other hand, due to those swinging successes, I don’t think he’ll ever really go back to his crazed, throw-everything-at-the-wall to see what sticks attitude and style of film making, that made Evil Dead films and Darkman so much fun. He came desperately close will Drag Me to Hell, but lovingly Darkman was a film from a guy that was eager to make a Spider-Man, which is a lot different from the man that did.

While Darkman takes its 90 minutes from a slew of other films, notably any superhero film not named The Dark Knight and the old Universal Monster movies from the 1930s and 1940s. This cobbling together attitude will signal to some that it’s being derivative, but to others it plays much like a homage to those films. After witnessing his lab be totally destroyed, his face and body horribly mutilated, and the love of his life believing he is dead, taking his research to a whole new level, Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson doing his best Bruce Campbell impression long before he became the Liam Neeson we now know) uses these life-like masks of people to pit his enemies against each other. One part any typical superhero origin, another part Phantom of the Opera, it’s all strung together by Sam Raimi’s balls-out mentality, that adds a lot of zip to each scene, that any other director who not have had the luxury of.

The film never shows its serious face and having us to believe it should is wrong. Darkman is a step-child of Evil Dead who slept with Spider-Man, only to have had Boris Karloff’s child. It’s not Raimi’s best film, but for a warm-up into the studio system, it’s a lot of fun, for things I doubt now days a studio would allow. Long live Darkman!

The Blu-ray:

Audio/Video: After making an early appearance on the defunct HD-DVD, Universal finally releases the film to Blu-ray as a catalog title. I was an early adopter of the Blu-ray format, so I can’t compare the two, but judging from the transfer, the 1080p video looks really good, yet I suspect it’s a port from the HD-DVD release. There’s a few print anomalies,  but nothing serious. The details are really good, the colors are fine, the blacks are dark enough without being gray or bleeding. Considering I doubt Universal went all out on a new transfer, this release, that features a swell DTS track, is what I call an average HD release. It’s good, as most fans will be happy, yet it’s far from a best attempt I’m sure was possible. It certainly doesn’t ‘wow’, but you won’t be bummed with the results.

For Extras, well, there are none-again. Darkman has always been neglected on home video, and it continues sadly, here. Not even a HD Trailer! Maybe one day someone will give us something worthwhile for this fun movie.

Conclusion: The film is still fun even after all of those years. While the Blu-ray is an okay release, the lack of extras hurt it.

The Film: Rating:

The Blu-ray: Rating: