Man, direct to video sequels sure were different back in my day…
Apologies for starting this review with a textbook old-guy rant, but in these days of multimillion dollar streaming sites where sequels like Prey and The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery can nimbly dodge cinemas without sacrificing a single iota of production value, kids these days have no idea how threadbare things could get if a studio started churning out cheap sequels to an eccentric hit.
Firstly, they debuted on on VHS to rent from places like Blockbuster Video (this was the 90s, remember, although it continued, unabated, throughout the 00s with DVD) and secondly, even though these rushed follow ups followed in the wake of such outrageous cult classics like From Dusk Till Dawn, Tremors and Starship Troopers, tight budgets and an absence of the original talent meant that I tended to avoid these titles like the plague.
What taught me this valuable, if painful, lesson? Call him… Darkman.
Years after a gang of thugs elaborately tortured him into a charred, vengeful wreck of his former self, tragic scientist Payton Westlake is still trying to crack the formula for making synthetic skin that survives longer than 99 minutes in daylight. Despite spending most of his existence wrapped in bandages and dressed like the Phantom Of The Opera as he zips about the subway system on a modified cart, he’s still hopeful he’ll success despite still having worse rage fits than Christian Bale and Russell Crowe combined.
Hope raises its unblemished head in the form of David Brinkman, another scientist work in the same field who may have finally cracked the formula and after making first contact, Payton finally allows himself to hope that he’ll eventually be able to – whoops, nope. Hold that thought a second, because despite last being seen screaming in terror when his helicopter ploughed into an overpass, ruthless criminal Robert G. Durant has awaked from a coma to take back his criminal empire by any means necessary.
Breaking a weapons expert out of jail and having him revolutionise the industry by inventing a particle weapon powered by plutonium (as you do), Durant plans to sell these handy little WMDs, but in a predictable quirk of fate, needs to secure David’s warehouse for means of production.
David refuses to sell, so Durant resorts to his usual fallback plan of sending the boys round to beat the man to death and then simply try the same deal again with their next of kin. However, when an understandably pissed Westlake discovers that Durant is involved (ie. the man who turned him into a skeleton fingered crispy critter in the first place), he dusts off his photography equipment and starts making up masks of the crimeboss’ goons in order to bring his empire down once and for all.
As a massive fan of the superhero loopiness that is Sam Raimi’s Darkman, the prospect of any sequel, let alone a cheap, made for video one, seemed incredibly enticing to me way back when. However, to my horror, my low standards were roughly hooked onto the back of a speeding semi and my hopes were mercilessly hauled into the side of a concrete tunnel as what unfolded couldn’t even touch the original classic with a gnarled, bony finger. While I wasn’t expecting Liam Neeson to reprise his role of the mangled, rage-a-holic, superhero (he’d long jumped ship to playing Oskar Schindler), my desire to see Bruce Campbell take up the mantle like the first movie teased was instantly trashed by the presence of Hard Target’s Arnold Vosloo. While I struggled to work out why Westlake’s vague, Irish twang had been replaced, without explanation, for a thick, hearty, South African accent, the film’s meagre budget and lack of frenzied visuals similarly struggled to remotely match the flair of the flamboyant original.
Obviously, I was livid and, forever marked by the experience, vowed never to trust a direct to video sequel of a blockbuster movie ever again. But time – much like getting blown through the roof of a warehouse explosion – changes a man and after a tentative rewatch, I found that the limited means of The Return Of Durant wasn’t as upsetting as I once found them. In fact, watching Darkman II with fresh eyes and a massive drop in expectation revealed that despite all of its obvious flaws, the movie us far more watchable than I had ever realised.
Oh, it’s campy trash, there’s no getting away from it and it plays to its comic book leanings so broadly, you’re legitimately surprised that the dialogue isn’t delivered with actual speech bubbles, but to everyone’s credit, Darkman’s second bow isn’t as relentlessly cringe worthy as some other, similar properties around at the time – anyone remember 1994s Robocop: The Series? While the acting is barely a step above movie-of-the-week status and the set pieces are chiefly reduced to a couple of car explosions and Darkman swinging around on a rope while people shoot at him, the script manages to be surprisingly witty considering.
Taking centre stage is the late Larry Drake’s resurrected Robert G. Durant, whose devastatingly egotistical crime boss has somehow recovered from being obliterated in a flaming helicopter crash with only a limp, a face scar and the occasional migrane to show for it and as his character migrates from loquacious thug to full-on super villainy, you can tell that the actor is having the time of his life revisiting a character so unapologetically dastardly. Whether offhandedly denouncing Renee O’Connor’s ineffectual, Miss Muffet-haired damsel in distress as a “Ridiculous bitch”, or executing a disloyal subordinate by launching them off the top of a skyscraper in a golf cart, he infuses his bad guy with lashings with pantomime flamboyance.
Unfortunately, Vosloo isn’t given quite as much room to shine; lacking the range of Neeson, Westlake’s descents into white hot rage merely seem more like a frustrated teen tantrum-quitting the latest FIFA game rather than the all-encompassing shit-fit it should be. Also, it might have been better to have Vosloo’s visage simply be another random face that Payton is using rather than have him be Westlake himself as a way to suggest that his true identity is evaporating into that of his face-swapping, manhole cover flinging avenging angel, still, his doomed partnership with a sassy reporter is a nice touch – or could have been if its mileage hadn’t been cut short with an errant car bomb (important tip: never give out your identity if you’re going to bury crime lords on the news, folks).
Yes, its hopelessly flawed. The plot holes are legion (why infiltrate a gang and play an unnecessary game of cat and mouse when you can just kill the fuckers with your augmented strength?), the effects are woeful (the effects for Darkman’s burnt visage look as lifeless as a Halloween mask – his mouth doesn’t even move when he talks) and the characterization is barely three steps more nuanced than an episode of Adam West’s Batman, yet I found I enjoyed its goofy charms way more than my teenage self did many moons ago. You want a great Darkman follow up, hunt down the six-issue Marvel comic series from 1993. You want a silly, cash-strapped, serviceable one, stay right here, because for all its obvious problems, Darkman II surprisingly doesn’t lose face.
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