Moody...enthralling...humorously dark!
This flick has a little of everything...a dark, angry villain...a cold blooded, venomous villainess...a comic relief...drama...pathos...tongue-in-cheek dark humor...a handsome, dark hero. This film became legend mainly because of the tragic death of its star, yet it is worthy of mention for many other reasons. The soundtrack. The revenge for love theme winding its way from start to finish. Its cold bloodedness. Its sweet innocence. Its pain and depth of fear. Its metaphysical overtones and the theme that true love will overcome hell itself.
This film brings to light the need to be loved in many people, and the lack of ability to love in many others. The film follows a young couple in love through their cold-blooded, cruel murders by a gang of heartless and soulless men, through the reverberations that heinous murder sent through its many witnesses and helpless victims. It follows the trail of young Sarah, who adored Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his beautiful fiance, who in turn loved her like the family she has never had. Sarah's mother is a woman who drifts through a drug-riddled life from man to man, helpless to escape her own tortured prison, and unable to give her street-urchin child the care, protection and love every child needs.
The story follows the policeman who investigated the double homicide, and who lost his detective's shield because he didn't believe it was a random act of violence. By asking too many questions of too many people. The policeman who watched Eric Draven's lovely fiance die in agony in the emergency room after being brutally assaulted and stabbed and beaten by men intent of getting her "out of the way" because she dared protest the forces at work in her neighborhood. The policemen who has befriended and protected Sarah, who now has no one of her own.
But Fate has no plans to let the killers and their bosses escape retribution. Eric reincarnates with the help of a mysterious crow, purported to assist souls to travel from earthbound pain to the release of the afterlife. Trapped in the ugly darkness of despair, the reincarnated Draven rises from his grave on the anniversary of their deaths, and makes his way back to their ruined, abandoned apartment on Devil's Night...the night before Halloween.
The evil forces at play are in for a grim reckoning, and as Eric Draven dons the stylized black and white skeletal harlequin makeup he used in his life when he was the leader of a rock band, and draws a tight black long sleeved T-shirt over his bullet riddled body, then wraps his ribs and forearms in shiny black tape, the hell hound retribution begins.
This highly stylized and gripping comic book adaptation is the stuff all good cult movies are made of...suspense, revenge, excitement galore, and a hellishly handsome, hell-bent hero out for blood.
I love this movie, and although it makes me sad to know that Brandon Lee died in a freak accident while making it, I watch it often, just to remember him as a living, virile, and wonderful young man.Read full review
