The Crow

Today is the 25th anniversary of the US release of The Crow. It still works, I think, and it still hurts seeing Brandon Lee as Eric.

(Content note: it uses sexual violence as a plot point for revenge, but it never depicts it except some glimpses from the victim’s perspective.)

Of course it’s also a foundational style piece for The World Of Darkness, and a soundtrack too. Even before the film, the original comic series had that sometimes painterly, sometimes grainy black and white look, and the tendency to break things up with a Joy Division lyric.

(The timing means I was actually out playing Enlightenment In Blood on the 23rd anniversary, playing an undead monster coincidentally wearing a Hangman’s Joke T-shirt.)

Since then there have been comic and film sequels, usually about different revenants, as well as a TV series where Mark Dacascos took over the role of Eric.

And of these... well, City Of Angels is a wonky remake of a sequel but I liked the music (Graeme Revell came back for the score and Courtney Love chose the bands) and Vincent Perez and Mia Kirshner as the lead couple and Iggy Pop as the main henchman, and I wonder what the longer never-released director’s cut would be like.

And Salvation took an interesting twist from the tie-in novel The Lazarus Heart by Poppy Z. Brite (while replacing the gay hero with a straight one) with an innocent man returning after being sent to the electric chair to find those who framed him.

It’s a shame none of the films gave us a female lead - one of the comic sequels did, and there have been a few here and there as well as a second female revenant in the TV series. Other than Eric all the leads were white too. I think the most interesting comics spinoff is Curare, in which the revenant is a little girl haunting the detective who tried to solve her murder. (Deeply grim in places.)

For gamers there are various totally not Eric miniatures out there, two official board games with standees rather than minis, and there was a City Of Angels video game (a hand-to-hand fighting game with easy character death, which really doesn’t seem like the best fit) and plans for a separate game that never came to pass.

And a new film version has been planned for years now, with an insane list of stars attached as well as a few directors. It’s a story that can certainly be retold... the usual problem with the follow-ups is that that’s most of what they do.