bad/awesome flixxx review: Darkman- (1990) (Sam Raimi)

"Tell us where to find the Bellasarious Memorandum, and we shall disappear... like a nightmare before the breaking day." - Durant

I love Sam Raimi, but talk about a shitty flick. This is one of those flicks that maybe you see once years ago, and maybe back then you were like, this is great OR, at least, that was pretty good. When you're a young dude or dudette, some things can seem amazing that are totally shitty. Sports for example. (That's sort of a joke). Ok, so like I said, I found a stash of VHS at this chateau in France, and I've been watching them. I thought I remembered this one being a really well done movie about a seedy underworld with a cool character trying his best to overcome the forces of evil, and with Sam Raimi at the helm, I had to revisit. Boy was I disappointed. Liam Neeson, & Francis McDormand in a piece of shit entitled DARKMAN.



To tell you the truth, I don't even know when it was that I saw this. I may have been taken by my folks with some neighborhood dudes to see this one hot summer day, and just been really high on kool-aid. Then again, it could have been one of those sleepover domino's pizza/oreos/coca-cola classic features. I can't remember. Either way, I was too young to discern how terrible Liam Neeson's acting was. Sam Raimi apparently wanted to do a big budget superhero flick, trying for Batman, and the Shadow. Unable to secure the rights for those, he said fuck it, and just made up his own character. The whole thing is NOT THAT BAD. BUT... i guess I've come to enjoy good/bad flicks so much, that when you see a bad/bad one, it just bums you out that much more.



the story is about a scientist who is trying to create some kind of synthetic skin, and he's almost there, except for that the skin disintegrates after 99 minutes. Finally he figures out that it won't melt if its in the dark. (I feel like in this day and age of plastic surgery that this whole movie doesn't make ANY sense anymore, and MAY be my problem with the whole movie. I think its become dated because of upgrades in technology.) So, buying into this, he also dates this chick who is a lawyer. She comes across a super badass named memo ("the Bellasarious Memorandum") and it says that her boss is bribing the board of directors allowing him to build a "super city". She splits to confront him on it, and he sends some gangster dudes (the nastiest one cuts off dudes fingers and collects them) to get the memo from the lab. I'm assuming that the lab was their apartment, because why the fuck would he take her paperwork to his lab?? But I digress. So anyway, they fuck him up, he becomes hideously deformed burning his hands and face and then blowing up the lab sending him flying into the water and assumed dead.



BUT... he didn't die, he was taken to a hospital as a john doe, and then treated with special techniques that cut his feeling off... Because he'd live in agony forever (if he woke up they said) but the bad news was that he'd go crazy because he couldn't tell how much adrenaline he was working up or whatever. Anyway, he wakes up, escapes, puts some of his old equipment together in an old warehouse, reconstructs masks of his face and his enemies faces and tries to go get his old lady back from the asshole who blew him up and stole her away. He succeeds, but I don't know, I was totally passing out... the one dude gets blown up in a helicopter but must've not died, because part 2 is called the return of Durant... and i don't even think he killed the main guy. Theres a couple cool scenes. He puts his regular face back on, tells his old lady he's fine, and now they're back in love, and then he goes to a carnival and wins her a stuffed elephant, but the redneck carny won't give him the prize, so he goes Bonkers, and wigs out, sees fire, and breaks the dudes fingers, grabs an elephant and just splits. So, its not all bad. There are some Raimi moments. Ok... I do not recommend this one. And that may be like the 2nd out of all of these that i don't recommend, so thats saying something. Last but not least, there's a special cameo at the end of none other than BRUCE CAMPBELL! He's the last mask Darkman puts on when he says fuck it, and splits from his chick to live the life he hates, but is forced to live.

If you have any bad/awesome flicks recommendations, leave them in the comments for me!! thanx for reading!!