Shout! Factory.
Who is Darkman?
In the summer of 1989, I had only been working in the marketing department of Universal Pictures for a few weeks when I first saw these words on a promotional button in my boss’s office. My then-boss, Universal’s head of national promotions, had hastily produced them for Comic-Con, hoping to capitalize on the rumors that Sam Raimi—then known mainly for The Evil Dead—was directing a superhero movie.
It was an act born of desperation: there was as yet no trailer for the film, no key art, no publicity photos. So my boss decided to play up the mystery. The rectangular buttons became a collector’s item at Comic-Con, and the words “Who is Darkman?” eventually served as the film’s teaser tagline.
Unfortunately, a year later we were still having a hard time answering the question.
Not just “Who is Darkman?” but, “What the hell is Darkman?”
Part of the problem was that Universal didn’t have much experience with superhero films (unless you count the mega-disastrous Howard the Duck). Partly it was a lack of star power: thanks to The Evil Dead, Raimi had serious cult cred but was by no means a household name, while leads Liam Neeson and Frances McDormand had yet to open a movie on their own (probably the best known cast member was Larry Drake, thanks to his recurring role on TV’s L.A. Law).
But our biggest obstacle by far was the movie’s tone. All superhero movies are permitted some levity, but Darkman frequently swerved into cartoonish episodes and dark humor (punctuated by dutch angles, sound effects, and weird visuals meant to show us the character’s inner state of mind). These early Raimi trademarks tended to baffle test audiences in 1990, who generally expect a certain level of gravitas from superheroes. I remember a comment card from an audience member who said it “wasn’t funny” to make fun of people with third-degree burns.
Despite the collective uncertainty of the marketing campaign, Darkman did scrape out a profit on its relatively low budget. Two two direct-to-video sequels and a failed TV pilot followed, and that seemed to banish Darkman to the darkness.
Today, however, the movie has fully achieved the cult status it deserves, and the question “Who is Darkman?” finally seems to have an answer. He is the first—and still the best—black-comedy superhero.
Darkman begins as Dr. Peyton Westlake (Neeson) develops artificial skin for burn victims (See? We don’t think it’s funny either), which can be molded to any appearance but dissolves after ninety-nine minutes. When his girlfriend, attorney Julie Hastings (McDormand) runs afoul of a corrupt businessman, mob boss Robert Durant (Drake) tortures Peyton by plunging his hands and face into acid. Unable to repair his skin or ease his indescribable pain, the doctors elect instead to sever his sense of touch entirely. He can’t feel pain—he can’t feel anything—and this, combined with rage-triggered rushes of adrenaline, give him the strength and reckless determination to take revenge on his enemies. When he has to, he can disguise himself to look like anyone (including himself) with his artificial skin… except, of course, that the illusion always falls apart in direct light. Hence, Peyton generally prefers to work with in the shadows: hence, Darkman.
On the surface, the setup isn’t entirely original.
It owes something to previous disfigured heroes like Gwynplaine in Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs and Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera (not to mention Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise). Of course, these guys aren’t particularly funny, and they super: three years before Darkman, Edward Neumeier get us there in his script for Robocop, giving us a maimed hero with kick-ass prosthetics. Yet even that excellent film would not go as far as Raimi does with Darkman.
Many wounded heroes—and aren’t they all wounded, after all?—become super as a response to trauma, a play on Nietzsche’s dictum that whatever does not kill you makes you stronger. The trauma may be physical (Tony Stark’s cardial injury) or emotional (Bruce Wayne’s ordeal in Crime Alley), but at least your newfound powers can replace some of what the trauma took away. This is true for Iron Man and Batman, even for Robocop; but not for Peyton Westlake. His trauma and his power are the same thing. He suffers not in spite of his powers, but because of them. Even when it’s played for laughs, you can still feel that suffering. A year after Darkman, the comic version of Deadpool would repeat the formula—except that Wade Wilson is in on the black joke that’s been played on him; Peyton isn’t. Wade is struggling his way back to humanity. Day by day, Peyton is losing his.
One scene in particular brings this home with fierce hilarity. The first time Peyton tries to reunite with Julie, he prepares by making a synthetic mask and gloves. These look convincing: the rest of him, not so much. His wig and clothes are whatever he can find in thrift stores.
Worse, Peyton is beginning to forget how to act like himself. “Jules! Jules, baby!” he exclaims to her at a county fair, doing his best impression of a happy human seeing his human girlfriend again. He holds her but he can’t feel her. Instead, he tries to impress her by winning her a stuffed pink elephant at a carnival game. Being the crack attorney that she is, she presses for answers: Where exactly is he being treated? Why didn’t he come to her sooner? He keeps throwing balls. He hits the target, claims the elephant, but the carny won’t fork over the prize. So Peyton breaks his fingers, tosses the carny through a wall, and thrusts the prize at a horrified Julie. “TAKE THE F—–G ELEPHANT!” he screams at her.
Then his face begins to melt off.
It’s a scene that draws shocked laughter—for weeks, my co-workers and I would quote “Take the f—–g elephant!” to each other—but it’s also a terrifying moment of desperation from someone who’s no longer capable of masking his rage. In its own over-the-top way, the film accurately depicts the primary symptoms of PTSD. The persistent numbness; the faltering attempts to present a veneer of normality, punctured by scalding bursts of anger; the increasing recklessness and disregard for one’s own safety; and above all the increasing isolation and loss of connection with one’s pre-traumatic self; all of these are present in Peyton’s steady alienation, to the point where he can no longer claim to be Peyton Westlake. He can learn to imitate the voices and mannerisms of other people. He can make himself look like other people. He can even look like the person he used to be.
But beneath it, he’s faceless. He is simply… Darkman.
This could have been the perfect origin story for an entirely new kind of hero, except for a few problems. First, as we discovered in marketing the movie, the character takes a lot of explaining (the final poster’s tagline is four lines long). Second, the script doesn’t offer the kind of “redemptive arc” that every 90s hero was supposed to have. Thanks to Marvel, today’s mainstream audiences can more easily handle complex backstories and are far less insistent that heroes be “redeemed.”
But there’s still the issue of tone. I’d forgotten how over-the-top the film could be until I watched it again for this review. In one amped-up scene, a thug (played by Raimi’s brother Ted) pleads that he’s told Darkman everything he knows. “I know you have,” Darkman says as he prepares to decapitate the thug, “but let’s pretend you didn’t.”
Finally, there’s the cast. Darkman would ensure that no one could possibly accept Larry Drake as a nice guy again. The two leads cannot be anything but phenomenal. Still, I’m struck by how ill at ease the lead actors often seem to be in their roles. Liam Neeson just isn’t made for twisted humor—though his pained gravel voice works great for the character’s occasional poignant moments—while Frances McDormand simply has too much candlepower for her narrow part (she later referred to Julie as “the first bimbo I’ve played”). Three years after Darkman, Neeson played Oskar Schindler and McDormand, and three years after that McDormand won an Oscar for Fargo.
For me, the tension between the cast and their roles is actually a strength. There’s raw power behind the mayhem, moments of genuine pathos and wit from two young, awesomely talented actors showing early signs of greatness. McDormand might have thought Julie was a bimbo but she didn’t play her that way. At times, her clipped, unflappable delivery convinces you she’s about to start talking about your accomplice in the wood chippah.
Extras include commentaries, featurettes, interviews, deleted scenes and galleries.
Darkman is dark. It’s also weird and off-kilter and it pounds laughter out of you in situations when decent people are definitely not supposed to laugh. In an age when the superhero genre seems to have collapsed under the collective weight of its various legendariums, Darkman is genuinely having fun at its own dark expense. In 1990, this kind of grim delight seemed way off base. Today, it’s a serious breath of fresh air. Does every supermovie have to involve saving the world?
Who is Darkman? He’s not the hero the marketing experts want. But he just might be the hero we all need.
