Sam Raimi, Dr. Strange, and Darkman

  

Are people excited about Sam Raimi’s new movie? 

I realize people are excited about Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Apparently you can even see it in 3D at the Imax. I am home with COVID, so I won’t be hitting the IMAX anytime soon, but a friend went and – while he likes any 3D – was a tad disappointed to see that the 3D had been added in post, that it wasn’t actually filmed as a 3D movie. When it is conceived in 3D from the gitgo, it generally means “things coming out of the screen at you.” (Lots of particulate, too, methinks = flashlights in dusty rooms, that Prometheus thing... you know what I mean). My friend's friends thought the 3D was "ho hum," he reported.

I believe Raimi's last feature as director, Oz the Great and Powerful, was, in fact, filmed as a 3D movie. It didn't really connect with Raimi's fan base, though, I don't think. Wizard of Oz fans might have enjoyed it, or people who like James Franco... there are people out there who do, right? He is very, very James Franco in it. The film itself was inoffensive,  but - having seen it twice - I have decided it really isn't even worthwhile without the 3D. 

To return to the new Dr. Strange, same friend also notes it has “good Sam Raimi input.”

Oh, yeah, if it wasn’t clear, I was creating a false distinction above between the new Sam Raimi and the new Doctor Strange. The new Doctor Strange *is* the new Sam Raimi, as I'm sure some of you recognized. But much as Raimi has his fans, I don't think - for example - that a lot of people flocked to see the Spider-Man trilogy he did, for obvious example, out of an excitement to see "the new movie by Sam Raimi," nor were they expecting that much of his signature style. Similarly, I *think* the brands that are relevant here to most people will be Marvel, Dr. Strange, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Not only will these be the primary draw, they’ll be the key determiners, along with the sheer budget involved, of the eye of the film; Raimi will have some freedom to put some of his distinct signifiers on it, but he won’t be able to pee in every corner of this particular territory (not that he should necessarily need to, but some people LIKE it “in Raimi territory,” the same way they want excess and smashingly surreal imagery from Ken Russell). To put it in terms of DePalma, the new Dr. Strange might be to Raimi's filmography what The Untouchables was for DePalma, distinctly his but not his in the same way that Snake Eyes or Raising Cain are HIS, if you see what I mean. Or to put it in terms of other Raimi - it might be about as Raimi as, say, Spider-Man, but it is unlikely to be much more so - probably not even as Raimi as Spider-Man 3, which gets into some very frequent Raimi territory, like visual and performance excess and characters being confronted by malign doubles. 

But even if there are flourishes here and there, the very nature of Dr. Strange and MCU movies and the stakes at hand will probably require some modulation of the Raimi scale. Dr. Strange will not battle Deadites, for instance. (Does Dr. Strange battle Deadites? Don’t tell me, let it be a surprise.)

A brief consideration of Levels and Degrees of Raimi: The Evil Dead movies all have the Raimi-factor set very high, but one feels it isn’t until the second and third that the, uh, Raiminess has been identified and is being self-consciously cultivated, that Raimi has figured out what makes a film distinctly his and is doing it a LOT. Let’s say that the Raimi is set at 10 for The Evil Dead, and then in the manner of Spinal Tap, set at 11 for Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.

Ash Versus Evil Dead, which does have Raimi’s input, but often is directed by others, dials it back to eight, maybe. Other people attempting to Raimi it up can only achieve so much. 

But of the non-Evil Dead films that Raimi has made, while I enjoy many of them - especially A Simple Plan and The Gift - only three that I have seen (and probably Crimewave, which I haven’t) are very strongly Raimi, and they’re all ones he wrote: Spider-Man 3 is more Raimi-fied than the first two; then Drag Me to Hell, which seems to be Raimi very consciously making a Sam Raimi movie to reward his fans for having stuck by him through his "superhero years"... and one kinda-forgotten gem from 1990, Darkman.

Darkman deserves serious re-evaluation from genre fans and a whole new generation of eyes on it; it’s a cult movie which hasn’t got near as big a cult as it deserves. Has it been released in a loving 4K scan? It should be. We watched it last night (sadly on DVD, which is all I have around; it's definitely one to upgrade) and both thought it was ripe for re-evaluation.

There are lots of reasons people might want to look at it again. It’s Liam Neeson’s first-ever action film, for one thing. It has an early Frances McDormand role - a meaty one, where she's a smart, able co-protagonist. There are a host of cameos for cinema insiders, from Bruce Campbell himself (whose presence in anything increases the Raiminess by a couple notches, even if Raimi is not involved) to William Lustig, the Coen brothers, and John Landis. Jenny Agutter – practically still in her Nurse Price uniform from An American Werewolf in London – is onscreen long enough that her role counts as a role, not a cameo. And there are a host of other genre references – at different points, I found myself thinking of Frankenstein - both doctor and monster; the Phantom of the Opera; the Abominable Dr. Phibes, the Mummy, the Elephant Man, Spider-Man, and Batman. 

Oh, and Robocop, too, a little. 

Plot summary: Neeson plays a badly disfigured scientist given superhuman strength, an insensitivity to pain, and a somewhat unstable temperament by his ordeal, who, like Batman, supplements his meagre superpowers with technology, including what reads now as a prototype 3D printer for genetic materials and a recipe for believable but photosensitive synthetic skin, which melts after an hour and a half in the light, but makes him a short-term master of disguise. There is some doubling in this film, too, though none on the level of Ash having to battle dozens of mini-Ashes in Army of Darkness; but a villain is caught, for example, in a revolving door with his double, each telling the gathered henchmen to shoot the other for being an imposter. Darkman - he really only takes the name at the end of the movie - uses his strength and his tech to battle the people who injured him and help save his wife, McDormand's character, from their clutches; I have not seen the sequels to see if he becomes a flat-out crimefighter, or if it’s always the same people he’s fighting, but he’s basically an all-in-one superhero, mad scientist, and monster.

There is, I admit, an added personal reason to the appeal of Darkman for me. As someone newly disfigured - if my lispy, newly-inarticulate speaking voice doesn't count, then consider the graft-site marks on my wrists - I found the scenes where Darkman awkwardly attempts to reconnect with his wife, wearing his own face as a mask (!), quite poignant, and occasionally turned to Erika (I was wearing a mask at the time, too, but due to my current COVID case, not because of disfigurations) and repeated some of the more pathos-rich lines from the film as Neeson said them. We both got a good laugh out of this; it was not just myself who experienced the relevance. 

If the text that spoke to me most on coming out of surgery was The Island of Dr. Moreau,  Darkman earns a strong second place. But mostly as a Raimi fan, I enjoyed the very distinctly Raimi-like moments of excess, the giddy, shameless, in-your-face inventiveness of his craft, as when, for example, Darkman is typing with one hand wearing a synthetic flesh glove and the other in a near skeletal state, having been exposed to both fire and acid. The "fake" hand - the one in the fleshglove - is played by a real hand, but the "real" hand (the burned, quasi-skeletal one) is stop motion (you can see a GIF of it here). Who else has ever done such a thing, in the history of cinema - have two hands on a typewriter, one of which is stop motion? It's hilarious. And there's a very old-fashioned Gothic horror feel to Darkman's burned-out lab, where he perfects his masks. One applauds Raimi for not going so far as to have his protagonist be an organ aficionado. 

There is much more visual wigginess in the film - but I've only ever seen it three times, and two of those screenings were back in the 1990's, so forgive me if I can't detail them. I hope it will suffice to note that there are hallucinatory montages of nightmare images that actually do bring Ken Russell to mind. Now THIS is a film that would be fun to see in 3D, or at least in 4K - neither of which formats is it actually available in, alas. 

People steeped in contemporary music will wonder if perhaps Robert Pollard saw Darkman and cribbed the central conceit from "I Am a Scientist" from the film - but again, don't tell me if he didn't. (There is a scene where Neeson talks himself down from a flight of hallucinatory rage and panic with the calming mantra of "I am a scientist," four years before the GBV song was recorded.)

I will get out to see Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness eventually - after I stop testing positive, say. Meantime, the rest of you might want to check out Darkman - especially since there may be a reboot/ sequel underway, which Neeson himself might return to (I have not seen the two direct-to-video sequels to Darkman, but have heard they are not great; neither involve Raimi or Neeson).

Darkman has grown in my estimation since the last time I saw it - a film well worth seeking out. I gather it can be rent or bought for five bucks via Prime; I have no better ideas, but it's very visual and the DVD doesn't look so hot, so I recommend the highest-def version you can access!