I was brought up watching Bruce Lee films. I was even named after the martial arts legend when I was given the middle name of Lee. I remember the first time I watched Showdown in Little Tokyo in 1991 starring Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee. I knew who Dolph was, he was the big bad Russian from Rocky IV, but I had no idea who this Brandon guy was. It was the early ’90s, and we didn’t have access to the Internet or sites like IMDb to check on an actor. The name Lee is common and so, I never made the connection to Bruce. As far as I knew, this Brandon fella was just some new action star trying to make his way in cheap Hollywood B-movies.

When I watched Rapid Fire in 1992, there were a couple of references to Bruce Lee films, and a very large penny finally dropped. The next time I saw Brandon’s name was on the front page of a newspaper in 1993 saying that he had been killed on the set of a new movie. It was crazy – even before the Internet took off proper, even before crappy news sites began making shitty clickbait articles – the rumours and conspiracies about Brandon’s death began to spread like wildfire. But I don’t want to get into any of that, I want to take a look at the movie franchise that was born from a little-known and very underground series of comics, The Crow.

The hype surrounding The Crow (film) was crazy. Due to Brandon sadly losing his life while making the movie, there was a deep interest in the finished product and the studio even (rather distastefully) made Brandon’s death a part of the marketing by selling it as “his final tragic performance”. I always felt a bit unsure and didn’t really want to watch the film originally. I waited a while until it was released on VHS and I don’t think that I watched The Crow until around 1996. I just didn’t have that morbid curiosity that others had when the film hit cinemas. What with a new The Crow movie now out and it being 30 years since the original was released, I thought that I would do a retrospective of The Crow franchise on the big and little screen.

The Crow (1994)

This is where it all began (aside from the comics and in terms of live-action adaptions). Legend has it that a crow carries the soul from the land of the living to the land of the dead. However, if a soul is unsettled, that a crow can bring a person back to right the wrongs. On Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween, Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his fiancé Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas) are killed by street thugs. One year later, and Eric comes back from the dead to seek out revenge, but with powers from the crow that make him invulnerable. Along the way to getting his revenge, Eric must also take care of Sarah Mohr (Rochelle Davis), a young girl who became close friends with Eric and Shelly before they were killed.

When you boil it down to basics, The Crow is a very simple vigilante/revenge flick. It’s Death Wish with a bit of a supernatural slant. I absolutely loved this when I first saw it and became a bit obsessed with it for several years. The Crow may be a basic revenge tale, but it oozed style. The washed-out colour palate makes it an almost black & white film. Interesting titbit, director Alex Proyas wanted to make the film in black & white so that it was closer to the graphic novel however, the studio balked at the idea and stopped him from doing so. But Alex used a lack of colour (except for the flashbacks) and made it as close to black & white as possible. Then there is the soundtrack, still one of the greatest movie soundtracks ever. The Crow was a coming together of elements that were perfect at the time.

As much as I adored this film through the latter part of the ’90s, I kind of ruined it for myself… I bought and read the original comics (republished as a graphic novel) by James O’Barr in the early 2000s. I very quickly learned how diluted the film is when compared to the source material. I do still enjoy the film, but it is a bastardised mess and is far lesser overall. I had not watched The Crow for close to 20 years before doing this retrospective and even now, I’d still rather re-read the graphic novel than re-watch the film. I’m not too sure that The Crow has honestly held up well, three decades down the line and I think that it most definitely shows its age now. It’s a damn shame that we lost Brandon Lee and all, but I think a lot of people were/are wearing rose-tinted glasses over this film purely because of Brandon’s death, and I include myself in that comment too.

The Crow: City Of Angels (1996)

With the first film being such a hit ($93.7 million box office against a $23 million budget), a sequel was inevitable. When Ashe Corven (Vincent Pérez) and his 8-year-old son, Danny (Eric Acosta) witness the murder of a drug dealer, they are silenced by being killed by a drug lord’s henchmen. Ashe is brought back from the dead by a crow and he seeks his revenge. Only he is helped by a now grown-up Sarah Mohr (Mia Kirshner) who, using her knowledge of the first film’s events, is able to help Ashe come to terms with his bizarre predicament of being dead.

Because I was such a fan of the original film at the time, the idea that they even dared to make a sequel and sully Brandon Lee’s death really pissed me off back then. I watched The Crow: City of Angels once, and only once, back in 1997. I detested it. I have never seen the film again – until doing this retrospective. Watching the flick now as a 47-year-old with a more mature frame of mind, without those rose-tinted glasses and not as an idiotic 20-something, I’m not as pissed off with it. Much like the first film, The Crow: City of Angels is a basic revenge flick. Get used to it, this is what the entire franchise is. I’m fine with them making a sequel that ties into the original – but still does its own thing. It was a good idea to not bring back Eric Draven and recast Brandon Lee. We have a new protagonist who is different enough, but still with that familiarity.

Without my seething anger and misplaced lack of respect attitude muddying my perspective now, I think this is a pretty decent sequel. Vincent Pérez is no Brandon Lee and he lacks the charm, but he is still a great lead and carries the film very well in his own unique way. I think that, in terms of direction and cinematography, The Crow: City of Angels is better than the first film. The soundtrack is good, but not as memorable. The editing is a bit poo though, for reasons I will get to soon. There are even references and connections to the original comics that the first film didn’t have. This is a good sequel and far more enjoyable than I remember it being when I first watched it, but it could’ve been better. The ending is a bit shit. Oh, they also made a video game of the film, it was terrible.

The Crow: City Of Angels – What Could’ve Been

Before I move on, I’d like to explore why The Crow: City of Angels ended up not being as good as it could’ve been. Originally director, Tim Pope and screenplay writer, David S. Goyer envisioned a very different film. They wanted to make a movie that was similar to the original, but still something very different. They wanted it to feel like it was in the same universe and all, but with a divergent story, characters and tone. At one point in the development of this sequel, adult Sarah was going to be the lead and the one who dies, to be brought back by a crow. Instead, they settled on a male lead but changed up the lost love. In the original, Eric lost his fiancé Shelly but in this film, it would be a father losing his son, keeping that similar but different flavour that Tim Pope and David S. Goyer wanted.

At one point, the idea to bring back Top Dollar (Michael Wincott) as a villain was on the table. Yeah, he definitely died at the end of the first film but we are dealing with a franchise that does bring back characters from the dead. As far as I can tell, Top Dollar was going to be brought back as an evil version of the crow and take over the main villain, Judah Earl’s body at the end of the film to do battle with Ashe. Obviously, that idea didn’t make the cut either. With the story revolving around Ashe getting revenge for the murder of his son (and him), there is no love relationship as with the original. The intent was to have Ashe fall in love with Sarah and decide that he wanted to stay in the land of the living with her and not go back to the land of the dead with his son. Now, there are a few elements of this sub-plot still in the released film, but most have been edited out. Due to this, some of the dialogue between Ashe and Sarah now makes little sense in the version we did get.

The original cut of the film that Tim Pope gave to the production studio, Miramax, was said to be around 160 minutes long. The released film is 84 minutes long (or short), so that’s a lot of cut content. The heads of Miramax were Bob and Harvey Weinstein and this is where the major fallout over the film began. The thing about the Weinstein brothers at the time was that they often took films away from directors to re-edited them and The Crow: City of Angels was no exception. Tim Pope’s cut was a vastly different film to the one that was eventually released. Some scenes were in a different order. As an example, there were no flashbacks – this was something that Tim wanted to do to distance his film from the original. Sarah had a lot more to do and was haunted by visions of someone returning from the dead. These visions would torment her and they gave more layers to the character. There were more interactions between Ashe and Sarah that would add depth to their relationship as Ashe revealed more about his past life. There were scenes where Ashe does crazy shit like shoot himself in the head (being invulnerable) to fuck with his victims before he killed them. The violence is much more visceral and closer to what was in the comic books.

Even the lead villain, Judas had more scenes that filled out his backstory. One such scene had him telling Sarah how he faced death himself as a child when he fell into an icy lake. This gives him a connection to the land of the dead that plays into the resolve of the film. There’s another scene where Ashe’s son, Danny shows up to take his father to the land of the dead, but Ashe refuses to go as he wants to save Sarah. Ashe is torn between choosing to go back to death with his son, or staying alive and being with Sarah. There’s better dialogue and an ending that is both dark and poetic. However, all of that was cut by the Weinstein brothers and a 160-minute film became 84 minutes. This edit really pissed off both Tim Pope and David S. Goyer as it removed a lot of the depth that they wanted to go for. There was a mass falling out as the director and screenwriter disowned the film.

There is this fan-made workprint that tries to recreate the film as close to Tim Pope’s original vision (here’s the original screenplay too if you want to read it). The workprint has been re-edited and new scenes added (or as best as they can be given the fact this is fan-made and not officially done). It’s rough, very rough – but it does show how much better the film could’ve been if the Weinstein brothers had not gotten their hands on it. Who knew that Harvey Weinstein raped films as well as women? It would be great to see an official edit made closer to the original vision, but Tim has gone on record saying that he has zero intention of ever doing a director’s cut due to how badly he and David S. Goyer were treated when making the film, he’s still really bitter about the whole thing. Still, the studio could go an Alien 3: Assembly Cut route and do their own official “director’s cut” without the director. But I think it could be a bit of a rights minefield as Miramax (who produced the movie) no longer owns the film rights. I guess we’ll just have to watch the fan-made workprint, read the original screenplay and fill in the gaps ourselves.

The Crow: Stairway To Heaven (1998)

By now, The Crow had become a bit of a franchise – not just in terms of live-action, the original comics had been republished and other The Crow stories had been written too. While The Crow: City of Angels wasn’t as big a box office success as the first film, it did turn a slight profit. So it made sense to see what else they could do with the franchise. Next, instead of another big-screen story, they made a TV show. The Crow: Stairway to Heaven is essentially a remake of the first film, but with a much-expanded plot and cast of characters. The first 2 episodes work as a retelling of the original film with Eric Draven (Mark Dacascos) and Shelly Webster (Sabine Karsenti) being killed. Eric is brought back by a crow while Shelly waits in a kind of limbo, not wanting to move to the land of the dead without Eric.

Pretty much all of the characters from the film return, all played by different actors. The main format of the show is really just a “villain of the week” kind of thing. The episodes are mainly self-contained with Eric having to deal with that week’s bad guy. But there is the continual story of Eric wanting to get back to the land of the dead to be with Shelly once more. The Crow: Stairway to Heaven is very formulaic as with all “villain of the week” type shows. Even so, it still manages to expand on the mythology and even does a few interesting things with it too. Without getting into spoilers, later in the show, Eric is arrested for killing Shelly and faking his own death. I honestly thought this made a lot of grounded sense. If two people had supposedly been murdered and one of them returned with no viable explanation, I’m pretty sure that they would become a major suspect in that murder.

The Crow: Stairway to Heaven only lasted only one season with 22 episodes. It ends on a cliffhanger as the show was geared to return. It received good reviews at the time but the production studio, Polygram was sold to Universal Studios in 1999 and Universal decided not to bring the show back, so the cliffhanger was never resolved. I had never seen an episode of The Crow: Stairway to Heaven until I did this retrospective and honestly, it’s pretty good. I do have a few gripes with it. The low TV budget really comes through and you can tell that the show had ideas that were bigger than they could afford. Most of it is filmed during the day and that just does not work given how dark and gritty The Crow is meant to be. I also think it was too long with 22 episodes as some of them are very samey given the show’s basic – bad guy shows up, Eric deals with bad guy – formula.

Still, there’s a lot to like about it. I thought that Mark Dacascos played an excellent Eric Draven. He is different to Brandon Lee, but still with his own charm and personality. The extension of the mythology was well done (for the most part), they included things from the comics that didn’t make it into the film, like the Skull Cowboy. The music is excellent and the show featured a lot of underground artists. The episodes would even end by telling you what music/artist featured in each episode. The Crow: Stairway to Heaven is a pretty good show, most definitely of its time and I’m glad that I left it this long to finally watch it as I think my misplaced “how dare they disrespect Brandon” attitude that I had back then would’ve blinded my judgement.

The Crow: Salvation (2000)

As with everything with this franchise after the first sequel, I had not seen this one either. This time around Alex Corvis (Eric Mabius) is framed for murdering his girlfriend, Lauren Randall (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe) and given the electric chair. Following a very messy execution, Alex is brought back and given the chance to clear his name and get revenge on the corrupt police who were responsible for Lauren’s death. I’m just going to cut to the chase with this. The Crow: Salvation is bad. The Crow: City of Angels had issues, mainly from the fact that the film was taken away from the director and fucked over by Harvey Weinstein. However, it still had some form of quality. The fan-made workprint proves that the director’s original vision was better. With The Crow: Salvation, and as far as I know, there is no alternate cut – this version was the director’s vision and it is really bad.

The first thing that struck me with this film is that it is a lazy rehash of the original. Say what you like about The Crow: City of Angels, at least it did something different with the plot. The Crow: Salvation does the same man and woman in love, she is raped and killed and he comes back for revenge plot. The only real change is that the bad guys are corrupt cops instead of a street gang. To be fair, this one does bring a handful of new ideas. Unlike the others, Alex is brought back soon after he dies and not a year later. Also, he doesn’t have the iconic make-up look instead, after being electrocuted, his flesh comes off his face leaving him with scars. Oh, and Alex can turn into a crow to get around the city (I think, the editing is not great and it’s not excatly clear what happens). I guess it is an interesting twist that Alex has been framed for murder and that is what gets him killed and all. Other than that, The Crow: Salvation is a lazy film that feels like they just could not be bothered to even attempt to make a good film.

It has been said that this was a straight-to-video release, but that is not 100% true. The Crow: Salvation did see a cinema release first – just not a very big one. The film was shown in a single cinema in Spokane, Washington for just 1 week. Why? It is believed this only happened to fulfil contractual obligations via a loophole. It has also been said that Miramax purposely didn’t support the film in the cinema as they wanted it to bomb. After the very small and short cinema release, it was released to the home market. The Crow: Salvation isn’t a good film but it does have a small number of watchable elements. Eric Mabius in the lead role is really enjoyable and he plays Alex as having fun with his new powers. There are some recognisable and good actors in this too. William “dickless” Atherton, Walton Goggins, Fred Ward and Kirsten Dunst. It’s just a shame that they were lumbered with such a poor film. The Crow: Salvation isn’t a good film at all, but it’s kind of worth one viewing just to see Eric Mabius having so much fun.

The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005)

I just want to repeat something that I said at the end of covering The Crow: Salvation. It isn’t a good film at all, but it’s kind of worth one viewing, at least. The Crow: Wicked Prayer isn’t even worth that. Let me get the basic plot out of the way first. Jimmy Cuervo (Edward Furlong) is an ex-convict living on an Indian reserve (with no Native Americans but loads of Mexicans) after serving time for killing a rapist. So he’s a good ex-con and not a bad one. Jimmy wants to start a new life with his girlfriend, Lilly (Emmanuelle Chriqui) but the two are killed by a local gang of Satanists led by Luc Crash (David Boreanaz) who wants to summon up the devil himself so that he can become the personification of Lucifer… I think. Look, the plot is utter nonsense. Yeah, it still has the franchise staple of a guy being killed and coming back for revenge, in this film that is Edward Furlong’s Jimmy. But it has this Satan worshipers angle that is fucking stupid.

I know that The Crow has always had an element of the supernatural about it, we are talking about a series where a dead person is brought back by a big black bird and all, but is still kept one foot in reality and there have never been any religious factors. The first film may have had a climax in a church, but God never turned up. The franchise has always had a level of verisimilitude even though it dealt with the supernatural. When you start throwing in the devil it really makes no sense. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t even make it all the way through this one, I had to quit watching about 20 minutes before the end and even then, I only got there by splitting the viewing into two parts. I think I watched about 30 minutes before deciding that I had had enough, but I came back the next day with the intent to see it through to the end – but failed. The Crow: Wicked Prayer isn’t a bad film, it’s fucking terrible and the awful plot is only the start of the problems.

By the time this was being filmed, Edward Furlong was trying to get on top of his alcohol and drug addiction problems as he first went into rehab in 2000. Honestly, I was rooting for him to make a successful comeback, but that never happened. Along with the rehab not being much help, this film tanked and his life began to unravel. Edward is horribly miscast as the vengeful anti-hero here and he just does not work at all. He has none of Brandon Lee’s charm, none of Vincent Pérez’s uniqueness, none of Mark Dacascos’s personality and none of Eric Mabius’s fun element. Of all the people to portray a lead in a The Crow film, Edward Furlong gets it all wrong. He keeps doing this thing, whenever he is angry, of gritting his teeth and he looks less like he is full of bitter rage and more like he is straining for a shit. I don’t want to sit here and write crap about Edward, I do like him and know he has faced a lot of personal demons in his life, but he is atrocious in this film.

Still, I can’t put all the blame on the main star, the story here is awful, the dialogue is terrible and much like The Crow: Salvation before it, there is a decent cast that is totally wasted. This film has Tara Reid who is hardly one of Hollywood’s biggest, but she can be very enjoyable in certain roles. The legend that is Danny Trejo plays the father of the murdered girl, and he is utterly wasted. Then there is Dennis Hopper… actual acting royalty. Yeah, Dennis has been in a few stinkers over the years (this being one of them) but he was still one of the biggest actors to ever been in a film in this franchise. So what do they do to him? They put some hair dye on him, put him in make-up that I think is supposed to make him look Mexican (his character is called El Niño) and give him some of the most cringe-worthy dialogue you are going to hear outside of a porn film. As terribly miscast as Edward Furlong is in this film, Dennis Hopper makes him look Oscar-worthy. It’s bad, it is so fucking bad. Oh, and Macy Gray is in this, for some reason, and all this casting does is prove that she is as bad an actor as a singer.

The Crow: Wicked Prayer (based on a novel, which is said to be only slightly better than the film) is by far the worst live-action adaptation of the source material. When people tend to talk shit about The Crow: City of Angels, I’ll always defend it because this film exists and nothing in The Crow franchise is as bad as The Crow: Wicked Prayer. At least, not yet. With this film killing off the franchise for many years there was really no other option than to reboot the franchise. A re-adaption of the original story has been trapped in development hell for many years. Multiple directors and lead actors have come and gone from the project since 2008. As I write this paragraph The Crow (2024) is just a couple of weeks away from being released. I guess that I may as well cover that then.

The Crow (2024)

Unlike many “fans”, I have remained open-minded about this film. The 1994 film is decent, but it still skipped over a lot of what made the source material so damn great. I have longed for a more faithful adaption of the comics since I first read the graphic novel in the early 2000s. So then, does this re-adaption of the source material deliver? While this take keeps the basics of Eric (Bill Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA Twigs) being killed, and Eric coming back for revenge, it makes sizeable changes to the story. I am going to avoid spoilers as much as I can, as this is a new film, but I will need to still to bring up plot points because I’m not sure if any of it makes any sense.

So then, Eric and Shelly (no last names like in the comic) meet at an institution for troubled youths and fall in love. Shelly is being hunted by Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston) a crime lord. Vincent is after Shelly because she has a video that implicates him in his crimes. Oh… and he’s demonically possessed or something. This is where I checked out because the story is utter nonsense. Anyway, Eric and Shelly are eventually found by Vincent’s men and killed. Eric comes back and gets revenge, the end.

Nope, this is absolutely nothing like the source material outside of Eric and Shelly being killed and Eric coming back. This take on The Crow makes an even bigger mess than the 1994 version did. Not only that, it’s boring. There’s an unnecessarily 40-odd minute long set up that introduces Eric and Shelly, them meeting and falling in love, then brings in the demonic bad guy. Then the murder of Eric and Shelly happens, Eric kind of starts his revenge another 10 or so minutes after that, but not really. The real revenge aspect doesn’t kick in until over and hour into the film and he doesn’t fully become The Crow until 15 minutes after that. By which time, the film is almost over and leaves Eric with around 25 minutes to get his revenge proper. That’s not how you do any revenge-based film, never mind a good The Crow flick.

Going back to the ’94 version, you get to the meat of the film in the opening 15 minutes. All of the main characters are introduced, and the set up of Eric and Shelly being killed and Eric coming back is covered. Even better, the comic (which this version is based on as it is not a remake of the ’94 film, but a new adaption of the source material) starts out with Eric already dead and seeking his revenge in the opening few pages. The backstory of what happened is filled in via flashbacks. This new version just draaaaaaaaags on and on before anything even happens. Then, when things do pick up and Eric finally seeks his bloody vengeance, there’s hardly any time left. The big action scene at the opera house is really great. It is massively violent, bloody and graphic… just like the comic. Honestly, this is the best part of the film by far. The problem is that you have to sit through an hour or so of utter dreck and bullshit nonsense story to get to it.

The film references the comics several times, the opening has a white horse caught in some barbed wire. If you have read the comic, then you’ll recognise this scene, but the film does something different with it. There is a kind of Skull Cowboy character called Kronos (Sami Bouajila) who serves as Eric’s spirit guide – but he just does not work in the same way that Skull Cowboy did in the comics and he feels redundant. So, the filmmakers were aware of the comics and do (kind of) refence the source material, but just then decided to piss all over it.

After the great opera house scene and when Eric gets to the big bad guy to kill him, it is horrendous and such a massive anti-climax. Even more so, the actor playing the Vincent role is so badly miscast. This could be the worst bad guy in a The Crow film ever… and remember, Luc Crash from The Crow: Wicked Prayer exists. In fact, that is what this take on the story put me in mind of with all the demonic possession crap. This The Crow is like a mix of all the bad stuff (of which there’s loads) from The Crow: Wicked Prayer and all the bad stuff from The Crow: Salvation mixed together.

As I said, I’m not part of the anti-The Crow crew, I’m not a Brandon Lee’s legacy brigade memeber. Oh, how I wanted to like this, how I wanted it to be a good adaption of the comics, but it is terrible. It may not be as outright awful as The Crow: Wicked Prayer is and it is not as slightly fun (worth one view, at least) as The Crow: Salvation, it sits somewhere in between the two. But in those two film’s defence, they were low-budget, straight-to-video efforts. This The Crow is a big-screen effort with a decent budget. How this film got greenlit, I have no idea. How someone was paid to write such a godawful story is truly stunning. How they could miss the point and soul of the comics so damn much is astonishing. Outside of the bare basics of Eric and Shelly being killed, for Eric to come back – this film has absolutely nothing to do with The Crow. I guarantee that I could fart out a better The Crow screenplay than whoever wrote this shit.

I actually quite liked Bill Skarsgård as Eric (no last name) and thought that of the main actors, he did the best with what he was given. FKA Twigs as Shelly is instantly forgettable and very beige and Danny Huston as the main bad guy, Vincent Roeg is some of the worst casting I have seen in recent years. But the writing is the absolute worst, the story is fucking terrible and it makes zero sense. Whoever wrote the screenplay should give their money back and offer an apology to the fans and to James O’ Barr… especially to James, and the director should never be allowed anywhere near a film set again. The big opera house action scene is fantastic, it really is. But the dull, overly long utter crap journey and bollocks demonic bad guy bullshitery that you are forced to go to to get to it is not worth it. The absolute end of the film sets up a sequel, but there is no way that this film is getting a sequel. I’m willing to put money on this coming to streaming services within the next 6 weeks. It’s going to tank at the box office.

Unmade The Crow Films

When the franchise was really gaining traction in the late ’90 and early 2000s, there were a couple of other The Crow films being talked about that never made it to the big screen. I just want to take a quick look at the films that were never made right here. The first was a film called The Crow 2037: A New World Of Gods And Monsters (the subtitle comes from a line in the 1955 film Bride of Frankenstein) and it was proposed as the third film before The Crow: Salvation was eventually made. Even more interestingly, Rob Zombie (whose music has been featured in the franchise) was hired as the writer and director, and this would’ve been his debut film. There’s this interview that Rob did with Variety back in 1997 where he talks about the project and if you feel like reading, the script for the film is available online. But to save you some time, I’ll offer some highlights. 

As the title suggests, The Crow 2037 was set in the future. A young boy called Basil, and his mother are murdered by Satanitis on Halloween night (because Rob Zombie) and as is the norm for the franchise, the boy is brought back one year later. As an aside, Bride of Frankenstein, the film that the subtitle comes from, is playing on the TV when Basil and his mother are killed. After coming back from the dead, and in a bit of a twist on the formula, Basil does not remember any of his previous life and remains oblivious for about 27 years. In the meantime and now a grown adult, he works as a bounty hunter called a shadow rider (they use horses to get around) and the world has become a post-apocalyptic hellscape that is filled with ghouls. That’s how they are described in the script, ghouls. The main villain is called Damien and it was he who murdered Basil and his mother years before. Basil does not get his memories back of being killed until about halfway through the film. So for a large part of the story, Basil is not even getting his revenge, he’s just a bounty hunter. Of course, Basil eventually tracks down Damien and kills him – the end.

So why didn’t The Crow 2037 get made? The main reason seems to be that the studio were not happy with Rob Zombie’s script as it devieted too much from what the franchise was about –  and it really does too. There’s a good reason why. Rob wrote the script as an original story that had nothing to do with The Crow, he then re-wrote it and added a few elements from the franchise when he was offered the job. When/if you do read the script, it is kind of obvious that this was never written as a The Crow story and it goes off the rails many, many times. After reading the script, I think it could’ve been a good flick – but maybe not a good The Crow film.

There was another film that never got made and unlike The Crow 2037, there is no script that I can find. Anyway, it was called The Crow: Lazarus and was going to be the fourth film before The Crow: Wicked Prayer was made instead. The Crow: Lazarus was going to be a bit of a departure and the studio intended it to be a big-budget return to the big screen after the direct-to-video release of The Crow: Salvation. It was also to have a bit of a hip-hop angle and use the killings of Tupac and Biggie Smalls as inspiration. Screenwriter, James Gibson was hired to come up with the script and James hinted at what the story of The Crow: Lazarus would’ve been when he talked to Bloody Disgusting in 2021.

James Gibson: “So it’s an artist cut down in his prime. The people who killed him have devious motives. So we thought, ‘Okay, let’s have it be kind of what this urban myth is, that it actually was an inside job by the guy he thought was his friend and partner.”

Rapper DMX was to play the lead and according to James, he met with DMX in a hotel room and pitched the idea, DMX loved it and (while smoking a lot of weed) agreed to be the star. This was before James had even begun writing a first draft and just had a basic story idea. I do need to add that James has said that he wrote at least one draft of a script, but I’ve not been able to find it, I have found a few story details. DMX was set to play Lazarus, a massively popular rapper who wants to leave the world of gangsta rap behind and settle down with his pregnant girlfriend, Mary. However, his friend and record producer, Stone (who was to be played by Eminem) does not like the idea of losing his most valuable asset and the two have a bit of a falling out. Lazarus performs a farewell gig and as he, Mary and Stone drive away from the venue in a limo, Mary is killed in a drive-by shooting by a rival rapper (very Tupac/Biggie Smalls) while Lazarus and Stone are hit, but not killed. Lazarus learns that Stone was behind the hit and the two fight each other. Lazarus dies and Stone is badly wounded – but survives. As is the standard for the franchise, Lazarus is brought back by a crow.

Lazarus goes back to the place of the murder and the blood of his girlfriend that hit him turns white and makes the now familiar crow hero makeup, only with the colours reversed (white instead of black). Oh, Stone has his own crow guide, an albino crow. I’m not sure if Stone did actually die and was brought back by this albino crow, I have found two sources that state two different things. One source says that he did die and was brought back to be an evil crow and another source claims that Stone was taken to hospital and survived. But the set-up of both does seem to be that there is now a hero and a villain crow in this one. So of course, Lazarus sets about getting his bloody revenge and makes his way through various henchmen to get to Stone. Along the way, Lazarus’s rampage gets the attention of a familiar face, Officer Albrecht (Ernie Hudson) from the first film. Yes, Albrecht was set to return. The following quote is taken from that previously mentioned Bloody Disgusting interview:

“Albrecht, revealed to have spent time in a psych ward since the events of the first film, sees the crow silhouette underneath and steps back, shaken. He’s seen this before, and knows what he’s likely in for with this particular case. Worse still, he’s only a week out from retirement, and saddled with a jackass of a partner.”

Set to retire soon, Albrecht is dragged into this case of a vigilante killing people all over the city. It all builds to Lazarus tracking down Stone to kill him, only this is when our hero learns that Stone also has the powers that he has from a crow. As the black and albino crow are linked, Lazarus kills his black crow, which also kills the albino crow, which makes both he and Stone vulnerable, which allows Lazaruz to kill Stone – the end.

Honestly, this sounds a million times better of a film than The Crow: Wicked Prayer which we did get. The Crow: Lazarus brought some new ideas that could’ve built on the mythology. So why didn’t we get The Crow: Lazarus? As far as I can tell, budget became an issue and the project just kind of fell by the wayside. The studio decided to go for a low-budget, straight-to-video The Crow: Wicked Prayer instead. I have only given you a few highlights of the story, here’s the much more in-depth Bloody Disgusting interview with screenwriter, James Gibson for you to read. It is crammed with much more detail and story elements.

Oh, and I may as well mention this in passing as it is kind of related to unmade The Crow films. Going back to the very first film and when the idea of making a movie out of James O’Barr’s underground comic was first being pitched, the studio wanted to make it a musical with Michael Jackson playing the lead. That is definitely one The Crow film I’m glad that was never made… cha’mone!

The main problem that The Crow has as a film/TV franchise is the unfortunate death of Brandon Lee. Due to Brandon losing his life while making that first movie, there are overly obsessive fans who dismiss any and everything connected to the film series, and they point-blank refuse to accept anyone else other than Brandon playing the lead role (like I used to back in the late ’90s). The comic book series aside, where there are multiple different takes on the mythology and characters, in terms of live-action, if it’s not Brandon Lee – then it’s not The Crow, according to “fans”. I don’t happen to share this view. Yeah, it was a damn shame what happened, Brandon was one hell of a charismatic actor and The Crow would’ve launched his career after being in shoddy (but fun) B-movies. But… he was just an actor, and no actor will ever be bigger than the character that they play. As callous as that may sound, it is the truth.

I’m all for more versions of The Crow, whether that be other attempts at adapting the original graphic novel with Eric and Shelly’s story, or adaptions of some of the other stories – or even fresh new takes with all new characters. I just love the folklore of the franchise and to me, more of it needs to be told. For years, I have always envisioned the perfect The Crow flick, and it is devilishly simple to do too. You go back to its roots. You go right back to James O’Barr’s original comics and just animate them. Take the graphic novel and use the drawings as storyboards. Get James O’Barr in as the art and animation director, hire a voice cast, lay on some great music and just do an R-rated animated version. Keep the stark back & white style, but throw in a bit of colour here and there – the blood and a few other splashes of colour. You see how great Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse turned out by keeping the comic book style? The Crow should have the same treatment. If I ever win the lottery, I’m hiring an animation team to do a few test scenes from the graphic novel and then I’ll “leak” it onto the Internet to get the attention of the studio and IP holders. I just need my numbers to come up now…