Last Updated on October 12, 2021
"Evil finds its superhero" with this weekend's release of the film BRIGHTBURN, which is basically a horror take on the Superman origin story. In anticipation of BRIGHTBURN, this edition of the Face-Off series takes a look back at two comic book adaptations that deal with horrific subject matter, Mark A.Z. Dippé's 1997 film SPAWN and Stephen Norrington's BLADE from 1998. One pits its title character against demons while the other character takes on vampires. But which hero does the better job at handling these monstrous threats?
Al Simmons was an assassin for the government agency A6 until he was betrayed and murdered by his boss. He went to Hell for his sins, and there he was offered a deal by the demon Malebolgia: if he agrees to lead an army of Hellspawn in an attack on Heaven, he'll be allowed to return to Earth to see his fiancée one more time. Arriving on Earth five years after his death, Simmons realizes that Hell has equipped him with super powers: among other things, he has the ability to heal very quickly, to control chains that fly out of the armor that covers his body, and to create objects with his flowing cape. Making Simmons this powerful turns out to be a mistake, because he uses his abilities to thwart Malebolgia rather than help him. Played by Michael Jai White (who is buried under burn makeup for most of his scenes), Spawn is a badass with a good heart, so it's easy to side with him even if the film fails at making him very interesting.
Star Wesley Snipes and his collaborators pulled off something surprising with this film – they made Blade likeable. I knew the character from comic books that were published in the '90s and I thought he was a raging prick. He was so focused on wiping out vampires and other supernatural beings that he would even kill his allies to achieve his goal. As played by Snipes, Blade is a stoic badass who has all the strength of a vampire but none of their weaknesses. They call him the Daywalker because sunlight doesn't destroy him. Blade got these abilities in a tragic way, as he was born while his mother was dying from a vampire bite. Now he's dedicated to wiping out vampires, but there is a heart beneath his armor, as is proven when he does his best to save a bitten woman by having his vampire hunting mentor inject her with a garlic serum. With his martial arts skills and various weapons, Blade goes to war with vampires, and it's a lot of fun to watch.
The "big bad" pulling all the strings is the demon Malebolgia, who is brought to life with some of the most appalling CGI ever unleashed on the movie-going public. It's shocking that this was deemed worthy of being projected onto theatre screens. Working for Malebolgia are Simmons' boss Jason Wynn and a creature called The Violator that looks like a diminutive, morbidly obese clown in its default state but can transform into a monstrous beast. Wynn is played by Martin Sheen, who was clearly savoring the chance to play a cartoony bad guy. The makeup effects that allowed John Leguizamo to play the clown version of The Violator are impressive, but the character is highly irritating as he never stops talking and making terrible jokes. Melinda Clarke is also in here as a trigger happy lackey of Wynn's named Priest, but her role is disappointingly small.
Deacon Frost is looked down upon by the higher-ups in vampire society because he's not a pureblood; that is to say, he wasn't born a vampire. He was turned into one. Frost has fully embraced the bloodsucking life, though. He sees humans as nothing but food, and he thinks vampires should make it clear to the public that there's something above people on the food chain. Frost has been a vampire for decades, he's even the one who bit Blade's mom back in 1967, but that hasn't made him any more mature. He's played by Stephen Dorff, who was in his early twenties at the time, and he seems like someone in their early twenties. He's a petulant club kid who just happens to have a shot at taking over the world. He's aided in his endeavor by a small army of vampires, including a couple notable lackeys played by Donal Logue and Arly Jover.
In the first half of the film, all of the enemies Simmons / Spawn takes on are human, and he easily dispatches them with gunfire, rockets, and martial arts skills. In the second half he aims higher, having a couple physical altercations with The Violator in monster mode. One of these fights even takes place in the bowels of a CGI Hell. Between the fights, Spawn and The Violator partake in a vehicular action sequence in which Spawn rides a motorcycle that has been modified by his cape. There's plenty of action in SPAWN, but most of it isn't anything special.
Blade has a whole lot of vampires to fight in this movie, and it never goes too long without throwing some kind of standout action sequence our way. It begins with Blade taking on an entire makeshift nightclub full of vampires, blasting and slashing his way through a couple dozen enemies, and leads to him raiding a vampire stronghold in the end, where he takes on a few dozen more. Apparently Blade single-handedly kills 65 vampires in this movie. When he's not shooting or hacking them or blowing them up, he's battling them in cool martial arts fight scenes.
The fact that the apocalyptic threat in SPAWN is being orchestrated by a mastermind from Hell may be a unique touch, but the threat is an over-the-top action movie cliché beyond that. Wynn is planning to hold the whole world ransom with the threat of unleashing a biological weapon called HEAT-16 that "makes the Ebola virus look like a skin rash". This virus could wipe out the planet very quickly, and Wynn has a device in his chest that will detonate virus-dispersing bombs all over the world if his heart stops. It's a real groaner of a plot, but it gives our hero something major to thwart and is so bad that it's charming.
Deacon Frost conducts a ritual in which "the blood of the daywalker" is used to release the spirits of a dozen pureblood vampires from their body. This awakens the "blood god" La Magra, and according to Frost this thing is going to hit the world like a hurricane, turning anyone caught in its path into a vampire. Creating a whole lot of vampires while also wiping out their food supply. Some viewers might be left confused at how this is supposed to be a good thing for the vampires, as the film doesn't fully explain how Frost intends to keep some people around to feed on.
SPAWN wasn't very well received when it was released and I was never a big fan of it, but it's slightly shocking to see how poorly this movie has aged. There's a lot of "how was this ever acceptable?" atrocious CGI on display, and the movie feels like a bad direct-to-video action flick that somehow had a good amount of money pumped into it. Director Mark A.Z. Dippé tries to make the film emotionally effective while at the same time making everything with the villains cheesy as hell, and having chunks of story told through an awful voiceover narration. SPAWN had potential, but there are so many poor decisions packed into this movie that it's a struggle to get through.
The cinematic branch of Marvel probably wouldn't be where it is today if it weren't for BLADE. Somehow this character's movie succeeded where films about Captain America and The Punisher had previously failed – it was a high quality movie released by a major studio, and it was a well-received success. A character hardly anyone cared about got an awesome movie that I would still count as one of the best comic book movies ever. While I prefer the style Guillermo Del Toro brought to BLADE II, Stephen Norrington did a great job on this first one. It's a shame his directorial career hit a dead end soon after, because he proved here that he could direct the hell out of an action movie.
Spawn seems to be a cool character, so it's a shame that he got stuck in such a disappointing movie. SPAWN is an unpopular film that hasn't aged well at all, while BLADE is a popular film that still holds up more than twenty years down the line from its release, so it wasn't too hard for me to choose a winner in this Face-Off. Spawn creator Todd McFarlane is currently working with Blumhouse Productions to bring his character back to the screen in a new movie with a very different approach, so maybe that one will turn out better.
Do you agree with the outcome of this Face-Off, or do you think SPAWN should have done better against BLADE? Share your thoughts on these films in the comments section below. If you have suggestions for future Face-Off articles, you can send them to [email protected].
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