I’m somewhat bewildered over how outraged people have been over the new version of The Crow (don’t call it a remake!). Many are calling it a stain on the legacy of the late, great Brandon Lee, who infamously was killed in an on-set tragedy, but by examining the franchise as a whole, it’s clear that as far as these things go, the franchise has been exploited to death. There have been no less than five Crow movies at this point, and guess what? We’re going to rank them all! That said, as far as our Crow movies ranked list goes, they’re all varying degrees of bad outside the first movie and the new version, which isn’t half bad.
Yes, ladies and germs, they once made a TV version of The Crow, and it was abysmal. You can find out everything you need to know about the show in the video embedded above, but suffice it to say virtually every successful genre movie got a bad TV version made in Canada in the nineties. There was Poltergeist: The Series, F/X: The Series, Highlander: The Series (actually, that one wasn’t so bad) and The Crow: Stairway to Heaven. Despite starring the great Mark Dacascos and earning surprisingly OK reviews, this show only lasted a single season of twenty-two episodes before the version of Eric Draven was allowed to rest in peace.
Some of you may be scratching your heads over this title, as the fourth Crow sequel barely got any release before being dumped to video. But, in 2005, The Weinstein Brothers resurrected the series through their Dimension Films label, basing the new movie on a graphic novel by Norman Partridge. With cult director Lance Mungia of Six String Samurai at the helm, the hope might have been that this scrappy sequel would win back fans of the original, but it was not meant to be. While star Edward Furlong does a fine job in the early scenes of Wicked Prayer, once he rises from the dead and becomes The Crow, he comes off as slight and laughable, and Mungia’s pseudo-spaghetti western tone feels less like Sergio Leone and more like a (bad) Robert Rodriguez riff. At least David Boreanaz is around to have a whale of a time as the movie’s villain, Luc Crash (his lover, played by Tara Reid, is named Byrne – get it – Crash & Burn?), and Dennis Hopper plays a satanic priest named – and I’m not making this up – El Niño.
Unlike Wicked Prayer, this was always intended to be a major theatrical release. But, in this era, The Weinstein Bros had a habit of shelving movies indefinitely or releasing them direct-to-video if test screenings weren’t good. This went the DTV route, and the director, Bharat Nalluri, didn’t direct another movie for eight years, later reinventing himself as a director of prestige fare such as Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day and The Man Who Invented Christmas. As such, this is a pretty bad entry into the franchise, with some laughably dated aspects, such as a bad riff on The Matrix’s bullet time, which was all the rage in 2000. But Eric Mabius delivers a decent take on the titular character, with him more of a demonic prankster than a heroic avenger. Plus, there’s Kirsten Dunst in an early role I’m sure she’d love to forget.
Like all the other sequels, this one went through a tortured post-production process, with Harvey “Scissorhands” Weinstein having director Tim Pope’s film cut down to a mere eighty-four minutes. Pope went on record saying that he tried to make a sequel unlike the first movie, only for the Weinstein Bros to change the approach at the eleventh hour, resulting in a disastrous theatrical version that ended a few careers. After this, star Vincent Perez gave up on a Hollywood career, returning to France, where he remained a big star. Like the other movies, though, it does have some good elements, such as the yellow-coloured visual palette, a cool performance by Iggy Pop as one of the villains, and a killer soundtrack. Maybe one day, Pope can reconstruct his original version of the film.
While fans have been sharpening their knives ever since Bill Skarsgard’s look as the title character was revealed, it’s really not that bad. Were it not for the terrible pacing and lacklustre story beats, I think fans would react more positively to this new take on the character, with Skarsgard and villain Danny Huston delivering memorable performances.
Of course, the only movie on this list I’d actually say is legitimately good is Alex Proyas’s original. Fun fact: I was a goth kid many years ago, and we all wanted to look exactly like Brandon Lee in this movie. While the fact that he died is an unimaginable tragedy, his legacy lives on like someone like James Dean or Heath Ledger does, as he’ll always be frozen in time as the romantic avenger Eric Draven. Alex Proyas directed a gorgeous movie with one of the best soundtracks of all time (The Cure’s ‘Burn’ is a particular favourite), plus Michael Wincott played one of the most memorable evil villains of the ’90s, Top Dollar. If you love this movie, and I doubt you’d be reading this column if you don’t, you owe it to yourself to check out the gorgeous new 4K disc from Paramount.
How would you rank The Crow movies? Let us know in the comments!