This Day in Horror History: DARKMAN Opened in 1990
Mike Sprague
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On this day in horror history, The Evil Dead director Sam Raimi’s R-rated superhero flick Darkman with Liam Neeson opened in 1990.
The film came about when Raimi struck a deal with Universal to make his first studio film. Unable to snag the rights to Batman or The Shadow, in true Raimi fashion, he just decided to create his own superhero.
The Darkman design was the work of makeup effects artist Tony Gardner.
The $16M flick was a box office success, snagging almost $49M worldwide. It spawned two Neeson-less direct-to-video sequels, Darkman II: The Return of Durant and Darkman III: Die Darkman Die.
Produced by Robert Tapert, it was written by Raimi with his brother Ivan and Chuck Pfarrer (Navy SEALs, Hard Target) based on a short story by Raimi that paid homage to Universal’s horror films of the 1930s.
The film centers on Peyton Westlake, a scientist who is brutally attacked, disfigured and left for dead by a ruthless mobster, Robert Durant after his girlfriend runs afoul of a corrupt developer. After a failed treatment to cure him of his burn injuries, Westlake develops super-human abilities, which also have the unintended side-effect of rendering him mentally unstable and borderline psychotic. Consumed with vengeance, he decides to hunt down the men responsible for his disfigurement.
The film sports an 84% over on Rotten Tomatoes with a Critics Consensus that reads: Gruesome and deliciously broad, Sam Raimi’s Darkman bears the haunted soulfulness of gothic tragedy while packing the stylistic verve of onomatopoeia springing off a comic strip page.
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