Wake Me Up Before You Crow-Crow

Quick impression for you, caw-caw, Bang!, Fuck I’m dead!

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Maybe you should never go back. I watched The Crow last night for the first time since I saw it at the cinema. Maybe I’m a fool for expecting the same frisson of excitement from an entertainment 26 years later, particularly one which was so much of its time, but man, it hasn’t aged very well at all*.

Okay, quick bit of bonus film crit – The Crow really looks the part, it all takes place in a world that seems entirely spun from fires, dry ice, urban decay and rain. Everybody looks far cooler than real people do and the baddie has the best hair of the whole 90s**. Brandon Lee, bless him, is excellent at running around looking skinny and menacing, sorta like an armoured Robert Smith configured for minimal wind resistance.

All so good, all so future-gothic-retro-noir-fi. My problem with The Crow is twofold: first up, it is this violent mean alt-looking film but it then just lightens up and chucks in every action movie cliché there ever was, annoying kid sidekick – check! Jokey black cop friend – check! Secondly, the sexual politics is very of its time shall we say?^ Only nudity in film is a dead female body? check! Protagonist motivated by his girlfriend’s gang rape? check! You’re either a slut or a mum? check! The final fight is oddly reminiscent of the climax of Paddington, which does not suffer by the comparison.

Shame because there is enough here to enjoy, if it had been made a few years later it could have been made a lot grimmer and gnarlier without the bits that reminded me of Lethal Weapon Nude Girl Corpse 4^^. Brandon Lee gives a really good performance and the bit where the baddie and his sister inhale the smoke from one of their victim’s eyeballs is a neat touch, exactly what I want from a film.

Bonus film crit over.

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Someone stuck his blades in all his major organs, in alphabetical order!

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For a film with a famous soundtrack music doesn’t figure massively in the film, yes Medicine and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult are seen on stage in the film, the Cure track is given some prominence, as is the Jane Siberry track at the end, unfortunately. Other than that songs get a few seconds hither and yon, some possibly not even that much. Odd.

The Crow was never released on vinyl until RSD 2018, where copies soon got stupidly expensive which pissed me off inordinately^* as I waited in vain for the price to drop. Ah well, it got rereleased in an edition of 4500 last year on fabulously gothic black vinyl – almost a novelty itself these days and I got one of those.

I hath proclaimed it before but I do really like soundtracks that are made up of a bunch of different tracks from different artists, it seems to be a bit of a lost art. The Crow certainly gives us some of that goodness, plus unlike a lot of such artefacts it has been sequenced really well.

The best track is the opener by the Cure ‘Burn’*^, a great gloomily grooving gravestone of a tune. It has a great baggy groove, a relaxed vocal turn, a gentle chiming guitar solo and a superbly melodramatic vibe; ‘every night I burn, every night I scream your name!’. Proper goth and great value at 6:38 long.

Machines Of Loving Grace come on like the awkward cousin of early NIN and Sisters of Mercy, which is great, the sort of track I’d have on my Lurking-In-Dark-Corners-Of-An-Urban-Hell playlist. Stone Temple Pilots ‘Big Empty’ really does nothing for me at all except fracture the mood a little, but I’m no fan I am afraid, despite the best efforts of several friends.

The Crow wheels out dark royalty then serving up Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against The Machine. NIN win the contest easily, their cover of Joy Division’s ‘Dead Souls’ is atmospheric, restrained and despairing with interesting flourishes and sounds, the latter sounds like a track that was culled from the sessions for their debut for being too humourless; although I am always a bit of a sucker for when Morello makes his guitar go ‘Whi-rr-Wiii-Weeghhh’ like your neighbour’s car alarm at 4am on the third night running. True story.

The Violent Femmes add a deal of class via ‘Color Me Once’, as is to be expected. Rollins Band give us an excellent slo-mo cover of Suicide’s ‘Ghostrider’, which surprised me this time around. Perfect for sound tracking a fight scene. Helmet’s ‘Milktoast’ doesn’t sound as good here as it does on Betty. Pantera cover 1537-faves Poison Idea’s ‘The Badge’ and give it a lot of heaviness but mislay all the speed and righteous anger of the original somewhere along the way, blunting it.

Digging a little deeper The Crow throw For Love Not Lisa at us next with the excellent ‘Slip Slide Meeting’ – what an excellent band they were, I had mostly forgotten about them – there’s a CD in one of the crates in my attic. This is a great track too where they come on like a more metal Jane’s Addiction. Sadly FLNL never made it onto vinyl, a product of their times.

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult have just used up their allotted portion of this review with their band name alone. Hey, they’re in the film at least, coming on like a sexy Ministry, but not as good.

Then chugging into the denouement we get Jesus And Mary Chain ‘Snakedriver’ which is a really excellent track, the band stretching their daft image to the very point of parody. The words are daffy but the sound is brilliant.

I've got syphilitic hetro friends in every part of town
I don't hate them but I know them, I don't want them hanging around
I won't roll my bones for every little girl who gets on down

Medicine also make a brief bar room appearance in the film and they’re fine, but I find their ‘Time baby III’ a little on the polite side although it is neat hearing Elizabeth Fraser on guest vocals. The final track is Jane Siberry’s ‘It Can’t Rain All The Time’ and as I’m a positive kind of guy, I’ll leave it there, other than to say judging by the title she certainly didn’t grow up in West Wales.

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So there’s The Crow for ya. Despite a couple of clunkers it is mostly a very good LP indeed. Just the ticket for those times when you fancy yourself as a whiplash-thin, black leather clad, lustrous-haired, revenge-driven creature of the night. Which as a non-whiplash thin, pyjama-clad, balding, harassed wage slave is surprisingly often.

Now I’m off out to play in the sunshine.

1072 Down.

*unlike your humble correspondent, who grows measurably better looking with each passing day.

**as voted for by readers of Screen Meanie magazine.

^totally passed me and my girlfriend by at the time, maybe that’s why she knew no better than to marry me.

^^which is every connoisseur’s choice as worst of the LWNGC franchise.

^*along with the Lost In Translation soundtrack I crave with every fibre of my being, which also has the Jesus And Mary Chain on it.

*^AKA that track I always say ‘what’s this track?’ whenever they start to play it live.