I spent an hour and a half of my weekend watching the fourth installment of The Crow on one of the more desperate TV channels. I willingly admit that it was more enjoyable than doing the laundry I've had piling up for the past week.

According to www.imdb.com, The Crow: Wicked Prayer was nominated for a Cinema Audio Society award for outstanding achievement in sound mixing for DVD original programming. But that's the beauty of watching flicks like this when they pop up on TV instead of researching them beforehand - you don't see the warning lights until after you've been hit by the train.

In my humble opinion, The Crow should never have become a franchise. They call it a "legacy", but we know better.

The original film (which was based on a series of graphic novels with a cult following) became a cult sensation due in part to the tragic and accidental death of Brandon Lee (son of Bruce Lee and an up-and-coming actor and martial artist in his own right) during one of the last days of filming. Brandon and his fiance, Eliza, were going to be married after filming was finished. Their situation made for an eerie parallel with that of the two main characters. I won't get into everything here (check out this site for more information), but nothing stirs up fascination more than when a story becomes bigger than the medium that initially contained it and takes on a life of its own.     

Anyway, ever since, people have been trying to recreate the phenomenon of the original, and doing so with an increasing lack of success. The sequels do not continue the storyline from the first film, but keep retelling that same story with different characters. In summary:

Beautiful, perfect girl falls in love with boy from wrong side of tracks, who has a heart of gold underneath it all. Enter evil villain types, who brutally murder girl and boy for selfish, violent reasons. Boy comes back from dead with the help of a crow. Is now an invincible, undead, Goth warrior who angsts about how much he wants to be reunited with his dead girlfriend while brutally dispatching the evil people who killed them and dispensing his own unique brand of justice. Evil people die, painfully. Justice is served. Boy goes back to being dead and is reunited with girl in field of flowers. 

This time, the part of the dude from the wrong side of the tracks is played by Edward Furlong of Terminator 2 fame. His character's name? Jimmy Cuervo. His girlfriend? She's a Native American named Lilly-Ignites-the-Dawn. Yes. Because ethnic specificity is the missing element that will cause the fourth installment of The Crow to rise on the wings of success. As opposed to, y'know, a decent script that doesn't use Satanism as a plot device.

Which is exactly what it does. Jimmy and Lilly are killed by a cheesy Satanic biker gang (headed by David Boreanaz of Angel and Buffy fame) that considers themselves the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse. Except Luc Crash (Boreanaz's character) isn't content with that - he wants to invite Satan himself to take up residence in his body so he can be, like, superpowerful. And Jimmy and Lilly have to die, because they need Lilly's "perfect blue eyes" to complete the invocation and Jimmy kind of gets in the way.

Jimmy comes back from the dead as The Crow to avenge his and Lilly's deaths and, as a bonus, I guess, save the world from Satan reborn. I was actually impressed with Furlong's performance. The mistake the previous two actors made was trying to be Brandon Lee. Furlong makes The Crow his own, or at least as much as he can, given that the makeup, hairstyle, and costume has remained the same for all three sequels. He has the right overly brooding presence and the necessary touch of snark to his angst. If only the screenwriter had given him some better dialog to work with. My favorite line?

Luc: What's the difference between you and me?

Jimmy: I'm dead.

And the cheesiest line?

Lola (after the invocation has taken place): Luc? Luc?

Luc: Call me Lucifer!

Oh, I get it! Luc could be, like, short for Lucifer! And because the invocation has succeeded, he really *is* Lucifer now! The pun is so subtle, you barely feel it smacking you across the back of the head like a two-by-four with nails in. Is that the best they can come up with?

Sadly, no.

See, Luc's last name is Crash and his girlfriend Lola's last name is Byrne. In case you don't work out the supposed humor in that for yourself, Luc and Lola call each other by their full names in an oddly placed flashback. And then El Nino (Dennis Hopper!), who performs the invocation/Satanic wedding ceremony, refers to them as "Crash and Byrne, back to do some more damage."

I know the cheese is all in good fun, but be careful the way you're swinging around those puns, The Crow: Wicked Prayer. Someone could lose an eye. Or two perfect blue eyes, even.  

The filmmaker gave all the "clarity" to the puns and left very little for the cinematography. For example: 

I'm not quite sure what's going on on the cross behind The Crow and I'm sure I'm better off not knowing. However, he spends a good couple minutes suspended up there, not moving. I couldn't figure out why - after all, he's invincible (as long as nothing happens to the crow that always follows him around), so why doesn't he get down from there and do something?

Apparently, he's dead, but only temporarily, until he gathers enough strength to get down. And then, to restore him to his full power, the local Native Americans have to do the crow dance in a big circle around his nearly-dead crow. No, I'm serious.

He doesn't look dead. He looks like he got tangled up in Grandma's knitting basket. There's no blood, no head-lolling. He's just kind of hanging out while Luc - sorry, Lucifer - and his minions gear up for the Apocalypse.

Boreanaz's interpretation of Satan is interesting. It's like he's reaching for Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice, but misses and lands on a low-budget Vegas magician with an inferiority complex. The inferiority complex is dead-on, though - nothing says Satan like insane jealousy, which comes across pretty darn clearly in lines like, "So God gave trash like you wings. He never gave me [excrement]! [Person who has intercourse with other people]!" He needs more rage and more self-centeredness in order to be truly convincing. That, and Satan would never be that nice to his girlfriend.

Speaking of Satan's girlfriend, Tara Reid (Lola) is very convincing as a burnt-out prostitute with low self-esteem using the dark arts to try and get back some of her dignity. The brief flashback that shows how she was forced into that line of work is cliche to say the least ("How many sexual references can we cram into 30 seconds?), but it does evoke sympathy for her character. And, um, singer Macy Gray plays a fellow prostitute, who is also El Nino's main squeeze. That must be in the top ten of industry jumps that didn't quite make it. 

I won't spoil the entire ending in case any of you also enjoy films that are cinematic trainwrecks. Suffice it to say that evil is vanquished and Jimmy and Lilly get their field of flowers. And I cried. I cried at The Brave Little Toaster, however, so my shedding tears is not necessarily indicative of a brilliant cinematic oeuvre.

If you're a fan of cheese, camp, and poorly written scripts, do consider renting The Crow: Wicked Prayer. Or you could rent Showdown in Little Tokyo - the dialog is more fun, and Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee kick some serious backside. What the heck - live dangerously. Rent them both and have a fondue party.