THE DARK AVENGER (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I thought I knew all of the failed TV-pilots of the 20th century that involved superhero-like characters. Yet the Agents of Streaming managed to unearth this curiosity, which supposedly appeared the same year as Sam Raimi's theatrical DARKMAN.

In my DARKMAN review, I addressed an assortment of possible influences on that film. There's probably next to no information out there about the genesis of DARK AVENGER, though it wouldn't be surprising if the director and writer (both well-traveled TV talents, with the latter being the creator of the series HUNTER) just whipped AVENGER out in response to a general impression of DARKMAN, rather than with the intention of literal emulation. The titular Avenger (Leigh Lawson) is disfigured in a rather more mundane manner than Darkman, in that the Avenger has lost one arm and half of his face. In his vigilante identity he sports an artificial arm (complete with a taser-gimmick) and a half-mask over his scars, much like the Gerard Butler Phantom of the Opera. The Avenger unlike Darkman cherishes no hope of undoing his freakish appearance, and where Darkman leaves behind a bereaved girlfriend who believes him dead for a time, the Avenger leaves behind both a former wife and a little girl-child, both of whom continue to think him dead by movie's end. 

Since AVENGER is a TV-film, it doesn't have the budget to indulge in the sort of hyperkinetic feats seen in the Raimi film. But since it's also less than 90 minutes long, writer Frank Lupo dispenses with any long recapitulation of the crusader's origin. Through the shadowy sentinel's dialogue with his tech-aide-- a smart-mouthed former lady crook named Rae (Maggie Han) -- we learn that the Avenger was once crusading judge Paul Cain, and that his gangland enemies ordered him knocked off. With Rae's help Cain survived, but since he no longer felt capable of living a normal life, he dedicated his existence to fighting crime. That said, on a couple of occasions he shows up at the house where his daughter lives, and leaves her a gift of flowers, just to feel some sense of connection. But that's about all the emotional tumult we get from this character. 

The strongest scenes are at the beginning, when the Dark Avenger succors a woman being intimidated by a criminal gang holding her brother hostage. Director Guy Magar, who mostly did TV-episodes, does a nice job of building tension as the small clique of thugs are driven to distraction by the hero's Shadow-style spookiness. Then the rest of the flick becomes jumbled between an arc concerning the assassin who tried to kill Judge Cain, and an arc about a young man falsely accused of being a serial killer named the Grim Reaper. Even having just watched the movie, I couldn't even follow who the real Reaper was supposed to have been. The most impressive scene in the telefilm's latter half concerns the assassin, who suspects the Avenger's identity and so kidnaps Judge Cain's daughter. The hero saves his daughter, but she doesn't recognize him due to his mask and is grossed out by his forbidding appearance. Back at home and in bed that night, she fantasizes that the spirit of her dead father will protect her from "the monster."

I doubt AVENGER would have made a very good series, though Lawson and Han had decent chemistry. Robert Vaughn appears as a crime-boss in just one scene. Possibly the producers hoped that if the pilot engendered a series, they might have been able to sign him on as a regular in order to profit from his relative star-power. Lupo works in a number of superheroic references to The Lone Ranger, "atomic batteries to power," and (of all things) Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.