The Crow

The Crow (1994) is about a murdered musician returning for revenge, and its lead actor really died during production. Eric Draven and his fiancée are killed on the eve of Halloween. A year later he comes out of his grave. He is wounded and heals; a crow keeps him tied to life. He finds the killers one by one. It comes from James O'Barr's comic. O'Barr wrote it after his own fiancée was killed by a drunk driver; the source of the story is a real grief. On 31 March 1993, eight days from the end of the shoot, Brandon Lee was shot during a scene. A fragment of a dummy round used earlier for close ups had stayed lodged in the barrel. The blank charge drove it out. Lee died after hours of surgery. His wedding was two weeks away. With his family's consent the film was completed: the script was reworked, a double was used, and some shots were produced with digital compositing methods that were new at the time. Lee was Bruce Lee's son. The visual language is permanently rain, black and neon; Alex Proyas carried that texture on into Dark City. The soundtrack keeps the early nineties alternative scene almost as an archive. It runs 102 minutes. Good for: gothic action, the nineties, and comic adaptations. Less good for: the violence is dark, the subject is grief, and knowing the real story makes it heavier to watch.