This music video features Anthrax doing what they did best, rocking it. Like many of the older metal bands, Anthrax usually kept it simple when it came to their music videos. Instead of going for gimmicks or a lot of bells and whistles, they just picked up their instruments and played as fast and as loud as they could. It’s not a bad approach. Though this video does feature clips of cattle and construction, it still puts the band front and center.
The song was recorded and this music video was shot during the time that John Bush was lead singer of the band, replacing Joey Belladonna after the latter was fired. Belladonna, of course, would later rejoin the band.
Director David Hogan has done videos for everyone from Blues Traveler to BareNaked Ladies to Shania Twain. He also directed Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire and served as a 2nd unit director on films like the third Alien film and Batman Forever.
A few weeks back I was disappointed to find out that I had not seen The Crow: City Of Angels like I thought I had way back in the 90s. Even worse, I discovered they made two more sequels. And for the final cherry on top, they were available to watch. So let me share a little bit from each film, and Barb Wire because I watched it at the same time.
The Crow: City Of Angels (1996, dir. Tim Pope)
Unsurprisingly, the film isn’t very good. It’s a pale rehash of the first film. I hear there’s a print that included a bunch of material that wound up the cutting room floor. I didn’t see it, so I can’t speak to it.
Getting to the screenshot, while I know the villain is impaled before getting Tony Goldwyn’s death from Ghost (1990), I want to know why Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) is playing in The Crow universe. It made sense for Michael Myers to reference it in Resurrection. I don’t know what it’s doing here. The Weinsteins produced both films, so maybe they just really liked it.
The Crow: Salvation (2000, dir. Bharat Nalluri)
Of the the three sequels to The Crow, this is the one I’ll remember the most. This one has a guy who is falsely accused of murdering his girlfriend. He is executed in the electric chair, and the crow brings him back. This movie would probably be memorable simply on the grounds that it has Kirsten Dunst, William Atherton, and Fred Ward. Not to me. They’re icing on the cake. The accused killer is played by Eric Mabius. Yes, the actor who plays Hallmark’s wound-tighter-than-a-drum postal worker from the Signed, Sealed, Delivered movies plays the person brought back to seek vengeance. I find that to be amazing.
The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005, dir. Lance Mungia)
Edward Furlong as The Crow. Why not? This movie also brings us Tara Reid as a person who steals someone’s ability to see the future. We have a satanic cult run by David Boreanaz. We have Danny Trejo and Dennis Hopper for good measure. The film sets up like it’s going to be like a spaghetti western, which I guess these movie were to begin with seeing as the plots aren’t too dissimilar to something like Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! (1967). It’s also the only sequel that includes a bunch of scenes during the day. However, all of it comes together as a mess that never really goes anywhere.
Here’s a bonus shot to show you how much they were trying to go with the spaghetti western look.
And yes, the other members of his gang are called War, Pestilence, and Famine.
Barb Wire (1996, dir. David Hogan)
I remember when Barb Wire came out. Baywatch was everywhere expect on my TV. Pamela was unavoidable, at least if you were a kid at the time. It only stuck with me because of the “Don’t call me babe” line that they played in the trailers. I didn’t actually see it till over 20 years later…sort of.
Have you seen Casablanca (1942)? It’s the same movie with a fictional world rather than the real one. It doesn’t even pretend that it isn’t. I know that at heart Star Wars did same kind of thing. The letters of transit are the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo is Rick, and so on and so forth. But Star Wars threw in some Kurosawa and made it all feel exciting and new. It made it its own. The only thing Barb Wire adds is post-apocalypse…and boobs. It’s Pamela Anderson. They come with the package.
You can go through almost every key element or character from Casablanca and find it here. The one upside is that WWII is replaced by a civil war that starts in 2017 and Pamela gives us an eerily accurate description of the real world in the couple of years that followed 2017.
James Dunn (Keenan Ivory Wayans) is an army sergeant with a talent for getting framed for crimes that he didn’t commit.
During the Gulf War, Dunn’s superior officer orders Dunn to shoot a shepherd boy. Dunn refuses and, when the two men get into a fight over a gun, his commanding officer is accidentally shot and killed. The army refuses to listen to Dunn’s explanation. He’s convinced of murder and sentenced to death. However, while Dunn is on his way to Leavenworth, he is rescued by Col. Casey (Jon Voight). Casey explains that he is giving Dunn a chance to join a super secret vigilante group that targets evil doers. Yes, Dunn will be expected to assassinate people but they’ll all be bad. With no other options available to him, Dunn agrees to work for Casey.
Dunn’s first target is the corrupt owner of a pharmaceutical company (played by Robert Culp) but — surprise — it turns out that the target was actually the First Lady and that the entire plan was to set up Dunn as a patsy! Now a “most wanted” fugitive, Dunn is forced to go on the run with a doctor (Jill Hennessy) who recorded the assassination with a camcorder. (Remember, Most Wanted was made during the days of the landline phones.) With Casey and his second-in-command (played by Wolfgang Bodison) determined to kill him and with only Paul Sorvino (as the head of the FBI) doubting the official story, Dunn has to find a way to reveal the truth.
Though he was subsequently overshadowed by his brothers, Damon and Marlon, Keenan Ivory Wayans was a really big deal in the 90s. As the man behind In Living Color, he proved that black comedians and writers could be just as funny (and, in many cases, funnier) than their white counterparts over at Saturday Night Live. It can be argued Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, David Alan Grier, and Jennifer Lopez would not have the careers that they have today if not for Keenan Ivory Wayans. (All of them first found fame as members of the In Living Color ensemble, Carrey, Foxx, and Grier as cast members and Lopez as a “fly girl.”) Most Wanted was Wayans attempt to transform himself into an action hero (perhaps not coincidentally, a year before Most Wanted was released, Damon Wayans had a minor hit with Bulletproof).
Keenan Ivory Wayans not only starred in Most Wanted but he also wrote the script and it’s interesting just how straight the action is played. It would be natural to expect Wayans to turn the movie into a spoof but there’s little intentional humor to be found in Most Wanted. Most Wanted takes itself seriously and the end result is an adequate but hardly memorable action movie, with Wayans jumping off of buildings and fighting off the bad guys. The action scenes are well-shot if not particularly imaginative but, unfortunately, Wayans doesn’t really have the screen presence necessary to be a believable action hero. Both the character of James Dunn and Wayans’s performance are just too bland to really be compelling. Far more interesting are Jon Voight and Paul Sorvino, who are both entertainingly hammy in their roles.
There’s one good scene in Most Wanted, where Dunn finds himself being chased by what appears to be the entire population of Los Angeles. Otherwise, this one is adequate but forgettable.
Through the Shattered Lens 