When comic book creator James O’Barr licensed The Crow to a movie studio for $1,500, he never expected it to get made, let alone become an enduring gothic touchstone.
Written gradually over nine years, starting in 1980, the original comic book story follows a young man named Eric Draven who returns from the dead to avenge the murder of his fiancée at the hands of a gang. The black-and-white panels drip with anguish, as Eric, face painted in a sinister scowl, stalks the rainy streets of a retro-noir city.
The film version, released in 1994, took this vision to the masses and became a cult classic. Under the eye of Australian director Alex Proyas, and starring Brandon Lee – son of 70s Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee – as bloodthirsty antihero Eric, it plugged into the zeitgeist, riding on the coattails of the emerging wave of industrial bands and playing a part in a 90s goth revival.
But The Crow also became infamous for a tragic event: Brandon Lee was killed during filming, due to an improperly loaded stunt gun, two weeks before he was due to get married.
The Crow was born out of tragedy. James O’Barr wrote it to help him get to grips with his own grief; his fiancée was killed by a drunk driver while they were still in high school.
“She was the polar opposite of me. I was dark and moody and sullen and hostile, and she was pure sunshine and happiness,” he recalls today. “My life was changed irrevocably, in one instant, for no good reason. All those negative traits in me were amplified after that.”
Following the loss of his fiancée, O’Barr enlisted in the Marines and was posted to Berlin. It was 1978, the height of the Cold War. He yearned for a routine to block out his misery, yet the isolation of military life only drove him further into his own head.
“I became big and strong and physically imposing, but the desired effect was not reached,” he remembers. “In fact, it was probably amplified a little more because I internalised it rather than speak out about it. Luckily, I had art as therapy.”
He began creating The Crow in 1980, at the same time as he discovered the downbeat post-punk and goth bands coming out of England – Joy Division, The Cure, The Comsat Angels and Bauhaus. He drew Eric Draven as the latter band’s singer, Peter Murphy, with a touch of Iggy Pop. The dank streets of Berlin also fed into his work.
“The populace was either angry about the outcome of World War II, or they were ashamed,” he says. “It was on everyone’s face, but it was not spoken of. I don’t have any recollections of the sun ever shining. It was a good visual analogy to the post-punk and darkwave stuff that I was listening to.”
After six years in Berlin’s darkness, O’Barr’s dad passed away, and he was reassigned to Michigan in 1984 to take care of his mother. Three years later, he got a job at the Ford dealership in Detroit, working on cars by day and drawing until two in the morning. The Crow was picked up by a local publisher and enjoyed a small run.
The Crow comic book came out in 1989 and became a cult success, though not enough for O’Barr to give up his day job. He was still working at Ford in 1992 when Hollywood showed interest in turning it into a film. He thought the violence and intense romance would put people off adapting it, but Tim Burton’s Batman had found worldwide success, and studios were hoping to cash in with similar films.
Brandon Lee was a rising star in Hollywood. Good-looking and charismatic, he appeared in 1992 action film Rapid Fire, but was keen to step out of his father’s shadow and prove he could do more than fight scenes. At 28 years old, he had a bright future in front of him, and he was due to be married a few weeks after filming.
The cameras began rolling in early 1993. O’Barr had initially been sceptical of Brandon as Eric, thinking the actor “too sweet” to play the vengeful role, but was won over when he saw him in the distinctive make-up and leather pants. O’Barr, who was on set most of the time, was struck by Lee’s humility.
“The whole film was shot at night in miserable conditions, in freezing rain,” he says. “Between takes, everyone would go huddle around a 50-gallon oil drum filled with wood, and start a fire to get warm, like vagrants do. A lot of the crew had brought their kids with them, and instead of going back to his trailer, Brandon would go over and spend time with them. He was personable, charming and genuine.”
On March 31, 1993, tragedy struck. Lee was filming a scene where Draven is shot and killed in his apartment, but when the take ended, the actor didn’t get up. The tip of a dummy .44 slug had become jammed in the barrel of the gun, and the force of the blank had sent it into his abdomen. He was rushed to hospital, but surgery could not save him from the injuries.
Alex Proyas, traumatised, flew home to Australia for a month. James O’Barr was on a promo trip in Detroit when he heard the news. He couldn’t bring himself to return.
“It felt amazing to be on the set and seeing the things I had drawn come to life,” he recalls. “But with Brandon’s death, it was like I fell back into that place I was when I initially began it. It’s a love story, but it’s couched in pain.”
Rumours began to fly; Lee had been killed on the lot, in mysterious circumstances, echoing his father’s passing. Bruce Lee had died of a brain swelling shortly before the release of his own breakthrough film, 1973 martial arts classic Enter The Dragon. Although the coroner had declared it as ‘death by misadventure’, unfounded theories circulated that he was the victim of the mob or a demonic curse.
With permission from Brandon’s fiancée and family, the crew returned to work two months later and finished the film in his memory. Aside from some script changes, they leaned on effects company Dream Quest to bring their vision to life, adding $8million to the $15million budget. Dream Quest used then-cutting-edge techniques to create seven new scenes, comprising 52 shots. In two cases, they digitally superimposed Lee’s face onto a body double. The footage of Lee’s death was destroyed.
When The Crow was released in May 1994, it was a surprise hit, becoming the Number One film at the box office on its week of release, and grossing more than $50 million domestically. Critics praised its dark visuals, although some felt it borrowed too heavily from existing films and wouldn’t have amounted to anything if it weren’t for fate’s cruel hand. ‘Were it not for Brandon Lee’s death… the movie itself would be little more than your basic heavy-metal occult revenge thriller, complete with rain-swept futuristic dreamscapes right out of Blade Runner and Batman,’ read one review in Entertainment Weekly.
Despite the ghoulish intrigue surrounding its production (there had been a string of minor accidents on set even before Brandon’s death), much of its success was down to timing – alternative culture was on the rise, and it exploded with the movie, which was accompanied by a zeitgeist-capturing soundtrack featuring The Cure, Nine Inch Nails and Stone Temple Pilots.
“It hit the American market just at the right time, where people were discovering post-punk – or what was called industrial in America,” says O’Barr. “Things were happening with the music and the dark fashion, and then The Crow came out and pushed it into the mainstream. So now you were cool to be wearing eyeliner, whereas you were a freak two years earlier.”
“Eric was my hero,” says former Him vocalist turned solo star Ville Valo. “The film happened right after grunge broke and was really grungy in a cool way. There were a few darker films, but I don’t think there was anything considered ‘gothic’ coming out of Hollywood at the time, and it had a bit of rock’n’roll. Eric was carrying a crow and a guitar.”
The Crow spawned a series of forgettable sequels, and a poorly received reboot in 2024 starring Bill Skarsgård in the title role. Yet nothing has dented the enduring appeal of the original. The Crow, like Eric Draven himself, proves there is life after death.
