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We here at Two Assholes love good movies. But sometimes, I get a desire to see how the other half lives. Don’t ask me why, maybe it’s because I’m a masochist, maybe it’s too much Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I like to watch bad movies. I’m not talking about your typical Ashley Judd thriller or latest rom-com tripe, but truly bad movies, movies that give The Rocky Horror Picture Show a run for it’s B-movie crown. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Crow, so when I heard about the fourth movie in the series, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, I couldn’t resist. This is a direct-to-video (a good sign) movie held for 2 years in Miramax’s vault (ohh, it’s getting better) “starring” Edward Furlong, David Boreanaz, and Tara Reid (I believe we have a winner). Would it be a worthy successor to the original? Probably not. Would it be a night of terrible cheesy fun? Guaranteed.

***Spoilers (If you care)*** If you’ve seen the first Crow, you’ve seen them all. The plot of every single one involves someone getting killed in a horrible manner, usually with a loved one, and being resurrected by a crow to take revenge. It worked in the first one because Brandon Lee gave a hell of a performance as Eric Draven and because it was a fresh idea. Every Crow movie since then has been a re-hash, so you probably wonder how they can stretch it to make it work for 4 films. (I had heard that Rob Zombie wanted to make one about a boy and his mother being killed. The Crow brings the boy back, but he can’t find his killer, so he uses his invincibility to become a bounty hunter, and eventually finds the killer 15 years later. Sounded interesting, but the people behind The Crow are now afraid of originality, so instead we get this.) Well, apparently the writers of this movie decided to make it work by making the plot impossible to follow. As near as I can tell, the plot involves Luc Crash, played by David Boreanaz, attempting to become an immortal demon with the help of his gang. As his gang is named after the four horsemen, Crash, AKA Death, is the only one to get a proper name. The rest of his gang consists of Yuji “I’m an Asian Native American” Okumoto as Pestilence, Tito “Ultimate Fighting Chump” Ortiz as Famine, Marcus “I was in The Matrix” Chong as War, and Tara “Frankenboob” Reid as Crash’s girlfriend Lola Byrne (That’s right, Crash and Byrne. I don’t remember that horseman, but oh well). Crash gets to become a demon by killing some people, having a funky prayer said over him, killing some more people, then having sex with his girlfriend. I don’t know, maybe it was written so that only gerbils would understand, but that’s what I got of the plot.

Our first stop in the demonology is to kill a Native American Indian woman named Lilly and her boyfriend Jimmy Cuervo (I guess his cousin Jose was busy). Jimmy is our hero, played by Edward Furlong in one of his rare sober periods. While he didn’t appear to be whacked out on coke in this movie, I’m sure cocaine had something to do with his decision to be in this movie. It seems Luc and Jimmy had some connection in the past. They either grew up together, or they were in prison together, I’m not sure, and I don’t think the movie is either. Anyway, the horsey gang kills these two, which gives Tara Reid the power to see “visions” (oh yeah, definitely no coke there). Crash sends two of his goons to dispose of the bodies while he goes to party. The goons proceed to the town dump, where they stick the bodies in a fridge, push the fridge into a puddle, and go home to celebrate a job well done.

This wouldn’t be a Crow movie if Jimmy stayed dead, so in a scene obviously meant to recall Brandon Lee clawing his way out of his own grave in the original while still maintaining the high production values in this film, Jimmy steps out of a fridge in the dump. He realizes the situation he’s in and paints himself exactly like every Crow character since Eric Draven has. It’s like they all watched the original and said, “I ain’t got time for all this ‘comin’-up-with-my-own-costume’ crap, I got some revenging to do!” Mr. Cuervo takes his scary self to hunt down those who did him wrong (he seriously is scary looking, because if you saw this guy coming at you in a dark alley you’d know he was whacked out on coke) and manages to catch Pestilence at a bar. After threatening him by throwing a drink straw at him, Jimmy manages to electrocute him by slamming his head into a light socket. Screenwriters not on drugs can’t come up with this stuff, people. Meanwhile, Crash and his minions go to wreck the local town party. Tito Ortiz decides to show how crazy he is by dressing up in a catcher’s mask and bashing a bunch of balloons with a baseball bat while all 20 people in attendance run around and scream (lamest town party ever. I guess even the Hollywood extras knew to stay away from this piece if they ever wanted a non-speaking part in another movie). Jimmy shows up and banters with Ange…I mean Crash. He manages to kill Famine, but Crash distracts him with PARTY DECORATIONS OF ENTRAPMENT, injures the crow (the bird one) and gets away while Jimmy is trying to escape the streamers.

While all this is going on, Lilly’s brother is looking for Jimmy. It seems he’s a cop, and he and his father (played by DANNY TREJO!) didn’t approve of her dating Jimmy. You see, when they were younger Jimmy accidentally killed a football player who was trying to rape Lilly, and they don’t like that she still loves him. Naturally, since they loved each other, Lilly’s brother assumes Jimmy killed her (or maybe he took one look at Jimmy in his crow makeup and figured he killed her on a drug bender). He rounds up a posse of people of various western ethnic backgrounds and goes trying to find Jimmy. Crash and his girlfriend pull up to what appears to be a church to finish the next step in the demon ritual while War stays outside to go Bat-shit-fucking-Loco and kill anything that comes near the church. Inside, it’s revealed that it’s not a church at all, but a whorehouse where Crash’s girlfriend used to work. And who runs it, who’s the big pimp-daddy here? None other than Dennis Freaking Hopper. And Doomgaze, my buddy, let me tell you, if you didn’t like Hopper in Land of the Dead because he was too restrained, this is the movie for you. Here Dennis is doing an impression of Gary Oldman from True Romance, which is to say he’s playing a white man acting like a black man. No, that’s not quite right, he’s playing Dennis Hopper playing a white man acting like a black man. Crash and his girlfriend stop Dennis’ scenery-chewing while they still have enough to finish the movie, and he says a prayer/marriage ritual in some of the most bizarrely stereotypical African-American language I’ve ever heard. They then proceed to kill everyone in the whorehouse. About this time the southwest posse shows up at the church just as Jimmy does. A “huge” battle erupts between Crash, Jimmy, War, the hookers, the posse, and the audience’s sanity.

In any other movie, this would be the climax, but not here. After approximately 30,000 bullets, 10 tons of explosives, some bad acting, and one ridiculously cheesy supernatural martial arts fight, War and Dennis Hopper are dead, Jimmy is crucified, Crash is on his way to complete the ritual, and I’m confused. The posse realizes that Jimmy is the Crow, as no one else could have been crucified by a satanic gang?!? (Maybe they saw the first one too and recognize Jimmy’s makeup job.) Anyway, since they’re all “Indians” they do a magical resurrection dance to heal the crow (both the bird and the coke-head man-child). I’m only 1/16 Native American and even I was offended at this point. Jimmy awakens and goes to stop Crash from completing the ritual and becoming a demon god. Crash and his girlfriend are in a cemetery when Jimmy shows up. All he has to do to complete the ritual is have sex with her, but he decides to fight Jimmy instead (Then again, if my choices were to have sex with Tara Reid or beat the crap out of Edward Furlong, I know which choice I’d make. Besides, I don’t know if demon gods are immune to STD’s). Ms. Reid responds to this by uttering the classic line “If the sun comes up and the spells undone, you’re gonna be a worthless punk and I’ll just be a piece of worthless white trash!” Sorry Tara, no satanic ritual can help with that. So another cheesy supernatural martial arts fight later, Crash is dead (in another scene clearly meant to invoke the original), his girlfriend is arrested by Lilly’s brother (after she starts praying the “Hail Mary” for no damn reason whatsoever), and Jimmy is on his way to the afterlife to be with Lilly.

This movie is terrible, though to be honest you don’t watch a movie like this expecting anything else. Edward Furlong is about as menacing as a wet sock. In his crow costume, he looks like Pee-Wee Herman’s little goth brother. I think he should have realized that old Hollywood advice: Once you’ve worked with Schwarzenegger, you’ve peaked. (Want proof that I love cheesy movies? I didn’t even have to look up how to spell Schwarzenegger.) I can’t tell if David Boreanaz is either hamming it up for a quick paycheck or if he’s a terrible actor. He gives some excellent performances on Angel, but then again I’ve never seen Sarah Michelle Gellar act decently in anything but Buffy, so maybe Joss Whedon just has a talent for pulling good performances out of crappy actors. I kind of think David looked at this and said, “It may not be good, but it’ll be fun!” His delivery makes some cheesy lines even better. For example, after killing Jimmy and Lilly, he tells his companions about the feast to celebrate: “Deviled ham, deviled eggs, and for dessert, devil’s food cake!” Or my fiancée’s favorite line, referring to completing the ceremony with his girlfriend: “I’m a horny little devil!” I don’t know if the screenwriters expected those lines to be serious, but I get the feeling David knew they weren’t so he cranked it up to 11. He gives an ‘Angelus after too much caffeine’ performance that makes you think he’s in on the joke. Tara Reid continues the excellent performance streak she’s given in such movies as Alone in the Dark and real life. She’s not good for much except looking at, and if she continues her alcohol binges she won’t be good for that much longer. Yuji Okumoto is such a good actor, no body knows who he is, and his resume confirms that. He played such unforgettable roles as “Shy Bomber” in Pearl Harbor and “Japanese Family” in the Truman Show. Tito Ortiz, a former UFC fighter, proves that as an actor he’s a believable UFC fighter. I’d continue ripping on him, but this review is getting too long as it is. Marcus Chong, who believed he was as important to the success of The Matrix as Keanu Reeves, has to be a good actor to convince himself of that. Unfortunately, he doesn’t put on that great a performance here. The fact that he isn’t given much to work with probably affected that, as all he does in the entire movie is kill people and give vaguely familiar quotes that have anything at any stretch to do with war. Seriously, if you typed “war” into google, you’d have everything he said in the movie. The entire gang seems less like a group of henchmen and more like a group of teens playing video games in their parents’ basement and listening to Limp Bizkit. Where’s Al Leong when you need him (man that guy can hench)? Danny Trejo does so little in this movie, I’m surprised they got such a big name actor (by B-movie standards anyway). The one bright spot in acting comes from Dennis Hopper, who is so fun being Dennis Hopper that I had a smile whenever he was on screen.

All in all, the movie is fun to watch if you like terrible movies. It’s rotten to the core, but it tastes so good to the right palette. It’s a shame that this didn’t get made before MST3K went off the air, because I’d love to see Crow do his version of the Crow while Tom Servo does his best Angel impression.

Drop a comment down there and let me know what you think of this review. Fun? Too long? Not weird enough? If you like it, I might be goaded into doing a review of one of my favorite bad movies; Street Fighter, the misbegotten video game movie starring Raul Julia and Van Damme’s head-knot.