If one were to take all the guitar-driven, angst-ridden alt-rock songs of the early 1990s, mash them up, and turn them into a movie, that movie would be The Crow. Full of dark skies, foreboding urban streets, smoke, fire, anger, and leather, it is a Goth-rock fantasy of eternal love and righteous vengeance made tragically immortal by the death of its star, Brandon Lee, during production. The son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, who himself died tragically young of a cerebral edema a month before Enter the Dragon (1973) made him an international icon, Brandon’s accidental on-set death by a mismanaged prop gun propelled the film into a kind of morbid infamy, although it has enough sturm und drang to stand on its own.

The story takes place over a few days in an unnamed city that appears to be the descendent of the hellish future Los Angeles in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). Perpetually awash in rain and smog, this city is overrun by a criminal gang headed by the gravel-voiced Top Dollar (Michael Wincott), who sends his anarchic minions out into the streets every night before Halloween to set fires, thus creating a nefarious new holiday known as Devil’s Night. Top Dollar’s henchmen—T-Bird (David Patrick Kelly), Skank (Angel David), Tin Tin (Laurence Mason), and Funboy (Michael Massee)—pay a visit one night to Eric Draven (Lee) and his fiancée Shelly (Sofia Shinas), who had the gall to complain about the condition of their apartment. She is raped and beaten into a coma, and he is shot and flung out the window to his death.

Shelly dies from her injuries at the hospital, and exactly a year later Eric emerges from his grave, tearing out of the ground with the assistance of a supernatural crow, which is described in the voice-over narration by Sarah (Rochelle Davis), an adolescent girl Eric and Shelly befriended, as a mystical carrier of the dead who can bring a soul back when “something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can’t rest.” In his resurrected state, Eric is imbued with near indestructibility, and he paints his face into that of a vengeful mime—white skin and streaks of black down his eyes and across his mouth—that give him the appearance of a monster even though he is a bringer of justice against those who are so violent and powerful that literally nothing can be done, least of all by Sgt. Albrecht (Ernie Hudson), a police officer who, along with Sarah, represents one of the few vestiges of human decency in the film.

Much has been made of Brandon Lee’s presence in the film, which is undeniably enhanced by his death, which turns his on-screen death and resurrection into a kind of meta-cinematic fantasy. One has to wonder what the film might have been like had he not been killed, which is a fair question even as it is also unfair to the strength of Lee’s performance (when he was killed, he had finished virtually all of his work on the film, so only a handful of shots had to be created with stand-ins and digital insertion of his face). As Eric, Lee plays not so much a character as an idea, a romantic-Goth revenge fantasy of ultimate retribution in which good, clad in black leather and twisted make-up, deals righteous violence to the truly corrupt and horrific. The screenplay by David J. Schow and John Shirley from the comic book series by James O’Barr, provides Eric with an armament of philosophical one-liners and dark observations that imbue his violence with a sense of righteous purpose. When one character is sent hurtling to his fiery death while repeating a poetic line about “how awful goodness is,” it summarizes the film’s dark moral center.

The Crow was the directorial debut of Alex Proyas, an Australian who had made a name for himself in music videos alongside other emerging directors like David Fincher and Michael Bay (although, ironically, he didn’t direct any moody alt-rock videos, instead creating visuals to go along with song by Yes, Rick Springfield, and Sting). If the look of the film doesn’t stand out like it once did, it is only because there have been so many imitators in its wake, including several sub-par sequels and a recent remake (which I have not seen). Proyas was working simultaneously on his next film, the sci-fi/noir mashup Dark City (1998), and you can see how the two films feed and play off each other visually and tonally. The latter film is a much more complex narrative with deeper and more profound ideas. The Crow is a much simpler affair, using visual style and a pounding soundtrack littered striking guitar riffs from Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, Stone Temple Pilots, and Rage Against the Machine, to dress up a simple revenge story that pushes hard and effectively on our primal buttons. At times it is probably uglier than it needs to be (I am thinking particularly of Top Dollar’s sadistic girlfriend played by Bai Ling, who smacks a bit too much of the evil Asian stereotype), but as a whole The Crow works its grungy magic to impressive effect.

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