Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

(1998)

Talk about a trip! Dark City starts as a gritty crime drama set in a 1940’s style film noir city underworld with a mystery that blows the mind more and more with each part that unravels. I don’t want to give ANYTHING away!

Rufus Sewell is our protagonist who stumbles upon the mystery and starts putting things together. It’s great seeing him as a good guy for once. Bruce Spence is among the many strange pale-skinned fadora-wearing weirdos following Rufus around. Keifer Sutherland is also in it but I don’t want to tell you who he plays. Jennifer Connolly is there too!

It’s so good. Very graphic though. Not for the squeamish. It’s not horror per sé. Just very dark subject matter with some blood and what not. I will say, don’t go into this expecting just a gritty crime drama. You’ll be disappointed. This is much more than that.

When I first saw this I had actually watched MST3K’s treatment of “Manos: The Hands of Fate” just before it. In Manos there’s a character named Targo, who speaks in a unique choppy kind of way. In Dark City, Keifer Sutherland speaks in not quite the same way but very similarly. It was hard for my friends and I to overlook the similarities and we found it very humorous. We joked that Targo must have found new work after he left “ThE M-m-A-s-T-e-R”.

Trevor Jones provides a most ominous musical score. You can almost picture the fadora-wearing weirdos participating in the ghastly choir providing the deep resonating masculine vocals. Very spooky and intense.

By the way, if you’re curious, this film has nothing to do with the Amazon Prime series titled “Dark City: The Cleaner”.

Also, don’t watch the trailer for Dark City. Just jump in fresh. It’s a cool trailer and all but seeing the film without any presuppositions is the best way in my opinion. You can watch the trailer later if you must.