Randall Boyll – Darkman

[dem bones]

Randall Boyll – Darkman (Titan, 1990)

Blurb:
Once he had a normal life, a beautiful girlfriend and a brilliant medical career – creating synthetic skin for accident victims…

Then he was a victim himself, brutally attacked by sadistic criminals – his face and body burned beyond recognition…

Now, he walks the night, searching for the woman he loves. A man who looks like a monster, he hopes to salvage his scorched flesh… and avenge those who destroyed his life…

EVERY SOUL HAS A DARK SIDE. THIS TIME IT WALKS LIKE A MAN[/color]

i've another of the Darkman paperbacks, In The Face Of Death, never felt the slightest inclination to read it, and i stuck with Boyll's novelisation of Shocker past the halfway point before giving up underwhelmed, but Darkman is that rare thing, an adaptation which stands up as a decent pulp horror novel in its own right.

Brilliant, thoroughly nice young scientist Dr. Peyton Westlake is at work on a synthetic skin which will bring hope to the hideously disfigured. He's reached the just not quite there yet stage when he has the misfortune to interrupt a break in at the laboratory. Julie Hastings, his lawyer girlfriend, has dug up compelling evidence linking bent business mogul Louis Strack Jr. to mobster Robert G. Durant, and not unnaturally, Strack wants it destroyed. Durant and his super-sadistic hoods, first murder Westlake's inoffensive assistant, Yakitito, then try out some gratuitous, Grand Guignol torture techniques on the doctor before detonating the building. Nobody could survive such a conflagration. That Westlake (what's left of him) does is thanks to a fast-thinking surgeon who, by removing various sensory bits and bobs, renders him completely impervious to pain!

After discharging himself from Hospital, Wes plucks up the courage to approach Julie, but one glimpse of his ruined face and she doesn't even attempt to hide her revulsion. This is hardly Julie's fault; she truly loves Wes but doesn't even recognise him in this charred lump of meat, and nor should she. Wes was pronounced dead on the night of the explosion.

So Westlake commandeers a derelict soap factory, gets to work on Lab #2, broods over his revenge.

The good news is, the liquid skin solution works fantastically well, and he's soon tarted himself up to resemble the dashed handsome Westlake of old. The bad news? the skin goes all melty after 99 minutes exposure to the light and it's a bastard to reapply. At least he has his beloved Julie back, but how can he stop her from catching him in one of his awkward Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber moments? Best he worry about that when the time comes and knuckle down to the business of vengeance!

Although Darkman is not without its share of surprisingly graphic, satisfyingly nasty moments, it's real strength lies in the core love story. Here are two likable characters thrown into an appalling situation, and when Julie realises that the burns victim and Wes are one and the same, can her devotion to her soul mate overcome her repugnance at his appearance? As for the Darkman, consumed by misery and murderous rage, just how much is left of Dr. Westlake? It's really very sad in a "when the Slimebeast gets killed at the end" kind of way.