Black Scorpion (1995)

Throughout the 90s, many superhero or comic-adjacent movies took their cues from (and owed their existence to) Tim Burton’s Batman (1989). Black Scorpion is a 1995 Roger Corman produced cable TV movie directed by Jonathan Winfrey, and it is the rare (only?) post-Burton superhero movie that feels specifically indebted to the horniness of Batman Returns (1992). Darcy Walker (a delightful Joan Severance) is a cop who becomes the vigilante Black Scorpion. Like Batman she has a tragic past incident that helps shape her and also ties into the movie’s villain (with a little bit of Star Wars thrown in). Like Catwoman, Darcy makes a kinky costume and suits up in a fit of passion (except she makes it from her undercover hooker clothes [it's funny how movie cops often go undercover as “street prostitutes” in what usually looks like really expensive fetish gear!]). 

This is a solidly executed, tongue-in-cheek superhero B-movie that separates itself from the rest of the pack by being much sexier. This movie fucks. Darcy and her partner Michael (Bruce Abbott, Re-Animator) have a longtime unresolved romantic tension. When he chases her as Black Scorpion she takes him down and forcefully makes out with him, he’s into it (understandable). Later she tries to make her move as Darcy, but Michael is a wishy washy bitch about it (not understandable!). So after an exciting night of Black Scorpioning, she sneaks into his apartment in costume, grabs him from behind, throws him on the bed and has her way with him! Then when she’s done she zaps him unconscious with her electric scorpion ring and dips.

if we could all be so lucky...

She even pulls a Superman II at the end and uses the villain’s mind control gas to erase Michael’s recent memory of her secret identity! To be fair he unmasked her when she was incapacitated and tried to arrest her… A lot of those elements play much creepier when a male hero does it, but I have to admit I enjoyed the gender flipped version quite a bit.

Outside of the brief sex scene, there is plenty more of Joan Severance looking smokin’ hot in her hooker disguise, the Black Scorpion costume, tight turtlenecks on the police job, and cute casual outfits (including an adorable pink dress).

I love that she isn’t stuck in androgynous cop or girly-girl mode, she gets to have a range of wardrobe appropriate to each situation as tough cop, lovesick partner, or vengeful vigilante. I am not going to argue this is a masterpiece of female representation or anything, but Darcy is competent, dominant, and well-rounded compared to other dumbass-dude written “empowered woman” of a similar flick like Model by Day (1993).

It also distinguishes itself by making Black Scorpion’s Lucius Fox equivalent a jive-talking former car thief played by a goofy Garrett Morris who supplies her with an experimental transforming car. His character Argyle is always on, but on the scale of amusing to embarrassing he leans much more towards amusing than Jimmy “JJ” Walker’s performance in The Guyver. Argyle also has a great running gag where he is shocked to find out Black Scorpion is white, and proceeds to call her White Black Scorpion from then on (which my wife also adopted). Considering the history of Black comic heroes who seemingly always had to have “Black” affixed to their name, that’s a solid bit! I wonder if Garrett “Ant-Man” Morris himself came up with it? The rest of the cops are also comic relief. Chain-smoking Captain Strickland (Stephen Lee, another Stuart Gordon alum from Dolls) is a one-joke character, but he commits to the bit so hard it got a few chuckles out of me. One of the other cops looks a bit like Paul Reubens, but sounds distractingly like Jon Lovitz, so I referred to him as “skinny Jon Lovitz” the whole movie.

The biggest complaint I can think of is that even considering the TV-movie budget and tongue-in-cheek tone, the supervillain’s costume is pretty cheesy and cheap looking. Then again, most of the wardrobe budget probably went to Darcy/Black Scorpion and all those outfits I loved, in which case it was money well spent! This was about as successful as a made-for-Showtime movie could be, so it spawned a sequel movie in 1997 and a TV series in 2001. The TV series lost Joan Severance as the lead and since it aired on Sci-Fi Channel I imagine it was nowhere near as spicy. Severance stuck around for the sequel movie, though, so we will be watching that and hoping that like the first movie it's “a sexy romp!” (my wife’s pull quote for this one).