Black Scorpion is a 1995 comedy-action film starring Joan Severance as the eponymous costumed crime fighter. Roger Corman was the executive producer, and it was originally released on the Showtime cable network as part of the Roger Corman Presents series.
The film concerns the comic book style adventures of Darcy Walker, a police detective whose secret identity is the Black Scorpion, a superhero vigilante for justice. The Black Scorpion does not have any actual super powers but, like Batman, she fights evildoers with a combination of martial arts, great agility and strength, and many technological devices, including a high powered, specially equipped car. And like the Batman TV series of the 1960s, Black Scorpion is a work of camp, using deliberately exaggerated and unrealistic characters and events to comic effect.
Black Scorpion was turned into a comic book series, published digitally by Devil's Due Digital. There was also a one-off Legend of Isis / Black Scorpion comic published by Bluewater Productions.
Goddamn, I loved me some Black Scorpion back in the early 2000s. This was one of many female-led heroine TV dramas that I was following at the time. Boy, I could write several articles on those various shows - Daria, Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, V.I.P., Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, Star Trek: Voyager, etc. to name a few. I was exposed to the TV show first from late night channel surfing and did some research, only to discover the films a few years after the fact. I only managed to find Black Scorpion II: Aftershock on DVD at first, but recently stumbled onto a copy of the original Black Scorpion movie on DVD in a local video retailer.
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| Michelle Lintel as Black Scorpion (left) and Darcy Walker (bottom-middle) Joan Severance as Black Scorpion (right) and Darcy Walker (top-middle) |
Why do I like the Black Scorpion? Well outside of how awesome and if I may add smokin' hot that Michelle Lintel looked in the costume (sorry Joan Severance, but Lintel blows you away in the looks department...), I just adored the adult-style campiness of it all. I grew up on the Batman '66 stuff with Adam West (who even guest-stars as a villain in this series, God rest his soul) and this was a nice throwback to that era of superhero narratives, with an adult touch to it. To say that people complain that there's not enough female superheroes, then they have definitely haven't seen this. Just as a word of caution, the films feature some minor, yet brief nudity in terms of a few topless scenes, but the TV series is pretty much PG for the most part, outside of some noteworthy Playboy/Playmate models guest-starring as some of the villains of the week.
In present day, Black Scorpion has a bit of a cult following as you don't hear too many people talk about the character anymore nor even know that she exists. I still plan on picking up that box set of the complete TV series though. A simple Google search can easily find a few uploads of the various episodes across YouTube and DailyMotion, but I want my own copy to cherish the memories.
Once I do, I should do a binge marathon just for laughs... and review the series at some point.
Until then, do yourself a favor and check out the Black Scorpion.
Until then, do yourself a favor and check out the Black Scorpion.
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