Anyone who grew up in the late 1980s and early 90s is bound to have some questionable role models. Elder generations should just be pleased there aren't a host of twentysomethings looking like this, or this. Films of that era offered an impressionable child nothing better than a series of cookie-cutter, clean-cut American teens to aspire to – still aping Luke rather than the far more desirable Han. So it should be no surprise that I was drawn to Tim Curry's scenery-chewing, gloriously designed turn as the Lord of Darkness, in Ridley Scott's failed epic (or should that be epic failure) Legend.
Thinking about it now, it makes perfect sense – the natural end point to a series of man-crushes on a progressively more insidious stream of ersatz male mentors. Perhaps it all began with Terence Stamp – and the endless TV reruns of Superman 2. As a youngster I'm sure it's the hero with the kiss curl you're supposed to imitate, but I was more concerned with instructing unimpressed classmates to kneel before Zod.
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Stamp's carefully crafted facial hair, costume cut to the waist and of course the cut-glass English accent were the perfect counterpoint to the blandest of all-American superheroes.
As I approached my teenage years, it was Kiefer Sutherland and his succession of snarling, sneery performances that captivated. It all came to an end with A Few Good Men, by which point he was too old for the act to look anything other than petulant – and so he duly retired to obscurity until Jack Bauer was born. But he was at his best as the mysteriously enticing David in Lost Boys.
Everyone else may have wanted to join the two Coreys as one of the Frog brothers – but I wanted nothing more than to follow Kiefer into eternal life. While I may never have been tempted to copy the haircut so expertly modelled by him and his crew in the film (the admiration in which Lost Boys is held may explain the mullet's brief revival a few years ago), it certainly provides the answer as to why I have a fascination with Chinese takeaways served in those American-style paper boxes.
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As teenagehood really caught hold, it was an all-black uniform and a futile attempt to embody Christian Slater as JD in Heathers. Channelling a young Jack Nicholson – and who wouldn't want to be a young Jack? – Slater was effortlessly cool, with a stream of quotable lines. He nailed the agony of school life while seemingly coasting along unaffected by its horrors. School is tortuous for most in some way or other – and Slater is able to enact our revenge fantasy on the jocks and cheerleaders of the typical American high school, so alien yet so familiar to a Brit. Of course, he's horribly self-absorbed, as only someone in the midst of puberty can be. Masterminding a string of murders and a high-school bomb plot that would never see the light of a projector post-Columbine, he attempts to prove the point that "the only place different social types can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven". In retrospect, a quick look at Thatcher's Britain proved the point far more effectively.
Slater's style of nihilism is a little too naive to stick with in adulthood – a perfect snapshot of a particular time in life. Tim Curry, on the other hand, is for ever. If all the other performances above have an element of camp, none can match the master. A recognisable face from Rocky Horror, it's his voice, and his laugh, that leap out at you from beneath the makeup in Legend. If I was supposed to empathise with a pre-dental work Tom Cruise as Jack, or the insipidly stupid Princess Lili (Mia Sara), then the screenwriters might perhaps want to look at the shout-at-your-screen dumb decisions they force on the characters to get the plot moving.
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Instead, it's the deep, at first unseen, voice of Curry that lifts the film – dragging you along until he's revealed in all his bright-red, horny glory. Presumably we're supposed to be rooting for Jack and Lili, and the return of summer to the ludicrous, fairytale middle ages – but I've always rather liked the snow, and frankly those two deserved what was coming to them. When the film reaches its denouement, Curry is in full flow – and he's irresistible. Not only has Lili gone from the above to the below under his stewardship (a definite improvement) but he's a huge, red, demon thing! With hooves! And giant black horns!
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And anyway, he may start out with the aim of wreaking havoc on the world, but by film's end all he really wants is love and companionship – what could be more admirable than that? While the film's heroes remain unchanged by events, a boringly perfect, all-white couple, Darkness shifts from his selfish, destructive appetites to a desire to love and be loved. He's the ultimate role model of how our wants shift as we mature. And did I mention he's a bloody massive horny red devil? I suppose I should have grown up by now – but if you ask me it still doesn't get any cooler than that.
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Curry would go on to countless other film roles – including another iconic turn as Pennywise in It – but in Legend he was at his best, shaping the imagination of a young, impressionable Londoner into something twisted – a heart "black and full of hate" – waiting to be enraptured by my very own Lili, and teaching me that while blowing everything up may seem cool when you're young, it's your relationships with other people that really matter in the end.
