Anyway, this week sees the third and, thankfully, final instalment of the series with 1991's "Deadly Nightshade", a welding together of the TV episodes "Ghost In The Machine" and "Deadly Nightshade" focusing on Central City's other crimefighting hero Nightshade. Once more unto the breach then dear friends, let's get this over with shall we?...
The story begins in 1955 when Central City's pre-Flash crimefighter Nightshade is involved in a confrontation with the villainous video technology obsessed Ghost and his assistant the Ghostess. The trio have a showdown at the Ghost's lair after he threatens to blow up the city centre if he isn't paid $1 million by midnight but in the melee the building is set on fire. Nightshade escapes and carries Ghostess to safety but the Ghost is presumed dead.
In truth though, he's escaped down a secret tunnel where he's built a cryogenic freezing chamber which he aims to defrost himself from in 1999 to witness the new millennium when he reasons that technology will have caught up with him. However, the vibrations from the door slamming knock the digits out slightly and he ends up waking up in 1990 instead (I was hoping for some sort of Evil Dead 3 scenario in this bit where Ash wakes up 100 years too late after drinking too much sleeping potion but sadly not).
Getting to grips with the new world around him, the Ghost recruits a couple of local hoodlums who are jacking machines in an amusement arcade to be his goons as well as recruiting Ghostess (now in her fifties working as a nightclub singer) and his one-time chief technological assistant Russell to help him once again. Their first act is to raid Central City's TV studios where a police sponsored telethon is taking place which Barry Allen, Tina McGee and Julio Mendez are all helping out with. The presence of the Flash there means that at least nobody is hurt but Ghost and his henchmen still make off with a load of equipment.
The gang's next target is STAR Labs where Tina and Barry work but they walk straight into a trap with the Flash ambushing them. However, Ghost traps him under a laser which is moving in ever decreasing circles. To the surprise of everyone, the Nightshade then shows up but while he manages to take out Russell with his trademark tranquiliser dart, Ghost then shoots him in the leg and flees. Flash manages to use his superhuman speed to reach out and turn off the laser before helping Nightshade who he realises is Dr Desmond Powell, a friend of both his and Officer Garfield's from the hospital. The pair escape to Nightshade's lair where Flash learns his backstory - Powell was a vigilante back in the 1950s but prided himself on never taking any lives (hence the darts rather than bullets). After the case with the Ghost when it appeared that Ghost had died in the fire, he was so devastated that he left his crimefighting ways behind.
Meanwhile, Ghost has set up his lair again and is planning to rig himself into the Central City electricity grid and cause everything to short out (as demonstrated on some traffic lights in the city centre). Using information given by Ghostess (who's got disillusioned with Ghost now being 35 years younger than her and even more demented than he was originally), Flash and Nightshade track him to his lair. Initially, Ghost manages to grab Flash and pull him inside the grid with him but Nightshade rescues him and pulls out the wires leaving Ghost forever stuck in the machine in a catatonic state a la Tresh from Generation X.
A few months later (ie in the second episode), the police are investigating the kidnapping of a wealthy heiress Felicia Kane by a hackneyed group of commie terrorists (complete with Che Guevara poster on the wall of their hideout). While on a phonecall to the lair, Commissioner Garfield suddenly hears shrieks as a masked vigilante bearing more than a passing resemblance to the Nightshade (except with glowing red eye goggles) bursts into the lair and guns the kidnappers down. Barry, who's been helping with the phone tap, turns into the Flash and races over there but he's too late only being able to free the decidedly traumatised Felicia.
When Barry finds out that Felicia has been saying the Flash's name over and over again upon interrogation, he realises that he's now the number one suspect in the case and decides to track down Dr Powell and ask for his advice, en route revealing his identity. The pair decide to do some recon at an old snitch's bar only to find that the new Deadly Nightshade has been there already and shot the owner who's just got out from serving a 20 year stretch in prison.
Through various deductions, Barry and Des work out that the Deadly Nightshade is a client of Des', Curtis Bohanan. Bohanan is the son of a mobster from the '50s who was originally brought down by Nightshade and has been wracked with guilt and trying to atone for his father's actions ever since. However, he has now moved beyond donating money to charity and started actually seeking down and killing those involved in illegal activities in a twisted tribute to Nightshade. Basically think an ultra-unhinged version of Tony Stark and you wouldn't be far off.
We see the Deadly Nightshade in action when Barry takes a psychiatrist from Cooper's department, Rebecca Frost, who had previously thought the Flash to be responsible for the killings until Kane's testimony that it was the Nightshade who was responsible along with the Deadly Nightshade sending a tape into Central City TV and attempting to gun down their newscaster Joe Klein, proved otherwise. The lawyer representing the revolutionaries who kidnapped Kane overhears them talking and deduces that Barry is the Flash - however, as he's on his way over to confront them, he's gunned down in cold blood by Deadly Nightshade. Barry turns into the Flash and tries to give chase but DN's car drops a load of tyre-bursting spikes which Barry treads on, temporarily putting him out of action.
The flipside, of course, is that Lieutenant Garfield has finally deduced that Cooper is Nightshade and arrests him believing him to be responsible for the murders. Barry turns into the Flash to go and bust him out only to find that Deadly Nightshade has got there first and kidnapped Cooper.
Tracing him back to his mansion, Barry confronts Curtis who tries to persuade Nightshade and Flash to join him in an ultraviolent vigilante task force. When they refuse, he unveils his newest weapon, a robotic suit of armour (see what I mean about evil Tony Stark?) which allows him to move just as fast as the Flash and gives him superior strength. However, Nightshade manages to nail Deadly Nightshade with a tranquiliser dart in the neck allowing Barry to short-circuit the suit and leave Bohanan as easy pickings for the cops to arrest later before rebuilding the hidden exit to Nightshade's lair in a scene unintentionally amusingly reminiscent of the bit in Superman 4 where Superman rebuilds the Great Wall of China using really bad special FX. The end of the film sees Powell finally hanging up his old Nightshade duds with book and film offers on the table for him and Barry taking Frost out on a proper date. And that, as they say, is that.
The third film in the Flash series is...well, probably the middle one I guess. Like its two predecessors, it suffers from not having aged particularly well, some clunky dialogue and the first half with the Ghost is eminently forgettable. However, the introduction of the Deadly Nightshade in the second episode...oops, sorry, second half of the film at least takes it off in a bit more of a dark direction and, while it doesn't exactly salvage it, at least it makes it a bit more watchable.
The Flash TV series was cancelled after its first run in 1991 but this isn't quite the last we'll be seeing of Barry Allen before his revival as part of the Justice League in recent times - the Flash would star in another TV series before the '90s was out which, unbelievably, made this one look like a lost classic. But that's another horror story for another time...
FINAL RATING: ⚡⚡⚡⚡ (4/10)
CURRENT DC FILM TABLE
1. Batman (1989) (8/10)
2. Superman (1978) (8/10)
3. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
4. Batman (1966) (8/10)
5. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
6. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
7. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
8. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
9. The Flash 2 - Revenge Of The Trickster (1991) (4/10)
10. The Flash 3 - Deadly Nightshade (1991) (4/10)
11. Wonder Woman Returns (1977) (4/10)
12. The Flash (1990) (4/10)
13. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
14. The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) (2/10)
15. Superman 4 - The Quest For Peace (1987) (2/10)
16. Supergirl (1984) (2/10)
NEXT WEEK: Back to the big leagues as we look at Batman Returns...
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