David Boreanaz

Edward Furlong was so wired at the end of the long days and nights that made up the filming of THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER that there was only one way he could unwind. “After filming I’d go home, jerk off a couple of times and then I’d be fine.”

Furlong laughs at his off-the-cuff, off-color remark during his afternoon Fango interview. There’s a bit of the smart-aleck in his remarks and, despite being on the fast track to 30, one can sense a bit of the teen he was when he got his big break in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. Both attitudes are much in evidence when he explains why he took up the offer to play the latest incarnation of the Crow in what has become an increasingly lackluster franchise.

“It was cool,” says Furlong. “I was going to be able to put on leather pants and KISS makeup and go around kicking people’s asses. I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to play a superhero.’ Even though this was part four, I felt I could bring something new to it. I wanted to be the pissed-off Crow, a sort of antihero. I just saw a lot of things I felt I could do with the character.”

Taking on the Crow role required a deep reach into the acting bag for Furlong, who’s best known for grittily down-to-Earth roles in the likes of T2, ANIMAL FACTORY and AMERICAN HISTORY X. “I’m used to playing realistic characters in realistic situations,” he notes. “The Crow is such a mythological character that it was definitely a stretch. It was tough trying to relate to coming back from the dead and kicking serious ass, and it was a challenge. But I spent so much time, mentally and physically, getting into Jimmy’s head that I believe audiences are going to buy into all this.”

Directed by Lance (SIX STRING SAMURAI) Mungia from a script by Mungia, Jeff Most and Sean Hood, THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER (debuting on DVD July 19 from Dimension Home Video) focuses on ex-con Jimmy Cuervo (Furlong) as he attempts to lead a straight life in a small Southwestern mining community and to establish a relationship with local Native American girl Lily (WRONG TURN’s Emmanuelle Chriqui). The couple run afoul of Luc Crash (ANGEL’s David Boreanaz) and his gang of satanic bikers; Crash has designs on becoming an immortal demon, and part of the ritual involved necessitates the killing of Jimmy and Lily. In death, Jimmy rekindles the spirit of the Crow, and he returns to the land of the living to avenge the murders and to stop Crash from completing the ritual. Filmed in Utah on a five-week shooting schedule, WICKED PRAYER also stars Tara (ALONE IN THE DARK) Reid and Dennis (LAND OF THE DEAD) Hopper.

After agreeing to do WICKED PRAYER, Furlong sat down with producer Most and watched the first three CROW movies to get into that back-from-the-dead-and-out-for-Revenge state of mind. “Watching those movies just got me all hyped up,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘Goddamn it! I can do that!’ When I put on the Crow makeup and trenchcoat for the first time, I felt I was filling some mighty big shoes. There are fans out there who take this franchise real seriously. I wanted the CROW people to like me.”

To that end, the actor and Mungia spent plenty of time refining the script and getting Furlong’s character to a place where he was satisfied with it. He also spent three months getting his self-described “skinny white ass” into Crow fighting shape. “I had to get my body more limber so I could look like I was able to perform martial arts,” Furlong says. “We were shooting an action movie in five weeks, which is really hard. So we went over all the action sequences in detail. By the time we began filming, I had a good idea of how the fights were going to happen and how I was going to perform those scenes.”

Given the nature of the Crow mythos, Furlong was well aware that he would only get one shot at this character. “I couldn’t come back for CROW 5,” he notes. “That’s just the way the concept works. But knowing that I would not be back made it a lot easier to go balls-out.”

And balls-out he went, though the actor reports that THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER was easily the toughest film he’s ever made. “There was nothing funny about it,” he says. “It was a hard shoot. It was 14 hours at a time, almost completely at night. Throughout the entire movie, I was intent on keeping this pissed-off persona. It was exhausting, but I figured that [holding onto] the rage and revenge thing was the best way to go with the role.”

Despite his many recent forays into independent genre fare, also including Asylum’s supernatural chiller INTERMEDIO and the recently completed religious/paranormal drama THE VISITATION, Furlong doesn’t feel that he has moved onto a horror-and-fantasy career track. “I don’t really think too much about the direction I want to go in,” he says. “All I want to do is just keep paying my bills.”

Given that attitude, it is not too surprising that Furlong has remained a competent working actor rather that a reigning superstar. Furlong attributes much of his status in Hollywood to his working-man’s ethic. “I just love doing what I do,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to be a superstar. I love doing all sorts of different roles and, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to branch out in different directions. After a while, you just can’t help but see the whole thing as a job, something that just puts food on the table. Sure, it’s the greatest job you can have, but I don’t take it all that seriously. I never thought I was actually going to have a career. I thought T2 was going to be a one-shot thing and that was going to be it. Every time I make a movie, I assume that’s going to be my last one. I always think the worst. I guess I’m a bit of a cynic.”

But all things being equal, Furlong can’t complain. “I have no complaints about the way my career has gone. So far so good. I’m still rocking and rolling and I’m still happy. I’ve seen a lot of people who were the same age I was when I started out who are not working anymore. I consider myself very lucky to have survived to this point.”

With THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER less than a week from release at the time of this interview, Furlong admits a sense of relief that a project he started nearly two years ago will finally see the light of day. “It’s always a relief when something comes out. Now it’s time to let it go and let other people make up their own minds about it.”