MovieChat Forums > Darkman (1990) Discussion > All right, this might be a dumb question...

All right, this might be a dumb question...

posted 17 years ago by Zcompany
8 replies | jump to latest

I haven't seen this in years, but I do remember something that just wasn't right. I probably missed something, but why is it that we see Westlake's grave immediately after his death scene and the gravedigger clearly states that he was "blown to tiny little pieces" and that "it didn't take him long to bury that."

Then a minute later, we see him all in one piece (so to speak) posted on one of those rotating devices at a burn unit.

What's the story?

[–] amain1 17 years ago

What the gravedigger actually says is, "All they found was an ear. Tiny little piece...didn't take me long to bury that." Obviously Westlake lost one of his ears in the explosion, which is confirmed when we finally see his face.

[–] Zcompany 17 years ago

Aaaaah, gotcha. Thank you for clearing that up for me.

[–] jason031572 17 years ago

Actually, I just watched it and you can see he has two ears in the elevator scene at the end of the movie. Now, either the piece they found was part of his ear, or it was the ear from his lab asistant.

[–] CFXAZ 16 years ago

Then a minute later, we see him all in one piece (so to speak) posted on one of those rotating devices at a burn unit.

The nurse also clearly states that he washed up on the lake shore without any ID and that they find a LOT of homeless people that way. This helps lead us into believing that he was thought to be just another homeless person that no one cared to ID.

Really though, the hospital staff and police would certainly make the connection - and who finds badly burned bodies on the water front and takes them to the hospital themselves without calling 911?!

Initial Success, or Complete Failure

[–] XtroTerrestial 16 years ago

*SPOILER*

Another question is how could they have a funeral for Peyton the following day?

[–] neal2zod 16 years ago

The funeral wasn't the next day. I remember an article on the movie in Premiere magazine all about that one shot, and Sam Raimi said it was meant to show that Frances McDormand's character was still in shock about Peyton's days/weeks later at the funeral.

[–] stevenackerman69 14 years ago

They apparently only found that piece of ear that they buried. They didn't know that he had been blown up intact mostly and landed in the ocean and was transferred to the burn unit.

[–] Voodooochild 14 years ago

You're all forgetting that he had a lab assistant who was killed & presumably left in there by the criminals. I'm guessing that the police found that body & assumed it was Peyton's