A legend lives on – Unseen River Phoenix film Dark Blood to be released next year says director
1993 was the year that River Phoenix died. I was 14-years-old, which is pretty young and while he was older than me, he was only 23, which is still criminally young.
Hollywood has a history of bight young stars whose tragic short lives turns them into legends and River Phoenix, like a modern day James Dean, was one of them. The problem of course is that stars that die so young leave so little behind for their fans to enjoy. James Dean was really only in three films…for River Phoenix fans there is a bit more to go on.
River’s first film was 1985’s Explorers, where he and a young Ethan Hawke find an alien, a cute kids movie that still holds up today. Other stand-out performances came in films like Stand By Me a coming of age film based on a Stephen King short story, Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty and The Mosquito Coast where Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren played the young stars parents.
The films that defined his career however were probably Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where he played a young Indiana Jones and My Own Private Idaho. Yet while having worked with Steven Spielberg, it was Gus Van Sant’s film about a gay hustler that turned River Phoenix from Hollywood star into an art house darling. But no matter how you remember him he was a great actor.
For his first feature he was awarded Young Artist Award for Exceptional Performance. His next picture gained him a Jackie Coogan Award, it wasn’t long before nominations from both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes came too – so it’s with much anticipation that news of an unreleased River Phoenix film has been received, a film entitled Dark Blood that is set to hit our screens next year.
Dark Blood was directed by George Sluizer. Almost completed, the film was reported to have had 11 days of filming left when Phoenix died. At the time a somewhat insensitive court case was raised by the producers, an attempt to sue Phoenix’s mother for $6 million because Phoenix had not declared his drug use to the film makers.
Sluizer himself has apparently remained friendly with the Phoenix family and believes with the help of River's brother Joaquin Phoenix, who will provide a voiceover, the film can finally be finished and released to the public. The story concerns a widower living in the desert who rescues a honeymooning couple from trouble. We’ll have to wait and see what it’s like, but the important thing is that we get to see more River Phoenix, and who doesn’t want that?