Head Canon: Marked For Death (1990)

There are many legends about Steven Seagal. The best one involves him shitting his pants.

On which movie set this stinky tale occurred is still up for debate, but the origin dates back to legendary stuntman Gene LeBell. Or, more accurately, one of Gene LeBell’s students, as the lore's allegedly been passed down (presumably out of class, over beers) at LeBell’s Judo school throughout the years.

The most complete iteration of the legend comes from an interview with former UFC contender Karo Parisyan. Seagal claimed nobody in the history of martial arts (or maybe it was humanity?) could choke him unconscious. Like Cliff Booth calling Bruce Lee’s bullshit, LeBell stepped to the plate, gripped up poor Steven, and forced the self-proclaimed Aikido master to lose consciousness, and then poop himself while in said blacked-out state.

Being a true professional, LeBell went to his grave never publicly confirming the claim, and being a true asshole, Seagal still denies the incident ever occurred. There were rumors of a gag order on set, and that the then-budding superstar, who was still at the start of his career when the beat-down transpired in the early ‘90s, threatened to murder anyone who mentioned it. Still, the scatological campfire story lives on, complete with a category named after it on Bill Simmons’ uber-popular Rewatchables podcast.

This is just one of several stories that have emerged over the course of not only Seagal’s bizarre movie career, but also his existence on Planet Earth. Launched by Hollywood super agent Michael Ovitz, who studied martial arts under the guy who claimed to be the only white man in the world to open his own studio in Japan, Seagal’s path to acting was a weird one to begin with. Ovitz found the instructor so magnetic that he simply had to get him in movies, not knowing he’d be putting the gears in motion for Seagal to eventually become not only Vladimir Putin’s bestie, but also a recognizable mouthpiece for the Russian State when it comes to things like, you know, the War on Ukraine.

Seagal bought into his own bullshit immediately. The opening credits of his first feature, Above the Law (a/k/a Nico, ’88), are laid over a montage of his character’s backstory, which cherry picks pieces of Seagal’s own biography in one of the more bizarre instances of “print the legend” Hollywood history. Featuring actual baby photos of Steven, we’re told that his introductory stand-in, Nico Toscani, saw "a little Japanese man" put on a martial arts display before a Little League game. Toddler Toscani was mesmerized, began learning the discipline himself, and then, with one jump cut, a grown Seagal is teaching class to a studio full of foreign faces. Sound familiar?

Seconds later, we’re dropped into the middle of the jungle, as Nico was part of a Special Forces squad during the Vietnam War. On screen, this would be the first of many times Seagal would play a guy with a shady past as a government operative. Returning to the normal world would be a running theme for his characters, often as a cop (in Hard to Kill [’90] and Out For Justice [’91]) or even as a Navy cook (in Under Siege [’92]). Sometimes he’s standing up for the little men and women in his neighborhood, while at others he’s literally championing Planet Earth itself, as he lectures us about the environment (practically via PowerPoint) at the end of his wackadoo directorial debut, On Deadly Ground (’94).

Are these good deeds atonement for past sins committed in the name of freedom? Possibly. Off-screen, Seagal would often drop dubious hints in interviews that he’d worked for the government (without specifying which branch), committing what one would only assume are war crimes that he’s (per a profile in GQ) “very, very sorry for”. This reliance on mythic militaristic ambiguity is best summed up by R. Lee Ermey’s paid merc, who warns his men hunting Seagal in On Deadly Ground that:

“My guy in D.C. tells me that we are not dealing with a student here, we're dealing with the Professor. Any time the military has an operation that can't fail, they call this guy in to train the troops, OK? He's the kind of guy who would drink a gallon of gasoline so he could piss in your campfire! You could drop this guy off at the Arctic Circle wearing a pair of bikini underwear, without his toothbrush, and tomorrow afternoon he's going to show up at your poolside with a million-dollar smile and fist full of pesos.”

Sure man, if you say so. Meanwhile, Segal hosted SNL in April of ’91, and was later called "the worst host ever” by not only Lorne Michaels, but also cast members David Spade and Tim Meadows. Apparently, he was a massive dick to the writers, treated the comedians like shit, and was, generally, a huge asshole to everyone who worked on the show. Seagal allegedly even went as far as to axe a “Hans and Franz” sketch because one of the muscle-suited morons claimed he could beat Steven up, and nobody talks to Steven Seagal that way.

Things start to go sideways for Steven after On Deadly Ground. Under Siege II: Dark Territory (’96) doesn’t live up to the “Die Hard on a boat” thrills of the OG (plus, BTS reports make it sound like Seagal was rewriting all his lines on the fly). The Glimmer Man (’96) saw him partnering with Keenan Ivory Wayans and chasing a serial killer (not to mention getting hilariously bamboozled out his newfound New Age pacifist clothes by character actor Stephen Tobolowsky). Fire Down Below (’97) saw him playing Captain Planet again, while The Patriot ('98) was the first of his films to be released direct-to-video.

Were it not for Exit Wounds (’01) teaming Seagal with DMX and getting the tarnished action star back in theaters, it’d seem the rest of his days would be devoted to crafting shelf-stuffer trash like Belly of the Beast (’03) and Kill Switch (’07) for Hollywood Videos around the United States. Karma being the bitch she is, his second go acting against a rapper (this time with Ja Rule in Half Past Dead [’02]) would damn him to DTV for the rest of his days. In the streaming era, if you’re clicking on junk such as China Salesman (’17), Seagal’s clocking in for a glorified cameo, where his increasingly fat ass barely has get up and walk around, much less fight fellow disgraced circus animal, Mike Tyson, as clever editing tricks attempt to convince you that brawl actually happened*.

We probably should’ve guessed Seagal would flame out quickly because, three movies into his career, he more or less labeled himself a deity in Marked For Death (’90). The gnarliest of his early works, Marked For Death sees Seagal playing John Hatcher, a former DEA hot shot who returns home to retire, only to wage a private war against local Jamaican kingpin, Screwface (Basil Wallace), and his posse of crack-slinging thugs. As you can imagine, things go from bad to worse pretty fast.

For a guy so self-conscious about his own image, it’s a wonder Steven Seagal ever allowed someone to photograph the real-time optical illusion that is him running. Looking like his arms are made of spaghetti, Hatcher is dashing through the streets of Mexico with his partner Chico (Richard Delmonte) after their cover is blown. Following a shoot out in a seedy brothel, Chico’s killed and John swears off his gun and badge, seeing no way to win the war in a system that’s set up to fail in the first place.

Retirement’s not going to be that easy for Hatcher, as his old war buddy Max (Ketih David) gives him a guided tour of Screwface’s Chicago invasion. From the football fields where Max coaches, to the dance halls where the Jamacian posse get down to Jimmy Cliff (who provides Marked For Death a pretty awesome pseudo-theme song). Screwface’s cocaine is all over the street, and those who defy him have their heads chopped off with the maniac’s sword. To make matters worse, these monsters are also into voodoo, leaving chalk scribbled curses on their crime scenes as a morbid calling card.

Let’s get this out of the way: the bad guys in Marked For Death are racistly drawn cartoons, hell-bent on destroying this Chicago suburb, seemingly only because it might make them a little bit of cash in the process. On a scale of "Your Woke Uncle" to "Setting the Culture Back Twenty Years", they rank toward the nightmarish latter, spitting patois nonsense before shooting up bars and cookie-cutter houses with reckless abandon. All the while, their megalomaniac leader performs black magic rites and howls every line like a rabid dog.

Thankfully, slasher flick ex-pat Dwight H. Little stages the proceedings with an alarming level of confidence. Reportedly hand-picked by Seagal because he was a big fan of Little's Halloween sequel The Return of Michael Myers (’88), there’s no mistaking that - even if these movies have the WB or 20th Century Fox logos before them - they’re still works of unapologetic exploitation. There’s a horror movie dread that permeates every frame, and Little photographs the usual one versus the world showdowns with Seagal and Screwface’s goons for maximum impact. Not a severed limb is missed, as Marked For Death jockeys for the title of goriest Seagal picture, all while regular Walter Hill cinematographer Ric Waite thickly layers on a grimy, urban texture.

As an early chapter in Seagal’s self-published Bible, it’s pretty significant that he basically elevates himself to the status of God in his enemies’ eyes. Thanks to a wobbly explanation from the token hot police investigator (Joanna Pacula), Hatcher learns that the only way he can run Screwface’s posse out of town is by convincing them that “his magic is greater” than their leader’s. So, he does just that - through a swordfight to the death that ends with Hatcher breaking Screwface’s back like he’s fucking Bane. It’s insane, but Seagal is now an ascendant destroyer to these psychotic piss peddlers.

Which begs the question: what did we ever see in this mere, obviously complicated, mortal to begin with? Seagal isn’t handsome. His greasy ponytail is upsetting at best, sex criminal-esque at worst. He can’t act for shit. His accent work is probably worse than anything he claims to have done in Cambodia. His fighting style isn’t particularly exciting or cinematic. How the hell did he ever cement his place in the annals of action cinema in the first place?

We talk a lot about an "X-Factor" when dissecting movie stardom: that unknowable something a Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt possess beyond talent or good looks. Seagal owns the dark matter iteration of that same star quality; an anti-charisma that makes him impossible to look away from, even as the movies become worse and worse. While Steven Seagal may not be pumped up like Arnold, own Van Damme's flexibility, or sneer like Stallone, he's still perfect to share the same time and space in genre cinema history: a disreputable, bizarro world, pants-shitting, counter-programming goblin you feel bad about liking as much as you do.

*If you look at their fight scene shot-by-shot, it’s unclear if the two were ever in the same room, as it all looks like stunt doubles hitting one another with close-up inserts trying to work some quick editing magic to the contrary.