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"Look! Look about you! It's all mine! Mine because I built it! I Built it aaaall!" - Louis Strack Jr.
Louis Strack Jr. was a corrupt owner of Strack Industries who held an ambition to rebuild the city to match his personal vision, by any means necessary. He served as the primary antagonist of the first film.
History[]
The billionaire owner of Strack Industries, Strack is the son of Louis Strack Sr., who, when he was a teenager, made him work "high steel," putting together skyscrapers for his father several hundreds of feet above ground. After taking over the company following his father's death, Strack's goal is to purchase and demolish rundown properties and rebuild them as a futuristic city, which he refers to as the "City of the Future." To make this a reality, he hired mobster Robert G. Durant and his gang to drive out anyone who refuses to leave and also bribed the city's zoning officials in order to obtain the necessary permits to build his city. His lawyer, Julie Hastings, discovers a document, the "Bellasarious Memorandum", proving Strack's bribery, which she leaves at her boyfriend Dr. Peyton Westlake's lab for safe keeping. She doesn't discover Strack's involvement with Durant, however. Strack plays innocent and insists he is crooked but has good intentions. He has some feelings for Julie, as well. When he inquires about the location of the document, he warns Julie that Durant might want it, and is a very dangerous man. Thinking she's protecting herself and Westlake, Julie told him where the document is.
Strack then sent Durant to collect the document from Westlake's lab. The gangsters had Westlake tortured and murdered his assistant Yakitito, and then left the scientist to die in the lab's explosion. Abscond with the document, Durant returned it to Strack. Westlake is thought dead (in truth becoming the faceless vigilante Darkman), and a grief-stricken Julie is consoled by Strack, who continues behaving as though he is good and unconnected with Durant. In the meantime, a vengeance-driven Darkman (unaware of who Strack is) is using his "liquid skin" to impersonate members of Durant's gang and sow distrust throughout their organization.
Julie eventually discovers the truth about Strack's connection to Durant when she finds the document in Strack's office, and when confronted about it Strack admits the truth, but insists Julie stay with him and not the badly-burned Westlake/Darkman, showing her the already partially completed city. She spurns him and leaves. Strack, angry that Durant failed to "excise" Westlake, decides Julie will lead him to Darkman. He gives Durant a Strack Industries helicopter and sends him to kill Darkman. Some of Durant's men kidnap Julie whilst Darkman turns the tables against Durant, killing him by causing the helicopter to crash into a freeway overpass. The stylized "S" insignia of Strack Industries on the helicopter leads Darkman to figure out who Strack is, and, disguising himself as Durant, comes to the construction site where the City of the Future is being built.
Strack arrives with a captive Julie and the three of them go to the top of one of the partially finished skyscrapers, where a henchman awaits. Strack tests "Durant" by telling him he's glad he survived the helicopter crash because, "I'd hate to see your kids deprived of a role model." Darkman, unaware that Durant was childless, replies, "They do look up to me," giving himself away. Strack unmasks his heretofore unseen foe and chides him for destroying out of revenge rather than to "build something better," as he does, and boasts that everything around them belongs to him because his company built it.
The two fistfight on the building, with the nimble Strack, due to his experience working high steel, having the clear advantage. He and the henchman with him sling chains at Darkman, and Darkman ends up hanging the henchman upside-down with a cable around his ankle. Strack grabs a rivet gun and fires at Darkman, accidentally hitting the cable holding his henchman up and dropping him to his death. Before cornering Darkman and preparing to kill him, he boasts that he "knows Julie quite intimately." Enraged, Darkman gets his second wind, rescues Julie, and then holds Strack off the side of the building by his ankle.
"Go ahead!" taunts Strack. "Do it, Westlake! But think of this! If you let me fall, you'll be as bad as me! Worse!" Darkman hesitates, and Strack laughs, adding, "You can't! I know you too well! Dropping me is not really an option for you! It's not something you could live with!"
Darkman releases Strack's ankle, and the billionaire promptly plummets out of side to his doom, (screaming while he's falling and not calculating that Darkman will kill him), to the sound of chiming church bells as Darkman solemnly observes, "I'm learning to live with a lot of things."
Appearances in other media[]
Comics[]
Louis Strack appeared in the comic book adaptation of the first film, where the comic's story played out mostly similar, though with a few minor changes. The comic depicts Strack Jr. constantly in odds with his father, Strack Sr. over the company's future and prefer the company remain in the real estate business rather than invest in gold krugerrands. Strack Jr. made a deal with Durant to arrange for his own father's assassination. Following his father's death, Strack took over the company and would continue to purchase gold kruggerands, though what he did to them were never revealed. Another change that the comic made was that the "Bellasarious Memorandum" was addressed to his father rather than Strack himself. Strack's death in the comic was also depicted more graphically, showing him being impaled shortly after falling down.
Strack was mentioned in the crossover comic Darkman vs. Army of Darkness. After Julie (who has become possessed by the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis) resurrects Robert G. Durant as a Deadite, the two make their way to a construction site formerly owned by Strack. While using her magical abilities to begin construction of a temple, Durant comments on the irony of Julie building her headquarters on a site belonging to her ex-lover. He then asks her why she didn't resurrect Strack instead. Julie coldly states that Strack was cremated, and not worth reconstituting.
Personality[]
Superficially charming on the outside and possessing a way with women, Strack is nonetheless a cold, callous individual. His wife held "certain deeds" and so he arranged for her to die in a plane crash so he could have them, and, in a subplot cut from the film, Strack also has his father murdered by Durant's gang so he can have control of the company. Despite the openly chummy relationship he has with his underlings and allies, Strack cares nothing about them in the end, seeing them merely as tools, as evidenced by the uncaring shrug he gives when he accidentally causes the death of the henchman assisting him on top of the building. His boastfulness lead to his downfall.
Behind the scenes[]
Louis Strack was portrayed by Colin Friels. According to issue #95 of Fangoria magazine, Strack was suppose to have a subplot that would've involved both Julie and his father, which would led him to hire Durant to kill his father. For an unknown reason the subplot was ultimately cut from the final version of the film, though his plot to murder his father would be depicted in both the comic book adaptation, as well as the film's novelization.
Deleted scene[]
A scene was deleted out of the final cut that involves Strack sitting on his bed in a towel, picking up a box full of gold krugerrands, placing the coins on the bed, taking his towel off, and then jumping on the bed and writhing in ectasy on the coins, naked.