Fresh off the success of Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell, Steinman lent one of the Original Sin tracks to Hollywood to be used as a theme to the film The Shadow (Russell Mulcahy, USA 1994), based on a 1930s character probably best known from a 1937 radio drama series. (“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.)

Director Russell Mulcahy was a longtime acquaintance of Steinman’s who directed the video for “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” He had a ton of success as a music video director (including directing “Pour Some Sugar on Me” when Def Leppard finished the album Steinman had once worked on), but he is remembered now for directing campy cult classic film Highlander (USA 1986). Steinman is actually referenced in that film but they otherwise don’t seem to have worked together in between “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and this one. The film ended up being a flop–apparently, obscure knockoff Batman characters needed another 14 years to hit it big–and the song has disappeared to such an extent that I have only been able to find it on YouTube.

While a few places (including Wikipedia, which means that’s likely the source for the others) say that the backing track is a “stripped-down version of the backup tracks recorded for Pandora’s box,” I hesitate to say that is definitely accurate. The credits only differ with respect to the vocals, taking off Steinman’s credit for “keyboards” in the original, and removing Tony Levin’s bass guitar credit. I hear that the bass is gone, but I also could swear that the guitar is just a little different. It seems to me like it has a little more distortion. Maybe it’s just in my head or somehow it’s removing something else that’s causing my ears to hear that difference, but that’s what I hear. Still, there is little change from the Pandora’s Box recording.

Further, the lyrics undergo a small alteration. There are a couple of minor additions (an “and” in the first verse and an extra “so” later) and the first section of the chorus is completely different after “It’s not enough to make the nightmares go away/It’s not enough to make the tears run dry.” Where the original version followed with, “Not enough to live a little better every day/Everything that they taught us/Was nothing but lies/Everything that the brought us/Was nothing but bribes/It’ll all be over now,” Taylor Dayne’s recording says, “And who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men today?/It’s a city of shadows/It’s a city of lies/It’s a city of cruelty/It’s a city of bribes/It’ll all be over now.” It’s a clear downgrade in lyrics, because it’s a reference to the themes of the film, but it’s not really a big deal overall.

The biggest change is the vocals. Where the original credited (*big breath*) Gina Taylor, Ellen Foley, Elaine Caswell, Deliria Wilde, Laura Theodore, and Holly Sherwood for “lead vocals” and Todd Rundgren and Eric Troyer for “backing vocal arrangement,” this recording credits lead vocals to Taylor Dayne and background vocals to Todd Rundgren, Rory Dodd, Eric Troyer, Gina Taylor, Laura Theodore, and Holly Sherwood (Rundgren and Troyer are still credited for arrangement). The backing vocals are great but really don’t sound noticeably different than the original. However, Dayne’s lead vocal is absolutely great. She doesn’t do a lot differently than Theodore did in the original, but she, while still delivering the menacing edge that Theodore had, just sounds stronger and richer every step of the way. It feels strange to have so little to say about such a great vocal, but it really is fantastic because it’s just a small improvement throughout on Theodore’s already great performance.

It’s unfortunate that the film’s failure took the song down with it, because not only is this still a great song, but I think this is an even better version than the Pandora’s Box recording. It seems to have caught Taylor Dayne at the wrong time commercially, with her last two charting singles having already shown diminished results from her peak by making it only to number 20 (“Can’t Get Enough of Your Love”) and then number 50 (“Send Me a Lover”). She never made the Hot 100 again.