Be Fearful What You Wish For

Year: 1999

Director: Jack Sholder

Cast: Holly Fields, Paul Johansson, Andrew Divoff

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: R 

Usually when horror movie sequels get subtitles, that's when you need to keep an eye out. They're not always bad. But when Halloween II gave way to Halloween III: Season of the Witch, things got so wild that the film was disowned by the horror community for decades. There's something sublime about the simplicity of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 or Exorcist III rather than Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III or Exorcist II: The Heretic. It's not a hard and fast rule, to be certain, but I can't say I was incredibly optimistic when I learned that Wishmaster succumbed to the fever immediately, delivering Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies the second that Hollywood uncorked the franchise bottle.

I truly am a martyr to these franchise horror movies, you're welcome.

Wishmaster 2 begins in a place I legitimately could have never predicted: an art heist. Morgana (Holly Fields) and her boyfriend Eric (Chris Weber) rob the local museum, in the process releasing the ancient Djinn (Andrew Divoff) we've come to know and love when Morgana smashes the crystal that held him. Eric dies in the escape, but the Djinn, in human form, takes the blame for the heist and is sent to jail, where he sets about granting wishes for the prisoners and collecting the 1,001 souls he apparently needs before he can grant Morgana three wishes, thereby unleashing the Djinn dimension upon the world. As if the mythology of the first movie needed to be even more complicated.

Anyway, all this sends Morgana into a moral crisis about the choices she's made in life, and she runs into the arms of hunky goatee priest Gregory (Paul Johansson), who turned to the church after she chose Eric instead of him. They work to learn more about the Djinn and how to go about destroying him.

Meanwhile, Andrew Divoff gets a chance to work on his Godfather impression.

Wishmaster 2 was helmed by Jack Sholder, a director who seems to be stuck as Wes Craven's clean-up hitter, considering he also helmed A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. I can't help but imagine he feels the same way, because that film - and its highly publicized homoerotic overtones - seems to be weighing heavily on his mind. At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with for why this film is so hideously homophobic. Even for a film set in a prison, the sheer amount of F-words flying back and forth is... shocking. It feels like a grotesque overcompensation, and the only scene that helps me feel better about the whole affair is a scene where a prisoner wishes that his shady lawyer would "go fuck himself." This results in him literally having sex with himself, which he does in fact seem to enjoy. 

Visibility is so important, y'all.

Generally, the wish scenes are about as satisfying as the original film, though the leading questions the Djinn is forced to ask to eke requests out of people are even more strained and ludicrous. Wishmaster 2 never captures the sheer, indulgent mayhem of the original's third act, but there's still a solid sense of fun to the proceedings (minus a truly atrocious joke in the climactic casino showdown, where a lady at a craps table literally craps hundreds of slot machine tokens out of her ass). And while the effects are hardly at the level of KNB's previous contributions, they are delivered with no small amount of gooey zeal by future Sharknado auteur Anthony C. Ferrante.

This stuff one can find on IMDb is wild, folks.

The only place where the DTV effects budget really shows is in the Wishmaster himself. We're getting a lot of Andrew Divoff face time in this one, and when he shows his true face as the Djinn, it's a lot more plasticky and immobile than last time. Rather than resembling an actual organic organism with a dripping, twitching carapace, it just looks like some dude's Wishmaster Halloween costume.  A very expensive Halloween costume, but still.

Beyond the effects setpieces, sadly, Wishmaster 2 has almost nothing to offer. The protagonist is even blander than the last time, a feat I didn't think could even be possible, and her inane thrashings that are intercut with every effects scene are even more irritating for it. Plus, this business with the priest lands the film in some deeply vexing sub-Exorcist territory. Down to the score (an airy interpretation of "Tubular Bells" by somebody who's clearly only heard it once, years ago) and the method of defeating the villain (repeating the same phrase over and over and over again until everyone at the slumber party watching this VHS tape has passed out from exhaustion), this film transparently aspires to Exorcist-level greatness, not realizing that all the hot air it's blowing about God and purity and prayer are a needless distraction at the absolute best.

Catholic imagery permeates the film to the point that even the Wishmaster seems perplexed by it. He's literally not a Christian figure, and his attempts to explain this fall on deaf ears.

Morgana's plotline is frustrating tedium. No matter what she does, we must see it repeated three times in three consecutive scenes before we can move on. Same goes for the Wishmaster, but at least he's turning people into goo in the process. But, dear God, the moments with him that go for myth-building or menace rather than gore fail miserably. Let me paint you a picture. At one point while our protagonists are preparing to head over to his lair, we cut to him sitting in a chair. He spins toward the camera, makes his magic gemstone appear in his hand and then disappear, at which point he says "Magic..." He's alone in a room! Who is this for?!

This film was clearly not thought through one tiny bit, and it's buoyed only by the mild amusement of seeing Wishmaster perform his dirty deals in new locations (the prison yard and later a bar run by the Russian mafia for some reason).

But hey. There's always a quality drop-off point in my franchise marathons, and considering that the Wishmaster franchise only ever stretched to four films, I was nervous they would condense their timeline and fall straight into the gutter immediately. Luckily, that was avoided, though being a big step down from the already mediocre original doesn't really leave the film in a great place regardless.

TL;DR: Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies is a sometimes fun, entirely forgettable horror sequel.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1110

Reviews In This Series
Wishmaster (Kurtzman, 1997)
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (Sholder, 1999)
Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (Angel, 2001)
Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (Angel, 2002)

A Scream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes

Year: 1997

Director: Robert Kurtzman

Cast: Tammy Lauren, Andrew Divoff, Robert Englund

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It's that time of year again, folks! Every October I begin a brand new deep dive into a franchise I've never covered on the blog before. Now, consider this fact: Sergio and I are now doing a lot of franchise marathons on our podcast Scream 101. So when I was picking out what series to do this year, I had to select one that was flat-out vetoed from being on the show, so the quality of these movies (which have in the past included infinite Amityville and Children of the Corn sequels) might be dropping precipitously. Pray for me. 

I hope against hope that I have struck a rich vein this year, because at the very least my favorite director Wes Craven is the producing entity that launched the franchise. I'm not saying I have any faith in the man's producing (he also made Dracula 2000, lest we forget), but at least his work is something I have a vast amount of context for and interest in. So. The Wishmaster quadrilogy. I guess we're doing this.

Here goes nothing!

Wishmaster tells the tale of an immortal djinn, so of course it starts off in a wildly misguided ancient Middle Eastern sequence. Nevertheless we learn that the titular master of wishes (Andrew Divoff) is not the babbling blue Robin Williams you've come to expect from genies in bottles. For one thing he's trapped in a gemstone. For another thing, he is a malevolent force of ancient pure evil, and if he grants three wishes to the person who releases him, he will break the veil between the human world and the djinn world, causing the apocalypse I guess. It's not super clear what the djinn would do to our world, but I'm pretty sure they're not just here for the sightseeing.

Oh, also the djinn is powerless unless somebody makes a wish, which he can then misinterpret to accomplish his desires. Upon which point he also steals their soul, which powers up the gemstone. There sure are a lot of rules for a movie about an evil genie. Anyway, jewel appraiser Alexandra Amberson (Tammy Lauren - who some people thought was too controversial to star in a horror movie about genies) releases the Djinn by... rubbing the gem on her shirt? Had nobody done this in millennia? He bursts from his gemstone prison, in the process killing her best friend/wannabe lover Josh (Tony Crane), then wanders around granting random people's wishes in a bunch of slasher setpieces before setting his sights back on her.

All while being dressed to the nines.

It is perhaps now I should mention that director Robert Kurtzman is much better known as one of the makeup effects gurus behind the KNB EFX group, a special effects company that has dominated the horror world from Elm Street 5 to Scream to The Walking Dead. As with most films directed by a special effects wizard, Wishmaster is packed to the grim with drippy, practical gore gags that still look phenomenal.

The two party scenes that bookend the film, in which all hell breaks loose during the Djinn's final bid for power, are pure, unfiltered movie mayhem. Glass shatters faces, skeletons burst out of their bodies and run around, creatures emerge from people's chests to devour other people, statues come to life and smash ancient weapons into skulls... It's chaotic, but an excellent built-in reel for KNB's next pitch meeting. 

These scenes (as well as most of the slasher setpieces that have no bearing on the actual plot) are going to be pure candy to any gorehound. Ditto the endless slew of cameos from horror icons like Robert Englund (given the meatiest role - thanks, Wes! - as a rich collector who orders the statue containing the Djinn's jewel), Kane Hodder (as a security guard, the role he was apparently born to play when not smothered in latex), Tony Todd (as a doorman, which is insulting), Angus Scrimm (as the narrator, which is perhaps less insulting because at least it's a cool trivia tidbit), Ted Raimi (as, guess what, a weaselly assistant), Reggie Bannister (as a pharmacist who gets "cancer" AKA boils that explode and kill him) and (for true devotees of cult film) George "Buck" Flower (as a bum, which he has extensive experience playing considering he's done it over 25 times since the early 80's).

Do you think he's just mad he's constantly forced to face off against people who played villains more famous than him?

And the detail in the Djinn design is something to behold. He's grotesquely organic, full of squishy parts that wiggle and move of their own accord (my favorite moment is when he's facing away from the camera and you can see a pulsing heartbeat in his back), counteracting the slight stiffness of his latex face with pure, realistic nightmare fuel.

Unfortunately, other than appealing to the basest lizard-brain instincts of the horror fan (the Where's Waldo of Horror game continues with an Easter egg Pazuzu statue in the background, etc. etc.), Wishmaster just doesn't quite have the juice to go anywhere. There's a little bit of fun to be had when the Djinn is in disguise trying and failing to trick Alexandra into making wishes, and Andrew Divoff has a blast chewing the scenery into tiny little splinters ("If you can't beat 'em, burn them... baby"), but their interactions are mostly dull as dishwater. When the film's budget briefly cools its heels late in the second act and they're required to match wits in some anonymous apartment, my interest wanes severely.

You see, there's almost nothing compelling about Alexandra as a protagonist. She's trapped in a bland Friendzone Love Story and does nothing but stumble ass backward into revelations about the Djinn despite having a convenient psychic link to him every time he makes a kill. This element is the most Wes Craven-y of a movie that quite openly suckles at the teat of Craven's filmography, and it is the most poorly handled. When a dude gets his jaw ripped off, I don't want to waste time cutting back to Tammy Lauren bulging her eyes, pursing her lips, and fainting left and right. All the interstitial bits between the horror scenes needed a punch-up or two or three before they hit the silver screen, because connective tissue isn't supposed to be tissue paper.

But there's a scene where a dude gets his jaw ripped all the way the fuck off, so who's complaining, you know?

TL;DR: Wishmaster is fun as far as turn-your-brain-off practical effects movies go, but it doesn't have too much to offer beyond its baseline pleasures.

Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1131
Reviews In This Series
Wishmaster (Kurtzman, 1997)
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (Sholder, 1999)
Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (Angel, 2001)
Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (Angel, 2002)