I'd Trade My Soul For A Wish, Pennies And Dimes For A Kiss

Year: 2002

Director: Chris Angel

Cast: Tara Spencer-Nairn, Michael Trucco, Jason Thompson 

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It's probably unfair of me to suppose you have committed to memory the production history of Sleepaway Camp II and III so let me give a quick recap. Those films were shot in one big chunk using the same crew, same locations, and same lead, then split into two direct-to-video movies in consecutive years. For some unfathomable reason, III is loads better than II, even though they had almost no time to reflect on their craft between productions.

I was hoping for the same thing with Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled, which was produced exactly one weekend after the abysmal Wishmaster 3, helmed once more by director Chris Angel. It's a foolish thing to dream that the miracle the movie gods visited upon the set of Sleepaway Camp would occur a second time, but you know what? My prayers were answered!

Good thing my prayers were not for Andrew Divoff's return, because THAT ain't gonna happen.

Wishmaster 4 opens with a bang. Literally. Young couple Lisa (Tara Spencer-Nairn) and Sam (Jason Thompson) move into a huge house they can afford because Canada, then immediately get to bonking their hearts out beneath the opening credits. It's a wildly lusty softcore scene to introduce a movie. At one point Sam starts thrusting so hard I thought he might turn into the Djinn then and there and split Lisa in half. Then, the cherry on top... A title card that reads "Three Years Later." Three years later than what?! We've done nothing to establish a timeline or any kind of narrative, we just watched some hotties bone down.

Anyway, now Sam is bound to a wheelchair after a horrible motorcycle accident, and Lisa is working on a lawsuit with the motorcycle company with hotshot pro bono lawyer Steven (Michael Trucco), who transparently has feelings for her. Sam's feelings toward her seem to have soured, associating her with the accident, and he compounds his shittiness by being outrageously jealous of Steven and assuming they've already slept together. As Sam pushes her away more and more, Lisa tries to resist Steven's advances but it's getting harder to do.

Oh yeah, and there's a Wishmaster. Michael gives her some sort of Ancient Persian rune thing as a present ("I know you like this stuff." Coulda fooled me, Steven.) and she releases the gemstone and thus the Djinn (John Novak, the only returning cast member). He kills Steven and takes over his body, then attempts to seduce Lisa into making three wishes so he can unleash the dimension of the Djinn upon Earth. He does this quite successfully until the third wish turns out to be about love, which is something his magic can't force. He then must convince her to fall in love with him to fulfill the third wish, but wouldn't you know it, along the way he might just be falling in love with her, complicating his world-domination plot.

Twilight be damned, Wishmaster 4 has the TRUE relationship between undying monster and extremely bland girl who doesn't really deserve his attention.

There's a reason the Wishmaster doesn't show up until paragraph three. The Prophecy Fulfilled could lift the Djinn entirely from the script and be left with a functional, if highly melodramatic narrative, because the characters who are affected by the horror are actually having an interesting storyline on their own without his help. This is literally the first time any human has ever been interesting in a Wishmaster film, which is quite the accomplishment. It also uses its small, microbudget cast to its advantage, allowing them to play out an actual human drama between evil wish-granting murder sequences rather than attempt to spread themselves out as evenly possible to try and make the body count seem more robust than it is.

It's, dare I say, the most coherent story in the Wishmaster canon. Following immediately on the heels of the least, it comes as quite a shock. But apparently Mr. Chris Angel made the wise decision to have two different screenwriters pen the movies he was going to jam together in one sixteen-day marathon.  Scribe John Benjamin Martin hasn't written anything else I've heard of, but he's at least been working consistently, proving that other people down the line have also recognized his skill. Again, it's no masterpiece (we literally learn the basic exposition that Lisa owns a clothing store and runs it with her best friend at about the 45 minute mark), but it's the best script we've gotten in four movies and that's not nothing.

There are stakes and everything!

As for everything around the script, it's a little more on and off, but "on" more often than I could have ever expected going into it. While the kills continue to be pretty routine and uninspired (and involve a strip club way more than is strictly necessary), they are brought to life with a certain bloody gusto. A scene with a lawyer who is forced to rip out his tongue and slice off his own nose (in accordance with a cavalcade of atrocious puns delivered via phone by Djinn Steven) delivers a string of effects that can only be described as "gooshy." And a ridiculous scene where the Djinn crushes a man's fist produces a spray of blood so vigorous it splashed its way right into my heart.

Plus, there are effects scenes that actually attempt to create atmosphere, something that not a single Wishmaster movie has ever had on its mind. I'm thinking specifically of the eerie scene where Lisa finally jumps Steven's bones, and while they are softcore thrusting, a dozen scabby slimy demon hands reach out for her from behind. It's creepy, and it might only be for a few seconds, but it's the only few seconds this October that my skin has crawled.

This movie also improves upon the ridiculous, campy world-building of Wishmaster 3 (Look at me - I act like these films are in conversation with one another, which I'm pretty sure is legitimately impossible, but what else is one to do in a marathon like this?). Where that movie was briefly salvaged by a ridiculous cameo by the Archangel Michael, this one is given another shot of pure sugar by the Hunter, an ancient character with an overdubbed James Earl Jones voice who is sworn to kill the person who wakes the Djinn before she can fulfill the prophecy. This leads to a lot of Ren Fair cosplay and swinging swords around in a public park, which is hilarious.

You know what, I might just love this movie. I know it's cheap and lousy and exploitative and I'm supposed to hate it, but I can only think of compliments. Maybe watching all of these movies melted my brain. Maybe my perspective has been skewed by all the garbage I've shoved into my eyes over the years. Maybe Michael Trucco is just the right amount of mid-2000's handsome that my nostalgic lizard brain quieted all other complaints.

He's not even specifically my type, but there's something about the kind of guy who was "hot" when I was a pre-teen that is still magnetic to me.

What is true is that Wishmaster 4 has the best protagonist of the franchise. This is definitely a backhanded compliment, but for once the heroine has something other to do than lament about her psychic connection with the Djinn, cutting into his fun kill scenes with her ludicrous forced writhing. This movie features no psychic connection at all, to my immense relief. It's certainly only because that plot thread wouldn't work in a movie where the Djinn is actively trying to win her heart, but for whatever reason the screenwriter felt compelled to excise it, I am extremely grateful. As a result, she actually gets a story and an emotional arc to play with. Isn't that just lovely?

It's always a pleasant surprise when the final movie in one of these marathons isn't a massive stinking pile of rotten banana peels. In fact, I don't think this has ever happened in an October marathon. So I won't question it. I'll just leave the Djinn and his exploits with a fond farewell, and consider this a Halloween season well spent. 

Oh, don't worry. Next year I'm certain to be forced to do some more sprawling, more excruciating project. I'm definitely running out at this point and there's a chilling silhouette that looks suspiciously like a Puppetmaster on the horizon.

TL;DR: Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled is - shockingly - entirely competent.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1442

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)

Wishin' And Mopin'

Year: 2001

Director: Chris Angel

Cast: Jason Connery, A.J. Cook, Tobias Mehler 

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Remember that precipitous drop in quality we narrowly avoided last time? Well, here it is. After somebody actually put effort into the made-for-TV Wishmaster 2 (I'm sure they had their reasons), the franchise got farmed out to Canada and director Chris Angel, who is notable only for not being Criss Angel. That's at least one point to his credit. Today's topic, Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell, was filmed back-to-back with Wishmaster 4 in Manitoba (there was literally one weekend separating production of the two films). And now here we are reviewing it some decade and a half later. I think I've already put more effort into watching this film than anybody did into making it.

The process that brought us Sleepaway Camp II and III couldn't possibly go wrong, could it?

The Wishmaster movies have never really had a consistent setting, so why not set it on a college campus? History student Diana Collins (A.J. Cook of Final Destination 2) is dating a schlub named Greg (Tobias Mehler) and has trouble saying "I love you" because her parents died in a car crash or something. Character motivation is fun, y'all. Anyway, she is volunteering at the campus museum and discovers the key to an ancient Persian puzzle box. Yadda yadda glowing gemstone, yadda yadda grant three wishes to the waker, unleash Armageddon. We get it. The Djinn this time is played by John Novak because Andrew Divoff hated the script so much that he walked from the project. Might I remind you that this is a man who said yes to a film featuring an old woman crapping out coins on the floor of a casino.

Because make-up work wastes precious hours and we're making this movie in about the same time that it takes to print the poster, the Djinn mostly takes the form of lecherous professor Joel Barash (Jason Connery, who is in fact Sean Connery's son). He spends the first half of the movie playing phone tag with Diana, granting wishes to randos along the way and eventually making his way across her group of nubile teen friends.

This is how it works, Billy. Sorry not sorry,

First things first, the Djinn sucks. The makeup is a huge step down (I assume it's mostly just a prosthetic headpiece they jam onto poor John Novak), and while I never thought I'd be missing Andrew Divoff, this film proves he brought a spark to the character. A spark that can't be recreated with an SNL-level impression. I could work with this pale imitation of the Djinn if he actually did anything, but the boundless creativity of the franchise hits a wall. Hard.

These movies have always had really tortured dialogue when the Djinn tries to squeeze wishes out of people, but there's no amount of twisting words that can change a wish for two women to be in love with you to topless zombie ladies biting out your tongue. It's not even lowest-common denominator clever, it's just lazy and insipid, going through the motions of a franchise nobody was really ever asking for in the first place. There are only two death scenes worth a lick (Billy's impalement, as pictured above, and a really brutal, grotesque moment where the mean girl who wished to lose weight is vomiting up all of her insides), and the rest are cheap, awkwardly executed pablum.

The script attempts to make up for the lack of creative kills by finally embracing the post-Scream meta humor that was dominating the teen horror market (at least a year too late, might I add), but these sad, painfully unfunny grasps at relevance ("These exams are gonna be murder!") are really the nail in the coffin.

A coffin with he will sadly rise out of sooner than later.

Wishmaster 3 briefly wins back my favor by going completely batshit insane for about 15 minutes Spoiler alert: the literal Archangel Michael becomes a character, possessing the body of Greg and wielding his flaming sword of angelic doom. But the daffy Act 3 decisions (there's also a sequence set in the campus graveyard - you know, standard college campus location work) aren't enough to redeem a painfully tedious film. By the hour mark it was my fervent wish that the movie would end as quickly as possible. I should have learned to be careful what I wish for, because the climax is devastatingly perfunctory.

There is practically nothing redeeming about this film. It's not even worth looking at, with its daytime scenes (of which it has altogether too many for a film with makeup this shoddy) blasted with an eye-searing lighting scheme that makes it legitimately hard to even see the characters, they're so washed out.

The sad truth is that I've still seen worse, so I survived the process of watching this with my wits pretty intact. It least it has a coherent plot. It's not worth following, but it's followable, which is something I've learned not to take for granted. It's in the literal sense a diversion. You can pay attention to it if you have nothing better to think about at the time. But I almost always have something better to think about, as I'm sure do you. Even if that thing is just Wishmaster 2.

...Next week is gonna be rough, isn't it? Do you think there's any chance Chris Angel got mentored by Steven Spielberg or something during that weekend between movies? Wish me luck. But make sure there aren't any Djinn around to hear you.

TL;DR: Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell is a paltry trifle that barely drags itself across the finish line, buoyed by some jaw-droppingly dumb plot developments.

Rating: 3/10

Word Counter: 973
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)

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)