|
|
|
Wishmaster
*1/2
Cinema
Releases - May 29,
1998
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by Robert Kurtzman. Written by Peter Atkins. Starring
Tammy Lauren, Andrew Divoff, Robert Englund, Tony Crane, Wendy Benson, Angus
Scrimm, Joseph Pilato.
As Robert Kurtzman's "Wishmaster"
opens, it seems rather clear that it wants to be like Clive Barker's 1987
"Hellraiser", with the same style of stupid ambience, and a narrative that
tells of mythical creatures hell-bent on destruction, unleashed by the same
sort of eerie boxes, jewels and rituals. It's some ambition, the desire to
be "Hellraiser", because it's utterly pointless -- that movie was, for me,
the worst well-reviewed horror film of the last decade, a wretched film which,
for its first hour, went about being empty, boring and
unfocused.
"Wishmaster" does too. After some ludicrously
cheesy medieval chaos, which is funny when it wants to be scary, the plot
attempts to unfold under handling which makes it hard to know who are the
main characters, how significant each scene is, and how it relates to the
rest of the piece. For a film we know will last only 90 minutes, it sure
takes its time. For a film which has incredibly graphic violence from the
outset, it sure is dull -- with incredibly poor, flat action that would excite
only the most desperate soul. Played and photographed like a comedy,
dialogue delivered with corn, the early part of this film seems like a soft-core
skin flick with elaborate murders replacing sex scenes.
It opens with an art collector's most awaited piece
arriving at a pier, but rather than going home to his hall, it's dropped
by drunken dock worker Mickey (Joseph Pilato) onto a yuppie bystander, killing
the guy and smashing the piece. Out of it falls a ruby, which is found and
sold by Mickey, eventually getting into the hands of Alex Amberson (Tammy
Lauren), who manages to unleash The Djinn (Andrew Divoff), "wishmaster" of
the title, an evil genie who is able to call upon others of his ilk to wreak
havoc upon the earth when his emancipator is granted their third
wish.
Even the appearance of Robert Englund, who played
Freddy Krueger in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" films, could not raise a
smile from me, so dull is this mess, which includes silly prophecies and
chants beings screamed with 100 percent sincerity. The wishmaster himself
looks rather cartoonish, and at times his macabre voice disintegrates into
an unintelligible echo. Lauren misinterprets her character for awhile --
at the outset she should be an apprehensive and slow civilian, then she becomes
Sarah Connor meets Columbo. However, her looks are the most outstanding thing
in the whole film, except for one wonderful exchange between the manager
of a pharmacy and a tramp, which could only exist in a film as outrageous
as this. It goes:
MANAGER: How many times have I told you not to
hang around outside my store?
TRAMP: Hey, you got customers in there, you shouldn't
leave 'em!
MANAGER: Don't tell me how to run my business,
you're a f---ing bum!
TRAMP: Well don't tell me how to run my life,
you're a f---ing prick!
The main body of "Wishmaster" involves the Djinn's
"charging up", which is building up his spiritual force by gathering souls.
In intelligible English, what that entails is the Djinn disguising in human
form and assuming the fake name "Nathaniel Demerest", going round killing
people in horrible ways after tricking them into making a wish. Example:
Demerest goes into a department store, buys a suit, and asks the gorgeous
clerk if she wants to be beautiful forever. She says yes, and he turns her
into a mannequin.
Obviously, this did not happen in "Hellraiser",
as the villain, Frank, in his painful state, was trapped in his brother's
house, so as our wishmaster roams the streets, he seems more like The
Exterminator. Okay, he's a supernatural sadist rather than an unhinged Vietnam
vet, but you get the point, he's killing over and over again in ever more
creative ways. After the film finally gets tired of this, which is long after
any sane audience member will, wishmaster goes after Alex, trying to get
three wishes out of her, resulting in an ugly, interminable battle scene
and a surprisingly clever solution to the story.
The systematic murder scenes are no more entertaining
than the film's drama. Some are amusing, but others are plain disturbed,
such as when a woman at a party is turned into exploding glass, causing everyone
in the room to get nasty gashes from the sharp residue.
Andrew Divoff is a delight as Demerest, applying
a very satisfying creepy charisma to his character. But every compliment
I've conceded to "Wishmaster" is quite petty, and the overall this is a pretty
dull and nasty horror film that we could have done without.
COPYRIGHT©
1998 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
1998 Reviews
(alphabetical)
1998 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)