WISHMASTER was a theatrical release, and given its low budget a profitable one. A year later, producer LIVE Entertainment was acquired by Bain Capital, restructured and rebranded Artisan Entertainment. While distributing real movies in theaters (including absolute classics GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI and THE LIMEY), they also started dipping into DTV sequels like the appalling CANDYMAN: DAY OF THE DEAD, the enjoyable THE SUBSTITUTE 2: SCHOOL’S OUT, and yes, a whole trilogy of WISHMASTER followups, starting with WISHMASTER 2: EVIL NEVER DIES (1999).

The sequels are not presented by Wes Craven, but funny enough the writer/director of part 2 is the same guy who did A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2, Jack Sholder. Sadly this is not on the level of FREDDY’S REVENGE, much less THE HIDDEN. He told interviewer Hellter from Gruemonkey that he’d turned down the first WISHMASTER and “didn’t especially like” it, then “needed the work” when part 2 came his way. But he was happy that he got to write it and “had a lot of creative freedom as long as I could do it for the budget.”

Andrew Divoff returns as the Djinn, last seen locked back up in the opal, which now gets shot in half during a battle between museum security and a pair of thieves. It would be cool if he was split into upper and lower genie halves who had to compete for wishes, but I guess that’s not how this works. Eric (Chris Weber, COMIC BOOK VILLAINS) is wounded and tells his partner in life/crime Morgana (Holly Fields, voice of Princess Fiona in various SHREK video games) to leave him behind, so she doesn’t see the broken jewel emit a bubbly pile of slime that grows a face and limbs in a genuinely cool effects sequence. KNB were not available, so the filmmakers got SOTA FX and J.M. Logan (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION, THE DENTIST) and they did a good job.

I sincerely love this part where the thing is born, crawls up to the wounded burglar and starts croaking to him about wishes he could grant like it’s a normal thing to happen. Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just a little blobby guy that crawled out of the wall, anyway here are some ideas for wishes before you die. He reminds me of some weird dude I would meet at a bus stop or something and not be totally sure if it was me he was talking to.

It’s also just one of the things in these movies that seem influenced by “The Engineer,” the weird hallway crawler monster in the first HELLRAISER that has never gottten enough love in my opinion.

Eric wishes he’d never been born, so there’s a sort of impressionistic CG sequence of him reverse aging to a baby and then disappearing. Not into his mother’s womb, though – she wasn’t available I guess.

The Wishmaster is still, I’m afraid, an extremely stupid character. We are to accept that if a cop says “Freeze!” that counts as a wish where he can turn the cop into ice. I will say, though, that the high quality of the makeup when he’s in Djinn form does provide an interesting contrast to the asininity. Here he is well lit and there’s something extra gross about how wet his horns look in this one. They kept the design pretty similar, but Logan explained to Fangoria, “I wanted to add tribal scarring and tattooing to the suit and face for dramatic effect.”

Of course, he immediately turns into regular Andrew Divoff form, a.k.a. Nathaniel Demerest. I was surprised to find that this is partly a prison movie. He falsely confesses to shooting the prison guards and gets locked up for a while.

The actual perpetrator, Morgana, is our protagonist. The guilt for her crime and loss of her boyfriend, plus the visions she starts having of the Djinn, cause her to change her lifestyle. First she goes to a church to visit Father Gregory (Paul Johansson, MARTIAL LAW II: UNDERCOVER, BOONDOCK SAINTS II: ALL SAINTS DAY), who is her ex-boyfriend and has a low opinion of her. Even when it turns out she came with religious concerns – “If God exists then Satan has to exist too, right?” – he whines, “Is there a point to this?”

Without the guidance of the church she’s stuck typing “PERSIAN MYTHOLOGY” into Webzap Services Inc., and she immediately finds out about Ahura-Mazda, the god whose statue the jewel was in in part 1. When Gregory relents and tries to help her, she starts throwing all this non-Christian information at him. There’s lots of sexual tension between them, and later they fuck and they don’t really act like it’s any kind of religious conflict. But she’s a good girl now. She anonymously returns the paintings she stole from the museum, takes out her nose ring and de-goths.

Meanwhile, “Demerest” is in prison with some of the stock prison movie characters, like Gries – Robert LaSardo (DEATH RACE, THE MULE) playing his usual tattooed gangster. Tommy “Tiny” Lister gets to be a screw this time. The Tiger Twins, James & Simon Kim (EXIT WOUNDS), are locked up together, and do some synchronized taekwando kicks.

Demerest goes around getting other prisoners to make wishes, to the point that people actually call him “Genie” and “Wishmaster.” But weirdly after he makes a guy squeeze himself through the bars of his cell in front of several witnesses, nobody mentions it again. Anyway we can all agree that the best part is when Gries’ lawyer comes to tell him he found a procedural error that’s going to free him, but because Gries wished earlier for him to fuck himself, the lawyer’s lower body twists around backwards and…. somehow begins fucking himself? Gries cries “What about my case, man?”

The Djinn also kills Tiny Lister and steals his body, so you get to see Zeus saying “open sez-uh-me” in that stupid voice before he switches back. He escapes with Osip (Oleg Vidov, RED HEAT), hangs out with Russian gangsters, gets shot by Morgana and turns into the Djinn but only worms come out of his bullet wound. This time for some reason his goal is to steal 1001 souls, so he pretends to be a “European partner” of a Las Vegas casino, working with Bokeem Woodbine (THE BIG HIT).

Morgana and Gregory confront the Djinn and end up inside the opal with him having a “come up with clever wishes to defeat him” showdown. Gregory gets hung up on a cross like Jesus and it’s kind of funny, he’s a handsome dude and in good shape but he has a bit of a belly compared to the traditional images of Jesus. It would be weird to have Jesus crucifixion body envy. Hopefully he had a more healthy attitude about it than me.

Rehashing part 1’s all-hell-breaks-out party scene in the casino, he first makes everybody win at the same time, then causes 200 souls to fly out of their bodies. A blackjack wheel shoots marbles like bullets, then rolls around chopping up people with PHANTASM-type blades. A card shuffler shoots deadly cards at people. There are plagues of frogs and locusts (animated black pill shapes). One person literally shits tokens like a slot machine because he said “Too bad, you just crapped out.” Which absolutely should not count as her making a wish, I want to report this one to the Djinn bureau or whatever.

One funny touch is when Morgana wishes that the security guard she shot was alive. The way they illustrate it is to cut to black and white security video of him coming home to his delighted family, including a daughter saying “Daddy! Daddy!” in a pitched up adult voice like a GAMERA dub.

In the end, Morgana puts the Djinn back in the opal using Lovecraftian magic words. It is a genuine defeat, because he neither gets to say a funny thing after the credits or return for part 3. Or at least Divoff doesn’t.

WISHMASTER 3: BEYOND THE GATES OF HELL (2001) is directed by Chris Angel – not the magic guy, but an editor of TV shows and DVD special features who had directed the DTV sequel THE FEAR: RESURRECTION. The screenplay is by Alex Wright (THE FIRST 9 1/2 WEEKS, now does Hallmark Channel Christmas movies).

Diana Collins (A.J. Cook, FINAL DESTINATION 2) is a college kid introduced waking from a dream/memory about surviving a car crash that killed her dad. In movies, as in life, everyone is haunted by reoccurring dreams that are completely accurate depictions of the most traumatic thing that ever happened to them. It’s very upsetting to her so, still in her pajamas, she climbs up to the roof of her dorm and looks over the edge… When her boyfriend Greg (Tobias Mehler, DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, Tommy in the unfortunate tv version of CARRIE, BATTLE IN SEATTLE) comes looking for her and thinks she’s dead she scares him and laughs about it. Just ones of those fun suicide pranks.

This is the only chapter of the WISHMASTER saga to be about young people, and therefore feel more like a standard slasher movie. Diana has her social group at school including shitty best friend Katie (Louisette Geiss, CHAMPIONS) and her horndog boyfriend Billy (Aaron Smolinski, baby Clark Kent in the original SUPERMAN – no shit!). She’ll spend time with them in libraries telling them about mythological stuff she read and trying to convince them she’s not crazy.

Examining museum artifacts late at night for class she finds the opal hidden inside a puzzle box. When she shows it to her teacher, Professor Barash (Jason Connery, SHANGHAI NOON), he immediately asks her out to dinner and, when she says she’s busy, stops talking and gets all pouty. So, moments after she leaves, the Djinn (John Novak, BLOODRAYNE 2: DELIVERANCE) appears to him, and starts taunting him by acting out a rape scene with his and her voices. Then he creates two sexy ladies to come out and show their boobs to him, bite his tongue off and scratch him to death. So the professor is the human disguise for the Djinn while trying to get “the Waker” to make three wishes. He even shows up at class and starts teaching about Djinn history.

In a church, Diana makes a wish that causes Greg to be possessed by the archangel Michael. He speaks in an electronically deepened voice and tries to sword fight the Djinn, but tells Diana that “only the Waker can stop the Djinn” and “the Sword of Justice will be yours when you are ready.” So eventually she gets to stab Jason Connery with a sword.

The final scene is on the roof of the dorm, calling back to the scene where she went up there to not commit suicide, which is now making me think that she actually almost did it and lied about it, because otherwise what would be the significance?

This is a not-very-inspired movie that’s semi-watchable as far as stupid bullshit goes, but less so than part 2, which was less so than part 1, which was already not great. Presumably this has an even lower budget, so there’s less of the gooey FX stuff other than the Djinn makeup, which is still well done by Logan (in a new design to fit the new actor). To be fair, there’s a good part where fake Professor Barash’s arm gets chopped off and grows back, and a good chuckle when he gets all twisted up in a car crash and reforms himself. But it’s only a few bits like that, and Connery actually makes me kind of miss Divoff’s permanent evil grin. At least it was weird.

WISHMASTER: THE PROPHECY FULFILLED (2002) was also directed by Angel – these last two were shot back to back in Winnipeg – but the script is by John Benjamin Martin (also an actor who played “Man on Crack” in FLATLINERS and “Henry the Guard” in LAWNMOWER MAN 2: BEYOND CYBERSPACE.) It starts with a remake of the same opening narration from the first film. The subtitle points to a pretty cool premise: seriously, what if he really does grant three wishes and unleash the Djinn on earth? What then? Well, it sort of deals with that.

The opening credits are a happy musical montage set to a song called “I Need You” by Vibrolux. Lisa (Tara Spencer-Nairn, WAKING UP WALLY: THE WALTER GRETZKY STORY) and Sam (Jason Thompson, General Hospital) drive up on a motorcycle to their newly purchased home, they have sex until the bed breaks, he draws her naked like in TITANIC, everything is great.

When the song and the credits end it says it’s three years later. Lisa is driving in a truck alone, she seems gloomy, she’s meeting with her lawyer/friend Steven (Michael Trucco, NEXT) about a settlement offer, she flashes back to happier times, she and Sam smiling dreamily at each other from the TITANIC scene. Okay, yeah, I guess he died after we last saw him, driving off on his motorcycle. Should’ve worn a helmet.

Steven gives Lisa a gift, a box that he says he found on one of his “all night web surfing jags,” and of course a Djinn-haunted jewel falls out. But he’s obviously treating this like a courtship, things get very awkward between them. This is like when the main character in part 1 rejected her best friend, then he died, or when the main character in part 3 rejected her sleazy professor, then he died and had his likeness appropriated.

Anyway it’s only during this part that I realized Sam is not dead, he’s just injured, and in a wheelchair. The main source of drama for the story, and most tiresome aspect, is that Sam is always angry and mean to Lisa, claiming he can’t satisfy her sexually anymore even though she says otherwise. She comes home to find him drinking tequila straight out of the bottle with a porn sight called Voyeur’s Vixens open on his Netscape browser.

The Djinn (Novak again) chokes Steven to death, steals his face, and takes over the case. He fulfills Lisa’s wish for a settlement (and makes the other lawyer kill himself), and then for Sam to walk again, so he’s sitting there at the computer (possibly looking at porn again) and realizes he can feel his legs (though they hurt like hell). When she gets home he’s struggling to stand up, but Fake Steven is with her and still makes him feel bad. We get some funny lines like “I didn’t fall in love with your legs, Sam!” as they continue to argue about not having sex.

This seems like by far the worst and most boring WISHMASTER, until suddenly at just about the half way mark Lisa mutters to herself “I wish I could just love you for who you really are.” Fake Steven is horrified and tells her to leave, then a fiery portal opens and three other Djinns harangue him about not fulfilling her third wish, which would mean THE PROPHECY was FULFILLED and they’d be free.

He explains that it’s a paradox. “Human love must be given freely, or it isn’t love. It’s a trap, a wish only she can grant.”

Okay, but…

Then a statue of Ahura-Mazda (there sure are alot of statues of this obscure pre-Islamic god around) comes to life as a guy in black with a sword (Victor Webster, SCORPION KING 3-4). He looks like he could be on Highlander: The Series.

It never really gets exciting as just that scene where the Djinn brothers show up. There’s, like, a sword fight in some woods. But I like that they’re adding some new mythology. I smile every time the other Djinns pop up and start giving him shit.

The deaths in this one aren’t much. There’s a wish for “killer sex” which just means a lady orgasms and then screams as she dies of something or other off camera. This being the horniest WISHMASTER (note the poster) it has a scene at a strip club, but it’s just discussion and boobs and a fight with security in the alley – not a redo of the party scene or the casino scene. Not enough money for that kinda mayhem. He does get to turn into Djinn form during the fight, that’s a good part. He throws a bouncer named Brick (Aleks Paunovic, CHRISTMAS RUSH, DRIVEN TO KILL, THE MARINE 3: HOMEFRONT, Winter from WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, COLD PURSUIT) in a dumpster and somehow knows to make a joke about which day the garbage gets picked up.

I suppose it’s a pretty clever idea for the Djinn’s master plan to involve having disguised but seemingly loving sex with Lisa and trying to get her to say she loves him for who he really is. The second part doesn’t work though. Our heroine is seeing two guys at the same time, both suck in similar ways, only one is a demon.

I guess technically the prophecy does get fulfilled? The other Djinns bust their heads through the wall and say “Lisa!” Maybe Djinns are taking over outside the house too, but if so she rolls it all back before we ever go out there. During the final confrontation one of the many dumb tricks the Djinn does is turn into Lisa in her underwear and talk sexy to Sam. Real, clothed Lisa is standing right there saying “Shoot it, Sam, it’s not me, it’s a trick!” but he still has to close his eyes to do it.

Like all WISHMASTERS throughout time, the fourth one is bad and dumb, but kind of funny. Like my mom always told me, traditions are important. And that was all she wrote for the WISHMASTER franchise property trademark brand series of products. Artisan eventually became Lionsgate and pursued other interests. They seem to be doing okay for themselves, but if they ever run out of SAW money or whatever hopefully they’ll bring back ol’ wishy horns. I would say “technically this counts as a new WISHMASTER” is a low bar to clear but honestly, there is no bar at all. No victim characters ever return, nobody would remember who they were anyway, the wishes don’t have to make sense, nobody gives a shit if it’s a different genie. But I think people would be excited just to see the name. Hey – do you think they ever considered rebranding George Miller’s genie movie as WISHMASTER 5: THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING? Might’ve been seen by more people, honestly. I should start pretending that’s the title when I recommend it to people.

Anyway, thanking you for reading. The wish is granted, long live Vern.