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.” (read the rest of this shit…)
I remember seeing WISHMASTER in the theater in 1997. More than that I remember cleaning the theater, because I worked there. There weren’t many people going, so there wasn’t much to clean, but I would try to be around at the very end of the credits because I thought it was funny that you hear the Djinn saying “Careful what you weeessshhh for!” in his ludicrous evil voice. That was the main thing I remembered.
It definitely did not impress me back then, and I’m afraid this is not one of those SLEEPWALKERS situations where I just wasn’t ready. But I can at least say that WISHMASTER is pretty good for a laugh when it’s decades after the fact and you’re not hoping for anything genuinely good, let alone an exciting new horror creation from Wes Craven (who “presents” it).
I’m not sure what Craven contributed, if anything, but the director is Robert Kurtzman, who is usually not known as a director. He’s the K in KNB EFX who in his capacity as a makeup FX genius helped create versions of Freddy, the Predator, Leatherface, Darkman, Pumpkinhead and more. As a filmmaker his biggest feat was writing a 24-page vampire treatment and commissioning newcomer Quentin Tarantino to write a script based on it, then after not getting it off the ground letting him give it to Robert Rodriguez.
Not that I wouldn’t love to see Kurtzman’s FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, but he obviously couldn’t have done anything slick like Rodriguez did. He makes true b-movies like THE DEMOLITIONIST, starring Nicole Eggert from Charles in Charge as as a zombie cyborg cop. Even though this here genie movie got a wide theatrical release, it’s coming from the same realm.
The villain of WISHMASTER is a nameless Djinn played by Andrew Divoff (TOY SOLDIERS, EXTREME JUSTICE, AIR FORCE ONE). We’re told by one of the movie’s exposition-providing mythology experts to “Forget Barbara Eden. Forget Robin Williams. To the peoples of ancient Arabia, a Djinn was neither cute nor funny.” Instead they are “creatures condemned to dwell in the void between the worlds.” (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m trying not to overdo the horror movies during these times of dread, but I feel very strongly that I didn’t fit in enough Slasher Searching this October. In order to be the change I want to see in the world I intend to continue the mission periodically, free of holiday constraints. So today I have for you a double-header of wrestling themed horror movies. I thought it was a good gimmick when I reviewed WRESTLEMANIAC 16 years ago (!), but I didn’t realize until scrolling Tubi recently that it’s a whole subgenre now.
WRESTLEMASSACRE (2018) is a slasher movie of the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT or Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN variety in that it follows the killer and gets into his psychology before he goes on a rampage. I guess it’s more of a grappler movie than a slasher movie, since he mostly kills with his bare hands. (But sometimes hedgeclippers.) Randy (Richie Acevedo, “Vendor (uncredited), SUPERFLY) is a timid Cuban immigrant who works as a landscaper but dreams of becoming a wrestler like his dad (Nikolai Volkoff). (read the rest of this shit…)
Maybe it’s weird to watch a post-apocalypse movie right before this particular election, but I’d wanted to see AZRAEL and then I saw that it was on Shudder. I knew it was a low or no dialogue movie starring Samara Weaving (MONSTER TRUCKS, THE BABYSITTER, SNAKE EYES), and not much more, but “genre movie starring Samara Weaving” is enough for me. It would’ve been a bonus if I’d known it was written by Simon Barrett (YOU’RE NEXT, THE GUEST) or if I recognized the name of director E.L. Katz from the dark comedy CHEAP THRILLS.
We’ve seen so many post-apocalyptic worlds, but this is a new one for me. It opens with a card that says, “Many years after the Rapture… Among the survivors, some are driven to renounce their sin of Speech.” Yes, it’s a movie where none of the main characters speak, or even sign, so the details of their situation are never directly addressed. But that leaves plenty of space to interpret and contemplate.
1977 gave us some pretty important movies. Some influential ones. Some we still talk about today. STAR WARS was a big one. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. ERASERHEAD. SORCERER. THE HILLS HAVE EYES. And hailing from Italy, Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA. One of the greats, a true original, and I think it’s safe to say one of the most beautiful looking horror movies ever made.
When I first saw it as a young man it set my brain on fire. I was pretty new to the world of Italian horror and had never seen anything quite like it, but it turns out that’s also because there’s not anything quite like it. Since then I’ve seen it many more times, including once in a theater with a Jessica Harper Q&A, and its reputation has grown even stronger as a generation or two discovered it in the age of screen caps and gifs. Its stunning visuals require no context to knock you on your ass. (read the rest of this shit…)
The central theme of ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) is right there in the title. It’s about someone having a baby, so it’s about fears surrounding a healthy pregnancy and beginning a new life as a parent. That’s part of what makes the movie so powerful, but one way I know it’s good is how effective it is even for someone like me, a non-parent, a childless cat lady. I’m sure it kicks your ass harder if you’re an expecting or aspiring parent, but it has other things going for it too.
My main association with ROSEMARY’S BABY is that it was my mom’s favorite horror movie. That might just mean it was one of the few she’d seen. But I remember when I was a teen obsessed with Freddy Krueger and Clive Barker she said “Do you want to see a real scary movie?” and we rented it. As far as I remember I thought it was pretty good, but not enough that I thought of as a favorite. It didn’t make it into the rotation.
That was more than three decades ago. For years now I’ve been wanting to revisit it and review it for the day before Halloween, my mom’s birthday. But I always get behind on all my other plans and get bogged down. I decided to make it happen this year even before I realized there was a new prequel on Paramount+, but I’ll review that soon. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE INVASION (2007) is the fourth (and final, the way civilization is going) official movie adaptation of Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers. I actually reviewed it for The Ain’t It Cool News when it came out, which is one way I can prove it exists. It’s documented! Anyway I after I watched the other three I figured I oughta complete the set.
This one stars A-listers Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig and is the Hollywood debut of acclaimed German director Oliver Hirschbiegel (DAS EXPERIMENT, DOWNFALL), as well as the first movie written by David Kajganich, who later wrote A BIGGER SPLASH, SUSPIRIA and BONES AND ALL for Luca Guadagnino. But it was kind of a fiasco, losing money and getting poor reviews, universally considered the weakest of the four versions. I’m sure we would’ve noticed it was kinda sloppy even if it hadn’t been widely reported that producer Joel Silver thought it wasn’t working and spent $10 million on reshoots written by the Wachowskis and directed by their guy James McTeigue (V FOR VENDETTA, NINJA ASSASSIN). It was delayed over a year and moved from a confident June release to a resigned August one.
Abel Ferrara’s BODY SNATCHERS (1993) was my first body snatcher invasion movie. I saw it when it was new on video, and I knew it had been poorly received, so I figured my ignorance of the original and the original remake must’ve helped me to enjoy it more than everybody else. But watching it now with a deep appreciation for the other ones, yeah, it’s still good anyway. So maybe I liked it better because I’m a unique individual with my own feelings and not a plant programmed only for survival. Or because I was ahead of my time – it seems to have a pretty good reputation now.
The title sequence is admittedly chintzy compared to the one in Kaufman’s version. Something about the long sequence of the title flying through a crude starscape and letter-by-letter turning from red to black, set to the score by Joe Delia (MS. 45, FEAR CITY, THE SUBSTITUTE 2: SCHOOL’S OUT), was putting me in mind of a Stuart Gordon/Brian Yuzna type movie, but that might’ve been my subconscious remembering that this was actually from a screenplay by Stuart Gordon & Dennis Paoli, rewritten by Ferrara’s guy Nicholas St. John. Gordon was supposed to direct but couldn’t get a commitment from the studio to actually make it until leaving to do FORTRESS. He told Fangoria that his version was originally designed as a sequel to the Kaufman version and went into more detail about how the pod people are plants. “It’s not like they have a brain in their head. The creature’s consciousness is throughout its whole body, so that if you destroy the head, it doesn’t kill or stop it.” That would’ve been fun! But what Ferrara did is good too. (read the rest of this shit…)
This DVD I rented is labelled DEMONS III: THE OGRE, but I knew that wasn’t really a thing. That’s just how video labels chose to promote THE OGRE, a 1989 TV movie that Lamberto Bava went off to do after giving up on a third DEMONS.
THE OGRE opens in Portland, Oregon, where a little girl wakes up and wanders into a dungeon/wine cellar and finds a bizarre, pulsating cocoon on the ceiling. It’s like a giant spider egg sac except it glows yellow, drips fluid and beats like a heart. She sees a spindly monster inside, and it reaches a hand out for her, then chases her. Eventually she wakes up. Yes, it was only a dream, but she dropped her teddy bear in the dream, and now it’s gone. (read the rest of this shit…)
Until now I had never seen DEMONS 2, really didn’t know anything about it, and considering its provenance it could’ve been a sequel-in-name-only. So I was excited when the opening narration described the events of the first film: demons unleashed from a movie theater. But it says that was followed by “days of terror that convinced the world demons can exist.” Days. So the war between the survivors and the monsters implied by the ending has already wrapped up, I guess. Things seem to be back to normal.
You could say it’s a DAWN OF THE DEAD type sequel – new set of characters later in the same apocalypse – but really it’s more of a do-over, a different take on the same rough idea. I think that’s a pretty cool approach, and they chose good elements to remix. Instead of a movie theater, the specific structure it focuses on is a high-rise apartment building called The Tower. Instead of the meta element of a movie about demons showing in the theater, they have one broadcast on TV, and various people in the building are watching it. They also have another part where suddenly it cuts to some punks driving around, although in my opinion they don’t really do much of interest with it. On the other hand they do one-up the iconic people-with-glowing eyes scene by doing it with a bigger mob of demons and then again looking up a staircase as they run down it. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Mr. Majestyk on Legend of the Eight Samurai: “Any movie with a title that sounds like the name of a lesser Wu Tang affiliate is worth watching.” Apr 2, 11:42
VERN on Legend of the Eight Samurai: “Definitely sounds up my alley. You had me at “I recommend BASTARD SWORDSMAN” though.” Apr 2, 11:05
Borg9 on Mickey 17: “It’s worth remembering that Bong grew up in a country being ruled by the military and may have other insights…” Apr 2, 09:33
Mr. Majestyk on Legend of the Eight Samurai: “Hey Vern, if you’re in the mood for more weird 80s kung fu, I recommend BASTARD SWORDSMAN, a Shaw Bros…” Apr 2, 06:22
Dreadguacamole on Mickey 17: “I liked it but, to be honest I would rate every other Joon-ho movie I’ve seen over it. A few…” Apr 2, 02:41
KayKay on Top Gun: Maverick: “And we’ve now lost Iceman for good!!! RIP Val…you were truly an iconic actor of your generation. The perfect blend…” Apr 1, 22:20
VERN on Mickey 17: “I don’t think Bong was trying to make a movie about Trumpism, I think that character is a whole bunch…” Apr 1, 18:28
Toxic on Mickey 17: “I remember that some people hated TEAM AMERICA because since the backdrop was a satire of the G. W. Bush…” Apr 1, 17:18
KayKay on Everything Everywhere All At Once: “So for those who loved Quan breaking out the kung fu in EEAAO and thought, this guy needs a movie…” Apr 1, 16:15
Ben C. on Mickey 17: “I have to say I agree with Mr Subtlety on this – I really wanted to like this more than…” Apr 1, 14:36
Mr. Subtlety on Mickey 17: “I have to say, I liked much of this, but Ruffalo’s awful Trump analog sort of ruined it for me.…” Apr 1, 13:54
Mr. Majestyk on Legend of the Eight Samurai: “If becoming intelligent and knowledgeable means I have to start thinking that song is terrible, then I guess I’ll just…” Apr 1, 09:38
Peter Campbell on Mickey 17: “Adored this film. Its my kind of weird science fiction. While it can wander at times in story its pacing…” Apr 1, 05:21
KayKay on China O’Brien: ““but he sure as hell was a legit action star” Hell yeah! Norton and Rothrock went toe to toe with…” Apr 1, 03:50
pegsman on China O’Brien: “I see that the younger pegsman is a bit harsh on Rothrock. Glad he’s not around anymore…” Mar 31, 22:38
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).
I remember seeing WISHMASTER in the theater in 1997. More than that I remember cleaning the theater, because I worked there. There weren’t many people going, so there wasn’t much to clean, but I would try to be around at the very end of the credits because I thought it was funny that you hear the Djinn saying “Careful what you weeessshhh for!” in his ludicrous evil voice. That was the main thing I remembered.
I’m trying not to overdo the horror movies during these times of dread, but I feel very strongly that I didn’t fit in enough Slasher Searching this October. In order to be the change I want to see in the world I intend to continue the mission periodically, free of holiday constraints. So today I have for you a double-header of wrestling themed horror movies. I thought it was a good gimmick when I reviewed 
WRESTLEMASSACRE (2018) is a slasher movie of the 
Maybe it’s weird to watch a post-apocalypse movie right before this particular election, but I’d wanted to see AZRAEL and then I saw that it was on Shudder. I knew it was a low or no dialogue movie starring Samara Weaving (
1977 gave us some pretty important movies. Some influential ones. Some we still talk about today. 
The central theme of ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) is right there in the title. It’s about someone having a baby, so it’s about fears surrounding a healthy pregnancy and beginning a new life as a parent. That’s part of what makes the movie so powerful, but one way I know it’s good is how effective it is even for someone like me, a non-parent, a childless cat lady. I’m sure it kicks your ass harder if you’re an expecting or aspiring parent, but it has other things going for it too.
THE INVASION (2007) is the fourth (and final, the way civilization is going) official movie adaptation of Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers. I actually 
This DVD I rented is labelled DEMONS III: THE OGRE, but I knew that wasn’t really a thing. That’s just how video labels chose to promote THE OGRE, a 1989 TV movie that Lamberto Bava went off to do after giving up on a third 
Until now I had never seen DEMONS 2, really didn’t know anything about it, and considering its provenance it could’ve been a sequel-in-name-only. So I was excited when the opening narration described the events of 
