The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Wishmaster (1997), directed by Robert Kurtzman

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "Wishmaster" by Nightwish

       As any student of Arabic folklore or garden variety nerd will tell you, there is more to the genie than Disney songs and pop culture references. Genies, or jinn for those of you out there that aren’t filthy casuals, was the catch-all term for the transcendental beings that made up part of the belief system of the Arabic people almost three thousand years ago. Aside from their magical powers jinn were said to be not that much different than humans, they were mortal and they ate and slept as humans do, and they were not inherently good or evil and thus could choose to be either, which made it quite easy to integrate them into the theology of Islam as it made its through the Middle East,  and on the surface seems a lot more tolerant than the ‘all your shit is Satan’ policies of Christian missionaries. Good jinn were those that chose to follow Allah and the bad ones didn’t, and many a tome written by many an Islamic wizard on the methods one could  summon or entrap these mystical beings to either punish them for their wicked deeds or do the bidding of mankind. That’s likely where the whole ‘wishes’ thing got its start, but this is just an introductory paragraph to a movie review, so if you want to learn more I’d suggest visiting your local library. 

       Honestly it’s a bit weird that there haven’t been more evil jinn movies, I mean we’ve got two dozen movies about killer bongs and possessed cookies, you’d think a creature with established powers and versatility would come up more often. Hell they even made an evil leprechaun movie, and those guys literally do nothing but fix your shoes and give you free gold. In this post-Aladdin world the people were crying out for a genie-themed horror movie, and when you wish hard enough for something it might just come true. Or at least it seems like it does in hindsight. 

       Released in 1997, Wishmaster was written by Peter Atkins, directed by Robert Kurtzman, and produced by the late Wes Craven through Pierre David. In an introduction by Phantasm’s very own Angus Scrimm, the nature of the Djinn are revealed to us; That they are beings of great power and great evil who tempt mortals with anything their hearts desire, but should they grant three wishes to the person who wakes them then the barrier between worlds will be ripped asunder and the Djinn will be free to run rampant across the Earth. Such an event almost happened in 12th century Persia, but before the Djinn (Andrew Divoff) could grant the final wish he was sealed into a red jewel by a wizard. That jewel was hidden with a statue and that was the end of it until the present day, when the statue was broken during transport to an American museum and the jewel was discovered and subsequently stolen. Eventually this jewel ends up in the hands of an appraiser named Alex (Tammy Lauren), and it’s she who unknowingly frees the djinn from his prison, because apparently no one thought to rub the jewel before that. Now the Djinn has been set loose in the city, cutting a swath through the wishful masses, as he hunts down the woman who will bring about the apocalypse. Tonight Alex is going to learn that wishes do come true, whether she likes it or not.  A shitty synopsis, true, but at least it’s accurate.

       I’ve always been a bit wary when it comes to things throwing the names of popular creative types in the title as it always feels like a ploy in order to squeeze out some more bucks at the box office, but thankfully for the audience that’s not the case for Wishmaster. Wes Craven was coming off of the most successful film of his entire career in 1996’s Scream, earning 173 million dollars over a 14 million dollar budget, so it’s likely he was chomping at the bit to capitalize on that newfound industry clout. Part of that was jumping on the franchise wagon with Scream as he had with A Nightmare on Elm Street a decade or so prior, but it also meant that he could take more expensive risks than he could have otherwise. That’s what I think Wishmaster was for better or worse, more the film that Wes Craven wanted to make rather than the film he had to make.

       We can see this right away in the choice of Robert Kurtzman for director. Looking at his film credits you can see that this was only the second film he had ever directed, but he had been a staple of the make-up and special effects department for the past decade, working behind the scenes on Marathon alumni like Night of the Creeps, Bride of Re-Animator, In the Mouth of Madness and dozens of others. So it’s no surprise that when given the keys to the camera and the OK by Wes Craven that he shows off what made him such an asset for all these years. You ever wondered what a skeleton ripping its way out of a human body looked like? Or a man getting his lower jaw ripped off? There are no papercuts in the world of Wishmaster, if you are around anything that might injure you then your family is gonna be requesting a closed casket funeral. In the review of Rise of the Planet of the Apes I wrote that that film could not exist without CGI, and while that’s not the case with Wishmaster (there are several scenes which utilize it after all), I don’t think it would be nearly as entertaining as it would be without the practical effects. The fact that it’s so over-the-top while being handmade is part of the macabre charm.

       Speaking of handmade, I also have to give credit to Kurtzman and crew for the design of the Djinn, both its smaller, ‘larval’ stage and the larger main body. While it does come across as less of a being of Middle Eastern folklore and more of a Power Rangers villain, they tend to downplay the potential goofiness of the suit in favor of the face make-up, which by contrast looks quite detailed with losing much in the way of expressiveness. When they introduce the Djinn’s human form, which is just Andrew Divoff in a suit, for a second I didn’t realize they were the same person as the make-up was that transformative. Wishmaster as a series might not be up there with the major horror franchises but I wouldn’t put that blame on the Djinn, he looks way cooler than Freddy Krueger and his beef jerky face.

       The second thing we can see right away is in the choice of casting, full of more cameos than a horror movie convention. Angus Scrimm (Phantasm), Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street), Kane Hodder (Friday the 13th), Tony Todd (Candyman), Buck Flower (Village of the Damned and over a hundred other things), even good ol’ Ted Raimi shows up for a minute or two to die a gruesome death, it’s a treat for those followers of genre though likely meaningless for everyone else. Andrew Divoff as smooth Nathaniel Demerest or the demonic Djinn is a solid performance, and his bizarrely deep, toad croak of a voice helps him stand out in the sea of mostly silent movie monsters. Tammy Lauren immediately gave me Linda Hamilton vibes when I first saw her, beauty with the baggage of tough living, the kind of person who looks made for cigarettes and sarcastic quips. Which they lean into a bit here but not as often as I would’ve liked, instead giving us a lot of overhead shots of her grimacing, which on the whole was not an attractive look for her. 

       The third thing we can see right away is grabbing Henry Manfredini to compose the score. Manfredini, much like Kurtzman, is a staple of the horror movie genre, having composed the music for the entire Friday the 13th series as well as House (not the Japanese film) and various other horror films. I haven’t watched House or the Friday the 13th films beyond the first film so I don’t know if Manfredini has a distinct style, but if I had to describe his work in Wishmaster in three words or less it’d probably be ‘big and brassy’. The kind of bracing sound that would go well against the backdrop of Luke Skywalker racing a landspeeder on the moon of Endor, but not necessarily an evil genie murdering people. At times it’s so excited with itself that it actually hurts the mood the movie is trying to build; The way the music blares at jumpscares (of which there are more than necessary) ends up feeling like a skit pulled out of the Scary Movie series rather than from a legitimate horror film. A modern film would have doubled down on the Persian and Arabic music and probably end up sounding a rehashing of the Pillar Men theme though, so I appreciate Manfredini’s John Williams tribute boldness in a weird way.

All of that adds up to form my overall opinion of Wishmaster, that it is two-thirds of a good horror movie. It’s got a good idea, and it does cool things with special effects, but the plot isn’t there. There’s a core of a good story, with Alex struggling with her past trauma and learning to open up emotionally, but most of the runtime is spent on redoing the same scene over and over again: djinn tempts person with thing, djinn grants person said thing monkey-paw style, Alex has vision and grimaces, rinse and repeat. We don’t even get to the whole ‘three wishes’ aspect until near the end, because so much of the film is waiting for the Djinn and Alex to finally meet, and by the time they do the film just rushes through them, in hindsight making those threads they set up for her character which would be perfect inroads for the Djinn to tempt her, just feel rather superfluous. Most of the deaths leading up to the climax aren’t connected to her or anything that she does either, in fact they’re largely pointless as the Djinn ultimately gains nothing from granting any wishes besides the three for Alex, so there’s a definite dissonance between the horror and the narrative.

Furthermore, the whole concept of djinn in the film doesn’t seem to have been fully fleshed out before pen was brought to paper. You’re trying to tell that the Djinn, who have been around since the dawn of mankind, have never been to make a single person make three wishes? Also what exactly constitutes a wish in this universe? The rules of the Djinn in this film state that they can only use their powers in service to a wish, but I think you hear the words ‘I wish’ once in this entire film. You could argue that characters mentioning that they want a certain thing counts as a wish and I might accept that, but at one point the Djinn counts a guy saying yes to a question that the Djinn asked as a wish, so how vague can you get before what you say doesn’t count as a wish? All it does is make the Djinn in this movie look stupid as hell, as they have all these advantages and loopholes to their one rule that prevents them from complete world domination and yet they insist on twisting wishes to do evil shit rather than just giving people what they want and thus making them more inclined to actually make the wishes. When the Graboids from Tremors come across as the more intelligent and competent threat then you’re doing something wrong.

       When compared to the horror movies of years past, your Halloween’s, your Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s, your Nightmare on Elm Street’s, Wishmaster struggles to find the right balance between thrills and story and in the end never quite finds it. That being said the special effects really are impressive for the time, and in a genre where visuals are of equal or greater importance to story that means Wishmaster gets the recommendation. If you’re looking for something to throw on the TV for your family/friends this Halloween, something that sparks conversation but doesn’t require your complete attention, you might want to consider Wishmaster. Pair it up with Leprechaun and Stargate and you can have your own ‘Americans screwing around with other people’s folklore’ night.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Cube (1997), directed by Vincenzo Natali

     The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Trapped In A Box", by No Doubt

     Yeah, vampires are scary, and zombies aren’t very nice, but there’s one thing that puts every movie monster in the world to shame: humans. As scary as those monsters can be, they are still fictional after all, and humans are more or less real. The fear of our fellow man has guided the development of the whole of civilization, caused wars, lead to racism, classism and has shaped our pop culture accordingly. Look at how money money has been made on the true crime and slasher genres, which is based entirely around the premise of people killing other people. Sure, if you go around thinking everyone around is trying to murder you at all times you’re either a severe paranoiac or a Republican, but if the idea wasn’t at least somewhat believable than it wouldn’t be successful. Who knows what people are capable of when pushed to their limits?

      The premise of Cube is a simplistic but highly effective one. 7 people awake to find themselves in strange color coded rooms, with no memory of how they ended up there. Each wall of each room has hatches that enter into other rooms, which also open into other rooms, forming a gigantic, constantly shifting cube. Not only that, but some of the rooms are rigged with various deadly traps, which ensure an instant and painful death for whatever poor bastard happens to stumble into it. Who put these people in this fantastical death trap? What horrible crime could they have done that would warrant such a punishment? None of that matters. The only hope these prisoners have to avoid a slow, painful death by starvation and dehydration is to band together and escape the cube, and they’ll soon find out that this is going to be harder than anyone ever thought.

      I don’t want to seem like I’m blowing smoke up Vincenzo Natali’s ass, but Cube is an amazingly effective horror/thriller film. The atmosphere of this film is fantastic, with a level of tension that builds and builds until it becomes almost suffocating. There is no outside force, no Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger waiting to kill everyone except the hot chick so that we as an audience can direct our fear towards some monstrous creature. It’s a couple of people locked in a room (in a sense) , and it’s one of the most of the most suspenseful films I’ve seen in a while. If that’s not a recommendation to place Cube in your Halloween watch queue, I don’t know what is.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Tromeo & Juliet (1997), directed by Lloyd Kaufman

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Sex & Outrage", by Motorhead

     In the world of theater, there are few names as influential as that of William Shakespeare. Poet, wordsmith, playwright par excellence, Shakespeare is responsible for some of the seminal written works not only of the English language, but of the entirety of recorded history. Hamlet, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, pieces of art that have survived the test of time, reproduced, replayed and reinterpreted thousands of time since they were written, and on and on for the foreseeable future. Name drop Tennessee Williams or Goethe to the average man on the street and all you’re gonna get is a blank stare, but they even catch a glimpse of a skull and the first thing on their lips is gonna be ‘alas, poor yorick’. That’s the power of Shakespeare, baby.

     By contrast, there are few names in the world of film that are less influential than that of Troma. Established in the 1970s by founders Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman as a truly independent movie distribution company, one that shunned Hollywood in favor of artistic freedom, Troma almost immediately became known less for being an alternate avenue for aspiring filmmakers and more for being purveyors of...well, let’s say shit. Generally movies that, due to lacking the funds, writing, acting, and pretty much everything else that Hollywood has, instead spend their time on cartoonish violence, gratuitous nudity and yawn-inducing shock jock style offensive humor. That’s not to say I’ve never seen a good movie with the Troma label (looking at you, Cannibal! The Musical) , or that I don’t support their mission, but some of the worst fucking movies I’ve ever seen are also part of the Troma family (looking at you, Dr. Fugazzi), and on the whole you’re probably going to find a lot more turds than you do hidden gems. They’re better than those tools who put out ‘Transmorphers’ and ‘Atlantic Rim’, at the very least.

     Thus it was inevitable that these two meet.

     Directed by Lloyd Kaufman and written by James Gunn, who you might remember from Slither or some movies you’ve never heard of about a talking tree or something, Tromeo And Juliet is obviously based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the classic tale of two teenagers who fall in love at first sight, despite their families being locked in a bitter and bloody rivalry, which ultimately ends in tragedy. At least that’s generally how the story goes, but after infected by the touch of Troma things end up a little bit different. The Montagues is now the Que family, headed by the inebriated and flatulent disgraced porno director Monty Que, Lord Capulet is a sadistic wife beater and attempted rapist with an explosive crossbow, Juliet’s Nurse is now Ness, a chick with a thing for lip piercings and fish tacos, and Tybalt/Tyrone carries a walking stick with Hitler’s face on it. Oh and the Chorus has been replaced by Leemy fuckin’ Kilmister of Motorhead (they also provided a song for the soundtrack), who seems to be almost but not quite interested in what’s actually saying. Throw in a fart noise every now and then and you’ve got yourself a movie, apparently.

     Normally when I cover movies I end up feeling bad if the article is too short, because it feels like I’m shortchanging you readers or not adequately defining my opinion, but I just can’t find much to say about this one. It’s a movie that sort of follows the story of Romeo and Juliet with a bunch of shit in so it can seem ‘over-the-top’ and ‘outrageous’, but ultimately comes as desperate and tedious. Does the film need a close-up shot of someone getting a nipple piercing? How about a softcore porn scene between Juliet and Ness with intermittent cuts of Tromeo having the saddest wank session ever seen to some late 90’s porno games? Where would the audience be without that side-splitting ‘Friar John is a child molester’ joke? I mean no one has ever made a joke about Catholic priests molesting children before, so Tromeo And Juliet is really treading new ground here. Move aside Will Ferrell, here’s the new face of comedy.

     Not to disparage Lloyd and James, because I’m sure they’re long past giving a shit about this movie, but I think there’s an important thing to note here: Sometimes, less is indeed more. I know that this is Troma, so you’re encouraged to throw as much shit at the wall as possible, but TAJ does it so often with no real cooling off period that I burned out long before the halfway point. Also, in case the above implication wasn’t clear, this movie just isn’t funny. Maybe if this was my first Troma movie ever this maelstrom of boobs and fake blood would seem like a novelty, like screwball 80s comedies taken to its logical conclusion, but once you’ve seen more than one you realize pretty much all they have. Aside from a scant couple moments where they play around with the play’s dialogue and a phone sex scene I didn't even come to anything beyond a smirk this the whole thing, and you can blame the internet or adult swim for desensitizing me to this kind of thing, but I’m telling you straight from the heart that it’s just stupid. Yes, stupid things can be funny, often are funny, but it takes a firm hand to keep stupid from drifting from ‘funny’ into ‘annoying’. By the time Tromeo And Juliet whips out the bull penis, it’s already smashed into the guardrail.

     The Lemmy cameo is fun, the music is pretty good, but Tromeo And Juliet just doesn’t do it for me. Could be that I’m just an old stick in the mud though, so feel free to check it out yourself. Hell, if you’re looking to make your night a Troma night, I’ll throw in a few recs for Cannibal! The Musical, The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke’em High and Story of A Junkie. Just make sure that no one in the room is lactose intolerant, because there’s going to be a lot of cheese. Cheese and exposed breasts, which I wouldn’t be surprised to discover is the name of a Troma franchise.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: Event Horizon (1997), directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", by Frankie Valli and The 4 Seasons

     While tales of evil invaders from beyond the stars have existed for over a century at this point, going all the way back to H.G. Wells’ seminal work ‘The War of the Worlds’, it was only after humanity managed to break out into the last frontier that the concept of ‘space horror’ really came into being. Writers like H.P. Lovecraft may have scratched the surface of the issue, but it wasn’t until outer space became a matter of public knowledge that the reality of it all began to sink in. That space is a vast, unknowable thing that stretches out farther than the eye can see, filled with things that we only can only theorize and speculate about. That the only way to even begin to experience it is to shelter yourself within a tiny little suit and a tiny little ship, and hope that you thought out every contingency so that your and your crewmates don’t suffer a painful, horrible death. It’s a humbling reminder of just how frail humanity really is and just how small our reach is when compared to the grand scale of the universe.

     It does make for some pretty good movies though.

     In 2040, decades after Earth has established itself on the Moon and Mars, a ship known as the Event Horizon disappeared somewhere around Neptune. The Event Horizon was a research vessel, outfitted with an experimental engine known as the Gravity Drive, which was meant to enable faster-than-light travel and propel us beyond the solar system. Specifically, the Gravity Drive used a magnetically contained singularity to open up ‘dimensional gates’, allowing you to pass through two points in space simultaneously. Had it not disappeared, it would have been the most important scientific discovery since the splitting of the atom.

     Seven years later, Dr. Weir (the designer of the Event Horizon and the Gravity Drive) and the crew of the Lewis & Clark rediscover the E.H. on Neptune after receiving an bizarre distress signal from the ship, despite the fact that the ship is way too damaged for the crew to have survived. Sure enough, the former crew are dead, with strange abrasions around their eyes, as if they were clawed out. Even stranger, the Gravity Drive seems to be active, which it shouldn’t be according to Dr. Weir. Then the hallucinations start, and the crew of the Lewis & Clark realize that their lives are about to become a living hell. Literally.

     There’s one thing I’ll say in Event Horizon’s favor: aside from some dated CGI, this film is fucking gorgeous.The scene with Weir inside the duct with rows and rows of glowing circuit boards lining the walls, the spinning blades of the walkway leading up the Gravity Drive, even the cockpit of the Lewis & Clark just look so meticulously crafted that you just want to be in those rooms, to just stand there and watch all the lights blink and pieces turn. Sure, the influences are obvious, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Scott’s Alien, but plenty of other movies have tried walking down the same road as Event Horizon and haven’t looked even half as good. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery when it’s done well, and in terms of artistic design Event Horizon has done very well.

     As nice as the films looks, the truth is that Event Horizon just...isn’t scary. At all, really. Sure, they try to do scary stuff, like ‘ooh, this person hallucinated some gross thing’ or ‘wowee, that lady has no eyeballs’, but it never takes that extra step forward that pushes it into truly disturbing territory as proper lovecraftian-style horror. I’ve heard that executive meddling cut down a good portion of the more graphic scenes in the film, and while I’m sure they tried to make the best with what they were dealt, it just comes across as flaccid. I mean Hellraiser wasn’t exactly movie gold either, but it managed to be far more bizarre and far more disturbing for what was probably a far smaller budget, and I respect that film for it. It’s both science fiction and horror man, the only limit should be your imagination! Maybe you should have taken a lesson from John Carpenter’s The Thing while you were busy making the giving the spiky black hole engine room a moat for whatever reason.

     Also, I don’t know if this is worth mentioning, since this is Paul W.S. Anderson and all, director of as many shitty Resident Evil movies as there are shitty Resident Evil games, but Event Horizon kind of gets really, really dumb by the end. I don’t know if this was the end result of more studio meddling or what, but it seems like that by the last third of the movie Anderson decided that he was done making a spooky horror movie and shifted into making an action movie instead, and a painfully corny one at that. Suddenly the wise-crackin’ comedy relief character is showing up to save the day, despite being launched into Neptune’s orbit earlier in the film, and Laurence Fishburne is fighting a psychic manifestation of evil, and it just feels way to energetic and hopeful for what should be a hopeless psychological horror story. It’s less jarring of a tonal shift than in From Dusk Till Dawn I guess, which went from murderers and rapists kidnapping a family to making jokes and shooting vampires with a penis gun, but in that case you had two different directors (Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino) working on their own halves. You can’t have lovecraftian horror while giving the audience a feeling of hope and human agency, otherwise it doesn’t work. Why be scared of hell if you can blow it the fuck up and be done with it.

     One last thing I should mention: the characters suck ass. Once again, you can tell they’re doing the Alien thing (which is the slasher movie thing in a broader sense) by introducing a large cast of characters (typically falling into certain archetypes) that we’re meant to identify with and have an opinion on whether they live or die. Not so in Event Horizon, where the entire cast (aside from Larry Fishburne and maybe the comic relief character) manages to sidestep most common narrative tropes by not being interesting in the least. Even Stark, who was apparently the female lead the whole time and I never noticed, who had less dialogue than the other female character and actually did far less. Even Dr. Weir, the architect of the whole shitstorm and the character who logic would dictate is the dramatic centerpiece of the film doesn’t really do or say anything dramatic or interesting, and ultimately fizzles out into some kind of weak Pinhead ripoff. Except Pinhead was the fucking monster of Hellraiser, not even the main antagonist in a sense, so it didn’t really matter if he was one-dimensional or not. Weir invents a portal to the Cthuluverse, has visions of his wife committing suicide and claws out his own eyeballs and yet I could not give less of a shit if I tried. If you can’t even write a worthwhile scenario for ‘scientist falls victim to his own creation’, which is literally the oldest science-fiction story in the book, then you know you’ve got problems.

     Still, sci-fi and horror films are not always the bastions of fantastic writing that we like to think they are, a lot of the time they’re just so the audience can marvel at the weird shit they see on the screen. So if you’re a people who is more interested in being entertained when watching movies than character archetypes and if it’s a ‘good’ story or not, then you might have some fun with Event Horizon. For all its flaws, it certainly is a spectacle.

     I’m not liable for any eye-gouging that occurs during the viewing of this movie, by the way.

Lost Highway (1997), directed by David Lynch

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