261 Days of Horror, Day 77: Warlock
Apr. 10th, 2007 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiWarlock. 1989. Directed by Steve Miner. Written by David Twohy. Released by Trimark (because original studio New World declared bankruptcy before the film could be released).
Nothing scores as many points in a typical game of Buzzword Bingo as "synergy." It's a horribly overused word that's crept into the vocabulary of every pointy-hair in the nation. Which is a shame; it was a damned good word before it got beaten to death by legions of clueless executives and marketers.
Warlock is a perfect example of cinematic synergy. The screenplay is derivative, mixing mediocre dialogue into a plotline that swipes from almost every mid-'80s genre hit, with only some good character work saving it. The cast, featuring scenery-chewing performances by Julian Sands* and Richard E. Grant, actually attempts to put the emotional weight on poor Lori Singer, whose "aging" throughout is not helped by the f/x department. Only solid work from journeyman horror director Steve Miner helps -- wait for it -- synergize this into a surprisingly good little film.
We start in Seventeenth Century Boston, where minions of Satan could be locked in towers without worrying about complaints that their civil rights had been violated. One of them, the Warlock***, is in the tower, calmly awaiting his execution while chained up from head to toe. The local witch hunter, having caught him, decides to taunt him a bit, but Warlock**** has faith that Satan will rescue him, and sure enough, a time vortex comes along and takes him away. Naturally, the witch hunter isn't going to let his quarry escape, and he jumps into the vortex after his prey. In most movies, this would be an act of utter stupidity, but the witch hunter, Giles Redferne*****, is the hero, so he lives.
What happens when you jump through an ancient Satanic portal? You end up in LA, of course! Like anyone didn't see that one coming.
Warlock ends up crashing through the window of a waitress named Kassandra and the appropriately named "Soon-to-be-dead Gay Male Roommate," although Kassandra calls him Chaz. Naturally, they decide to let him rest on the couch, and while Kassandra is away waiting tables, Warlock wakes up, sees that Chaz somehow has an old ring that used to belong to him, and gets revenge by french kissing him to death. Because when Warlocks do tongue action, it involves biting. And then spitting the severed tongue into a skillet.
Warlock next goes to a fake medium******, who decides that Warlock is hot, and therefore worth trying to con. She does her usual shtick, but is surprised to find herself really possessed by one of Satan's minions. Warlock gets his unholy mission: there's an old book called the Grand Grimoire, and it contains the true name of God. And if you read God's name backwards,he gets sent back to the fifth dimension the world will come to an end. Naturally, the book's been broken up into three pieces and scattered around the globe. This means we've got a Warlock Road Trip! Warlock, incidentally, gets to use the severed eyes of the medium to help him find the book pieces.
Meanwhile, Redferne has finally made it to the future, and he confronts Kassandra and asks her about the blood in her house, making a compass out of a small bit of Warlock's blood. Kassandra, however, thinks there's something strange about a guy wearing furs and talking like a Ren Fest reject, so she calls the cops and has him arrested. Alas, Warlock has discovered that the first section of the Grimoire is hidden in Chaz's coffee table, and breaks back into the apartment. Not only does he take the book, but he casts a spell on Kassandra to make her age twenty years each night.
Naturally, Kassandra is perturbed, and she decides that the only thing to do is bail Redferne out of jail and go on a road trip after Warlock.
Most of the rest of the movie is solidly predictable, but well-done. Warlock almost gets everything he needs to end the world, causing lots of mayhem en route. A churchyard confrontation leads to a climactic battle in which Warlock goes to Hell*******. We get lots of jokes involving anachronisms and "fish out of water" moments featuring the folks from the past. We also get some great interactions between Kassandra and Redferne. My favorite of these is when Kassandra (a high-school drop-out) is shocked that someone from 300 years ago (and the New World) knows that the world is actually round. Alas, it's mixed with cliched crap like, "let's tarry not," that make me want to smack someone.
Along the way, there are some good moments (including one in which Redferne encounters his own grave in a Boston cemetery), some genuinely threatening moments (Sands menaces a farm family quite convincingly, and his encounter with a preacher and his wife is a high point), some good use of assorted warlock myths (milk going bad when he's around, etc), and some awful special effects.
There's also something surprising: Character development. Kassandra grows from being a shallow airhead into a true heroine. Of course, stripping her of her youthful good looks (or, at least, putting a few dollops of makeup on her and pretending that she's older) helps, as she's forced to rely on her other talents. But her character rises to the eventual challenges she faces gradually, getting a little bit stronger and tougher with each horror she's forced to encounter. Likewise, Redferne, in his quest, develops a sense of compassion to go with his righteousness, as each of the heroes helps the other one grow. Wisely, although there's clearly sexual tension between the leads, they never follow up on it, allowing the quest to save the world to remain the focus of the film.
Sands may not technically give a good performance here (or anywhere), but his overacting is just perfect for the role of Warlock. He conveys pure, malevolent evil, the kind that would gladly kill a child to make a potion or unmake all of creation. He doesn't grow as a character, but he isn't supposed to. He's just an evil fucker, something that needs to be stopped for the good of mankind.
Screenwriter David Twohy would go on to give us some damned good films (like The Fugitive and Pitch Black), and some utter crap (Waterworld, G.I. Jane). His work here is solidly in the middle, with swipes from Terminator, Highlander, and even Midnight Run overshadowing what little story there is here. And he certainly doesn't yet have an ear for dialogue. But his characters are well fleshed-out, and he avoids some common cliches quite nicely.
Director Steve Miner is the real hero here, however, taking that screenplay and turning it into a surprisingly exciting and consistently engaging movie. Although I've liked most of his movies (not counting any movies featuring C. Thomas Howell pretending to be black), he does a lot more here with a lot less. Lori Singer does give one of her better performances as Kassandra, and Richard E. Grant, although guilty of overacting all too often, has good chemistry with her. Jerry Goldsmith's score is forgettable, but it seldom gets in the way of the movie. Likewise, the F/X are pretty terrible, but are rarely so central to the movie that this is a huge problem.
Warlock inspired two sequels, which I might snark at later in this series (the immediate sequel is mediocre, but the third film is surprisingly watchable). But on its own, the first movie is a damned fun guilty pleasure, and one that's aged better than most '80s supernatural movies.
*Warlock, incidentally, was made shortly after Room With a View, when there was some sort of rumor that Sands would go on to become a quality A-list actor (even though he'd already made Vibes by this point), instead of the genre mediocrity he became**.
**And yes, I know that a lot of you really like Sands. But he's the male equivalent of Brinke Stevens. Get past the looks (and the British accent, which need not equal "classy" or "talented,"), and he's there because he looks real pretty.
***Not to be confused with Magus's son.
****Honestly, I'm not totally sure if it's a name or a title. Or both. Maybe his name is Warlock Warlock. Or Warlock the Warlock. Or Warlock Warlock the Warlock.
*****Thankfully, we never see where the Redferne grows. It's not that kind of movie.
******Yeah, I know. But this is a movie with warlocks and stuff, so it's not as redundant as it seems.
*******Not Los Angeles again.
Nothing scores as many points in a typical game of Buzzword Bingo as "synergy." It's a horribly overused word that's crept into the vocabulary of every pointy-hair in the nation. Which is a shame; it was a damned good word before it got beaten to death by legions of clueless executives and marketers.
Warlock is a perfect example of cinematic synergy. The screenplay is derivative, mixing mediocre dialogue into a plotline that swipes from almost every mid-'80s genre hit, with only some good character work saving it. The cast, featuring scenery-chewing performances by Julian Sands* and Richard E. Grant, actually attempts to put the emotional weight on poor Lori Singer, whose "aging" throughout is not helped by the f/x department. Only solid work from journeyman horror director Steve Miner helps -- wait for it -- synergize this into a surprisingly good little film.
We start in Seventeenth Century Boston, where minions of Satan could be locked in towers without worrying about complaints that their civil rights had been violated. One of them, the Warlock***, is in the tower, calmly awaiting his execution while chained up from head to toe. The local witch hunter, having caught him, decides to taunt him a bit, but Warlock**** has faith that Satan will rescue him, and sure enough, a time vortex comes along and takes him away. Naturally, the witch hunter isn't going to let his quarry escape, and he jumps into the vortex after his prey. In most movies, this would be an act of utter stupidity, but the witch hunter, Giles Redferne*****, is the hero, so he lives.
What happens when you jump through an ancient Satanic portal? You end up in LA, of course! Like anyone didn't see that one coming.
Warlock ends up crashing through the window of a waitress named Kassandra and the appropriately named "Soon-to-be-dead Gay Male Roommate," although Kassandra calls him Chaz. Naturally, they decide to let him rest on the couch, and while Kassandra is away waiting tables, Warlock wakes up, sees that Chaz somehow has an old ring that used to belong to him, and gets revenge by french kissing him to death. Because when Warlocks do tongue action, it involves biting. And then spitting the severed tongue into a skillet.
Warlock next goes to a fake medium******, who decides that Warlock is hot, and therefore worth trying to con. She does her usual shtick, but is surprised to find herself really possessed by one of Satan's minions. Warlock gets his unholy mission: there's an old book called the Grand Grimoire, and it contains the true name of God. And if you read God's name backwards,
Meanwhile, Redferne has finally made it to the future, and he confronts Kassandra and asks her about the blood in her house, making a compass out of a small bit of Warlock's blood. Kassandra, however, thinks there's something strange about a guy wearing furs and talking like a Ren Fest reject, so she calls the cops and has him arrested. Alas, Warlock has discovered that the first section of the Grimoire is hidden in Chaz's coffee table, and breaks back into the apartment. Not only does he take the book, but he casts a spell on Kassandra to make her age twenty years each night.
Naturally, Kassandra is perturbed, and she decides that the only thing to do is bail Redferne out of jail and go on a road trip after Warlock.
Most of the rest of the movie is solidly predictable, but well-done. Warlock almost gets everything he needs to end the world, causing lots of mayhem en route. A churchyard confrontation leads to a climactic battle in which Warlock goes to Hell*******. We get lots of jokes involving anachronisms and "fish out of water" moments featuring the folks from the past. We also get some great interactions between Kassandra and Redferne. My favorite of these is when Kassandra (a high-school drop-out) is shocked that someone from 300 years ago (and the New World) knows that the world is actually round. Alas, it's mixed with cliched crap like, "let's tarry not," that make me want to smack someone.
Along the way, there are some good moments (including one in which Redferne encounters his own grave in a Boston cemetery), some genuinely threatening moments (Sands menaces a farm family quite convincingly, and his encounter with a preacher and his wife is a high point), some good use of assorted warlock myths (milk going bad when he's around, etc), and some awful special effects.
There's also something surprising: Character development. Kassandra grows from being a shallow airhead into a true heroine. Of course, stripping her of her youthful good looks (or, at least, putting a few dollops of makeup on her and pretending that she's older) helps, as she's forced to rely on her other talents. But her character rises to the eventual challenges she faces gradually, getting a little bit stronger and tougher with each horror she's forced to encounter. Likewise, Redferne, in his quest, develops a sense of compassion to go with his righteousness, as each of the heroes helps the other one grow. Wisely, although there's clearly sexual tension between the leads, they never follow up on it, allowing the quest to save the world to remain the focus of the film.
Sands may not technically give a good performance here (or anywhere), but his overacting is just perfect for the role of Warlock. He conveys pure, malevolent evil, the kind that would gladly kill a child to make a potion or unmake all of creation. He doesn't grow as a character, but he isn't supposed to. He's just an evil fucker, something that needs to be stopped for the good of mankind.
Screenwriter David Twohy would go on to give us some damned good films (like The Fugitive and Pitch Black), and some utter crap (Waterworld, G.I. Jane). His work here is solidly in the middle, with swipes from Terminator, Highlander, and even Midnight Run overshadowing what little story there is here. And he certainly doesn't yet have an ear for dialogue. But his characters are well fleshed-out, and he avoids some common cliches quite nicely.
Director Steve Miner is the real hero here, however, taking that screenplay and turning it into a surprisingly exciting and consistently engaging movie. Although I've liked most of his movies (not counting any movies featuring C. Thomas Howell pretending to be black), he does a lot more here with a lot less. Lori Singer does give one of her better performances as Kassandra, and Richard E. Grant, although guilty of overacting all too often, has good chemistry with her. Jerry Goldsmith's score is forgettable, but it seldom gets in the way of the movie. Likewise, the F/X are pretty terrible, but are rarely so central to the movie that this is a huge problem.
Warlock inspired two sequels, which I might snark at later in this series (the immediate sequel is mediocre, but the third film is surprisingly watchable). But on its own, the first movie is a damned fun guilty pleasure, and one that's aged better than most '80s supernatural movies.
*Warlock, incidentally, was made shortly after Room With a View, when there was some sort of rumor that Sands would go on to become a quality A-list actor (even though he'd already made Vibes by this point), instead of the genre mediocrity he became**.
**And yes, I know that a lot of you really like Sands. But he's the male equivalent of Brinke Stevens. Get past the looks (and the British accent, which need not equal "classy" or "talented,"), and he's there because he looks real pretty.
***Not to be confused with Magus's son.
****Honestly, I'm not totally sure if it's a name or a title. Or both. Maybe his name is Warlock Warlock. Or Warlock the Warlock. Or Warlock Warlock the Warlock.
*****Thankfully, we never see where the Redferne grows. It's not that kind of movie.
******Yeah, I know. But this is a movie with warlocks and stuff, so it's not as redundant as it seems.
*******Not Los Angeles again.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 03:01 am (UTC)And I have to confess that I also loved this film.
Julian Sands
Date: 2007-04-11 01:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 01:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 01:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 02:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 12:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 12:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 02:33 am (UTC)Otherwise, spot on!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 03:04 am (UTC)Can't believe he got Darwin Mayflower's name wrong. Lestat's narrator would be mightily displeased.
It's probably all those bad movies he's been watching.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 06:02 am (UTC)Oh, and nice Hudson Hawk reference there, by the way...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 07:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 12:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 03:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 12:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 02:18 pm (UTC)Satan's Member.
You see, the Warlock is so cool, he's been blessed by Satan with a penis so large that the fortune teller, being violated while possessed, describes the sensation as "having her stomach gouged out with a baseball batt". It is his primary weapon. It was used upon the Soon-to-be-dead-gay-roomate, Redferne's wife, the fortune teller "as mentioned above" and is felt by Singer's character through his ye olde Calvin's before she uses her instruments of Warlock Destruction at the end (whereas in the movie, he gets them in his neck). Whether he kills them while buggering them or by buggering them is kind of unclear, but it's there.
Also there are touches like instead of carving out the eyes of the fortune teller, he sucks them out. Another bit is a scene (which was in the previews) where he charms a vending machine (not with Satan's penis) to kick out free coke and then kills a mechanic by witching the jack out from under the car he's working on.
Thanks for the review. Have a lovely day. Peace.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 10:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 09:52 pm (UTC)You've used this joke at least once, if not twice, before.
Shame.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-11 10:19 pm (UTC)