KarateParty.org - Wishmaster (1997)

Tony Todd .... Johnny Valentine

An ancient evil being inadvertently brought into the modern world is a standard starting point for a horror film. In Wishmaster we learn that in ancient times genies weren’t considered lovable characters, but were an evil that lived in a space between the realities. All they needed was to grant three wishes to a person who awakens them, and they can take over the world.

The sorceror was pleased to
not be working for Stephen
Sommers for a change.

The film opens in ancient Persia where a king has summoned the Djinn. But, as we are to learn, the Djinn are tricky. When the king asked to see wonders, the people of his city started turning into snakes, merging into brick walls, or having their skeletons jump out of their skin. Of course, it would take another wish to make that stop, so you can see how quickly you’d use three up and doom humanity (and animality as well, I suppose). A sorcerer manages to trap the Djinn in a jewel, which is then put inside a statue.

Cut to modern day America. The statue has been bought by antiquities collector Raymond Beaumont (Robert Englund), but when it’s being unloaded a drunken dock worker drops the crate. It crushes Raymond’s assistant Ed Finney (Ted Raimi) to death, and shatters. One of the dock workers finds the jewel in the rubble, steals it, sells it to a pawn broker who brings it to the auction house where our hero Alexandra Amberson works. Alexandra tries to analyse it, which wakes the Djinn. But it doesn’t break free until she asks her friend Josh to analyse it with a laser imaging machine. The machine explodes, shattering the jewel, killing Josh, and freeing the Djinn.

Enter glory hole joke of your
choosing.

The Djinn then has to find the person who awoke him. He takes the human form of Nathaniel Demerest, played by Andrew Divoff, to conduct his search. Divoff is an amusingly malevolent actor, who does the tough job of pulling off the human form of an ancient evil. He’s more amusing than scary, but at least he’s entertaining. But it is a little strange seeing this guy who’s an ancient evil have to snoop around asking for addresses to find Alexandra. There wouldn’t be much of a movie or body count without it, so it’s a contrivance worth swallowing. But, it does bug me that a guy who can send visions into her head can’t work out what street she lives on.

The Djinn has to convince people to wish for something to be able to do anything to them, and he can talk people into it. This could have been repetitive, but Peter Atkins, the screenwriter, manages to mix things up enough, with some pretty amusing characters and deaths that I won’t spoil. With each death Alexandra has a vision of the Djinn coming for her. A few too many if you ask me, there are limits to how many times I want to a see a woman wake from a vision screaming in any one movie. But between her bouts of hysteria, she finds out about the Djinn, and how to combat it. These scenes are okay, but Alexandra is a bit of a dull character, and Tammy Lauren isn’t the most charismatic of actresses.

What a posse! Shredder, Wishmaster,
and Achilles.

Without giving anything away, I did think that the last sequence seemed to push the limits of what the Djinn should be able to do with any one person’s wish. It’s still a reasonably entertaining sequence, like the whole film. And it luckily managed to just sneak into Mandroid’s sphere of plot acceptance.

On the whole, Wishmaster works. It’s premise offers the possibility of imaginative deaths, and the film delivers. It’s a horror film in terms of imaginative gore, rather than scares. I would go so far as to certify this film as not scary, if there was any reason to do it (there isn’t). But, imaginative gore is my preference over people walking down creaky hallways for an hour, which is why I had a good time with this film. But marks off for contrivances, a sub-par hero, and not being that good.

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