Wes Craven’s name was attached to this movie’s full title, Wes Craven’s Wishmaster, so I had to check it out. Craven’s been responsible for some of my favorite horror movies, like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and The Serpent & The Rainbow. I never took the time to notice that Craven neither wrote nor directed Wishmaster. He simply co-produced it and that’s not quite the same thing. This movie was directed by Robert Kurtzman, who’s only other directing credit is for The Demolitionist, a movie starring Richard Grieco. It was written by Pierre David and Peter Atkins, who are responsible for Scanner Cop and the last three installments of the Hellraiser series respectively. Had I known all of this, I would have passed on this movie. I didn’t.
The similarity to Hellraiser, in terms of subject material, is pretty strong and there’s a lot of gore, but, underneath it all, there is a Wes Craven-type horror film screaming to get out. (Pardon the pun.) It’s just not handled with the same care and feeding that Craven himself would provide in terms of an intelligent script and interesting direction.
Craven’s trademark menacing, but humorous, villain is present in the form of the Djinn (Andrew Divoff), who’s been encapsulated in a giant fire opal for hundreds of years. The Djinn has the power to open the gateway between earth and absolute evil. That is, if the person who has awakened him from his slumber makes three wishes, which the Djinn is obligated to grant. Once the wishes are granted, the gateway opens, and evil reigns supreme.
The Djinn is awakened by Alexandra (Tammy Lauren), a gem expert who works for an auctioneer (Chris Lemmon). When a man brings in a large fire opal for appraisal, she notices something strange inside it. To get a better look, she breathes on it and wipes the steam vapor away on her sweater. This awakens the Djinn inside. Alexandra then takes the jewel to her friend, Josh (Tony Crane), who works in college laboratory and can do tests on it. When Josh applies a laser to the jewel, it splits and the Djinn is freed. Josh, however, is killed.
The Djinn has to find Alexandra so she can make three wishes and open the gateway to evil. As he tracks her down, he grants wishes to various people around the city, all with disastrous results. When one woman wishes to be beautiful forever, the Djinn turns her into a mannequin. The Djinn finds a way to turn even the simplest wish into something sinister. The more vague the wish is, the more evil the granted wish becomes.
Tammy Lauren’s performance as Alexandra comes off as a low-rent Linda Hamilton impersonation, but she screams well when the script requires her to do so. Chris Lemmon is entertaining in his relatively small role as the auctioneer. Andrew Divoff, who’s got one of those villainous faces, ala Michael Ironside, is fairly effective as both the Djinn and his suave human form, Nathaniel Demerest. None of these performances is really worth much individually, but collectively they don’t taint the film as horrible based on the acting alone.
The film seems to take great pride in trotting out numerous horror star cameos for genre fans to identify. Robert Englund, who was Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street films, plays an art collector. Kane Hodder, who played Jason Voorhees in some of the later Friday the 13th movies, plays a security guard. Angus Scrimm, the Tall Man from the Phantasm movies, narrates the opening sequence. Reggie Bannister, also from the Phantasm series, plays a pharmacist. Tony Todd, who was Candyman, also plays a security guard. Ted Raimi, from Xena: Warrior Princess, as well as Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, appears briefly.
The problem with Wishmaster is that if you know the cameo references, you’ll also realize that the film is inferior to all of them. It’s too derivative to be anything but a movie that will be remembered as nothing more than a wanna-be Hellraiser and, of course, the reason Wishmaster 2 will be released in 1999.
1.0 out of 5.0 stars
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