The Wishmaster series
I made it a point to finish the Wishmaster series for this challenge, seeing as how they're both rated low enough to qualify. Not parts 1 and 2 though... those movies are too good, apparently, rated 5 and up. So what's so great about Wishmaster anyway? And how great is it as a franchise?
https://junkepics.com/film/?title=wishmaster
Wishmaster (1997) - This is what I would call a Fangoria film. You have all these 80s horror icons bundled into a story about supernatural evil, and plenty of room for blood, guts, and practical effects. However, this is the 90s, and we're also getting some bad CGI.
The Tall Man himself, Angus Scrimm, narrates as it starts off with a prologue in a scene of balls to the wall chaos. People are getting magically murdered by a genie, because this genie is a dick. As expected, he'll twist your wish and steal your soul.
Robert Englund is some museum guy whose artifact resurrects the djinn, and begins killing off an assortment of our beloved horror icons, in various supernatural ways. There's a central female protagonist, there to defeat him. Right? And of course, we even have George Buck Flower, always playing a hobo.
Andrew Divoff plays the main antagonist, and there's something about this guy that makes it work. He looks like a real bastard. In the end, the movie isn't mindblowing, but it's damn sure a lot of fun. Wes Craven "presented" it, which basically means he endorses it, but not necessarily the sequels. It can only go downhill from here, right?
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (1999) - The series is already starting to feel direct-to-video at this point. Andrew Divoff returns for no good reason, but we're all for it, because he's got a face you love to hate.
Again, there's a lead female protagonist out to stop him, but it ain't so easy this time around. And there aren't any good horror icon cameos this time around. Yet, they make up for it by having some decent kills. A man stares at his locked prison door and wishes he could walk right through that door, so guess what happens? The djinn takes things pretty literally.
Then, we have the lawyer scene. An inmate wishes his backstabbing lawyer would go fuck himself, so that happens. How exactly, is pretty preposterous. They crop the bottom half of this guy as he's sitting in a desk or something, and his legs go behind him and rotate, and start fucking him. I don't know, I was overthinking it, but it still seemed weird to me, but I still love it.
The film leads to a rampage at a casino, to rival the opening of the first film. This ending is better than all of Leprechaun 3 (which is set in Vegas). Overall, it's a satisfactory entry in the series, which is now officially a series at this point.
Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001) - This is where the series takes a nosedive, because the script is so generic and dull. IMDB trivia:
"Andrew Divoff was set to reprise his role as The Djinn in Wishmaster 3 and had even written an original draft, but the producers didn't like it so they went with Alex Wright's script instead, Andrew hated it and left." He hated it for a reason. It was so dull. I only watched it last night, and I can barely remember it. Of course, I was drunk at the time, but who cares? A bad movie is a bad movie.
The film features A.J. Cook (Out Cold, The Virgin Suicides), and she's wasted in an uninspired screenplay, directed by Chris Angel. Not the mindfreak, though.
The genie isn't as charming without Divoff, so they decided to have him steal someone else's face. Some square who isn't quirky enough. The wishes are all lost in translation, and none of them are really interesting. To make things even worse, there really aren't any good kills in the movie either. What has become of this series? It's only on part 3, and we're looking pretty fucked.
Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled - This entry was shot back-to-back with Part 3, both of which directed by this Chris Angel guy. Immediately, this doesn't seem promising, but somehow, this entry is a lot more entertaining than the last one.
I think Chris Angel didn't put any effort into the last movie, saving it all for this one. They tried to work some romance into it, and it's okay for the most part. Our next female lead is having hard times with her boyfriend, because he's in a wheelchair after a motorcycle accident. She loved fucking this dude, and he hasn't been able to for the last 3 years. Their lawyer is introduced, trying to get them a good settlement out of it, but the good old evil djinn takes this guy's face, and is back to his old, dirty ways... or is he?
He's kinda caught up in a plot twist, which I wont go into out of apathy on the subject, but for some reason, this one didn't rub me the wrong way so much. It actually had a few okay kills in it, and a decent ending, compared to the crap we had in part 3.
In all of these movies, the genie is obviously defeated in some way or another. Like in X-Men, they never kill Apocalypse. They only trap him, and that's the best you can hope for with this guy, too. Like Pinhead from Hellraiser, you really just want him to leave you alone, and hope he doesn't come back to you, because he can't be destroyed. But... seeing as how there aren't any sequels beyond this one (which really surprises me, actually), I guess maybe the djinn
does die at the end?
