Wishmaster (1997)

Movie: Wishmaster (1997), directed by Robert Kurtzman

Watched on: Amazon Prime

Ran: 7.05 miles, 8’51”/mile, 01:02:25 (recovery run)

 

Seeing as I was still sort of mired in late-’90s nostalgia (trust me, it beats living in 2020), I figured I’d revisit another title, but this time maybe one that wasn’t one of the umpteen Scream-inspired teen slashers of the era. Nothing against messy and mysterious serial killers stalking oddly attractive-yet-mature-looking high school “kids,” but that spiel can wear thin after a while. I wanted something a little more monster-y, a bit more special-effects-y; a little less Hollywood and a lot more Horror-fan. So what else but Wishmaster to the rescue? I mean, come on, there are like a half-dozen big names in horror attached to this flick, from Wes Craven executive-producing to Robert Englund in a major role all the way down to a cameo in a drug store by special effects legend Tom Savini. Clearly Wishmaster was made for people who like scary movies.

 

So what do horror fans get for tuning in? Well, for starters, how about an expository intro narrated by none other than Phantasm’s Tall Man himself, Angus Scrimm? He obligingly informs us that Djinn aren’t happy-go-lucky genies, but rather nasty-ass DEMONS trying to take over our world by granting “Monkey’s Paw” wishes to the hapless humans who wake them: “Fear one thing in all there is: fear the Djinn. BOY.” Then we get to see the whole “be careful what you wish for” dynamic in play, as the Djinn of the title wreaks havoc at the 12th-century shindig of a Persian emperor in an orgy of the best (or, at least, most excessive and gratuitous) special effects 1997 had to offer. But before the Djinn can grant the third wish that will doom mankind, the court sorcerer magically binds him into a pretty red gem that may or may not be a cherry Ring Pop.

 

Cut to the Present Day of 23 years ago! You know it’s 1997 because everybody’s smoking and only a few people have cell phones. A priceless antique statue is being unloaded from a ship when a drunk crane operator drops the crate on Sam Raimi’s brother Ted, destroying both the statue and Ted’s chances of ever escaping his big brother’s shadow. But what’s this? Inside the statue was hidden the Ring Pop fire opal that houses the Djinn, which is promptly stolen by a dock worker and pawned. The pawn shop owner takes it to be appraised, and that’s how it winds up in the hands of Our Heroine, Alex, a Feisty ’90s Woman who smokes like everyone else but doesn’t have a cell phone. She is, however, an expert on gems, but even she’s never seen anything like this, so she takes it to her lovestruck scientist buddy Josh Friendzone, who zaps it with a laser and frees the Djinn while Alex is off imparting Chekhov’s Zen Basketball Wisdom to the girls’ team she coaches.

 

What follows is a lot of Alex trying to Nancy Drew the Mystery of the Exploding Ring Pop while the Djinn steals a human face and tries to locate his awakener Alex in order to grant her three wishes and unleash hell on earth. As you can imagine, this entails the Djinn granting a whole lot of ill-advised wishes to random people he meets, because the studio put “Be Careful What You Wish For” on the movie poster so now they have to beat that theme INTO THE FREAKIN’ GROUND—which means you get to see Tony “Candyman” Todd as an ill-fated bouncer and Kane “Beefiest Jason” Hodder as a security guard who gets turned into bad CGI glass and shattered, so hey. Eventually Alex and the Djinn meet face to face, there’s a bunch of Hellraiser-y chaos as he tries to get her to make three wishes and doom the planet, and Alex finds herself in a bit of a pickle—will Zen Basketball Wisdom save the day?

 

All snark aside, I have a soft spot for this flick, which I’ve seen many times over the past quarter-century or so. While watching it I get the sense that everyone involved was having fun; somehow it feels about equal parts labor of love and cynical cash grab, and that works for me. I mean, it’s not like we can say we shouldn’t have expected a horror movie about djinns by then, right? Once Leprechaun made back like triple its budget in its opening weekend, strip-mining cultural mythologies for scary ideas was going to be a trend and of course they’d get around to djinns sooner or later.

 

There’s also something endearing about a movie whose prime directive was apparently MOAR SPECIAL EFFECTS, because it was made at a time when the divide between good and bad effects was especially wide, and the vast chasm is fully on display here. Many of the practical effects are killer, but some are definitely Buffy-era TV-budget dude-in-a-rubber-suit quality. Meanwhile, some of the digital effects hold up surprisingly well after nearly a quarter century, while others… don’t. At all. Whether you laugh or cringe will probably depend on how drunk you are.

 

Wishmaster wears its imperfections proudly. It has a decent premise that gives rise to a promising plot—which then yields to the movie’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, oh-heck-throw-in-the-sink-too, actually-you-know-what-add-three-more-sinks-just-in-case philosophy and accordingly falls down at the end, painting itself into a corner so tight only a time travel paradox can fix it with a weirdly happy ending. Even though it’s tantamount to the “it was all a dream!” gambit, somehow you feel sort of okay with that, because you feel like the movie is okay with that. Actually, Wishmaster seems like it feels that way about everything. And what’s more ’90s than a personal affirmation?