Streaming Availability: Tubi
Wishmaster is a horror comic con that doubles as an actual movie. It is remarkable how many cameos they managed to shove into this thing. You got Robert Englund (Freddy), Kane Hodder (Jason), Tony Todd (Candyman), and Angus Scrimm (The Tall Man) is doing the narration. All we need is Michael Myers and Chucky to complete the set. There's a statue of Pazuzu, of course. Besides that, the movie is crammed with a dozen faces that only a genre nerd would care about: guys like Buck Flowers, Reggie Bannister, and Ted Raimi. This movie expects you to be Once Upon a Time In Hollywood pointing at practically every scene. If you're not excited to say "hey, that's Joe Pilato, the asshole captain from Day of the Dead!" then maybe this isn't your movie.
What is happening here is an attempt to launch a new slasher franchise from the ground up. This is why Wishmaster is borrowing all these icons: to manufacture one. Also, they really wanted to nail the gore. This movie is directed by special effects wizard Robert Kurtzman with assistance from the even more famous, Greg Nicotero. Tom Savini did not work on effects, but he does have a cameo. (Because everybody has a cameo!) Wishmaster at times feels like a super group of all these Fangoria slaughterhouse darlings. This is like Mr. Big, with all these super-legit ultra-talented guitar freaks joining together to make a band, you're going to get a lot of incredible guitar solos. That band... was mostly okay. And Wishmaster itself is... fine.
The concept is great. By 1997, The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise had largely wound down and it left a big hole in the market. The world needs a solid franchise that can reliably supply creative and fantastic kills, if just as a way to get young hungry directors a chance to prove themselves. (These days we have the Saw movies, and indie horror is bigger than ever.) Wishmaster is clearly trying to launch a new Freddy or Jason-sized horror icon in its evil Djinn character (Andrew Divoff). There's a ton of mileage you can get out of a spooky guy with a sense of humor, ironically murdering people with the thing they desire most.
Before we continue: what is a Djinn anyway? We know about demons; they're bad news. We know about the their opposites, the angels. But there is a third class of invisible spirit in Abrahamic religions: our bad guy. The Djinn are known as "genies" here in the English-speaking parts of the world, our mental image of them is of a singing blue Robin Williams helping Aladdin get laid. In mythology though, they are not just cartoon wish-granters. The Djinn are an Arabic myth, predating Islam, yet surviving and flourishing after Muhammad enforced monotheism in the 600s AD. Like us humans, they're capable of both good and evil, and interestingly, they can be believers or infidels. Unlike us humans, they're beings made of fire with great magical powers. Maybe the Djinn are not technically demons, but they can do everything nasty a demon can. They possess people, they rape women, and they appear in black magic rituals. There's still strange news reports coming from the Middle East this very century about men getting divorced from their Djinn-possessed wives or little girls sacrificed to these beings.
Also, the Djinn have become a very popular horror character in the 21st century. There's a lot of Turkish movies with Djinn bad guys. Weird fact: Tobe Hooper's last film was a horror movie shot in the United Arab Emirates called Djinn. (It did not get good reviews.) If I were doing my job better, I would have two or three authentic Djinn horror movies to recommend from around the world.
Instead I have a stupid American movie.
The Wishmaster Djinn is straight demonic. His only goal is to unleash pure chaos, which for some reason requires him to grant three wishes to a person who breaks him out of his ruby gemstone container. In this case it is Alexandra (Tammy Lauren), a nice lady about whom I have nothing to say. Divoff Djinn is basically Satan, granting wishes in exchange for souls. However, Satan is a better salesman and actually delivers on his promises, usually. Our villain is always being the biggest asshole Ironic Genie he can about it. All he wants to do is kill people and it is very annoying that he has to follow these dumb rules. When a guy wishes for a million dollars, his mom dies in a plane crash for the life insurance windfall. Wish to be eternally beautiful and he turns you into a mannequin.
The problem with Wishmaster is that a lot of these kills are not as creative as they could be. Some of these idiots are just handing the Djinn infinite ammunition. Tony Todd is dumb enough to wish to "escape his boring job", so you can only imagine the kinds of nightmare dimensions the Djinn might send him. Instead Todd teleports into a Houdini water cell and drowns. That's the best you could come up with?? Kane Hodder asks for the Djinn to "go through me" and instead of awful grisly body horror, he just kinda turns into stained glass that breaks. That effect even looks terrible.
It does get better once Robert Englund foolishly asks for a party people will talk about for centuries. At that point the Djinn and Wishmaster are free to do just anything they feel like. You piano wire ripping people up and Englund puking out some kind of demon baby fused to his guts. It's great. The opening of Wishmaster is similarly nasty fun. A gormless Persian king asks for "wonders" and oops, bad move. A guy's skeleton rips out of him to run off and cause trouble. There's an alligator man. You better believe Mr. Big could shred, and yeah, Wishmaster can go so hard with make-up effects.
Even the Djinn himself is an alien creature with lizard skin and two tentacles for hair which are always moving. Nice puppetry there. He's got great teeth prosthetics and red-yellow contact lenses. Let's hear it for practical effects, guys! It fucking rules. Meanwhile the CG work from 1997 is as bad as you probably imagine 1997 CG to be.
Wishmaster is easily the dumbest movie we've covered this month. Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian creator god, appears as a statue within which the Djinn is trapped. Now I could be talking about the origins of angels, how Persian religion influenced ancient Israelite religion, but none of that matters to Wishmaster. Instead I'm thinking about how a criminal rips a cop's jaw off in a gnarly effect. That is what this movie is really about. It's fun and it is stupid.
The Djinn never became a true icon like Freddy. However, his movies were not terrible. There were three Wishmaster sequels, and they are all watchable. The second movie might even be better, or at least, it has the single best kill in film history after a prisoner wishes for his lawyer to "go fuck himself". (Oh boy, does the Djinn ever have a time with that wish! Go look up that scene, it will make your day.) The sequels all find themselves drifting more and more into traditional Christianity. The heroine of Wishmaster 2 has to redeem all her sins, and by the third and fourth movies, the Djinn is fighting the Archangel Michael. That final movie also has its protagonist accidentally wishing that she could love the Djinn, posing as her boyfriend, "for who he really is". So the Djinn ends up in a supernatural romance movie, a Genie Twilight. This franchise goes places, the Djinn did not cheat the Persian king when he asked for wonders.
Next Time! Let's wander even further outside the Christian prison I locked this month into, let's watch a Japanese demon movie with Noroi: The Curse.
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