Warlock

Warlock (1989)
Directed by: Steve Miner
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 53%

Hello Film Fans! Today, I have a review for a film that I have been itching to see for over a decade! When I was younger (probably fourth or fifth grade) I bought a few used games from a local video store for my SNES. One of those games was Widget the World Watcher (which I am positive nobody ever saw the show or played the game...I did both). The other game I bought was Warlock. I had no idea what it was about but the cartridge looked cool enough...

I was easy to please?

Anyway, when I got home and fired up my SNES I put hours into Warlock. By the end of my time with the game (maybe 3 levels in) I still didn't know what the Hell I was doing. I never did finish the game and I never knew where the developer drew inspiration from. Here is a clip of some game play. Skip to about 3 minutes in because the person that recorded this gameplay just dicked around for a while before starting to play.


I am not sure you can tell but the game was incredibly fun but insanely difficult which is why I never bothered to finish it. So flash forward several years and I saw the poster art for Warlock and I immediately remembered my time with this game. I have had it on my Netflix Instant Queue for months now, and tonight I finally decided to watch it. What follows is going to be a complete overview of the film in "Hate Watch" format but know this; this film is SO worth seeing because it is SO bad!

Warlock starts (rather abruptly) with an old man shoving a cat into a picnic basket typed vessel. We then see a group of elders walking through a village that looks like it is from the colonial days. The group eventually makes its way to a tower where they are keeping a man prisoner. It is revealed by the leader that the year is 1691 and they are in Boston. The man in front of them (Julian Sands) is accused of being a Warlock and is sentenced to death by burning. They make sure the clarify that he is sentenced to burn while boxes of live cats are tossed in below him! This explains the beginning of the film. Because I don't want to continue to call him The Warlock, I will simply refer to our antagonist as Sandy. As the elders leave, a man with the best 80s metal hair, Redferne (Richard E. Grant), tells Sandy that he is going to pay for the pain he has caused. Sandy informs him that the Devil will set him free. Redferne knocks him over, rude, and leaves. A huge storms comes through and takes Sandy away in a tornado. The elders rush back up to discover that not only is Sandy MIA but so is Redferne.

The film then jumps forward almost 300 years to 1989 California. Sandy crash lands into the house of Chas (Kevin O'Brien). Kassandra (Lori Singer), Chas' roommate, rushes out to investigate. The two contemplate on what to do with the unconscious Sandy and eventually decide to put him in Kassandra's room (because everything is plastic and Chas' stuff is antique). The next day, Sandy wakes up and broods which is super sexy to Kassandra (who looks like she walked out of a fitness VHS). She leaves for work which means that Chas is left alone with Sandy. Sandy admires a ring that Chas wears but he informs him that he cannot take it off because he broke his finger and now it cannot be removed. Utilizing his warlocky powers (he chops the dude's finger off) he takes the ring. Sandy then gives Chas a kiss of death (he bites out his tongue). Chas then dies. Kassandra is taken in by the cops and questioned about Chas' death. She freaks out and heads back to the house to collect her stuff. While she's at the house, Redferne shows up and asks where Sandy has gone. After the initial shock (and a phone call to the police), Kassandra helps Redferne find the glass that Sandy cut himself on. When the police arrive, they take Redferne in for questioning. While Redferne is in captivity, Sandy comes back and hexes Kassandra by making her age rapidly. This is a real "bummer" according to Kassandra.

Kassandra bails Redferne out and she decides to help him until she is unhexed. In the meantime, Sandy has caused a faux Medium to become possessed by an actual demon which causes her to die. Sandy plucks her eyes out and uses them to find the pages to the Grand Grimoire (a book that is like the Bible only for Satan). Sandy finds the first third of the pages back at Chas' house inside an antique piece of furniture. He then travels to a trailer park and seemingly befriends a young boy tossing a football around. Sandy hears a church choir singing and asks why the boy isn't among them. He replies that his father doesn't like "all that Jesus and the 12 apostrophes stuff". Sandy informs him that he is a witch and the boy asks where his broom is because he can't fly without it. Sandy chuckles and tells him he doesn't need a broom to fly. We discover later that Sandy murdered the boy so he could use his fat to make a flying potion (because he needed the fat of an unbaptized boy). Sandy then gains the second set of pages from a Mennonite farm. The elder farmer notices signs that point to bewitchment and paints a hex symbol on the barn. This alerts Redferne and a battle ensues. During the fight, Kassandra regains the charm bracelet that Sandy took which is the source of her hex. She reverts back to her original age and she tells Redferne that she is done with this chase. Redferne appeals to her caring nature and she tells him it would be better to fly to Boston to get the last set of pages before Sandy does. After a brief moment of shock by the planes, Redferne agrees and they arrive in Boston. We see, however, that Sandy has hitched a ride in the cargo hold of the jet and meets them in a graveyard at the church where the last pages are being held. Another battles ensues and Sandy gets all three sets of pages together and almost yells out the true name of God but is thwarted by Kassandra injecting saline into his skin with her insulin needles (I mentioned she is diabetic right?). The saline causes Sandy to burst into flames (because witches hate salt) and thus the universe is saved. Redferne then catches the next tornado back to his own time and the film ends with Kassandra burying the grimoire in the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Here is the trailer to the film that actually shows pretty much the entire film in a minute and half


Now, nobody would ever claim that Warlock is an incredible piece of cinema nor would they claim that it is even, in fact, a good piece of cinema. However, there are a few things that lead to it being considered a terrible (yet cult classic) film. First, neither Sandy nor Redferne show any real shock at the inventions around them. Redferne is a little spooked by cars but gets over that quickly. Sandy gives exactly ZERO Fs about what is going on around him. All he cares about is getting those dam-ned (how they say it in the film) pages. They could have had a really great horror/comedy if they'd added some fish-out-of-water typed humor. Perhaps have Sandy get into a cab and demand to be taken to Boston and the cabbie say "you mus' be crazy, cracka" or something similar. Secondly, the effects are laughable. Watch that clip up there and see for yourself. I could make a film with better effects with the stuff that is in immediate reach from me right now. If they had dropped maybe $13.75 more on effects then they could have had some passable CGI. Lastly, the acting. Holy freaking crap the acting. It is so bad that it almost passes as a parody of these types of films. Kassandra's vocabulary consists entirely of something resembling Valleyspeak. Julian Sands emits this aura like somebody told him that he was doing a film version of a lost Shakespearean play. The good thing about that, though, is that his performance is actually kind of terrifying and pretty much all awesome.

Warlock is not meant to be taken seriously (at least I hope not). Watch this film with the expectancy to laugh and mock. Even if you are scared of the most remotely occult related things; you can watch this and laugh hysterically. The effects are cheesy, the dialoge is unusual, and the story is trite but it is still a ton of fun.

My Score: 5/10