So, who’s this mysterious handsome Warlock guy with that soothing British accent? To quote the star himself, Julian Sands: he’s a man in black and white, who comes from the 17th century to the 20th century downtown Los Angeles. And he’s a malevolent person (and not here to audition for Calvin Klein). Sounds intriguing enough.
It all starts in the year of 1691 in Boston, Massachusetts, where the Warlock is chained at the top of an execution tower. He’s locked in a way that puts his thumbs and big toes together that would make him The Hunchback of Boston if he was stuck in that position long enough. When the witch hunter who caught him, Redferne (Richard E. Grant), comes in to witness the execution, the Warlock casts a spell and gets transformed into a cute little tornado, like in Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, that warps him to present-day California. Redferne manages to jump into the spell at the last second. And a series of weird shit happens from here on.
Warlock swirls and crashes through a window into a house where the cuteface Kassandra (Lori Singer) and her landlord Chas live. They let him stay over for the night, because they are good people. The next morning after Kassandra goes to work, the Warlock spots a ring on Chas’ finger. He cuts off his finger with a kitchen knife before biting off his tongue and makes an omelet of it. Yum. Warlock visits a spiritualist lady whom I’d bet sits on a dildo saddle everytime she “goes into trance“. Warlock tells her to summon Zamiel, who tells him to find all the missing parts of The Grand Grimoire so he can learn to spell God backwards (don’t ask) and unmake Creation…something like that. The reward is to be the son of Satan. I’d just prefer a truckload of cash, but that’s just me. Warlock cuts out her eyes to use them as a compass to find the rest of the pieces.
The compass brings him back to Kassandra’s house, where he finds the first part of the Grimoire in an antique table. What a coincidence. Poor Kassandra, who just gets caught in the middle of this cosplay BS, tries to escape, but instead he does the worst thing you can ever do to a woman: by casting a spell on her that ages her to an ancient 40-year-old! And I find it funny that her “40-year-old hag makeup“ is just her, more or less, without any makeup, where I’d mistake her for being a witch from the Westboro Baptist Church. I’m sorry, that was rude of me to say. She eventually meets Redferne and, after clearing some misunderstandings (to put it lightly), helps him to track down Warlock because she is the one who knows how to drive a car. In return, he helps her to break the age curse. Sounds like a fair deal. So what we basically have here is a cheesy fantasy movie set in real time sprinkled with some mild horror elements, a road movie, and, well, it’s a movie. And the similarities to The Terminator are already obvious.
Warlock is an odd one which was supposed to be more of a horror movie than the final cut was. The story is very ambitious on paper, written by David Twohy (Pitch Black, Below, The Chronicles of Riddick), and with the horror director Steve Miner who did the first two Friday the 13th sequels, there were maybe some expectations. Instead, most of the horror elements got watered down and edited after a failed screen test. Some were cut out due to bad special effects and others because of the pure shock value. And the strained budget really shows in several places, especially the effects of Warlock flying which just looks comical and retarded.
A particular scene that was cut out was where Warlock meets the boy with the rugby ball and kills him. Since this boy was unbaptized, his boiled body fat would give Warlock the upgrade to fly like Superman. I like the dialogue leading up to this when Warlock asks the boy why he isn’t at the church given that it is Sunday. Not all Americans are Christians, believe it or not. Then the boy asks Warlock the same and the conversation goes like this:
– Warlock: No witch can set foot on church ground!
– Boy: You’re telling me you’re a witch? You ain’t no witch. Witches are GIRLS.
– Warlock: Some are MEN !
– Boy: Yeah..? Where’s your broomstick? Witches fly on broomsticks.
– Warlock: I need no broomstick to fly.
– Boy: Yeah..? What DO you need?
Then you have a sinister moment where Warlock just looks at him, starts to laugh like the evil super villain he is, and you can only imagine the rest. We see him shortly after drinking his boiled body fat while it got suggested that the boy got killed by the coyotes. Even though this part was cut down, film got blamed six years later for inspiring two Canadian teenage boys for killing and cut the skin off a seven-year-old, who believed they would be able to fly if they made a potion of it. Just too bad they didn’t jump off a cliff to see if it worked.
Despite the campy clumsiness and the weird tone, all the actors plays their roles straight. The one who plays it most straight of them all, is Richard E. Grant, as if his life actually depended on it. His intense and neurotic Shakespearian line-deliveries makes a fun contrast to modern day Kassandra while arguing with cab drivers in Boston. Fun fact: Basil Fawlty himself (John Cleese) was actually considered for the role of the evil Warlock. That would be Something Completely Different indeed, if you take the reference. Julian Sands, who was even hesitant to take a look at the script, plays the role as a slick, charismatic psychopath with the type of confident elegance that could only come from a Brit. Warlock is overall a fun watch, much thanks to our three lead actors who brings a lot of charm and personality to it. It’s not something I’d recommend for everyone, though, It’s feels very dated with schlocky effects, clunky tone and is way more a weird fantasy/action hybrid than horror. But then there’s the sequel.
Director: Steve Miner
Writer: David Twohy
Country & year: USA, 1989
Actors: Julian Sands, Lori Singer, Richard E. Grant, Mary Woronov, Kevin O’Brien, Richard Kuss, Allan Miller, Anna Thomson, David Carpenter, Kay E. Kuter
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098622/
