|
The Film: 3/5 (Overall)
WARLOCK (1989/1991): 4/5
The Warlock movies were one of the odder horror franchises to be realized during a decade that had no shortage of quipping monsters and gore-soaked slashers battling it out to see who scored the most Fangoria cover stories. Despite having its initial theatrical release delayed by two years due to the collapse of its financier New World Pictures, the first Warlock went on to achieve modest box office success and cult status through home video and cable viewings, spawning two sequels of diminished importance in the process.
Now Lionsgate has gathered all three films together in one glorious package of supernatural mayhem, confounding mythologies, and slumming British thespians doing their darndest to take it all as seriously as they can. The Warlock Collection is the latest addition to the studio’s Vestron Video line of cult favorite horror films from the 80’s and 90’s rescued from Home Video Purgatory and granted new high-definition transfers and loads of new and vintage supplements.
In late 17th Boston (approximately three centuries before the birth of the first Wahlberg brother), a warlock (Julian Sands) has been captured by the gifted witch hunter Giles Redferne (Richard E. Grant) and condemned to death by a tribunal of stodgy old guys that includes Ian Abercrombie (Seinfeld, Army of Darkness) and Kay E. Kuter (The Last Starfighter). Just as the sentence is about to be carried out, the warlock manages to escape through a convenient time portal summoned by Satan (I think) that sends him crashing – literally – into 1980’s Los Angeles, with Redferne close behind.
Using a phony spiritualist (Mary Woronov) to channel his dark lord and master, the warlock is given the mission of locating and assembling the pieces of the Grand Grimoire, a Satanic bible that contains the true name of God, the name that was first spoken at the dawn of creation. If the warlock recites the name, the entire universe will be unmade in a matter of milliseconds. Teaming up with Kassandra (Lori Singer), a waitress who has been cursed by the warlock to age two decades every day until she dies, Redferne pursues his demonic adversary on a cross country mission that takes our heroic duo from the streets of Hollywood to the rural farm of a helpful Mennonite to a final confrontation at a cemetery in Boston, the very city where this ultimate battle between good and evil first began three hundred years earlier.
Skillfully directed with energy and style by Steve Miner (Friday the 13th Parts II and III, House) from a screenplay written by David Twohy (The Fugitive, Riddick), Warlock is a pure blast of relentless action, horror, and dry humor. Twohy clearly had a lot of fun concocting the story, outlining its earthy mythology, and determining the rules that permit both our heroes and the titular villain a fair chance at success, and most of his dialogue is joyfully cask-aged in the theatricality of mannered Old English speak.
Stars Julian Sands (Naked Lunch) and Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I) rip into their respective roles with the relish and respect of Shakespearean actors performing the Bard for the first time before a captivated audience, with Sands creating a deliciously evil embodiment of the devil himself walking amongst us mere mortals with a smile on his face and some poor soul’s bloodied beating heart in his hands. Though Grant may not be the most likely candidate to play an action hero, he handles the part with the seriousness and determination it requires. The story wisely focuses on Redferne’s mission and relegates the usual fish-out-of-water tropes of stories such as these to the sidelines, occasionally finding its humor in how Lori Singer’s beleaguered 80’s Californian Kassandra (with a “K”) tries to make sense of the insane, centuries-spanning fight she has been unwittingly dragged into and accordingly adapt. She has a good rapport with Grant that only hints at romantic potential in their final moments together.
Meanwhile, Miner keeps the action moving at a healthy pace, bringing the various set-pieces to life with a moderate amount of practical effects work from Carl Fullerton (The Silence of the Lambs) and many others, including some in-camera gore gags and an animated enhancement of the warlock’s devilish superpowers that was added in post-production. The only effects that have not aged well are the ones used to age Singer in later scenes and then try to make audiences believe that a warlock could fly, visual flaws only made more obvious by the HD upgrade.
The late Jerry Goldsmith (Planet of the Apes) contributes a rousing orchestral score, while the cinematography of David Eggby (Mad Max), whom screenwriter Twohy would later work with (as a director) on Pitch Black and Riddick, is a modest feast of moody, painterly images that bring out great mood and atmosphere in the production design by Roy Forge Smith (Monty Python and the Holy Grail).
WARLOCK: THE ARMAGEDDON (1993): 3.5/5
Two years after the original Warlock was rescued from the rubble of what used to be New World Pictures and given a theatrical release by Trimark Pictures, the indie upstart studio hired Frank LaLoggia (Lady in White) to direct a sequel that would essentially be a reboot in that characters and events from the original were to not be alluded. When LaLoggia’s vision of the film proved too costly for Trimark’s blood, he was replaced by British director Anthony Hickox.
Having previously made both Waxwork and its equally fun sequel as well as the modern-day bloodsucker western Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat and the better-than-average Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, Hickox had proven to be just as adept as Steve Miner at crafting efficient and pleasurable horror entertainment that packed plenty of gruesome fun and spooky shenanigans into tight running times. He was a natural to take over from Miner, and armed with a script penned by Kevin Rock (the unreleased 1994 Fantastic Four, Howling VI: The Freaks) and Sam Bernard (Rad), he managed to lure Julian Sands back for an encore performance as the warlock and surrounded him with a supporting cast of up-and-comers and seasoned industry veterans.
The result is far better than you might expect, but not quite the equal of the original (which the makers of The Armageddon decided to pretend never happened – big mistake). The first movie hinted that the warlock was the son of Satan, but the sequel makes this the pretty obvious truth from the beginning. After his Xtro-style rebirth (as gleefully grody as only a Hickox flick can deliver), our natty necromancer receives new orders to track down six runestones within six days because a lunar eclipse is about to happen and combined the stones have the power to free Satan from his prison in the underworld and set him loose upon our world. Unlike the last time, when he had to create and ingest special potions to attain certain magical powers, the warlock returns to Earth sporting a wide array of abilities far beyond those of mere mortals.
Opposing his efforts to literally unleash hell are the descendants of an order of Druids living in a small rural community – one of whom (Steve Kahan) realizes the time has come to begin training his teenage son Kenny (Chris Young) in the ways of the Force, or the Druid version of that anyway. They face heavy resistance from the town’s overwhelming Christian community that believes the Druids serve the same master as the warlock. Ultimately the task of battling the warlock and destroying him once and for all falls to Kenny and his girlfriend Samantha (Paula Marshall), the daughter of the town minister (Bruce Glover) and someone who shares with Kenny a destiny to become a protector of the planet from evil.
Right from the start of Warlock: The Armageddon, the viewer is warned to expect something different from its predecessor. Rather than follow a cat-and-mouse chase narrative, director Hickox spends his time cutting back and forth between the warlock’s hunt for the runestones and our youthful, optimistic couple Kenny and Samantha coming the accept their birthright and train to master the great powers they were destined to draw upon to fight the greatest evil. The two plot threads are given equal time and solid pacing and they converge with a vengeance in the film’s final twenty minutes when Hickox goes all in with the stunts and special effects to bring his contribution to the Warlock franchise to a frightfully entertaining conclusion. The pyrotechnics may seem excessive at the this point in the story, but they are more than welcome even if they must compete for screen time with some seriously shoddy video illusions.
Warlock took a restrained but playful approach to its violence, but with Hickox at the helm, The Armageddon cuts loose on the prosthetic gore and bathes its handsome sets in gallons of stage blood, all marshalled by an effects crew that includes past Hickox collaborator Gary J. Tunnicliffe and the great Bob Keen. The FX wizards are in their element staging several creative death scenes that demonstrate the warlock’s improved powers and the malicious intent with which he welds them against his vulnerable victims. The scene where an arrogant art collector is crushed and twisted into resembling a living creation of Pablo Picasso is one to remember.
Sands is also given similar license to ham it up to more delicious extremes than a Miss Piggy performance of “Pork Salad Annie”, dressing, speaking, and carrying himself like a demonic televangelist working over his flock with over-the-top monologues and smug one-liners. He may have been scarier in the original, but at least Sands is having fun here and that fun can’t help but be mighty infectious. Chris Young (P.C.U.) and Paula Marshall (Full Eclipse) are barely able to generate a fraction of the chemistry and conviction that Richard E. Grant and Lori Singer shared in the original, but they make likeable heroes and romantic interests are well supported by veteran character actors like Steve Kahan (Lethal Weapon), R.G. Armstrong (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid), Charles Hallahan (The Thing), and Bruce Glover (Ghost World).
Gerry Lively, who served as cinematographer for Hickox on the Waxworks duology and Hellraiser III (as well as Return of the Living Dead III and the Ice Cube/Chris Tucker comedy hit Friday), brings out the gorgeous malevolence in the city scenes where the warlock murders his way into possession of the stones and contrasts it strongly with the bucolic serenity of the film’s primary small town setting, creating an inventive visual palette upon which the director stages his stylish brand of genre mayhem. The original score by Mark McKenzie (the direct-to-video Dragonheart sequels) lacks a memorable theme but commendably reflects the aggressive and gorehound-pleasing approach of The Armageddon.
WARLOCK III: THE END OF INNOCENCE (1999): 1.5/5
The third and final (so far) of the Warlock series was released direct-to-video at the end of the 1990’s and was the only one of the two sequels to have a Roman numeral in its title. Sands bowed out of returning for this one, so Bruce Payne, one of Hollywood’s handiest Euro-heavies for action movies like Passenger 57 and Highlander: Endgame (as well as the cool HBO action-horror werewolf cop flick Full Eclipse, director by Anthony Hickox) was hired to play a new warlock villain by the name of Philip Covington. He’s joined by fellow genre vet Ashley Laurence (Hellraiser), who snagged a rare lead role that didn’t require her to interact with any Cenobites.
A DTV release meant a substantial reduction in the budget this time, but the production moved from the U.S. to scenic Ireland and scaled back locations so that the story takes place mostly in and around a single ancestral house. These cutbacks in filmmaking resources didn’t have much of an effect on the narrative ambitions of the film’s creators - directorial duties were handed off to Eric Freiser, who worked mostly as a writer and producer for television, and for his only feature film he also collaborated with producer (and Trimark executive) Bruce David Eisen on the script – but the lower budget also meant that horror fans wouldn’t find much to enjoy about The End of Innocence outside of an occasional flash of female nudity or crudely executed gore FX gag. Without a single doubt, this is the worst of the Warlock movies, though it has a few modest virtues that can’t be easily dismissed.
What little is worthy of praise about this cut-rate endeavor of celluloid does not extend to the music by David Reynolds, which is hilariously awash in bad techno that an amateur club DJ could have crapped out in less than an hour, or the cinematography from Andrew Turman and scenery which have both been drained of color and life. The characters are dull and disposable and not even Laurence – playing a woman with a dark past summoned to a house she recently inherited – is granted any time or space to develop a hero worth rooting for when Payne’s master of the dark arts comes calling. Playboy Playmate Angel Boris and Rick Hearst of Frank Henenlotter’s cult classic horror comedy Brain Damage play a couple heavy into sadomasochism, and yet they still aren’t that interesting to watch.
We’re basically watching a slow and ponderous slasher flick with supernatural overtones, drowning in the trappings of cheap late 90’s horror cinema. It’s stunning in its mediocrity, and for a movie with Warlock in its title, the warlock is barely in it at all. Payne’s villain pops up in flashbacks tied to the backstory of Laurence’s character before he enters the story proper near the halfway mark of the 94-minute running time and proceeds to mount a first-class charm offensive that leaves everything a smoldering wreck in its wake. Blood and gore are minimal because obviously we watch movies like The End of Innocence for the great character and plot development. Whatever. This movie blows, and I’m sick and tired of writing about it.
Audio/Video: 4/5 (Overall)
Each film in the Warlock trilogy has been given a crisp and vibrant high-definition upgrade in full 1080p resolution, and each MPEG-4 AVC encoded transfer is presented in anamorphic widescreen.
The first film comes framed in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, while the two sequels have each been framed in 1.78:1. Boasting the best and most improved transfer of the bunch is the original, which brings warm and balanced colors (befitting a late 80’s New World Pictures production), strong black levels that bring much-needed visibility to the various night scenes, and a low and consistent level of grain to the collection. The only shots that feature more grain than the rest of the film are occasional effects shots of the warlock in flight, but there isn’t enough of them to detract from the overall quality of the transfer.
The Armageddon fares only slightly worse because it carries more grain in select scenes early in the film and the seams in the poorly composited effects shots are more apparent than even in the days of VHS, but healthy image stability, a balanced color scheme that reaches Argento levels during a sequence set in a carnival funhouse, and fine close-up details are enough to redeem the transfer’s flaws and make the film look better than ever before. Warlock III: The End of Innocence looks pretty sturdy for a cheap DTV 90’s horror flick, with a consistent level of grain, accurate flesh tones, and an improved clarity in the close-up shots. This is a very drab and ugly film, so don’t expect any vibrant colors, except in the lush greens of the forest that surrounds the house where the story mostly takes place.
To compliment the upgraded transfers, all three films come with English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks that offer laudable replications of their original two-channel Dolby stereo sound mixes. Dialogue, music, and ambient effects mesh very well together and are given equal room to impress on their own. Distortion is non-existent. English and Spanish subtitles have also been provided for all three films.
Extras: 4/5 (Overall)
Lionsgate has stacked The Warlock Collection with tons of bonus features, some of which were newly created for this release. Naturally the original gets the lion’s share of the best supplemental content, beginning with a new audio commentary with director Miner that does a fine job of providing an honest, detailed overview of the production of Warlock and rarely succumbs to dead air thanks to the pointed questions and observations from moderator Nathaniel Thompson. The third alternate audio track offers a selection of isolated music cues from the Jerry Goldsmith score alongside an audio interview with author Jeff Bond. It’s worth listening if you’re a fan of memorable film music.
Red Shirt Pictures has produced three new interviews for this edition of Warlock. “Satan’s Son” (25 minutes) talks with actor Sands about how he was inspired to become an actor after seeing Laurence Olivier in Richard III and his involvement with Warlock and its first sequel (as well as explaining why he decided against starring in the second sequel). He also shares some thoughts on his collaborators both in front of and behind the camera. Director Miner discusses the making of Warlock in “The Devil’s Work” (16 minutes), and the information he shares here is mostly covered in greater detail on his commentary track, but it’s a good interview all the same. Finally, make-up FX creators Carl Fullerton and Neal Martz are interviewed separately about their contributions to the film’s many chilling visual splendors in the worthwhile “Effects of Evil” (16 minutes).
The rest of the extras date back to the production and promotion of Warlock. First, we have a lengthy selection of interviews filmed on the set with Miner, Sands, Grant, Twohy, and producer Arnold Kopelson (40 minutes). Shorter featurettes cover the creation of the film’s effects with Fullerton and Martz (6 minutes) and visual effects supervisors Patrick Read Johnson and Robert Habros, animation supervisor Mauro Maressa, and matte artist Robert Scifo (6 minutes). Closing this package out are the original theatrical trailer, complete with New World logo (2 minutes), TV spots (3 minutes) and a short promotional spot for the home video release when the film was picked up by Trimark, behind-the-scenes footage without narration (18 minutes), and a video still gallery (9 minutes).
The second Blu-ray disc houses both The Armageddon and The End of Innocence and their accompanying supplements. Armageddon gets a new commentary with director Hickox that is constantly funny and informative but threatens to run out of steam towards the end, a vintage making-of featurette (8 minutes), vintage interviews with the director and stars Sands and Marshall (6 minutes), behind-the-scenes footage (5 minutes), the original theatrical trailer (2 minutes), TV spots (1 minutes), and a video still gallery (4 minutes). Apart from the still gallery, all the video extras are presented full-frame.
Bonus features for End of Innocence are even slimmer than Armageddon. We get more behind-the-scenes footage (14 minutes), the trailer (2 minutes), a brief video sales promo (1 minutes), vintage interviews with the cast and crew (43 minutes), and the last of the video still galleries (4 minutes).
Overall: 4/5
The Warlock Collection is one terrific action-horror B-movie with A-list resources and aspirations, one better-than-average sequel that is great gory fun, and one extremely dull and lifeless sequel that is an ordeal to sit through. I still recommend this Blu-ray set from Lionsgate and Vestron Video on the strength of the first two films’ entertainment value, the vastly improved high-definition transfers, and the wealth of new and vintage supplements that have been provided for each film. Fans of the series and late 80’s/90’s horror should find much to enjoy here. Highly recommended.
|
