Month of Horror 8: The Hellworld Gospel Resurrection Legacy

[Jagosaurus]

So out of the horror stuff on Netflix, y'all have any luck? I've already watched It Follows and the classics. Next on my list would be Tucker & Dale vs Evil and John Dies at the End. I haven't seen a good horror comedy in some time. Hush looks like it could be legit.

Found this 2018 list. Any feedback?
http://collider.com/best-horror-movies- ... mendations

[Michi]

Wishmaster

Is anyone else reminded of the Dracula movie poster when they
see this? Am I the only one?

A very unlucky auction-house employee, Alexandria, is asked to appraise a gem. Unfortunately, during her appraisal she accidentally releases a Djinn, an evil, ironic-wish-granting entity, from its centuries of confinement. The Djinn roams around town, granting wishes to anyone unlucky enough to come in contact with him. Then he sets out to fulfill his true mission: grant three wishes to the one who released him so that, upon the granting of the third wish, he may open the door to his world, releasing the other Djinn into our world and thus dooming mankind. It’s up to Alexandria to figure out how to stop him, but she has no idea how to stop an unkillable foe.


She also doesn’t know how to stop her boss from acting like a douche. Poor gal has more problems than she needs.

This is not the first time I’ve seen Wishmaster. My earliest memories of it, is watching the edited version on cable years ago. But I hadn’t watched it in forever, so I decided to give it another viewing. I remember liking it when it was on TV and being excited the first time I saw it, because I recognized Robert Englund and that guy from Xena.


Imagine my dismay.

So, did it hold up to later scrutiny? Well, kinda yes and kinda no.

Let’s start with the good. To begin with, the movie is chock-full of various horror cameos. In addition to Englund, there are familiar horror actors from a variety of series peppered throughout the film. Kane Hodder and Tony Todd both make appearances, and Angus Scrimm even does the opening narration. And it doesn’t end with the characters. There are also several visual nods to other films, including a Pazuzu statue (a not to The Exorcist) and this little fellow seen at the beginning of the film-


Gee, I wonder what they could be referencing…..

This brings us to the effects, which is a good segue point. The practical effects of Wishmaster are pretty great. The makeup here is on point and the design of the Djinn is pretty creepy. There’s a point in the film where the Djinn brings a group of statues to life and I gotta admit, with the exception of the eyes, they looked about as authentic as ‘suddenly animated statues’ are going to get.





On the flip side, though, are the computer graphics. Let us just say that the CGI of this film did not age well. At all. Wishmaster is a late 1990’s production and comes with all the technical caveats associated with that. While some of the computer effects don’t look too bad (I can deal with the strangely glowing rock), most of it looks downright cringe worthy today. The ideas they had were good, but when you take into account how well the non-CGI effects look by comparison, it’s really a damn shame how poorly they came out.


It looks even worse in motion, trust me.


And I’m not even entirely sure what they were going for with this.

That brings us to the acting, which is a bit hit-and-miss. Andrew Divoff plays a pretty creepy Djinn… at least when he’s in the costume. When he’s not, he’s dressed in a suit and tie and looks like some kind of shoe salesman. It makes all the...transactions he has with possible wish-takers come off as a little hokey. Robert Englund is great, as he usually is, but here he’s highly underutilized. All the cameo actors are perfectly fine, having pretty much perfected their personas at this point. Everyone else is just kinda okay. Most of them are either under acting or overacting, and while it makes the tone of the film a little disjointed, it does give us some very entertaining reaction shots.



Overall, I still like Wishmaster. I still think it’s a fun little movie, even if the story isn’t 100% consistent. The crappy CGI is really jarring today, but the costume effects are still pretty good. The acting is a bit all over the place, but the film is also a lot campier than I remember, so depending on your tastes, that might not be a deal-breaker. I know it’s not for me. If you're at all interested, watch it for the cameos and practical effects. Those are probably the highlight of the film.

[noiseredux]

Wishmaster is ridiculous fun. A totally cheesy throwaway... But too fun to deny.

[Kuruwin]

So out of the horror stuff on Netflix, y'all have any luck? I've already watched It Follows and the classics. Next on my list would be Tucker & Dale vs Evil and John Dies at the End. I haven't seen a good horror comedy in some time. Hush looks like it could be legit.

Found this 2018 list. Any feedback?
http://collider.com/best-horror-movies- ... mendations

I haven't seen it ages but the original Shutter is on the Finnish netflix and i assume that it's also on others. I remember really liking it but i haven't seen it in ages.

I haven't seen most of the films on that list but i can say that Train To Busan is not very good. It's perfectly alright but i think the only reason why it's gotten so much praise is because it's rare to get something decent zombie related.

Babadook and Invitation might be worth watching.

Ravenous i have seen and i like that movie but the second half is bad compared to the first. It tries to be both dark comedy and horror but it clashes too much. If you happen to like the perioid that it's set in then i recommend it just for that. I wish there was more horror films set in that time.

[Jagosaurus]

Man, that Wishmaster poster brings back VHS rental store memories. I always wanted to rent it, but eluded me. I didn't realize it was a Craven film.

@kuruwin, awesome. Thanks.

[Michi]

Wishmaster is ridiculous fun. A totally cheesy throwaway... But too fun to deny.

It really is. It's got some flaws, some due to the material itself and some due to time, but it's still really entertaining.

Man, that Wishmaster poster brings back VHS rental store memories. I always wanted to rent it, but eluded me. I didn't realize it was a Craven film.

It was only produced by Craven, sadly. Though his name being attached to it is probably why so many horror icons show up in the film.

[noiseredux]

yeah, there's a fair number of "presented by Wes Craven" films that folks have misunderstood to mean that they were actually written or directed by him. Over the years I've had more than one confused film-goer mention They or Dracula 2000 or Don't Look Down or Mind Ripper... etc, as "Wes Craven movies."

[Nemoide]

Watched Hotel Transylvania tonight. I'm an animation nerd, but I have a pretty strong bias against CGI. But this one has monsters, was directed by Gendy Tartakovsky (of Dexter's Lab & Samurai Jack fame), and had Rebecca Sugar (of Adventure Time and Steven Universe fame) doing some storyboards, so I figured I should give it a try.

This is a pretty mixed bag TBH. On one hand, the character designs are fantastic and look like classic cartoons, with characters' weight being carried in an expressive way I really like. Visually this film is wonderful. The timing is great. Unfortunately the story is about as bland as can be. This is the type of kids movie where you can guess the entire plot's trajectory within the first 10 minutes.

I'm feeling a bit burned out on kid-movies and classic films, I think I need some gore in the near future...

[Michi]

Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies


The evil Djinn is once again released upon an unsuspecting world. This time, in order to power up, he takes up residence in a local jail (no shortage of wishes there), before he sets his sights on the woman who released him, a burglar by the name of Morgana. It’s now up to Morgana and her priest friend/boyfriend to figure out a way to once again imprison the Djinn.


Luckily, her priest friend can read ancient Persian… for some reason. I guess Latin really is dead.

Wishmaster 2 is a lot like the first Wishmaster. It follows the typical sequel formula, taking the basics from the first installment and expanding upon the lore and the body count. But where the first Wishmaster was cheesy fun, Wishmaster 2 just comes off as cheesy. Instead of improving upon what made it’s predecessor fun, it focuses on all the negatives and expounds on them.

The acting in particular, suffers this time around. Everyone here seems to either be overacting or terribly stiff. Most of the film takes place in a prison and despite the number of characters roaming around, most of them just fall under the title of ‘Thug’ or ‘Wise Guy.’ They’re pretty much just cookie-cutter personification of inmates, to the point that the movie could have switched all the characters around between scenes and the viewer would have been none the wiser.

To top it off, even the protagonists are dull as sin. Morgana spends most of her time moping about her dead boyfriend and acting awkwardly around the priest friend (wow, she got over the death of the love of her life quickly.) And the priest is… well about as dull as priests can get, especially considering he keeps switching between ‘you must give yourself to God’ and trying to remind himself not to bone his friend.

The only person who’s still close to on par with the last film is Andrew Divoff, and even he comes off more as a creepy salesman in the film than the truly evil presence he’s supposed to be. Maybe the budget was so bad they couldn’t afford to keep him in the suit too long.

But hey, at least the film kept with the tradition of the over the top reaction shots.


Please, check out my wares. They’re to die for.


My reaction when I realized the CGI was about to rear it’s ugly head.

Speaking of tradition, one of the things that does carry over from the first film, is its excellent use of practical effects. Sadly they don’t use it nearly as much as they did in the first, but when they do use it, they get it right.





Unfortunately, the film also carries over its predecessors use of crappy CGI, and here it’s even more pronounced than in the first one. I guess they felt they’d save some money that way, but good gracious is it terrible. Souls flying out of bodies, fake bees terrorizing people, it’s all just horribly cringe-worthy. What makes it worse, is most of it is relegated to the end of the film, turning what could have been a pretty cool climax into something the viewer could turn into their own personal drinking game. Which might actually be fun, but I’d suggest you don’t include any over-the-top reaction shots with it. There’s so much happening at the end there, that I’m afraid some people might pass out before they got to the end.

On second thought, that may not be a bad idea.


One frame, two shots. Drink up, suckas!

One of the things I noticed about the sequel that I really didn’t like was how the wishes were reframed. The tagline of the first Wishmaster was ‘be careful what you wish for’ and in that film, it was pretty accurate. Sure the Djinn would grant your wish, but you actually had to make a wish, as in actually say the words ‘wish’, ‘want’ or ‘I’d like’ and then he’d grant it in a cruelly ironic way, like how he turned the saleswoman into a mannequin after he coaxed her into wishing to stay beautiful forever.

In Wishmaster 2, not only is the sense of irony gone, but so is the condition that someone has to actually make a wish. One of the first things he does in the sequel is freeze a policeman because he told him to freeze. The policeman didn’t specifically say he wanted to freeze, or even that he wanted the Djinn to freeze. The whole exchange goes something like:

“Freeze!”
“Did you say, freeze?”
“Yeah, I said freeze!”
“...Done.”

No. Not done. Those words do not a wish make. I’m not sure if it’s a rushed writing job or they just didn’t care, but that one little change really bothered me.

So, yeah, Wishmaster 2 is a bit of a step down from the original. It’s still relatively nice to look at and full of campiness, but most of the campiness seems to be in all the wrong places. The horrible CGI and poor acting makes a roaring comeback, but so do the decent practical effects. The film also adds in a bit of additional lore that just comes across as cliche and unnecessary. If you liked the campiness of the first one, this one is pretty meh, so don’t set your sights too high.

[prfsnl_gmr]

So out of the horror stuff on Netflix, y'all have any luck? I've already watched It Follows and the classics. Next on my list would be Tucker & Dale vs Evil and John Dies at the End. I haven't seen a good horror comedy in some time. Hush looks like it could be legit.

Found this 2018 list. Any feedback?
http://collider.com/best-horror-movies- ... mendations

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is pretty much a perfect horror-comedy. I loved it. I also loved John Dies at the End, but it is hard to classify that one as a horror movie. Of the movies I the Collider article, I also recommend Hush, The Babadook, The Invitation, Sleepy Hollow, Hellraiser, The Host, and Under the Shadow (Michi: This movie also features a djinn, but instead of being bad, like the Wishmaster movies, its good!). If you are looking for more streaming movies in Netflix, I recommend Darling and I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House. (I am sure that there are more, and I have a bunch more in my queue. Those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head.)

Finally...my wife an I watched Pumpkinhead (1988) on Amazon Prime. Sure, the creature effects were pretty good, and the movie had a nice, dreamlike aspect. It just wasn't that good, though...