A Wishmaster(s) Trio: Part III

I'm not sure it's even fair to give a full review to Wishmaster III: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001).  Why you ask?

For starters, the movie opens with a dream sequence involving a horrible car crash. Young Diana Collins and her parents are driving along, minding their own business, when the "DAD, LOOK OUT!" scene screeches into the movie.  A jack-knifed semi-truck is cutting off part of the road up ahead.  Dad panics and instead of swerving to the right, where the road is clear, makes a desperate swerve to the left, into the accident, and rolls their car multiple times,  Diana's unscathed father leaps miraculously from the sheet of metal that used to be a car, and helps Diana to safety before running back for her mother.  His timing couldn't be worse, however, and the car (as all Hollywood cars must) explodes in a fiery ball.   Mom and Dad both tragically burn to death.  

So sad.  And Diana has never been the same since  "the accident."  In fact, after being awakened by this nightmare she goes and sits on the roof, toying with the idea of jumping, much to the worry of Greg, her jealous boyfriend, who puts up with some serious quirks from Diana.  Apparently she's really hot (see previous Wishmaster review) despite her average features.

Anyway, Diana is the favorite T.A. of the university's history teacher, Professor Barash, who has a thing for college girls, badly bleached hair, and ancient artifacts.  In fact Barash just happened to commission a museum exhibition with, you guessed it, some Persian artifacts!  Naturally he wants Diana to check it out with him, much to the chagrin of Greg.  Unfortunately, the good Professor must have missed his own memo since she arrives and he doesn't bother to show up for another couple hours.  He's probably just busy correcting papers, or raping a campus co-ed.  Turns out, as the Djinn later drudges up, Barash can't always control his sexual impulses around all these attractive students.  Sometimes "no" just means "yes."

Meanwhile, you can't let a history buff like Diana alone in a room full of artifacts without some sort of mayhem, right?  And wouldn't you know she happens upon a very particular stone, happens to decode the secret message on the stone and also happens to open it's secret compartment containing... wait for it... a blood stone.  And a Djinn.   All in five minutes.  Any archeology team would be lucky to have her, if she wasn't so busy letting evil spirits loose.

Ignore the details, are any of the main points of this sounding vaguely familiar?  That's because Wishmaster III is a blatant rip-off of the same plot as the first Wishmaster.  Really, really blatant.  If the first one is bad, then what is does lousy carbon copy look like?  Search no further than this movie.  Oh sure, Diana is younger than our previous heroine, a nubile young college student.  But let's start keeping score here.  Professor Barash, asks her to dinner and is spurned, before becoming toast thanks to the Djinn she let loose.  Wait, didn't that exact thing happen to the Scientist-Schmuck?  And what about Diana's friend, who bears a strikingly similar personality and the same penchant for dressing like a hooker as Alexandra's sister from the first one? Apparently Djinn prefer woman with parents who go up in a blaze, since both main characters lost theirs in a fire.

And what is with these movies and the Djinn having to desperately track down their "Waker" anyway?  Somehow, by the time he shows up, the girl has taken off to who-knows-where, leaving the Djinn to Nancy Drew his way to where she resides.  This involves obtaining school or work records, hunting down former bosses and lapses in deductive logic.  If there's a more obtuse and indirect way to discover either of these women's residences, rest assured the Djinn will find it.  Have these Djinn never considered using a phone book or the school's directory?   You might argue that they're from another world/time period, but that's moot since the Djinn clearly know how to (and do) use cell phones.

Not to belabor the point, but this film is also rife with ridiculous wishes and wish-grantings.  I'm still angry about one girl in particular.  While running from the Djinn, she ducks into a science classroom and wishes she could find a place to hide.  Done!  Granting her wish, the Djinn forces her head into a cage filled with lab rats that start chewing on her face.  "No one will find you in there," he cackles.

Uh... what?  Am I the only one confused by the execution of this wish?
A) Since when do rats just chew peoples eyes and faces off, first of all.
B) A little cage in the middle of the science room does NOT a hiding place make.
C) The Djinn laughs about it, as thought he's clever.  What do you mean no one will find her in there?  Her head is in a animal cage in the middle of the room, with the rest of her body hanging outside it on the counter.  It's the first thing you WOULD notice upon entering.  And as if to prove my point, Diana and Greg do find her, about ten minutes later. My frustrations with this wish fulfillment are enormous.  If someone wished for a place to hide, I can think of a thousand horrible places to put them.  A cage that doesn't even remotely act as a hiding place is just sloppy and incredibly lazy.  My anger grows.  

I did get my hopes up for another wish however, when their friend the frat boy encounters and fights the Djinn. The Djinn demands that frat boy wish for something from him.  Frat boy responds "To blow me!"  For a split second, you hope the franchise just might take it up a notch in bad taste and feature a Djinn blow job.  But no, the creature just gores him on a hanging bull's head on the wall instead.  Or in another erotic moment in which a character behaves as though bleached-hair-homely-joe is sex-on-a-stick, there's the girl who wishes her heart broken by Professor Barash (actually the Djinn in disguise).  You can guess what a wish like that might result in.  And don't get me started on the girl who wishes to be thin and so he gives her "anorexia."  Clearly these Djinn are not medical experts as another misconstrued diagnosis occurs.  The girl spends her last moments vomiting her own fat chunks up.  Apart from being disgusting, it still rankles me that we're supposed to equate that with anorexia.  Not bulimia, or some internal liposuction, but anorexia.  It doesn't last long however, because Diana falls for the same old "Do you want me to release her from her pain?" trick only to be totally shocked when the Djinn kills the girl.  God, wishes are so overrated.

In fairness, there are some differences between the two films.  Like the smoking.  While the first film maintained a constant smokey haze, this movie eschews all the ciggies for something more conventional.  Like boobs.  Lots and lots of boobs.

I'm not sure if this movie was meant to rope in a new generation, seeing as the first was only released four years earlier, but it looks as though they tried to bring in slasher conventions to get the teenagers who sneak into these sorts of movies all excited.  All the women take off their tops at some point or another, because hey! This is a college town, and college girls are craaaazy!!  Or more likely the director was just a perv, and enjoyed seeing his entire female cast naked.  Which reminds me.  I didn't mention how Professor Barash dies, did I? Without spoiling it, I'll tell you this much:  it involves topless belly dancers and sharp teeth.

The Djinn is played by a different actor this time around.  We lose the creepy voice and instead we get someone a little more manic with a high pitched voice, and less... um subtlety?  It's wrong that I could even call the first incarnation subtle compared to this, but there you have it.  He even has a new monster suit, complete with the hottest trend in monster prosthetics, a pair of giant shoulder thorns.  They really are the new shoulder pad.

Diana does make use of one of her wishes, thanks to the obligatory research scene.  Facing down the Djinn, she decides to wish for the spirit of the Archangel Michael to come help her.  No offense, but I find it hard to believe that Diana's intelligence quotient would allow her to come up with that option in a high pressure situation.  Especially since her first wish was releasing the girl's pain.  I'll tell you, it wouldn't have been my first thought, and I consider myself brighter than Diana, but she's all over it.  Let's also not mention how lucky it is that the Djinn's guard is down and he doesn't see fit to twist this wish at all.  She gets exactly what she wants, the spirit of Michael, all contained in her boyfriend Greg's body.

It might have even been a good wish if Michael weren't totally and utterly useless.  Apart from being one  of the dullest things to hit the earth, he's also condescending and a complete sexist.  I didn't realize Michael had such disdain for the fairer sex, as he occasionally adds "... for a woman" to his speeches on how hopeless the situation is.  Stop being a douche and have a little faith man.  You're an archangel for God's sake!  Luckily Michael, or Greg-Michael as it were, has a really bad ass sword that he must have dug up from one of those weird little oriental stores in the mall that sell all sorts of low grade weapon reproductions and bamboo plants.

Diana is on a mission now, ready to kill the Djinn however she can, and as she tells her friends, help her or get out of her way.  Since most of them run aimlessly around campus and then die, I suppose they chose the latter.  Anyway, I do need to mention that none of these characters are appealing in this movie.  None.  They are not relatable; they are completely shallow, and their logic fluctuates to huge degrees.  Luckily they all behave as if the shoddy writing really gives them concrete rules for defeating this Djinn, despite the fact that the contrived rules are constantly broken on the whim of any production staff member.

How does it end, you might ask?  By fleshing out the foreshadowing from the beginning.  Foreshadowing plays a major role in this film, and you know these clever filmmakers were laying the tracks for this ending from the get-go.  Like the family car crash and that scene later when Greg-Michael and Diana flee from the Djinn by car only to crash in huge fiery explosion (obviously).  That whole scene at the opening about jumping off the roof... total foreshadowing.   Diana attempts to kill herself to avoid a third wish by jumping off the building.  It doesn't work, but total clever foreshadowing.  In the end, Diana does manage to stab the Djinn with the sword, resulting in blue pyrotechnics and scorched grass.  Oh, and Diana falling off the building and to her death.  It's like a big circle.  See how that works? Clever.

Poor dead Diana.  If only something could bring her back, like the tear of an Archangel.  What?  We just happen to have one of those present?  Well bring it on!  And so Greg-Michael does.  After flying off the roof.  Wait, he could fly this entire time and never did?  In all their running, escaping and exploits against the Djinn, you didn't think that might come in handy?  Worthless, Michael.  You're totally worthless.

Wishmaster wasn't exactly brilliant.  But it does start to look that way next to the dumbed down,  erotically awkward and atrocious writing of it's bastard brother Wishmaster III...

I give it a 6 on the "So-Bad-You-Must-See-It-Immediately"Scale.

Part IV Coming soon... Stay tuned!!