A Wishmaster(s) Trio: Part I

A movie riddled with plot holes and blatantly ignored rules?  Your wish is my command.

This weekend presented an opportunity I couldn't pass up... or miss subjecting friends to.  OnDemand happened to have the Wishmaster series of films available for viewing.  Now I love campy horror and this promised to be exactly that.  We started with the first and were so unimpressed, we couldn't help but wish for more.  Unfortunately, only movies I, III, and IV were available.  I'm not sure why II didn't make the grade, but we'll forgo it for the moment, to review these three.  And don't worry, I'll be sure to add the second, should I dig it up to watch.

Let's start with the first, Wes Craven presents (but neither writes nor directs) Wishmaster (1997).  Everyone knows the stories about wishes gone bad.  I realized from a grade school age, after reading stories like The Monkey's Paw, that a plan of of action was definitely required should a genie, or severed hand, ever show up to grant me my wishes.  Liberal interpretations are a given when dealing with magical beings, and in the event I was offered such a gift, I'd be sure to have my lawyers on call, writing an enormous contract detailing the exact specificities of my wish, and how it was to be administered, negating potential health risks and negative side effects to me or anyone else.  I mean, isn't it just obvious?  These things should be done with care.


Wishmaster is a fantastic account of what happens when stupid people are given the opportunity to have anything they want.  And it does sport a great opening, as a Persian kingdom is laid to waste by the king's wishes.  You can't help but wonder what he wished, as his subjects are violently turned into trees, crocodile-snake hybrids, or have their flesh melt off and their stop-motion skeleton jump out to attack other hapless people.  How can you say no to a fat man's intestine's bursting from his stomach, growing a face and chewing on a random woman?  The film was made in the late 90's, and it harkens to a time when foam latex make-up effects were scary; a simpler time before the era of torture-porn and really decent digital special effects.

Back to the wish, we never find out, because the Djinn (which are basically evil scary genies... or as EVERY Wishmaster movie will tell you, creatures that dwell between worlds) gets locked in a gem stone, or rather, a blood stone.  I know, this flies in the face of all those genie-in-a-lamp/bottle myths you've heard, but folks, this is the way it works.  Trust the movie.  Flash forward to present day (a.k.a. 1997) in which a museum collector is waiting for his Persian statue to arrive.  You can guess where this is going, can't you?   There's an accident, someone finds the gem, he sells it, etc, etc, until one thing leads to another and our deeply troubled heroine, Alexandra Amberson (how's that for a name?) makes an appearance, when she's asked to appraise the stone.

Now, you might think a gemologist would handle it carefully and look at the chemical make-up of this ridiculously large gem, but no.  She flies on instinct here, and instead she blows on it then rubs in on her sweater.  I'm not sure which is necessary for waking the Djinn (particularly since in the later films he seems to awaken just by someone touching the thing), but rest assured you need either blow the Djinn, or rub it on your sweater.  Right.

If you have your own Djinn problems, allow me to post the blood stone recipe from the film here.  Note it also helps to keep your ingredients in celtic boxes or containers made from human skulls.

Simple Blood Stone Recipe

  1 Dash paprika

  2 Pinches of cinnamon

  1 Sundried tomato

  4 oz. of human blood or Kool-Aid

Place ingredients in pestle and mortar; grind with love.  Heat mixture until the consistency of molten metal, pour into a quartz rock.  Voila! Your very own bloodstone, perfect for containing one (1) evil creature.  

Warning: The stone is a door between worlds and may be opened from either side.  Horrific and absurd supernatural mayhem likely.

Perhaps it's just as well since, had Alexandra investigated the make-up of the gem, she'd realize it wasn't rock at all but human blood, like a really big scab.  And not only would that be creepy, she also might be dead right now.  Luckily Alexandra sends it over to her desperate bestie to take a look.  He says yes, cuz he's a scientist-schmuck, and wants into her pants.  Instead, the the rock explodes, releasing a larval-Djinn who, thanks to Scientist-Schmuck's wish to "end the pain" steals his life force.

For clarification purposes, let's get the rules of the Djinn straight here:

1. The Djinn only has as much power as people wish for things.  They have to wish for him to be able to do anything.  Unless it's inconvenient to the plot.
2. The Djinn can cut off and steal faces (thanks to their swiss-army fingernails) to look like anyone.  Even your homeroom teacher.  Remember that F she gave you on your history paper and then imprisoned you inside a giant ruby?  It might have been a Djinn.
3.  The Djinn must grant three wishes to the person who awoke him (hereafter referred to as "The Waker").  Upon the third wish, he can open a gateway for his fellow Djinn who will pour through and destroy the world.
4.  God created these creatures, "from the fire," apparently for no real purpose except to lurk around, waiting to get to Earth and have humanity wish themselves into bloody oblivion.  That's right.  Your God created these jokers.
5.  The Djinn get to freely interpret the wishes of a person wishing, even if their interpretations are big stretches, sometimes to the point of not making sense.  Oh, and usually these have negative consequences.

After watching stupid people making many stupid wishes, wishes which are compounded in stupidity by the Djinn's fulfillment, I realized there's a serious problem with the system out there.  These Djinn get to run around granting wishes, and aren't beholden to anyone.  There's no cosmic checks and balances, and as such, the nasty actualities are pretty far removed from what the person asked for.  For example, a homeless man wishes for the death of a local pharmacist.  After a prompting from the Djinn to explore the reaches of his imagination for the details of the demise, he creatively adds, "... to get cancer and die."  BAM! Granted.  Apparently Djinn-cancer is much worse than human-cancer since the pharmacist immediately goes sallow, followed by boiling skin and vomiting up toothpaste and falling dead in the space of 15 seconds.  Since when were these symptoms of cancer?

In another unlikely granting, a bouncer at the party tells the Djinn he wishes he could escape.  And bam!  Bouncer is now trapped in a strait jacket, submerged in a tank of water.  The Djinn adds that "Houdini did it in two minutes!"  Oh ha ha, how clever.  Wait.  Didn't he wish to escape?  Not be trapped in a magic trick and drown.  Talk about wide interpretation...  Even more, the Djinn starts bringing statues to life, strangling people with piano wire and trapping people in burning paintings, all under a blanket wish for a man's party "to be remembered."  Oh it's remembered, but what exactly are the statutes of limitation on such a wish?  Till the Djinn gets bored mutilating the guests?  It's a pretty vague request.  And this brings my point home.   Perhaps that's one of the major reasons this movie bugs me.  It tries to be clever and instead comes across ridiculous and nonsensical.

I feel we need some sort of oversight committee who can address and set the standard for wish fulfilling.  I strongly urge you to write your congressmen and senators, asking for new laws to control free interpretations of wishes and some sort of organization who will hold the Djinn responsible for falsely granting wishes.  I propose the Veracity & Adjudication of Genies (V.A.G.) Committee, or something like that.  It really is in everyone's best interest.  This way, those killed by their own malicious wish will rest assured that it was their own fault for lack of planning and not because some Djinn hadn't really thought through the twisting of the wish.

Can I take a moment to point out that it doesn't take a very bright bulb to see that wishing for "the pain to go away" will result in your death?  And yet people continually ask for it.  Honestly.  What's worse, is many of these people are totally lulled by the Djinn's arguments to reveal their deepest desires to him - which is usually right after they've seen him in his true form as a horrific creature, or in his almost creepier registered-sex-offender human form.  The human form is usually doing something weird, like crashing an exclusive party, or demanding security guards open the doors to a corporate building at 2:00 am.  But with minimal persuasion, they totally open up to the Djinn, and naturally suffer for it.  Even more perplexing is that women seem to find his human form really sexy.

This becomes a theme in the Wishmaster movies, where terribly unattractive people are somehow viewed as sex bombs, when no one even wished for it.  It's like being in a parallel dimension, where the filmmakers keep trying to remind us that these actors are hot stuff when they obviously aren't...

 I mean look, could you resist a face like this?  Yeah, me too.

But that's not the only thing they're trying to pass off.  As you're watching this movie, you might notice an oddly universal character trait.  Everyone in this film, and I do mean everyone, smokes.  Everyone.  Even the creature, older than time with infinite power, lights up.  There might be subtext here: Wishes, and smoking, will kill you.  But upon closer inspection, you'll realize that the smoking is really to create atmosphere, and acts as a stand-in for actual, you know... acting.   This is a dark moody scene - let's have him smoke.  Alright, time to look pensive, better have a smoke.  Stare deep into the fire, remembering the accident, and smoke.  Got to formulate a plan to stop the Djinn! I'll think about it and have a smoke.

Overall, it wasn't the worst of the series, but it certainly wasn't the best.  I have to admit that I watched a couple of behind the scenes moments, where the director copped to pretty much making decisions on the fly...  and I'm not terribly surprised.  It's pretty scattered and the holes in the plot stare you down.  But the cardinal sin in my book (and in most horror films) is when the characters make unbelievably bad decisions.  Not decisions in moments of panic, but really hit-yourself-in-the-face kind of decisions, just to further the splatter, gore and scares.  What does Alexandra think is going to happen when she wishes to know fully what the Djinn is?  A history lesson?  Stupid.

This movie does seem to have a cult following, and for that I'm sorry.  It was totally ridiculous, but at the same time, a bit of an ego boost.  You'll constantly ask yourself "Is that the best they could come up with?"  And with a sense of satisfaction, you'll know that you could definitely do better.  Definitely.

I give it a 4 on the "So-Bad-You-Must See-It-Immediately" Scale.

Stay tuned for Parts III and IV.