From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999)

This may surprise you guys reading, but I was recently turned into a vampire. I don’t intend to let that stop me from doing my reviews, though. Or really, anything else in my normal life. Because really, being a vampire isn’t a big deal, and those who become vampires shouldn’t let such a pesky detail just ruin their plans. I mean, we all gotta pay our bills, you know.

If you’re wondering why I have come to this conclusion, it’s because I stopped listening to inferior movies such as Near Dark or Let the Right One In, and started listening to From Dusk Till Dawn 2, the only true manifesto of how to be a vampire the right way: don’t let it fuck with your day job.

Director: Scott Spiegel

Starring: Robert Patrick, Duane Whitaker

IMDb

The first From Dusk Till Dawn wasn’t great, but it was entertaining and had some fun scenes. This one’s a festering, heaving shitpile with no redeeming qualities, and when it's directed by the guy who made Hostel III, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

We start off with some woman in a building on her way to an appointment to be attacked by bats, which is never something you want to be late for:

"I can't be late for my 3:00 either, guys!"

It takes a really long time for the bats to kill her though, and then we see they even do her the courtesy of sending the elevator down to the first floor for her afterward. How nice of them!

"Sirs, this is your floor. Please exit the elevator in a timely manner."
Wait a second, nobody hears things like that when they exit an elevator anymore. JOKE RUINED...FOREVER...

Then we get true genius as we see Robert Patrick from Terminator 2 playing some jackass redneck. He’s hanging out at his trailer and takes time out of fucking a hooker to adjust the TV set. Yes, really. I don’t even know what angle to come at that from.

"Honey, you know I only hire hookers when there's nothing good on TV! But now Duck Dynasty's about to come on! Get out of the way!"

They see on TV that one of their friends, Luther, has escaped police custody and is now on the run. We then see Luther himself calling up Patrick’s character from a payphone. In the middle of a bright sunny day. With a cop car right behind him. He’s sure lucky the cops in this town are of the ‘doughnut shop’ variety rather than anything actually competent or remotely realistic!

I guess the story here is that Patrick’s character Buck is assembling a sort of low-rent Ocean’s 11 group to go and rob some dinky bank in Mexico, because really why not, you know? His first stop is to go get this guy, who likes to make his dog run on a treadmill and make the camera do ridiculous things like give us “bottom of the beer cooler” perspectives:

That's one grimy, dirty looking beer cooler. You sure you want to drink anything out of that? Oh who am I kidding...by Texas standards that's practically squeaky clean.

That’s...so stupid it’s really just sad. I don’t even really have a joke here, because frankly I can’t form coherent thoughts when I’m being shown a camera POV from a dog’s water bowl:

Because if you can't simulate being eaten by an ugly dog in your movie, you've really just wasted an opportunity.

Or a perspective shot from the eyes of a guy doing push ups!

Yeah, a shot of his crotch and legs was really good and necessary. You get an A+.

I realize it’s cool to be all artsy and shit with your directing, and there are some directors who can do really clever shots like this. But...oh, hell, what do I care? Just put your camera in a fucking washing machine next time, you’ll get a really good POV shot from that when you turn it on and film it!

There’s also this jackass named Ray Bob, who is so clumsy he nearly destroys the security guard room he’s setting up when Buck surprises him:

Because, you know, a guy who’s that clumsy is always good to have around on a bank robbery job. I’m also inviting my paraplegic friend and pyromaniac friend who tends to start fires whenever she gets nervous. That’ll really be a good bank robbing team! Make sure to wear all pink and have bells attached to your shoes too. That will truly make it an awesome bank robbery.

They end up staying in some shitbag hotel and watching porn, to which actual time in the film is taken to show - yes, a movie that sinks so low as to actually have characters watching porn as a featured thing in the runtime that takes up minutes of your life.

Nothing gets him off like watching porn with a group of other sweaty, morally questionable middle aged men.

The snuff tapes from Vacancy DO make good hotel room viewing, I guess.

Money was spent putting this moment on screen. You could’ve spent that money feeding starving children or donating to charity or even paying for a bucket at Target so you could dump ice water on your head. And you did this. You absolute waste of life.

Then we get a scene where Luther, while coming down to meet them, gets his truck broken down due to an unexpected visitor:

Get that Halloween mask from K-Mart out of my face.

He goes into the Titty Twister bar from the first one and finds Danny Trejo still working there, even though I could’ve sworn he died in the last movie, not to mention that other little detail - what was it again? Oh yeah - the friggin’ bar blew up!

Gee, I wonder how that reconstruction process went - did they just rebuild during the night only? Was there a big conflict between doing vampire-y stuff like killing people and drinking blood, and doing REALLY IMPORTANT shit like rebuilding a bar?

"Hi, I'm Danny Trejo. I have no standards for what I appear in. At all."

For that matter, why even rebuild it? Was it absolutely vital for the vampires to have some shitty bar to call their home base? I mean, I guess it DOES allow you to have more sequels to this franchise. And cover up the fact that you couldn’t get George Clooney to come back for this one.

So because the movie can’t think of any way to move its own plot forward that isn’t complete fucking nonsense, Luther refuses the offer his friends give to come pick him up, and instead just accepts a ride from Trejo, who is a guy he never met before at a shitty, sleazy bar in the middle of nowhere in a country he isn’t familiar with. Were you literally just born yesterday?

Yes, apparently.

It turns out the bat he hit was actually a vampire, who appears out of nowhere in the desert and, surprise, is in league with Trejo. How did he survive being hit by a car and trapped inside the engine? I know being a vampire gives you some super strength or some shit, but that’s pushing it. They turn Luther into a vampire too rather than just straight up killing him, which makes sense because again, the movie wouldn’t be able to go on otherwise!

Then we see another incredibly important scene with that one guy having sex with some random woman we’ve never seen before. It’s okay though, because we see HER purpose in the film afterward: to take a shower and be attacked by a bat in a long, drawn out scene that results in her turning into a vampire too! But mostly the shower thing.

That's how all women shower in reality - in ways that exclusively make them look sexy and hot for an audience they're not supposed to know is there. Great realism, movie.

The other guy gets turned into a vampire too, and so now they have an entire team of vampires waiting to prey on unsuspecting victims. So what are they gonna do - take over the hotel and turn it into an awesome vampire coven? Turn more people into vampires? Turn more people into food for vampires? Or maybe just rob a fucking bank like they were planning to in the first place.

Yup - you heard it right. They actually just go ahead with the bank robbery plan like nothing happened. I’m sorry, did you just forget what kind of fucking movie you were making?! I admit the idea of a bank robbery movie with vampires MIGHT be cool in a pulp sort of way, but come on! These guys are turned into vampires, don’t question a thing and just go about the robbery like nothing happened? What kinda stinking rotten manure is that?! What’s wrong with you? That’s really the best you could come up with?

Turn the camera right side up, you dipshit. What is this, a Ulli Lommel production?

I mean...come on, seriously? You’re vampires. You don’t need all this secrecy and sneaking around. Just fucking break some shit and steal whatever you want. What does a vampire need money that much for anyway? You’ll be sleeping when all the Hot Topic stores are open. Not like you’ll be able to go and refill your cache of black mascara and pseudo-gothy looking capes that easily.

Oh, and we really needed this POV shot from the lock being turned around in circles:

Come one, come all; ride the tilt o' whirl!

Thanks a lot...ya jackasses.

Then we get a scene where Buck figures out most of his friends have been turned into vampires. For some reason he gets really tense and angry about this - oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know a fucking bank robber had such high-class morals as to care whether his team was human or not. You still got the money, you idiot; just take your share and worry about it later - not like the vampires will be able to follow you once the sun comes up anyway.

But the cops arrive too, and Buck gets arrested while trying to warn the cops about vampires. It’s really odd how quick Buck just accepts the fact that vampires exist. He doesn’t even blink an eye, consider any other options or seem surprised at all. Was he just always suspicious that vampires MIGHT exist and this just validated his insane paranoid delusions?

We then get a long, long, looooooooooooooong battle scene between the vampires and cops in which they fight, fight and….fight some more. It’s indescribably boring and makes watching your dad file taxes seem exciting.

I don’t even know how you make a fight scene this boring - at the very least, the action scene can be the saving grace in a shitty movie like this. But proving that nobody really gave a crap about what they were doing in this thing, even the action is boring, overdone and overlong. The film suffers from this problem any time it tries to put something “exciting” on screen, as I already talked about with the “bat attack” scenes earlier - to compensate for having little to no other ideas or points of interest in the film, it just stretched out the fight scenes to a bloated extent. Well, I can see the fucking stretch marks, assholes.

We get the most convenient eclipse in the world, right as the sun is coming up, allowing the fight scene to go on even longer. AAAAAHHHH!

"Uh, hi, yeah, I'm the most convenient and plot-pandering eclipse ever made. Sorry to budge in, but the poorly written script says I have to."

We then learn several cool things, like that signs are perfectly good weapons for vampires to use in a fight, because it's not like they have super strength or magic powers or anything:

"Yield!"

Also, whoever thought this was a good idea for an action shot - you only see their shadows through the entire action sequence - needs to be Indian burned:

I didn't know the Shadowboxing championships were in town.

But finally, after what seems like an eternity of this bland nonsense, we finally see all the vampires killed off. Buck makes friends with the sheriff who just lets him go despite the fact that he committed a crime. So there’s a real-world application for ya - if you’re planning on robbing a bank, just kill some vampires nearby. That will get you off the hook.

Otherwise, this movie is the pits. Bad characters, annoying camerawork, no real story or direction and a complete waste of the ‘vampire bank heist’ concept. This movie was not only bad; it flaunted its badness, as if somehow proud of its ceaseless, unrelenting idiocy - it constantly just paraded its badness in front of your face without even trying to hide it. It's seriously a test of patience and sanity to watch any of this thing, as there is absolutely nothing in it resembling quality filmmaking. It is one of the most irritating, asinine and ridiculous things I've ever seen.

Oh well. This movie blows chunks and I'm still a vampire. I'll have to consult my therapist about it.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The following account is a true story of one reviewer’s quest to review one of the most famous horror films of all time. He was never seen again and this is the last known record of his existence on Earth. Do not read this review in the dark - this will be your final warning.

I arrive in Burkittsville early in the day and get a cup of coffee from the local diner, black and steaming. The waitress is middle-aged with dyed brown hair and a pleasant face. As she pours my coffee, she asks what my business in town is – this is a small town where everybody knows everybody and they spotted me as an outsider almost immediately.

“I’m going to find the Blair Witch,” I say.

The look of horror that came over her wrinkled face then was palpable.

“Oh, my,” she says. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Sure am,” I say.

“We get some tourists doing that every year,” she says. “Lot of em, they don’t come back. Or if they do … well, they’re not the same afterwards.”

I feel a shiver down my spine, which I ignore, and put on a steely smile. “Thanks for the tip,” I say. “But I have to do this.”

As I leave, I feel her eyes boring into my back.

The Black Hills are big and dark. Even though it is a sunny day, it looks overcast in the woods. One could get lost in there, I think. I can’t believe the size of these woods – I mean, it’d be easy to get lost in there. Especially if a witch supernaturally enlarges the size of the woods and makes it impossible to find my way out. But I need this experience to make sure my review is all the more credible!

I look at the woods and feel an acute terror. I can’t believe what I'm about to do. I take a couple of steps into the woods. The air is damp and the ground crunches and crackles under my feet with each step. Around me on all sides the woods stretch out in an inviting manner, saying come in, come further.

So I walk a few steps in. Then a few more. Then I am completely surrounded by woods. I keep going and after about ten minutes I come to a flowing stream, crystal-clear and odd amidst the eerie woods. At the bank of the stream is a small bundle of sticks. I pick it up and pocket it - maybe it'll help me get some inspiration later on while writing.

I decide I've got enough. I leave the woods and head back into town. Maybe, I think, I'll come back later on, in the dark when it's really scary. Take a longer walk then. Yes, that will add the right level of credibility to this whole thing.

I check into a hotel room at the nearest hotel to the woods, and once settled in for the afternoon, I boot up my laptop. I find The Blair Witch Project on Instant Streaming and turn it on. It's time to get down to business.

Directors: Eduardo Sanchez, Daniel Myrick

Starring: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard

IMDb

The film begins with a text blurb saying the characters in the film went missing and this is the only proof we have of the events that unfolded. I sure am glad the Blair Witch gave back their camera so we could see this movie! Otherwise I don’t know what we would’ve done. Also, yes, I totally believe a film distributed by Lionsgate is actually a real story found on cameras once owned by missing people.

Then we get our main characters playing a game I like to call “Camera-ception” – where they film each other filming one another.

After that, main characters Heather and Josh meet up with their other main character-slash-friend, Mike. Or as they call him, Our Little Mikey!

Truly a dignified and adult nickname.

That truly is the glare of death – are they sure THIS guy isn’t the killer in the film?

We then get some interview clips that educate us on some things – like that camera angles for documentaries in the past were getting it all wrong, and THIS is the real way to do it:

Ohhhh yeah. That’s some good documentary makin’ right there. If you don’t tell your interview subjects to hold the camera tilted up at a close-up of their faces, it’s just not as real. Almost as interesting as the only redneck white trash trailer park home to have an American flag in it. I think that’s worth noting because patriotism is at an all-time low now in this country.

Sure the flag belongs to a crazy tin-foil hat old lady who thinks she's seen Bigfoot, but ... it's still a ringing endorsement for our country! Really!

But enough of that nonsense. We do get some stories from old people in the movie about how there were several grisly murders in this town in the past. I’m sure glad these people weren’t part of the committee to make the town’s new promotional “welcome” video – I don’t think stories about that crazy time a guy kidnapped and ritually murdered a group of kids is exactly good PR.

In other news, crazy ladies who work at coffee shops AREN’T the most reliable sources! This one talks a lot about how she believes in “witches and ghosts and stuff like that.” Oh, really? “Stuff like that”? Please, tell us more about stuff like that – the viewers are waiting with bated breath. Then maybe you can show us your tinfoil hat collection and pictures of that time you visited Area 51 and thought you had an extraterrestrial experience in your sleep, but it turned out it was just some guy robbing your purse from your hotel room.

We also get a story from an old crazy woman about how she once saw a really hairy woman in the woods. Uh, excuse me lady, but they’re making a documentary about the Blair Witch, NOT about the secret origins of Ellen Degeneres!

In the woods, they wander around for a bit and show off their hairy chests and what not. Given that the Blair Witch was just described as being covered in thick, dark hair, I think they should start looking at the possibility of this guy being the killer more seriously.

Get your man boobs out of my face.

I dunno though; I’m mostly just waiting for these idiots to run into the cast of the 1981 Don’t Go in the Woods in this forest. Surely they’re built around similar agendas – I mean the killer in THAT movie was a hairy bigfoot as well; it’s pretty fucking similar.

So they manage to get lost within the next five minutes of the movie’s screentime. In the movie it’s supposed to be like a whole day, but it’s funnier to say five minutes, so that’s what I’m going with! You could also say that it’s actually the Witch messing with their minds and making them get lost in these woods that, apparently, aren’t all that small. And I’d agree with you – this aspect of the film is well done, creepy and effective.

However, for the humor-related purposes of this blog … man, these must be the biggest woods in the world! Or they’re just the worst navigators in the world.

I do have a bit of justification for that one – I mean, when they lose their map and Mikey eventually confesses to getting rid of it on purpose, we find out that apparently only Heather knew what the map actually meant and where they were going. Because you know, that’s a good contingency plan for going out in the woods! “Hey, let’s just make sure our only means of knowing where we’re going is confusing and nobody knows what it means except one person! Also, let’s make sure one of the guys that DOESN’T know what it means is the one who holds onto it!” “Awesome; we’ll get lost and die for SURE now!”

Also, Mikey seems to be taking Nic Cage classes, judging by his constant maniacal laughter and random forays into screaming his head off. That’s always good for a documentary, right?

A man truly in his element.

They also keep finding little bundles of sticks in the woods. They think it’s the Blair Witch, but I think it’s the Monty Python reenactment of The Crucible.

Josh also goes on a long-winded rant about how his girlfriend will notice if he’s gone. For some reason this goes on for quite a few lines of dialogue. Oh, really? That how it works now? Your girlfriend will notice if you go missing? Well, color me surprised. Unless your girlfriend regularly talks to the wall and confuses it for you, then I guess that’s just a strange thing to have to point out to others. Maybe there’s some insecurity at play here?

***

I hear a rustling noise outside. I pause the film. I look out the window and am surprised to see that the hotel is bordering on the forest – the trees are less than ten feet from the window. I could have sworn they were further away when I first came in. I think perhaps I simply misjudged the proximity of the woods. It happens sometimes. Maybe I'd been so preoccupied on the review I just had not noticed. That's plausible, right?

The noise must’ve been a branch, I think. Scraping on the window. I’ve seen Poltergeist. I know this whole rigamarole!

But was it just a branch? Or is there something out my window? A shadowy figure, perhaps – lurking between the trees, just out of my line of sight?

Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or is the movie getting to me? I suppose I have been doing this a long time, after all – maybe I'm finally coming a bit undone. Out the window it looks dark now, and pregnant, swelling clouds have usurped what was a pleasant sunny day.

I shrug it off. I need to finish the review. That is the main goal – I won’t, and cannot, let anything else distract me.

***

We continue the movie with the characters descending further into arguing. Josh says if Heather keeps on filming shit, he’ll THROW HER INTO THE WOODS. Grr, manly threats! Except it’s dumb because, you know, they’re already in the woods.

Meanwhile, Mikey is upset because they have no more cigarettes. What kind of backwoods convenience store is this? No cigarettes? Well, I’m certainly not ever shopping here again, no thank you very fucking much!

We're lost in the woods with no hope of getting back AND there's no cigarettes? If you don't fix this problem we'll MAKE SURE YOU KEEP BREATHING! DAMN YOU!

How the hell are they even still filming at this point? It’s been like two days and counting and the cameras show no sign of dying even though they’re constantly filming. Is there just a bunch of hidden power outlets out in these woods? Hell, just slap an ad for batteries over top – Duracell: it’s now Blair Witch accessible!

Also, this is now a documentary about women crying.

Apparently, Heather and Mikey keep getting turned around and ending up at the same place they started even though they traveled all day in a straight line. I would say this is horrifyingly creepy and macabre, but really it’s just what I told these kids before they left – shoulda brought a GPS.

We then see something finally happen as Josh goes missing in the middle of the night. Heather and Mikey wander around shouting his name at the top of their lungs. Mikey, exasperated, then says “Josh would have told us where he was by now.” Yes, that Josh was always known for telling people where he was. It was one of his defining characteristics. Except, apparently, where his girlfriend was concerned.

I will give this movie one thing, though – it at least isn’t relying on jump scares to constantly move the plot forward. Maybe if it was made ten years later it would have, but fortunately this was made in a time where jump scares were not quite as comparable in value to the lowest form of currency in another country while you're broke and living on the streets in America.

In case you’re wondering when they’re going to stumble onto the Voorhees shack with Pamela’s decapitated head inside, it doesn’t happen. But we do get the discovery of some of Josh’s clothes as well as some bloody teeth.

That’s it, put a search out for this guy!

You know, it’d really be funny if Josh had made it out of the woods and was safely back home with his family eating Cheerios by the time the rest of the movie happened.

We then get the final breakdown of Heather as she makes a video apology to everyone she’s let down through her mistakes in the film, including her parents and the parents of the other two characters. It’s an affecting and somber scene, especially in the raw darkness going on – it really makes the best use of the low-fi camera format.

Having a close-up on one eye was the best way to get the apology across. I totally see why she chose this. And yes, I realize she is supposed to be in extreme emotional distress during this scene, but I don't care; that shouldn't stop her from making better directing choices. For shame.

Then they come across a decrepit old house and, feeling they have nothing left to lose, just go in anyway. They hear some screams from upstairs, which I’m pretty sure is just the filming sessions from another movie, but they think it’s Josh. They go upstairs, but get separated. When Heather comes back downstairs, it seems Mikey has been sent to the corner for being a bad boy:

That's what you GET for taking too much ice cream before dinner, young man.

Heather falls down, and drops the camera, which now means the movie is over. What, you’re not going to go all Cloverfield on us and show us another shot afterwards of them all being happy, to juxtapose the two scenarios? Pfft. So disappointing. I mean, the way this ended as is, it was atmospheric, unsettling and really underlined how hopeless and dark the whole thing was. But I NEED to have a hokey un-subtle shot of them having fun and smiling to point out that they had lives and happiness before the movie's events; otherwise I just don't get it!

***

I’m typing the conclusion to the review when I hear the next crackle of the “branch” outside, banging on my window in the wind. My head snaps up. There’s a rash of goosebumps on my arm. There's a heavy storm outside, having crept up on me as I was enraptured by the movie, and the wind is whipping like mad. I rub my eyes – it seems there’s something out there in the woods, standing between two tall trees – a black, hooded spectre with clawed hands … but the window is dripping wet with rain and I can't see clearly. When I blink, the figure is gone.

I turn back to the computer and start to type, but my mouth is dry. I get up and pour myself a glass of water from the mini-fridge. I drink and the water cools my throat – which has become oddly parched over the course of the film. It is as if I myself have been as lost in the woods as the film’s characters, deprived of food and water. My stomach rumbles and I put a hand to it – a shaking hand, trembling with fear. My head feels light and fuzzy.

There’s a loud bang against the window, and I jump near clean out of my skin. I go to the window despite every nerve screaming for me to run, run right home and never look back. The figure is there now, and closer! I can see it’s a feminine body-shape, and beneath the cloak she has pitch-black, mottled fur which I imagine is wet with blood.

No, I think – stop, damn you; stop having such wretched thoughts. Stop imagining such horrors, for they will come true. It's just a byproduct of sitting in the dark and watching the damn movie for so long.

I close my eyes and expect the figure to be gone when I open them, but when I do she’s still there – this malefic black-cloaked horror with clawed hands and fur covering her whole body. I can’t see her face and I don’t want to.

In a fit of energy I run. I throw open the door and run down the hall, which becomes a blur of velvet-red carpeting and golden stripes on the walls. I come to a stop when the hall dead-ends into another hotel-room door. It is with an acute sense of terror that I realize it’s my own. I’ve run down this hallway, sprinting to get out into the world, but come back to the very room I was just running from!

I open the door, for there’s nowhere else to go. It’s my room, only my computer is now gone. I look around the room and it’s not there – it’s simply vanished. And out the window the hooded spectre looms. I feel the inevitability of death creeping up on me. I look out the window and this time, clear as day even in spite of the torrential downpour separating us, I can see her face – and oh it is a hideous sight to behold.

I turn and face the wall – anything to get away from the awful sight – and then the blackness comes and devours me whole.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (1999)

Well, I got what I wished for today: an even stupider, less coherent Wishmaster sequel, with twice the laughs and half the sanity. Praise the evil 1,000 year old Djinn who made this possible with the expense of my mortal soul!

Director: Jack Sholder

Starring: Holly Fields, Andrew Divoff

IMDb

We kick off this one with a bunch of robbers robbing a museum. How absolutely clichéd. The way they scream and start making noise like maniacs as soon as one of them stupidly breaks glass that sets off an alarm is just priceless. I’m no museum robber, but I think running around like drunk maniacs screaming “LEAVE IT, COME ON, GOGOGOGO!” isn’t the best way to avoid capture.

Never mind the fact that there's a third burglar who gets shot right away and is never ever mentioned again in the movie. If the characters didn't forget he existed due to all the drugs they were doing, the writers most certainly did.

We then see that apparently museum cops in this world get to have guns. That’s understandable, seeing as how they’re trained to be the next John Wayne with them, but are somehow stuck guarding museums at night.

All museum cops are bullseyes with a gun. It's 'cause they have so much free time guarding the museum to practice outside on Coca Cola cans and their wives' old dildos.

How about this for some ridiculously cliché writing – the robbers turn out to be a boyfriend/girlfriend couple. It’s never explained why they’re robbing this place, and in fact the plot point of them being robbers is completely dropped afterward. So we’re just left with the baffling cliché of two romantically intertwined museum burglars – how risqué! – and the headache-inducing dilemma of why anyone would put something that retarded on paper, let alone film it. The film tries to distract us with something totally batshit insane:

Man, Picasso's later work wasn't as good as his early stuff.

Is this just what happens when you’re dying? You see blobby heads on the wall telling you they can grant your wishes with red lights glowing around you like a rave in Hell? The dying robber doesn’t even care. He’s just like, “Go to hell.” Not “OHMYGOD WHAT IS THAT” but just “fuck off.” What a badass! Can we have him stay alive for the rest of the movie and be the protagonist? Apparently no – the genie has other plans for him:

Instead we get stuck with museum robber chick, whose idea of grieving is sitting alone staring at a gun and then randomly freaking out and wrecking her own apartment. Geez. You’d think her boyfriend got shot and killed and she then shot and killed a man herself after. Well, I guess that is kinda what happened. In a manner of speaking.

We also find out that she used to date this priest guy. The priest, who unfortunately is a main character in the film, is – well, just bizarre, to put it nicely. I just didn’t know priests’ training allowed them to tell their exes to leave a place of worship to avoid awkwardness, or that they could just chat casually about how the girl’s new boyfriend (who is now dead/turned into a baby) wasn’t right for her. Doesn’t seem all that Catholic!

But the real headscratcher is the fact that this girl apparently went from dating a priest to a museum burglar. Interesting choice! And also one that makes me wonder if the writers of this film actually interacted with any human beings in the last ten years before making this. I mean we’re fifteen minutes in, and nothing makes sense. I’m just praying for scenes with the genie fucking with people like in the first one now.

Andrew Divoff thankfully reprises his role as the genie in this. His performance here contains 50% more evil grins and 20% more Ray Liotta than before. With added smarmyness and corny lines delivered in a game show host voice, I think it's safe to say Andrew Divoff's performance is a part of a balanced breakfast for bad movie fans.

Lo and behold, I get my wish. He gets arrested at the crime scene and hauled in by the world’s most angry cop ever. The cop accuses him of being gay and seems quite adamant about knowing the details about whose cock he’s sucking. When the genie doesn’t share that info, the cop gets unrealistically angry and starts screaming about how he’s HAD IT UP TO HERE with the genie. Uh, buddy – take my advice and see a counselor. Your sexuality may have a few unopened doors.

The genie gets sent to prison. The first guy he meets is a complete whackjob – I know this because when the genie says he can offer the guy anything he wishes for, the guy draws the logical conclusion: “You’re a fuckin’ genie!” he says, and then threatens to “own his lily white Yuppie golf playin’ ass” if he doesn’t make it come true. Personally I would be skeptical as fuck and ask a lot more questions. But then again, I guess I’m not living in this bizarro-world the movie has created.

What follows over the next forty-odd minutes of the film is pretty much the genie in jail just doing horrible things to the prisoners. The prisoners do deserve it though, just for wording their wishes in the most asinine ways possible. Like wishing “to go right through the bars” gets you this:

And this bird knows you can't chaaaaaaaange...

Wishing to get completely wasted and fucked up gets you thrown into a fight scene between extras from Michael Bay’s The Rock:

Just play the Looney Tunes music over this and it would be complete.

Most importantly is one scene that takes place about 25 minutes into the film. This one guy wishes his lawyer would go fuck himself for not helping him out more. What happens is, well, exactly what the guy wished for:

You know, there’s a limit, and this scene – this lawyer contorted like a Chinese trapeze artist practicing the fucking Kama Sutra – goes FAR BEYOND the limits of what my sanity can tolerate! The first Wishmaster had that weird Kane Hodder with the jail cell scene, and Wishmaster 2 has this scene. Do they just have some nightmare factory where people come up with these scenes to make sure nobody has a peaceful night’s sleep again? Jesus.

If you’re wondering – for whatever sadistic reasons – what the genie’s plan is in this movie, I’ll tell you – he wants to collect 1,001 souls so he can start the apocalypse and let the race of evil genies come to Earth and destroy everything. Apparently it’s all part of some sort of prophecy from thousands of years ago. What kind of prophecy is that? Who figured that one out? Maybe some ancient Mesopotamian philosopher was sitting around one evening, looking at the stars and thinking ‘hmm, it’d be really cool if, in thousands of years, a race of genies destroyed the Earth after granting people wishes.’

It’s just so contrived. Why not make the plot about a prophecy saying the Looney Tunes will destroy the world after Donald Trump collects 1,001 copies of Space Jam? I mean you can’t tell me they weren’t just ad libbing this shit anyway. Jesus, this is insane. I’d love to go back in time to the writing room and envision exactly what kind of mindset the writers were in when creating this movie.

Seems about right.

In between this, we get seemingly interminable scenes of that weird museum burglar chick and her boring priest boyfriend basically just spouting exposition. They’re the kinds of scenes you get in every 90s and 2000s horror film – attempted drama as the characters research various ancient prophecies and history and then shout about it to one another while trying to sound worried. It’s pretty much boring as hell. I’m sorry, I can’t take your doomsday prophesizing seriously when the director keeps trying to look up your skirt:

The 2014 Man Hating Feminist reissue of the movie has jogging pants digitally edited on.

The genie makes friends with this Russian mafia guy who he helps escape from prison. The Russian guy tells him about a place where he can find lots of souls – a casino in Vegas. But not before an agonizingly long detour in which the film becomes about Russian Mafioso politics. This Mafia leader guy tells the genie he wants someone else’s head – and lo and behold, his head changes into that of his enemy. Get it?

Wanting someone's head is a Mafia movie cliche for 'wanting someone dead.' But the genie took that literally and actually gave him someone else's head! HA HA HA! Okay I'm over it now. Wasn't that funnier now that I explained it?

I think this genie just has the best job in the world. He gets to collect souls and make up ridiculous ways to turn peoples’ wishes against them!

So eventually everyone gets to the casino, and it’s a jolly old time. Well, until people start shitting coins out of their asses – always a lowlight of any night out in Vegas. The weird demon-alien mutant things bursting out of their stomachs aren’t exactly an enticing point of the Vegas casino experience either. Most people usually like to leave before that starts happening; cash out early and what not.

Wait, these are normal occurrences in Vegas, right?

They even fit in some Jesus-bashing when the genie takes out some personal issues on Priest Boy:

This wouldn't have happened if the genie's mom hadn't made him dance to I'm a Little Teapot while wearing a dress and a beret after church every Sunday!

Gee, that would be really shocking if this character wasn’t just an afterthought to give the main girl someone to bounce vapid dialogue off of. They defeat the genie this time when the main girl wishes that the guy she shot was still alive – somehow, that nullifies everything and sets time back to when the movie began. I’m sure there’s an explanation somewhere in the movie, but come on, do you really think this is the type of movie where an explanation needs to be explained? Just remember it had this scene in it:

Yeah, so I guess everything is good now. Except for those people in the casino, who are left with a faint but definite desire never to gamble again. Crapping out a pound full of gold coins will do that to you. That old lady will wake up at night and feel a tingling in her ass, and she will know that the casino has never been further away. That, my friends, is the power of Wishmaster.

There’s so much wrong with this movie it isn’t funny. Except when it is funny – which is most of the time. While it’s pretty much indefensible, with bad writing, poor plots and uninteresting characters, it’s just hugely entertaining, and I had a good time watching it anyway. If you want a good time, wish upon a star and you’ll get this to make you laugh and scratch your head plenty.

Every wish has its backfiring, though, and mine has become clear – I have to review Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell next week!

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