Samhain Project '24: Wishmaster

 Wishmaster is a 80s/90s horror fans dream. Before I get into any sort of the narrative of the story, let’s look at who’s in the film shall we? 

It has Tony Todd (Candyman). It has Kane Hodder also known as Jason Voorhees.  Ted Raimi pops up, who has been in multiple horror films of the 80s, including Candyman and Evil Dead II, and let’s not forget Robert Englund, who is legendarily known as Freddy Krueger. 

There’s smaller side appearances by Joseph Pilato from George A. Romero's Day of the Dead, and of course, Phantasm’s Reggie Bannister, as the foul mouthed pharmacist. He argues with an equally profane Buck Flowers, who’s appeared in several of John Carpenter's films, and is the utterer of “crazy drunk drivers” when Marty McFly reappears in his own time in Back to the Future.

I also can’t disregard the opening of the film's narration, which is read impeccably by Angus Scrimm, also known as the tall man in the Phantasm series.

I don’t think I need to go any further than that.  This movie, produced by Wes Craven,  is surely no less than an 80s 90s film fanatic’s dream as far as casting, but let’s look at who really is the star of the film. That would be Andrew Divoff,  whether he’s in his regular skin and his intimidating facial expressions, or Greg Nicotero and the rest of KNB‘s facial make up, he is unsettling.  His voice, very equally so.

He plays of course a djinn, which is an evil genie; here to try to take over our dimension after being bottled up in a gem for the last several hundred years. Tammy Lauren, who was in thousands,  it seems, of television programs during the 70s as a child actress,  plays our lead here and does a pretty good job with it. She’s the target of our villain.  The Wishmaster needs her to wish 3 times to fulfill his evil course of action.  Getting her to cooperate is not as easy as he had hoped. 

Overall, I can’t say enough about Wishmaster being a ton of fun. Is it gonna scare the crap out of you? No, that’s not gonna happen, but I still gotta give it a Project Samhain thumbs up anyway.