Wishmaster is a 1997 horror film about a naughty djinn. I had thought I'd seen it before but my Watched Movie List say no. It's directed by Robert Kurtzman and produced by Wes Craven. Wes everyone knows from the movies he's done and Robert is perhaps better known as an effects guy. He started KNB with Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero back in 1988 and left the company in 2002. He makeup credits on 103 films, special effects credits on 51 films and he's directed 5 films, including Wishmaster. I've seen The Rage and The Demolitionist but not Deadly Impact or Buried Alive.
That Robert Englund and Andrew Divoff, Robert plays an art collector interested in religious relics and Andrew is a djinn in human form. Djinns in the movie aren't the fairy tale genies of yore. If a human wishes something, the djinn has to grant the wish. Unfortunately for the human, the wish doesn't have to be delivered in a beneficial way. Death, in many forms, is heaped upon the unsuspecting victim.
Tammy Lauren is the gal that holds the key to putting the genie back in the bottle. That a metaphorical bottle, it's really a jewel in a statue that holds the beast at bay. She yells constantly but she's got enough brains to trick the djinn. At least until the sequel comes out. There were 3 sequels after the first movie.
The movie is fun, in a gory tricky demony kind of way, and the deaths are gooey, bloody and nasty. The movie has a nice sense of humor and we laughed a good bit. There are lots of interesting guests in the movie, several really fun cameos, and some of the characters are named after horror writers. I thought it was well worth seeing and today I ordered the Blu-ray set of the four movies. I'll want to see these movie again someday. I'll take a chance on the rest.
A Fantastic Fear of Everything is a 2012 movie with Simon Pegg. It's a wacky comedy with Simon as a writer who's driven himself crazy researching Victorian Serial killers. It's the first feature film for co-directors Crispian Mills and Chris Hopewell. Crispian wrote the screenplay.
Simon has turned paranoid, he believes a serial killer is out there, waiting to murder him. He's taken to carrying a big kitchen knife around with him. At one point he can't get his hand to release it. He's got an opportunity to talk to a producer and his trying to get some clean underpants leads to him being caught by a serial killer.
Parts of Simon's deep rooted problem is his abandonment as a child. It happened in the very same laundromat that he brought his y-fronts to tonight. Simon's trip to the laundry turns out to be a benefit in several ways. He gets over his fear and finds a lady friend. For such possible dark bleak subject matter the movie is a good bit of fun. I'd recommend it, it made me laugh, a fair bit. You might like it.
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