Review of Warlock (1959) by Allan C — 13 May 2016

Enjoyable but a mixed bag of a fantasy/horror film. Julian Sands plays an evil warlock from the 1700s who is being hunted down by Richard E. Grant. Their chase leads them to travel through time into the present (or the 1980s version of the present).

Lori Singer (real-life brother of The Beastmaster, Marc Singer) plays the love interest. The most pleasant surprise about this film was that it was written by David Twohy (as D.T. Twohy), who'd was hot off his first writing writing credit, "Critters 2" but before he would go on to write "The Fugitive" "Pitch Black" "Below" and the underrated "Terminal Velocity.

" Although this film has a rather cheap low budget feel to it (the special effects are pretty terrible even by 1980s standards), the script has some interesting ideas and some better than average warlock battles, which is something that more often than not are poorly done in films and usually amount to witches and warlocks pointing their fingers and shooting something out of them.

Twohy also brings better developed of characters than you'd expect for this sort of film. Also of note for this film is that Richard E. Grant is great and this made me want to watch some of his old films again.

The film also features a fine Jerry Goldsmith score, which greatly helps the film along. On the downside, I've never been much of a Julian Sands fan and I think that's why I'd never watched this film before.

Also, the film as directed by Steve Miner who I don't think ever made a film of note in his 40 year career (okay, maybe I did enjoy "Lake Placid" about the giant alligator). So overall, it's entertaining enough, even if it's a mixed bag.