Review of Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001) by Steve M — 06 Oct 2005

[b]Wishmaster[/b].

Starring: Tammy Lauren, Robert Englund, Andrew Divoff, Reggie Bannister, Kane Hodder.

Director: Robert Kurtzman.

In [i]Wishmaster[/i], an evil demonic spirit, a djinn (played by Andrew Divoff), that has been trapped inside an enchanted gem since Babylon was young, is accidentially unleashed onto the unsuspecting modern world. He requires his unknowing liberator (played by Tammy Lauren) to make three wishes so that he may call forth hoards of his kind and create Hell on Earth. While tracking down his liberator so he can grant her three wishes, he wanders the streets of a big city in human form and grants wishes to whoever he comes across--and he always twists them into the nastiest, most violent interpertations.

The story in this movie is, basically, a weak retelling of the classic short-story "The Monkey's Paw", and it spins around the same "be careful what you wish for" moral. Aside from a shakey storyline, the film is hampered by a weak performance by its star, Tammy Lauren. However, the outrageously gory ways the djinn kills his victims, and the evil glee with which Andrew Divoff portrays him, by themselves earned the film four of the tomatoes I'm giving it. (Watch particularly for the scene where the djinn has to deal with the rent-a-cop, played by Kane Hodder, at the office where Lauren's character works. It's a doozy, and one of Divoff's best moments in the film.).

Oh... and the ending is better than what I've grown to expect from second-tier horror flicks like this one.

[b]Wishmaster 3[/b].

Starring: A bunch of actors who should be ashamed of themselves.

A wish-granting djinn is released upon an unspecting modern world, and the young woman who freed it must ask three wishes from it so that it can bring forth its djinn brothers and destroy the world.

Same as before, except the events are limited to a college campus; the djinn is dumb as a post, and there is none of the obscene humor in the twisted wishes that made the first one so enjoyable--just lame gore-laded violence and badly done make-up and special effects; no one in it can act worth a damn, although the actor playing the djinn does manage to connect with the audience when viewers get the sense that he too is getting frustrated at how stupid everyone seems to be; the story is full of holes and contradictions; and the film looks like it was made for $2.95 (Canadian). All that was missing for this to be a typical direct-to-home-rental horror film would be for it to have been shot on video tape instead of film.

Everything that made the original [i]Wishmaster[/i] fun is absent here. Avoid [i]Wishmaster 3[/i], or you'll be wishing you had.

(If you're wondering why I skipped 'Wishmaster 2,' the answer is that I've never seen it for rent or sale as a stand-alone DVD. It always seems to be packaged with the original 'Wishmaster,' and I'm not paying for that one twice!).