Enchantéd, Pt. VIII: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Enchantéd: A Retrospective Tribute to Diane Franklin

VIII. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

(PG, Orion Pictures)

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By the year 2688, Earth's civilization will have finally reached Utopia. Clean air, clean water, and even clean dirt. Bowling averages will reach an all-time high while mini-golf scores plummet, but everyone will agree that our planet owns the monopoly on waterslides. Ironically, the teller of such fortunes is George Carlin as Rufus, a native of this future paradise who doesn't pause to explain why bowling and golf are not officially sports. For as we all know, you have to rent the shoes from the lanes and golf is as boring as watching flies f…

…forget it. The point is that this New World Order would not exist had the two philosophers from San Dimas, CA who founded it flunked their history exam in a most heinous development.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is the sole blockbuster movie in Diane Franklin's pocket (for those of you who didn't recognize her the first time, myself included, she's the blue belle on the left of the late Mr. Carlin), but we've reached the turning point where our peerless 1980s innamorata suddenly becomes much less visible than ever before. Franklin has less than 10 minutes of screen time here, a dispiriting realization compared to the twin peaks of Better Off Dead and TerrorVision. Also, we've come full circle as her function in Bill & Ted is basically a more sophisticated version of the "babe" persona introduced in The Last American Virgin.

At least in Second Time Lucky (which is as close to a Bill & Ted movie tailored for Diane as you'll ever see) and Better Off Dead, her glorified love interests were given ample breathing room as characters. This is strictly square one.

Common knowledge tells us that Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was completed in 1987, when then-Ms. Franklin was still a working actress. The film was originally produced for Dino De Laurentiis, who gave the world Amityville II: The Possession, but his DEG distribution label was in the red. In stepped Orion Pictures and Nelson Entertainment, formerly Embassy Pictures, to give the film a proper push theatrically. After a few post-production tweaks, mainly to change the setting from 1987 to 1988 (there was also an alternate "prom" ending which got dumped), it opened in February of 1989 and spawned a most excellent franchise which is currently being groomed for a third entry.

Another well-known fact: 1991's Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey replaced both Diane Franklin (Princess Joanna) and co-star Kimberley LaBelle/Kates (Princess Elizabeth) with ‘90s starlet Sarah Trigger, who was born with her English accent, and Annette Azcuy.

And yet, after Diane Franklin spent over a decade transitioning to domestic life, her own daughter Olivia DeLaurentis made a short film in 2011 called Humanized in which she subconsciously named her character Alexis Winters. Betcha didn't know that!

So while The Last American Virgin and Better Off Dead vie eternally for cult supremacy in Diane's canon (seriously, where's the love for Summer Girl and/or TerrorVision?), Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure became a legit phenomenon, spun-off into cartoon series, breakfast cereals, video games, and action figures. Better that than having an abortion clinic board game or a plush version of Ricky Smith.

Although if it were Charles De Mar ("This is pure snow!" he'd say after you pull his string), I'd sincerely consider it.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure introduces its characters in way that suggests a sketch comic parody of Back to the Future starring the Spicoli Brothers. We get the over-juiced speaker catching fire, the "we're late for school" epiphany and their shaming by the school's authority figures. Unlike Marty McFly, though, they haven't the ability to get near a tune nor the wherewithal to attract girlfriends. Calling themselves Wyld Stallyns, Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves) don't even share the same train of thought, pondering a chicken-and-egg debate over whether their fame rests on Eddie Van Halen's tutelage or a bitchin' music video, skirting the obvious fact that they should actually learn some basic chords so that they approach even Link Wray-level proficiency.

Bill & Ted are just as clueless scholastically as they are musically; to them, Joan of Arc is "Noah's wife" and [Julius] Caesar is "a salad-dressing dude." The fate of the world is in doubt due to their consistent F marks in history class, for Ted's police captain father (Hal Landon Jr.) is one step away from sending his son off to a military academy (apparently in "Alaska," according to the ditzy Ted). Rufus is beamed into the present to act as emissary and salvation, materializing from out of the sky via a time-traveling phone booth and into the parking lot of the local Circle K.

Thanks to a freak accident during a test run of the device, it also rains Napoleon Bonaparte (Terry Camilleri), fresh from Austria 1805. Having returned at Ted's home, the duo place the discombobulated general under the care of Ted's older brother Deacon (Frazier Bain) as they embark on their manifest destiny: to travel back to the many time periods their history professor Mr. Ryan (Bernie Casey of Cleopatra Jones and Revenge of the Nerds) has outlined on their final and collect various iconic figures to give their own testimonials.

Looking back at the movie in context of Diane Franklin's decade-spanning exposure, its clear how far we've come from The Last American Virgin to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Whereas the trio of horny teens in Boaz Davidson's film required some major liberties to accept as tight-knit friends given their conflicting personalities, Bill & Ted are truly dudes of a feather, the ensuing comedy amiable in the best possible way. There is a pleasing absence of malice to the way the duo interact with the world, and even the introduction of an Oedipal complex in the lissome form of Bill's trophy stepmother Missy (Amy Stock-Poynton, graced with a humorous pout) is hardly catastrophic. Whereas the chauvinistic triad of that 1982 film would no doubt cry "Slut!" upon sight of Missy's cleavage, the worst that happens here is Ted's innocent razzing of his confused best friend ("Remember when I asked her to the prom?" "Shut up, Ted!!!").

As based on characters developed for the improvisational comedy stage, writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon (see if you can guess which scene they cameo in) get a lot of mileage out of the duo's vibrant lingo, one which combines the refined with the lowbrow. Bill refers to his "distinguished colleague" Ted in failing to bluff his way into convincing Mr. Ryan to go easy on them. Also there's Ted's priceless reaction upon seeing their future doppelgangers sing the praises of Rufus: "Bill...Strange things are afoot at the Circle K." The boys mangle the pronunciation of Socrates ("So-Crates"), tempt another ancient figure with a Twinkie and demonstrate their fullest knowledge of George Washington by referring to the Hall of Presidents exhibit at Disney World. And they call each other "Fag!" after a perfectly rational bro hug, which is hardly cause for alarm since they giddily resume japing.

These idiot savants wouldn't be half as charming, however, were it not for the serendipitous casting/chemistry of Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves. Winter, previously a bit player in Death Wish 3 and The Lost Boys (and currently a documentary director whom I previously spotlighted), resembles a curly-haired, midriff-baring goof on Emilio Estevez. More self-assured than the shaggy Ted, a cigar-chomping Bill tries to school his dopey bud on the art of the "poker face" during a high-stakes game with Billy the Kid (Dan Shor of Wise Blood and Tron), only to crack hilariously when he finds three aces in his hand. And Reeves, in his star-making role following River's Edge and the 1986 Babes in Toyland, nails down the elastic body language and dazed reaction shots to turn his comparatively more childish personality into a comical treasure.

Ted is the designated "ladies' man" of the team, demonstrated by their arrival in medieval London where they become smitten with Princesses Elizabeth (Kimberley Kates, who was in a DTV murder mystery called Dangerous Love with LAV's Lawrence Monoson) and Joanna (Diane!!!). Able to recite classic rock lyrics at will for the sake of philosophizing (and to happily confuse the torture device known as the iron maiden with the Iron Maiden), Ted charms these predetermined brides with this impromptu stanza:

"Oh, you beautiful babes from England,
For whom we have traveled through time...
Will you go to the prom with us in San Dimas?
We will have a most triumphant time!"

But it ends disastrously upon the arrival of their daddy, the royal ugly Duke (John Karlsen), and the duo are saved from the guillotine by Billy the Kid and Socrates (Tony Steedman). With no time left to lose ("The clock in San Dimas," Rufus told them, "is always running"), Bill & Ted continue forward by snatching up the likes of Sigmund Freud (Rod Loomis of The Beastmaster and Jack's Back), Joan of Arc (pop star Jane Wiedlin from The Go-Go's, also the dead messenger girl from Clue), Genghis Khan (Al Leong, the oriental heavy in Die Hard and Lethal Weapon), and Abraham Lincoln (Robert V. Barron, previously seen in Eating Raoul and Disorderlies).

Meanwhile, back in present-day San Dimas, the movie's trump card character, Napoleon, gets his literal day in the sun. Terry Camilleri, like much of the cast a relative unknown, might be familiar to the handful who fondly recall famed Aussie director Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris from 1974 (he later had a cameo in Weir's The Truman Show). It's a shame he didn't land a fruitful career as a physical comic after this. Adapting the Revolutionary emperor's stoic tyranny to the modern world, Camilleri's perpetually wide-eyed Napoleon cheats at bowling, conquers the public pool Waterloo ("Mon dieu!") and wields a dessert spoon like a bayonet for the last precious drop of melted "Ziggy Pig" ice cream sundae.

Matheson and Solomon play a lot more loose with the time-space continuum than seen in previous pop fables like Time After Time or Back to the Future. Random occurrences crop up so frequently during the finale, mainly to help Bill & Ted break out their jailed charges after they all get arrested for various infractions at the mall, that it becomes a battery of satirical jabs at the nature of contrived happy accidents. On a meta level, it's forgivable, although the verdict is still out on the significance of Rufus' own mission. Everything is pretty much guaranteed excellent in 2688, so where's the conflict?

Again, if you approach it on the clever satirical angle, as a lampoon of the culture of rock star worship be it Elvis Presley or Eric Clapton, you won't need to get hung up on dubious logic. There's a reason the "Three Most Important People in the World" are members of The Motels, The Tubes and The E Street Band (deep-voiced saxophonist Clarence "The Big Man" Clemons, R.I.P.).

Director Stephen Herek's debut movie, 1986's Critters, began with a sublime, FX-powered visual joke at the expense of an intergalactic assassin borrowing the visage of a video star who is clearly a wannabe Mick Jagger (Terrence Mann as Johnny Steele). After the first Bill & Ted, he found a modest career as a hired gun in his own right, helming a battery of Disney productions (The Mighty Ducks, Mr. Holland's Opus, the live-action 101 Dalmatians) as well as many middlebrow trinkets (Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Rock Star, Life or Something Like It). Herek is the poor man's Chris Columbus, another once-promising craftsman who forsook imagination for assimilation.

That's a shame, because Herek's low-budget beginnings are further credits to the evolution of youth-friendly 1980s comedy away from the bastard sons of Porky's. And again, it's a huge relief when you look at Diane Franklin's resume from 1985 onward. Savage Steve Holland spun teen tropes on their heads like a dreidel in his Better Off Dead, although his gift for whirling dervish burlesque was eclipsed by Ted Nicolaou's TerrorVision and his outlandish parodies of nuclear families, materialistic scenesters and the cultural brain drain. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, by its own rights, makes pleasant time-capsule material in its varied riffs on 1980s pop flotsam right at the dawning of a new decade.

Where else are you going to see Billy the Kid and Socrates act like libidinous boys on the make, only to be foiled by Freud with a corn dog? ("Geek!") Or Joan of Arc copping Flashdance-style spastic gyrations to an audience of refugees from the Jane Fonda Workout Video? Or Ludwig van Beethoven (Clifford David) discovering the magic of the synthesizer and extolling the virtues of "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi?

Or, finally, when all is most triumphant in the universe, Honest Abe emancipates an entire auditorium from their boredom with the Wyld Stallyns' two most timeless credos: "Be excellent to each other and...PARTY ON, DUDES!"

My only rebuttal: "Awesome! Totally awesome!"

The next review in this retrospective is another academically-themed teen movie from 1989, yet there's good news and bad news. The good news is that Diane Franklin will reunite with the creator of her single most charming role. The bad news is that she will have even less screen time than in Bill & Ted.

Bogus!

Peggy Sue Got Married

PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED

(PG-13, Tri-Star Pictures, 103 mins., theatrical release date: October 10, 1986)

"I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger," is not just the opening line to the chorus of The Faces' "Ooh La La," but also the thematic undertow of Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married. The main difference is that the person asking to turn back time is not a grandson hung up on wicked women, but a soon-to-be-divorcee pondering 25 years of regret on the night of her high school reunion. Peggy Sue Bodell is not keen on walking into a gymnasium full of her old friends who will no doubt question the absence of her one-time prom king Charlie, who grew to inherit his father's appliance store empire and has turned into a pathetic, philandering Crazy Eddie doppelganger.

The attention gets to be overwhelming for her, as does Charlie's inevitable arrival, and as she is re-anointed to be the belle of the ball, Peggy Sue faints into a time warp to the spring of 1960, her senior year at Buchanan High, going from panty hose to bobby socks all over again.

Coppola had flirted with the mainstream on his own terms in the 1980s, chiefly his two S.E. Hinton adaptations (The Outsiders, Rumble Fish) pitched at a trend-setting younger audience in ways that stood out from his adult-oriented '70s masterpieces. This was done to offset the financial ruin stemming from the box-office disaster of One from the Heart, but for many years, Coppola's reputation took a nosedive as one high-profile film after another suffered dismal returns.

Respectable if not bankable, Coppola's misfortune halted in 1986 when his latest for-hire project managed to draw in audiences and critics alike, making both Siskel and Ebert's ten-best lists (they also championed its lead actress in their annual "If We Picked the Winners" special) and grossing more than twice its budget, Coppola's first windfall since Apocalypse Now. Peggy Sue Got Married is a teen movie, too, and one that was easily pegged as a derivative of Back to the Future, what with its timeline-jumping fixation on a distant love affair. Originally developed as the feature debut for Penny Marshall before the producers got cold feet, this is also a precursor to Marshall's later smash Big, which reversed both the character's gender and age trajectory.

And the less said about Coppola's own decade-later Jack, the better.

For a film which hinges on the double-edged sword of hindsight, Peggy Sue Got Married has aged as well as some kind of fruit of the vine you find in bottles, I forget what they call it.

The main charm in Coppola's hands is Kathleen Turner, white-hot on the heels of Body Heat and Romancing the Stone, giving an Oscar-caliber performance which furthered her sophisticated, sensual adult persona with more precise warmth, body language and comic timing than ever before. The familiar complaint of watching obvious grown-ups having to go back to prom dissipates by virtue of self-professed "walking anachronism" Peggy Sue's arc as a mature, experienced soul in a naïve girl's body, making amends and breaking hearts all over again by dint of absolute knowledge. The sting of what lies ahead is tempered by a flurry of tenderness and introspection which doesn't exactly end in a rose-tinted butterfly effect a la Marty McFly's return to Hill Valley 1985, but is subtly deeper and considerably more despairing given the infidelity and shame in the present day.

Luckily, there's still plenty of genuine entertainment and humor to be gleaned from the journey. Take the now-youthful Peggy Sue Kelcher's reunion with her old nuclear family, which is filmed in a delicately belittling tracking shot as she approaches the front porch and deigns to knock nervously on the open door. Upon making herself at home again, Peggy and her kid sister Nancy (Sofia Coppola) watch Dion & The Belmonts performing "A Teenager in Love" on The Dick Clark Beech-Nut Show. "Look at that man," Peggy awes. "He never ages." Nancy grumbles pettily over Kenny Rossi and Arlene Sullivan, reaching for the bowl of M+Ms as big sis tells her to avoid the red ones (because of the amaranth scare). Peggy then calmly goes to her dad's bureau and steals a couple glasses of whiskey: "Oh, what the hell. I'm probably dead, anyway."

Mr. Kelcher (Don Murray) then arrives to surprise his family with his new Edsel, although his inebriated eldest daughter has seen it all before and cackles it off. Dad: "Are you drunk?" Peggy: "Just a little. I had a tough day." He then proceeds to ground her, thus making Peggy more comically belligerent. Her statement of teenage rebellion: "I'm an adult. I want to have fun. I'm going to go [to] Liverpool and discover The Beatles."

And then there's Peggy's future hubby himself, Charlie Bodell (Nicolas Cage...I'll get to him), waiting for her the very next morning in his big blue '58 Impala.

Enduringly-married screenwriters Jerry Leichtling & Arlene Sarner may not have piqued Coppola's initial interest (he thought it was merely "okay" and no different from a "routine television show"), and their joint career never evolved beyond the promise found herein. Still, the two of them have considerably and carefully mined ample quirk and pathos from what could have been an indiscriminating gagfest. Peggy Sue immediately rebounds from that hilarious episode of disbelief by asserting her independence, calling Charlie's bluff on his three-year plan of outside dating as "comparison shopping" and belting out "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" during the pledge of allegiance to the mortification of her apathetic best friends, Maddy Nagle (Joan Allen) and Carol Heath (Catherine Hicks).

The clash between Peggy's ingrained sense of modern woman's worth and the conformity of her adolescence makes her a bit of a social pariah, although she already extended a hand in friendship to nerdy Richard Norvik (Barry Miller). No one is more taken aback by Peggy's brash personality than Charlie, whose adherence to the male rites of passage are frequently subverted. When necking in the car threatens to blossom into sex, it's Peggy Sue making the moves, leaving Charlie confused and angry. The idealistic doo-wop crooner legitimately loves Peggy, as does she, but she's defensive about both their emotions to Charlie's dejection, as he is bent on stardom and avoiding the callous fate Peggy knows he will fulfill.

Speaking of lost innocence, Peggy Sue Got Married exists in simpler times in terms of its male lead, too. One of Nicolas Cage's breakout roles was as New Wave hunk Randy in Martha Coolidge's Valley Girl from 1983, in which he proved equally intense and charming. It wasn't too long before Cage's knack for Methodic weirdness took over. For Alan Parker's Birdy, which called for him to play a Vietnam soldier whose face was horrendously scarred in a mortar explosion, Cage had a few of his teeth pulled out and would walk off the set in his bandages. From Vampire's Kiss onwards, Cage's idiosyncrasies would define his image, and his offbeat appeal engendered a mix of campy affection and catty resignation in audiences.

Like his Uncle Francis, Cage was also itching to put his own stamp on the material, and in his freedom, he turned Charlie Bodell into a peculiar comic creation. The defining quirk Cage applied was a nasal lilt to his voice modeled after Pokey from The Gumby Show, thus making the younger Bodell an exaggeratedly pubescent swain. A lot of people find it irritating to this day, even saying it adds a creepy dimension to Charlie some of Cage's more physical blunders. At the dramatic turning point, when Charlie sneaks into Peggy's bedroom to confront her infidelity, his bent, Nosferatu-style hands and the near smothering of Peggy with a pillow work against him.

Luckily, Cage redeems himself by the end of said scene, conveying his wounded pride and crazed despair over losing Peggy with greater dignity than he is credited for. Sure, there is a nervous squeak when he asks "Did we break up?" and the last line is a simpering declaration that "I'm going to be just like Fabian!" But Charlie Bodell is a figure of both humor and heartbreak, and we've seen him project enough budding intelligence and guileless charm up to this point that the pain feels genuine. Peggy Sue is bearing a grudge Charlie doesn't even know exists yet, and his getting cuckolded seems to put Peggy in the wrong despite her clairvoyance.

What I'm saying is that Nicolas Cage doesn't sabotage the role with his peculiar approach, and he has clearly thought through Charlie's emotions and cared enough to bring them to life. This doesn't mean he can't score an honest laugh, such as Charlie's legendary mention of "my wang" when Peggy propositions him, or project the right amount of goofy but good-hearted bravado in his musical numbers. In this case, I am tempted to dispense with the postmodern sarcasm and unashamedly enjoy Cage's screwy but affectionate characterization as it was initially meant to.

Besides, Cage is flanked by an assortment of fellow wild card wonders, including an unknown Jim Carrey as Walter Getz, Charlie's best friend and Carol's steady, and the debut role for Kevin J. O'Connor as Michael Fitzsimmons, the brooding Beatnik whom Peggy romances to Charlie's dismay. Carrey gets a moment to mug his way through a rendition of Dion's "I Wonder Why" with the rubber-bodied gusto that would make him famous, whilst O'Connor reaps some of the wildest dialogue through his pompous poeticism: "I'm going to check out of this bourgeois motel, push myself away from the dinner table and say 'No more Jell-O for me, Mom!'"

Joan Allen appears at the start of her storied career, having also stood out in the same year's Manhunter, as do Catherine Hicks, Helen Hunt (as Peggy's doting daughter Beth) and an acerbic Lisa Jane Persky (from The Sure Thing and Coneheads, as well as Coppola's earlier The Cotton Club) as gossip girl Dolores Dodge. Filling in the guest appearances slot are Leon Ames and Maureen O' Sullivan in touching performances as Peggy Sue's grandparents, plus the mighty John Carradine as a lodge spokesman. And other recognizable faces include Don Stark (Evilspeak) as jock bully Doug Snell, Barbara Harris from Freaky Friday as Mrs. Kelcher ("Peggy, you know what a penis is...stay away from it") and Barry Miller (Fame, Saturday Night Fever) as the millionaire-in-sneakers Richard, who has named his own theory of time travel after a burrito and is given hot tips on future innovations from Peggy Sue, such as "Walk-a-mans" and "portable enormous radios."

Well-acted across the board, wrapped up tidily with a John Barry musical score (as well as token appearances by Buddy Holly and his 1980s heir apparent Marshall Crenshaw) and given an intriguingly nostalgic glow by cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, the movie is less a technical showcase for Francis Coppola than a storytelling triumph. The movie offers us one bravura camera trick right after the opening credits and then keeps itself simply elegant and exciting. Coppola's working on a level of populism which courts comparison to Spielberg as well as Capra, but there's nothing excruciatingly broad about how he handles the dramedy. It has all been captured with deceptively effortless ease, from the strained chemistry between Peggy and Charlie, the thrill of pelvic-thrusting teenaged love and the brutal awareness of temporary relationships between family and friends in need of closure.

How these emotional threads are resolved is not entirely clear-cut, and Peggy's return to the present brings her back into the realm of compromise, as Charlie dotes nearby, having dumped his mistress for having the temerity to confuse the Big Bopper with a cheeseburger. But I felt myself growing up all over again next to Peggy Sue Kelcher, and she's one high-school sweetheart who not only deserves her party crown, but wears it exceedingly well. Peggy Sue Got Married, but you'll love the gal just the same.

Warlock (1989)

WARLOCK (1989)
(R, New World Pictures/Trimark Pictures, 103 mins., theatrical release date: January 11, 1991)

Time travel and Satan worship, two great tastes that go together in Warlock, one of the last New World Pictures productions which got a belated theatrical release two years after its completion. The former Corman house, several years after going public and branching out into video and television (thank them for Alan Spencer's cop comedy Sledge Hammer!), were in financial ruin after failed acquisitions and court cases deprived them of any gains they stood to earn from such successes as Soul Man or the Hellraiser series. Like Cannon Films, the dissolution of New World was a messy one, although unlike Golan/Globus, New World went out with a bang when they acquired Michael Lehmann's seminal teen comedy Heathers. They also had Warlock, but it was shelved until early 1991 when another independent company, Trimark Pictures, properly unleashed it to the world at large.

Producer/director Steve Miner had done two movies for the company in 1986 with the aforementioned Soul Man and the previously reviewed House, but here was perhaps the best of the three, a black magic take-off on the premises of Nicholas Meyer's Time After Time (1979) and James Cameron's The Terminator (1984) which shifted from Salem to SoCal as the forces of good and evil waged ancient war in modern times. Part of the reason Warlock worked so well was the casting of the primary combatants, two rising British talents in the form of Julian Sands and Richard E. Grant. Sands was already familiar thanks to notable parts in The Killing Fields, Gothic and the Mechant/Ivory drama A Room with a View, whereas Grant had made his debut in the cult classic Withnail and I. This was a considerable boon, as they play admirably straight characters who would've tempted a more winking treatment had they been instead filled by established superstars.

Sands and Grant admirably resist the allure of parody, playing cool and consistently their respective parts as the nameless Warlock and witchfinder Giles Redferne. The film opens during the supernatural scare in Massachusetts circa 1691, as the Warlock has been successfully captured and incarcerated for heresy by the dogged Redferne. On the eve of the prisoner's execution by funeral pyre (with cats for kindling, natch), the Devil throws a curve by whisking the Warlock away through a time-vortex twister, although Redferne catches wise and jumps in after him. Their destination is three centuries later in Los Angeles, where first the Warlock and then Redferne happen upon Kassandra (Lori Singer), a twenty-something Valley Girl waitress with diabetes who rents a room with the openly gay Chas (Kevin O'Brien).

No sooner have the two taken in the stray sorcerer than our villain literally plants the kiss of death on hapless Chas, eventually making his way to a dubious spiritualist played by the great Mary Woronov, an old guard from the New World (Death Race 2000, Rock 'n' Roll High School). She channels the spirit of the Devil against her will, informing the Warlock of his mission: to retrieve the scattered pages of the Grand Grimoire, the coveted anti-Bible which contains the true name of God which, when spoken backwards, can beget the apocalypse. Intrigued by the notion of becoming "the new messiah" (watch the theatrical trailer, where the line is taken from an unused alternate death which apparently also involved demonic eyes pasted over the psychic's nipples), the Warlock sets about collecting the various sheets starting at Kassandra's house, after she has already been introduced to and called the cops on Redferne.

The vain Kassandra is cursed to age twenty years per day thanks to his machinations, and has no choice but to bail out Redferne for help. The two reluctantly travel cross-country in an attempt to catch up with the witch, who has already murdered an Arizonan preteen (Brandon Call, the boy sidekick to Rutger Hauer from Blind Fury) of impure soul so that his fat can be harvested for flying potions and hidden in the basement of a Mennonite farm out in Colorado close to completing his task. The final pieces of the puzzle will take them back to the hallowed grounds of Boston, but can Redferne finish the job when his archenemy is more hellbent than ever before?

Figuratively speaking as an eighties B-movie enthusiast, Warlock is very much a witches' brew of a movie. Miner and screenwriter David "D.T." Twohy (co-creator of the Vin Diesel Riddick series) have all the proper ingredients to fit the recipe, especially when you factor the cast by itself: lips of Sands, larynx of Grant, legs of Lori, eyes of Mary (and yes, that's voice actor Rob "Yakko Warner" Paulsen in a walk-on role as a gas station clerk). Miner doesn't quite stir the pot with the kind of cackling vigor of a Witch Hazel, but instead relies upon the leisurely dry humor evident in all of his prior horror efforts. Case in point: the ironic cut from a severed tongue sizzling in a pan to Kassandra serving an omelet at her place of work, a joke which frankly would've gotten the point across without a cop immediately making the connection via interrogation. After the bottom-line bloodbaths of the Jason films and the broad farce of House, Miner is refreshingly droll with the basic tone of Warlock.

Twohy's script allows for Middle English and Malibu personalities to contrast against each other with aplomb. While Redferne sets up his witch compass in his first sudden, uninvited appearance at Kassie's ("Now, brute, one last time we play the game out"), she phones the emergency police line ("He's got a thing for blood...draw your own conclusions") with no intention of waiting for them to show up ("I'm skatin' right now!"). Redferne demands her to stay until the cops arrive, at which point he matches whips with tasers and is suitably outmatched. Kassandra is bewitched and fools herself that she can pass for 40 with a tennis skirt and a new dye job on her hair. The script has plenty of requisite references that show just how far out of time the ancient duo has come (The Wizard of Oz, faucets instead of wells), but this doesn't act as the movie's only source of comedy.

The visual effects are of a particularly rough quality, dependent on wires and bright orange opticals whenever the Warlock flies or lets loose with magic. Luckily for Miner, he doesn't lean too much on either, which is fine since he got some natural magic out of two proper actors in Julian Sands and Richard E. Grant. One of the more delightful tricks involves Kassandra nailing the Warlock's tracks as a means of crippling him, and Sands' agonizing screams get the point across with gusto. It should be said that Sands, here suggesting the heir to Malcolm McDowell's charismatic creepiness, makes a top-flight antagonist by virtue of his smolderingly Aryan good looks, wicked smirk and verbose grandiosity.

Although Sands returned for the first sequel in 1993, the hammier Anthony Hickox-directed Warlock: The Armageddon, missing from that film was an opposite number of Grant's caliber, a personality every bit as wry and wonderful as Sands was initially. Grant as the blue-eyed, fur-lined, God-fearing Redferne has an equally likely commanding presence and knack for character-specific subtleties that is truly dignified. Lori Singer's part is a bit less distinctive than that of the male leads, but she has a spacey comic timing and manages a solid job of her own.

Linger too long on Warlock and its ridiculousness becomes transparent, especially in the bizarre sight of Lori Singer in shoddy old-age facial make-up trying to limp about as a 60-year-old in her glittering leather miniskirt. The rubbery Richard Moll zombie from House looked more convincing. The true delight of Miner's film is in the way he and Twohy spin such a breezily entertaining chase pic out of superstitious sundries, from the painted-on hex mark outside the Mennonite barn attic to the various threats and colloquialisms dropped by the main characters. You've got to love how Redferne warns a priest of the imminent danger of the Warlock reversing all of God's designs into something akin to "Satan's black, Hell-besmeared farting hole," whereas that same man of cloth is later threatened by the witch to aid him lest his "children be born slugs of cold flesh."

In a word: Huzzah!

Warlock remains available on DVD in the American market specifically in a full-frame, bare bones release. A special edition would be a preference, especially considering how Jerry Goldsmith's colorful, ominous original score would benefit greatly from an isolated music track. Also, a crisp widescreen print mastered in HD would undo my murky VHS memories and bring new life to the film's rich scenery and production/costume designs. There are Blu-Ray releases from certain European territories, but this is something British distributors Arrow Video would do wise to explore for one of their own catalog titles. Chances are Lionsgate Home Entertainment in the U.S. won't be getting around to this one until the world ends. Must be the Devil, I don't know.