Wishmaster

"Wishmaster" is better than I expected. It's quite a bit more entertaining than I thought it might be. As a direct-to-video series of horror flicks from the '90s, it had been on my radar for a long time, but I had never heard it spoken of or recommended, which is a shame.

Of course, it raises a flag that the movie was "executive produced" by Wes Craven. A lot of people have been burnt by that; generally people who don't know what an executive producer does, ie. nothing.

I wonder if the presence of the great, forever underrated Robert Englund ("A Nightmare on Elm Street") is owing to Craven's brand, however. And let's not forget the movie also features Tony Todd ("Candyman") and Kane Hodder ("Friday the 13th") in cameos, as well as Sam Raimi's brother Ted, and is narrated by Angus Scrimm, known as The Tall Man in "Phantasm".

The problem with the movie is that is doesn't hold together very well from scene to scene. It has many entertaining moments and good lines, but the story is simplistic, yet told in a confusing way. One indispensable aspect of these mid-'90s horror flicks is that they were made right before CGI came and ruined everything, and the movie has a lot of cool, practical gore effects.