{"id":9162,"date":"2014-06-25T20:00:42","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T01:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=9162"},"modified":"2014-06-21T23:07:02","modified_gmt":"2014-06-22T04:07:02","slug":"cast-a-deadly-spellwitch-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/9162","title":{"rendered":"Cast a Deadly Spell\/Witch Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cast a Deadly Spell<\/em> (1991, Martin Campbell)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Los Angeles, 1948. Everybody used magic.”<\/p>\n

Nice enough TV-movie with some good performances and a great premise: a noir detective story in a world where magic exists. Our hardboiled hero Lovecraft (Fred Ward, the year after starring in Henry & June<\/em>) who doesn’t use magic due to an incident that killed his partner is hired by a rich guy (David Warner, an HP Lovecraft fan judging from his IMDB resume) to retrieve his Necronomicon. Ward runs into ex-flame Julianne Moore (this might count as her first starring movie role), tries to avoid thug Raymond O’Connor and his zombie, and finally protects Warner’s unicorn-hunting daughter from Warner’s own convoluted world-dooming scheme.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Clearly influenced by Who Framed Roger Rabbit<\/a><\/em> with a lower budget, magic creatures and spells popping up in every scene (accompanied by overdone cartoon sound effects). Campbell went on to make some James Bond movies<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n–<\/p>\n

Witch Hunt<\/em> (1994, Paul Schrader)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“For some of hollywood’s biggest stars and studio moguls, it’s time to name names.”<\/p>\n

When I heard Schrader had made a sequel starring Dennis Hopper, I couldn’t get a copy fast enough. Unfortunately it’s such a bad movie, it makes me wonder if I didn’t severely overrate the previous one by calling it “nice enough”. This one has fewer puppets, more early (too early) digital effects. And I love Hopper, but he doesn’t seem right for the role, speaking too slowly, looking out of his depth.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Shakespeare is summoned as script doctor:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Eric Bogosian (writer\/star of Talk Radio<\/em>) is a slimy anti-magic senator, starts a literal witch hunt by arresting and arranging to burn Hopper’s witch neighbor (now played by Sheryl Lee Ralph of To Sleep With Anger<\/a><\/em>) for defying “the unnatural activities act”. I don’t know if this is a prequel or what – Hopper has different reasons to avoiding magic than Fred Ward did, and Raymond O’Connor’s zombie is back from the other movie. Penelope Ann Miller (Edna Purviance in Chaplin<\/em>) is love interest fatale “Kim Hudson”, there’s a movie-star lookalike whorehouse a la L.A. Confidential<\/em> run by a transvestite lipsync artist, more characters with obvious names (a cop called Bradbury), and Julian Sands with a heavy fake accent. And morphing – remember morphing?<\/p>\n

Mouseover to see Hopper vomit a crow:<\/em>
\n\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first couple minute are nice though, with clips from 1950’s industrial films recognizable from MST3K and a reference clip of Reagan testifying before HUAC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cast a Deadly Spell (1991, Martin Campbell) “Los Angeles, 1948. Everybody used magic.” Nice enough TV-movie with some good performances and a great premise: a noir detective story in a world where magic exists. Our hardboiled hero Lovecraft (Fred Ward, the year after starring in Henry & June) who doesn’t use magic due to an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1085,1313,1408,1112,216,1793,1747],"class_list":["post-9162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-dennis-hopper","tag-double-feature","tag-julian-sands","tag-julianne-moore","tag-magic","tag-morphing","tag-paul-schrader"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9162"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9182,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9162\/revisions\/9182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}