Movie Review: Warlock (1989)

The movie stars Julian Sands, Lori Singer, Richard E. Grant, Mary Woronov, and Anna Levine.

My wife and I both had a 4-day weekend this past weekend and, knowing this is one of her favorite films, I decided to record it off of one of our movie channels last week so we could watch it together again. 

I've seen this movie before. But, it had been a while and, because of that, I couldn't remember too much about it. As it turns out, while a bit dated, it was still a halfway decent movie.

I don't remember Julian Sands from any of the other movies he's starred in. But, in the case of this movie, he was the perfect choice for the title role. My wife thought he was attractive. I thought he put off a bit of a creepy vibe, enough to make his character believable.

I also liked the fact his character wasn't indestructible and, instead, had just enough weaknesses to keep him vulnerable whenever his mortal enemy (Grant) succeeded in hunting him down. This kept things from being too predictable and made his various escapes fun to watch because it was easy to understand the hero's frustration.

I also found I liked Singer's waitress character in this movie. A lot of times, female leads in movies like this aren't much more than one-dimensional love interests who do don't much. As a result, I liked how her character wasn't afraid to chase after the Warlock by herself, especially early on, when she was already bewitched and was at a serious disadvantage as a result of that.

Probably my only real complaint about this movie when we watched it this weekend was the special effects. They were probably state-of-the-art special effects in the 1980s. Today, they seem pretty fake looking. Fortunately, the overall movie was good enough to make up for this and still make the film enjoyable to watch.

The special effects are a little dated. But, overall, this was still a fun movie to watch and is a film I would recommend as a result.

My Grade: B