THE STORY:  Teetering on the brink of my patience, is this flick. I never expected it to be a classic. But I found myself mildly annoyed by it. I can assign some of that to the fact that I expected this movie to more enjoyable than it actually was. After all, the original Warlock movie is no horror classic, but its fun to watch in a goofy kind of way. The second one was, well, stupid. The original and the first sequel did have two things in common that this movie lacks…Julian Sands and the same basic premise. In Warlock’s 1 and 2 the Warlock has to travel a certain distance (like across the United States) to obtain certain objects that will allow him to unleash Satan, cause Armageddon, destroy the earth, etc, etc. That made for plenty of scenes where the evil Warlock would use his gnarly powers to [unwrite] up a few characters during his travels. This movie uses the old "haunted house" routine. Get a group of people in the general location of the monster/killer/demon/warlock and let the good times roll. As per usual in those kinds of situations the people are barely fleshed out but nonetheless annoying young people.

Our story begins in the 17th century New England. A mother and daughter are walking through the forest when the Warlock shows up and captures the little girl. Then all of a sudden we’re in the "present". Art student Kris has recently discovered that she was an orphan. She doesn’t know anything about her natural family until she gets a phone call from Mr. Buttermore, a historian in some rinky-dink town. An historic house in the town is to be torn down in a few days. The historical society has discovered that Kris’ real family owned the house and asks her if she’d like to look at it and take anything of value out of the house before its demolished. I’m not even going to try and understand that. If the house is being torn down in a few days wouldn’t anything of value already have been removed? If this house is worthy of the interest of historians why is being torn down? It doesn’t seem that there's anything near the house, so couldn’t they build the highway to go around it?

Spurred on by the desire to learn something about her real family, Kris decides to take the offer. She asks her boyfriend, Michael, and her other close friends to go with her. These other people would have been interesting if they had some personalities...but in a cheapo horror flick most times the characters are created on a Template from the Big Book of Stereotypes. There's Jerry, the pothead musician who has known Kris his whole life and harbors unrequited love for her, Scott, the official Big Dumb Jerk for this video, Scott's girlfriend The Kinky-Sex Chick, and Robin the spooky into witchcraft chick. At first her friends refuse, since they have finals coming up and need to study so Kris ventures out alone. Soon she is in rural New England searching for the house when she almost runs over a cliche....meaning she meets an old woman standing in the middle of the road for no good reason that ominously warns her that going to the house will bring death. Seems that happens a lot in movies. I wonder if its EVER happened in real life anywhere!

Kris finds the house practically empty, in disrepair and gloomy. The prerequisite storm is brewing outside and of course her car won't start so she's stranded there. (Three cliches in about 10 minutes of each other! The spooky old lady's warning, The Storm and the car that- worked-perfectly-five-minutes-ago-but-now-won't-start!) With nowhere else to go, Kris beds down in the house. She is awakened however by the voice of a little girl pleading for help. Spooky noises ensue, lightning and banging shutters. Kris actually sees the apparition of the girl outside of a window, and does the first thing that makes sense...she gets her [unwrite] and makes for the door! But suprise! Her friends are all outside trying to get in! It turns out that they all felt bad about abandoning her and decided to join her on this quest for her families past out of loyalty. (Yeah, what are college finals between friends?)

Now that they're all here the hijinks begin. Jerry sees a strange amorphous shape rise out of a sink and into the ceiling but attributes it to the big freaking joint he's puffing on. (Do joints make ya see [unwrite] like that? I don't know, being a good little boy I've never smoked one! At least I never inhaled. :) ) The next morning Mr. Buttermore arrives to see how Kris is doing and to get her signature on some papers for whatever. I'll deal with the house-in-her-family thing below. Kris asks him some questions about her family's past but gets no real answers. Soon after this the Warlock shows up under the guise of Mr. Covington, an architect that's interested in the house. He asks if he can just look around at the house before its torn down. Since Buttermore is the only person in the cast that knows about anything in the houses past and has an old letter from the 1600's he wants to show Kris, he's the first one the Warlock kills.

Covington ingratiates himself with Kris and her friends after hiding Buttermore's body. Only Robin, the witch, notices how strange he is. She warns her friends not to give him anything personal to them...because she thinks he's a warlock and then he'll be able to do bad things to them. Since that information is put out we soon see the hapless youths giving Covington things. Being evil and all he puts them to deadly purposes. He gets rid of Robin at the first opportunity since she's on to him. Then he starts putting the whammy on the others. Next thing you know, Kris is the only one left.

The warlock needs to sacrifice Kris because she's the descendant of the woman we saw in the beginning. I'm not real clear on this, but that woman was a witch...a good witch. The little girl the Warlock captured had to be sacrificed so the warlock can do something about bringing hell or mating with Satan or some wierdass crap. But the good witch stopped him and in order to save the little girl teleported her into the future and hid a magic knife in a doll or some such bull[unwrite]. I really don't understand all of it and I can't watch it again since my cheapass VCR at the tape. (Warning: Don't by a Hitachi MX421...I got it cheap and boy did I get what I paid for....piece of [unwrite]) Anyhow, the Warlock needs Kris' friends to forsake her for some reason so he can do his hoodoo-voodoo. Why he needs these people to say "I give up on Kris" I don't know. But he forces them to do it by imprisoning them in their own private hells. The kinky-sex chick and Scott are tortured in a medieval looking hell-room, Michael loses his hearing and being a musician that drives him to the brink, and Michael begins to waste away because he doesn't want t be like his father...who is dead. In poor Jerry's defense though, he didn't give up from the loss of his hearing...the Warlock magically showed him a vision of Kris making fun of him...(which DID happen earlier in the movie) since Jerry is in love with Kris this hurt him bad enough to make him give up.

Soon the warlock has Kris in his chamber of sacrifices, somewhere beneath the house. Kris fights back but is losing badly until she finds the little girls doll and realizes through some visions she has that a magic knife is in the doll. (Don't ask...as I said I broke the tape so I can't rewatch this to elaborate...but if you know what's going on email me and help me out here!) Kris destroys the Warlock...until Warlock IV at least. The ghost of the good witch tells her what a good daughter she is and the last we see of Kris is her walking away the next morning looking content. The end.

I don't know if this Warlock is supposed to be the same Warlock from the previous movies. If he is than he's lost a bunch of his powers. Before he didn't particularly need a personal object from someone in order to hurt them. He was also a little more threatening. Though he's coldly evil in this movie, the warlock didn't really seem all that dangerous to me. I have no idea how he got from the 17th century to the present. Was he the amorphous shape Jerry saw? I don't know. I just know I have to pay for the busted tape and get a new VCR. So maybe I'll never find out. Kris was played by Ashley Laurence, the chick from Hellraiser. She's a dish! Really, I find her very attractive. The Warlock was Bruce Payne.

Best Lines: I uh...didn't write it down, sorry.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?:

1.) When we see the Warlock in the 1600's he's wearing a leather coat that looks fairly modern. Did he time travel to the 20th century, buy some clothes at the mall and travel back in time to scare puritans?

2.) In addition to the old spooky woman in the road there's a repair guy that goes to the house before Kris arrives. He says on his cel phone that the city asked him to come check on the pipes or something and then he climbs a ladder to a second story window. Excuse me, but are pipes usually somewhere around a window pane on the second floor in New England? To make this even more nonsensical why is he even fixing anything in the house if its going to be demolished in TWO days? Isn't that kind of like putting new tires on a car that's going to a junkyard?

3.) Speaking of the house...if it belongs to Kris' real family doesn't the city have to buy it from her before they can just knock it down to build a road? Don't they have to at least pay for the property? Isn't some civil servant going to lose his job for allowing a highway project to be planned over someone else's' property without finding the heirs first? I just don't get that. Kris must have some rights to the property or else they wouldn't ask if she wanted to take stuff out of it! If this house has been here for almost 400 years isn't a little more valuable than a road? Wouldn't the historical society want to keep it standing? And what about Scarecrow's brain? (Sorry, I've always wanted to just say that last bit...)

4.) When Kris becomes stranded at the house and decides to bed down for the stormy night she changes into a flimsy gown and goes to bed in one of the creepy old rooms. (There's beds in here still? The house according to dialogue has been empty for fifty years! How moldy are those mattresses?) I don't know about you, but I damn sure wouldn't change into a flimsy gown if I were her. I'd sleep in my clothes. Discounting the possibility of ghosts, vampires, Bigfoot, warlocks and maybe Jason showing up what about vagrants or local hicks that might use an abandoned house to hang out in? I'm quite certain that a pretty young woman like Kris would be a load of fun for them if they found her sleeping in a bed barely dressed!

NUDITY AND SEX:  Kinky Sex Chick and Scott get it on. Kinky Sex Chick should just have her breasts credited since she was really only in the movie to bear them.

HUH?:  What was the purpose of the dead meat repair guy or the old woman? Especially the old woman. Why was she in the middle of the road? She couldn't have known Kris was coming...for that matter she didn't know where Kris was going until Kris asked for directions. Then she goes into her "That place brings nothing but death!" routine. I guess she just stops any car that travels down that road and says that. I can see it now. Ten minutes after Kris leaves another car comes by and a guy asked her for directions to the nearest Wal-Mart. she then looks at them all eerily and says "Wal-Mart! That place is the Devil's Den! Don't go there! It can bring only DEATH!"

None of Kris' friends actually seemed like close friends to me. Of course none of them were really likable. I have to wonder how they even got together. Especially Scott, His tough guy act really got on my nerves.

Once again I wonder this...when only one person survives a clash with the supernatural what do they tell people? What's Kris going to tell everyone when she gets back to school...surely there'll be questions asked when her five closest buddies go missing...at FINALS! What's she tell the Dean? "Well, sir, a Warlock turned Robin into porcelain and broke her into smithereens, and killed Michael and Jerry. He imprisoned Kinky-Sex Chick and Scott in hell, but I managed to kill him with a magic knife left by my descendant who was a witch....yep, that the ticket...that's what happened!"

For once I'd like to see people who are less than thirty play college students or high school students! Ashley Laurence is a great lookin' gal, but in Hellraiser she was a college-aged person and that was thirteen years ago! She's got to be at least 30! (Still, she wears it well!)

THE TALLY: If you're a fan of the Warlock series this is a so-so deal. It'll interest fans of horror. Its not a really sucky flick, but it could've been a little more forthcoming in what the hell was going on. If you do rent it don't use a crappy VCR like I did....you might as well buy it.