Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Wishmaster Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 27, 2017

Note: This film is available as part of the Wishmaster Collection.

What would your three wishes be? It’s a time honored game played by a lot of kids, and maybe even some nostalgic adults: pretend you were someone like Aladdin who discovered a genie in a bottle (since that’s where genies supposedly are invariably found), freed it from its confines and then were granted that magic trifecta of desires. Of course any kid worth their salt makes it clear that their third wish is for three more (or infinitely more) wishes, unless the rules have already been proscribed denying that ability. But at least those first two wishes can be fun to contemplate, for those fond of indulging in such episodes of pretend. You might not want to get to that venerable third wish should you find yourself in an environment like that depicted in the Wishmaster series, since part of this film’s conceit is that the djinn (an Arabic term relating to a class of supernatural beings, one of whom is called a djinni, or as it became Anglicized, genie) are basically just waiting to escape their purgatorial (or in fact hellish) universe to invade ours, and that some poor hapless mortal getting to that third wish is the mechanism by which that event can happen. That’s just one way the Wishmaster franchise skews traditional elements of “genie in the bottle” stories, with another one being that very bottle element: in this formulation, the djinn is imprisoned in a jewel, one that (of course) repeatedly falls into the hands of either unwitting innocents or very witting bad guys, all of whom (again of course) unleash the superpowered being into the human realm, with expected calamitous consequences. The first Wishmaster is fun if hokey, augmented by some nice visual effects work, but this is one franchise that definitely experiences the law of diminishing returns as it goes on.

While certainly not any kind of undiscovered masterpiece, the first Wishmaster is probably inarguably the best of the franchise, with an appealing enough concept, some cheesy but enjoyable special effects and the added bonus of featuring a host of cameos of then au courant horror stars. That includes a voiceover by The Phantasm Collection’s Angus Scrimm during the film’s opening which describes in Scrimm’s sonorous tones the sad fate of the djinn, fallen angels of a sort who are condemned to live in a netherworld that’s not exactly to their liking, hence their extreme desire to get out.

A brief prelude vignette also documents the imprisonment of the Djinn (Andrew Divoff) in a fire opal several centuries ago, before the story moves to contemporary times and begins with the arrival of a shipment of a supposedly priceless artifact, an ancient statue of the Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda. An antique collector named Raymond Beaumont (Robert Englund, A Nightmare on Elm Street Collection) is there to pick up his goods, but is distressed when an inebriated dock worker drops the crate, killing a bystander (listen to the commentary if you need to figure out whose cameo that was) and more or less destroying the statue. In the chaos after the accident, another dock worker (where are the Teamsters when you really need them?) sees a beautiful jewel embedded in one of the shards of the now smashed statue and purloins it. Bad idea.

After a visit to the pawn shop, the jewel ultimately ends up at an auction house run by Nick Merritt (Chris Lemmon), who has his gemologist Alex Amberson (Tammy Lauren) try to figure out what it is. That leads to the first rumblings of the Djinn trapped inside it, which leads Alex to hand off the investigation to her pal Josh (Tony Crane) for further experiments. Probably none too surprisingly, that in turn leads to the escape of the Djinn (along with the demise of poor Josh). Alex is on the hunt for the history behind both Ahura Mazda and the gem itself, which brings her in touch with Beaumont and, ultimately, a kind of spooky folklorist named Wendy Derleth (Jenny O’Hara), who provides a ton of exposition while looking like a slightly drugged out modern day witch.

Meanwhile, the Djinn is keeping busy himself, attempting to collect human souls and grant wishes in order to release his kin to—well, aside from world domination, that part is never really explained with any clarity. Not wanting to traipse around a major metropolis as a Devilish looking entity with horns and bad skin tone, the Djinn adopts an alter ego, a normal (or at least more normal) looking man named Nathaniel Demarest (also Andrew Divoff, who frankly looks just as scary without the Djinn makeup).

Of course the film is building to a showdown between the Djinn and Alex, but rather interestingly, there is more than one such skirmish, in one of the film’s few unexpected twists. Alex turns out to be smarter than your average “wisher”, using her wishes relatively wisely to keep her out of harm’s way. The whole thing boils down to a kind of predictable climax where Alex’s final wish plays like the sting at the end of a not particularly memorable episode of The Twilight Zone (anyone paying attention to how this all started will figure out Alex’s final wish way before it’s uttered).

Wishmaster Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Wishmaster is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films' Vestron Video imprint, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. All four of the films in the Wishmaster Collection are within "shouting distance" of each other, quality wise, but I'm grading this film and the first sequel at 3.5, and the last two at 4.0 to indicate some subtle but noticeable differences between these transfers. The first two films exhibit some fairly bad wobble during the credits, a tendency which calms down when the actual film begins. Wishmaster's palette is represented quite winningly here, though some of the "Djinn territory" material is bathed in a deep red that debilitates fine detail levels (see screenshots 14 and 15). In normal lighting, and especially in the brightly lit outdoor sequences, fine detail is very good to excellent. While grain resolves naturally most of the time, it clumps unappealingly occasionally, especially in some of the darker sequences and some of the opticals.

Wishmaster Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For members who may have gotten into spats when submitting update requests which are rejected and who argue "hey, it's what the packaging says", guess what: packaging is often incorrect, which is why we reviewers and mods typically do reject such submissions. Case in point: Wishmaster's packaging proclaims a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, when in fact it only features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix (the series is rather inconsistent in this regard, ping ponging back and forth between 2.0 and 5.1 offerings). Our forum has had some vigorous complaints about this, since evidently previous home video releases of Wishmaster did feature a surround track. I frankly never owned Wishmaster in its previous incarnations, and so can't comment on what "might have been", and instead can only state that the stereo track here offers excellent fidelity and clarity. The film's fun sound effects have good force if not much spatial presence, and both score and dialogue are also rendered cleanly and clearly with good prioritization.

Update: Lionsgate instituted a replacement program for those wanting a 5.1 mix. Details are in the Forum thread devoted to this release.

Wishmaster Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Robert Kurtzman and Screenwriter Peter Atkins


• Audio Commentary with Director Robert Kurtzman and Stars Andrew Divoff and Tammy Lauren


• Isolated Score Selections and Audio Interview with Composer Harry Manfredini


• Out of the Bottle (1080p; 21:55) features interviews with director Robert Kurtzman and co-producer David Tripet.


• The Magic Words (1080p; 13:55) features an interview with screenwriter Peter Atkins.


• The Djinn and Alexandra (1080p; 25:57) features interviews with stars Andrew Divoff and Tammy Lauren.


• Captured Visions (1080p; 12:43) features an interview with director of photography Jacques Haitkin.


• Wish List (1080p; 12:04) features interviews with actors Robert Englund, Kane Hodder and Ted Raimi.


• Teaser Trailer (1080p; 00:45)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:37)


• TV Spots (1080i; 3:00)


• Radio Spots (1:09)


• Vintage Making of Featurette (1080i; 24:45) is entitled Wicked Wishes: Making of Wishmaster.


• Vintage EPK (1080i; 5:39)


• Behind the Scenes Footage Compilation (1080i; 11:58)


• Storyboard Gallery (1080p; 7:37)


• Still Gallery (1080p; 6:42)