The Super Network

What’s a Blog-a-thon? This blog-a-thon is a challenge, its participants have chosen films the other has not seen to watch and review.
November Blog-a-thon criteria: Hidden 90’s Gems
Why A.J. Chose This Film For Marcey: “‘Cast a Deadly Spell’ brings together two of my most favorite things in the world: film noir and monsters. But instead of just chucking these two elements together and letting the gimmick do all the work, director Martin Campbell weaves them together into an incredibly fascinating world. The style makes this movie, and I loved the cleverness with which the concept of magic and the supernatural was woven into a standard ’40s detective thriller. “Cast a Deadly Spell” is a premise that could’ve been a one-note dud executed with love and skill.”

Marcey’s Review: This has been the first Blog-a-thon film I’ve had trouble with, I had to obtain two different copies because the one I had first had very bad audio issues and I watched the film basically without sound the first time. This review has taken some time to get through due to this issue and a hand injury which has kept me out of action. So please excuse the delay and hopefully my review makes sense.

Cast A Deadly Spell is quite an odd and different film for the made for television platform. It is a unique piece, a Lovecraftian horror mixed with film noir – there are lots of nods to these genres /themes and it does feel like a piece made from and with passion. Going into this film I really had no idea what to expect, I barely even remembered what A.J. had said about it originally so I went in minus any real expectations and that paid off.

The film is set in the 40’s, where everyone uses music except one P.I. (Fred Ward) called Harry Philip Lovecraft (geddit?), who gets called by the rich Amos Hackshaw (David Warner) to find a book (the Necronomicon). The book is the possession of Harry Bordon (Clancy Brown) and hijinx follows as Lovecraft takes the case. There is a lot going on with the film and I’d rather not give anything away.

First and foremost this is a visual film, my first viewing I barely had any sound so I had to rely on what I was seeing to tell the story. For the most part I did follow things, and I was highly impressed by what I saw. It was well done for over 20 years ago, and the practical side of things looked very professional. The film has two very different genres to play with, yet they seem to go hand in hand because they blended really well in the hands of director Martin Campbell (best known for his James Bond efforts Golden Eye and Casino Royale).

It is a very fun film; it is full of fantastic performances across the board. It is pretty neat to see Julianne Moore in an early role, just the look of her here screams femme fatale. If you can track this down, I’d highly recommend it, this was a great experience for me and a nice start to the Blog-a-thon.

Rating:

Check out the other reviews for Week 1 of the Blog-a-thon: Sam @24fps, A.J. @CineSlice, Mike @EFilmBlog, Bede @SM.com.