Janne the Director’s Favorite Rare Movies Top 100 List #76: Cast a Deadly Spell (1991)
76. Cast a Deadly Spell (1991)
I know next to nothing about H.P. Lovecraft except that I should expect tentacles and goth nerds to cream their pants over it.
Well, there are no tentacles in sight in this but Fred Ward plays a private eye named Harry Philip Lovecraft and it’s set in the 40’s where apparently magic was a common thing. We get zombies doing the jobs Mexicans do today, director Martin Campbell flexing those suave muscles he put to use later when directing Bond films and the closest thing to tentacles we get is Julianne More as a femme fatal.
This was made for TV and it shows – but it doesn’t matter because it got flair and balls bigger than any TV-screen. Three years later Paul “I wrote Taxi Driver” Shrader directed a sequel called Witch Hunt (1994) with Dennis Hopper as Detective HP Lovecraft. Pretty fun/good too but it had Julian Sands in it and therefore prevented it from being an honest recommendation.
PREVIOUS ON THE LIST: #77: Small Faces (1996)
