Trailer
Plot summary
In Boston in 1691, a warlock is condemned to death for killing the wife of the witch hunter Giles Redferne. Satan pulls him out of his own era before the sentence is carried out, and he lands in Los Angeles late in the 20th century. The warlock appears at the home of a waitress, Kassandra, and her roommate Chas, who take him in. Satan possesses a fake psychic and orders him to gather the three pieces of the Grand Grimoire, a book that can unmake Creation. Redferne arrives with a witch compass, and Kassandra, aging from a curse, joins him.
Cast
- Kevin O'Brienas Chas
- Kenneth Danzigeras Magistrate #2
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Warlock (1989)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Screenwriter David Twohy originally spent six to eight weeks writing Warlock as the reverse of the finished film, with the warlock as a sympathetic character persecuted in the 17th century and again in the present, before reworking the story and trimming it to fit the budget.
- An elaborate series of makeups to progressively age Lori Singer had been designed, tested and approved by makeup man Carl Fullerton, but on the day of her transformation into a 40-year-old she refused to wear any prosthetics, forcing the crew to resort to stippling, shadowing and a gray wig.
- In a Canadian murder case, lawyers argued on the killer's behalf that he had become obsessed with the film Warlock and that the murder was based in part on occult concepts from the movie. The case is reported to have influenced the country's decision to enable parents to use the V-chip to censor violence in cable television.
- Julian Sands initially turned down horror scripts on principle and let Warlock sit unread for a while, only agreeing to star once he realized it was written as a black comedy rather than a slasher film.
- The post-production optical effects work passed from Dreamquest Images to Perpetual Motion for budgetary reasons, and no one from the new company was available to supervise on the set, so the crew had to shoot background plates and plot the effects on their own and hope that the FX team had the proper materials to work with.
- Director Steve Miner originally wanted Richard E. Grant to play the villainous Warlock, and once Julian Sands was locked in for that role Grant's involvement nearly fell through; Miner auditioned him anyway and was impressed enough to cast him as the witch-hunter Redferne instead.
- Producer Arnold Kopelson suggested Julian Sands for Warlock, but it was director Steve Miner who chose to cast him against type as the villainous title character rather than as the good-hearted witch-hunter Redferne.
- The farmhouse with the iconic red barn is the George Washington Faulkner House, which was open to the public with an annual pumpkin patch attraction for many years. Because of the logistics of the special effects, the climactic graveyard was erected on a soundstage in Los Angeles.
