Customer Reviews

Warlock 3: End of Innocence [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Warlock III - End of Innocence

I started out on the wrong foot with this film. I made the classic mistake of rushing to get a film for the weekend, not finding what I wanted and grabbing something that I thought was the continuation of another series entirely. Not until the action opened on an entirely different cast of players did I figure out my mistake. Being doubly grumpy does not make me a friendly viewer.

The film starts out with college student Kris (Ashley Lawrence) receiving a call about a house she had inherited. Since Kris had never known her original family, she jumps at the opportunity to learn about her past and dashes off, without her friends, to investigate. She arrives and is promptly badly spooked (people who know this series will recognize the house as belonging to Phillip Coventry [Bruce Payne], the warlock). A grand thumping at the door announces the arrival of... Kris's college friends. Among them her boyfriend Michael (Paul Francis), her best friend and apprentice witchlet Robin (Boti Ann Bliss), and her high school buddy Jerry (Jan Schweiterman). "Great!" thinks me, "Yet another college student hack-and-slash film."

Well, it is and it isn't. Don't mistake me; 'End of Innocence' has a twenty-five word or less plot, an unknown cast, and the requisite gratuitous nudity and violence. Nevertheless, surprisingly, the film isn't cheesy at all. Director Eric Freiser stays with fairly understated and subdued effects, rather than immense splashes of gore and parts. This makes that acting more prominent, and several of the cast really turn in professional jobs. Coupled with a setting that actually is interesting, and good film work, this makes the story far more believable that many similar efforts.

The end result is an enjoyable rendition of a classic grade B horror flick - forgettable, but fun. Definitely an R rating, but not excessively so. I would suggest seeing parts one and two first. Then you won't have to spend the time I did figuring out what is going on.

Why...oh why...did they make ANOTHER sequel? The first movie was an instantaneous classic featuring the EXTREMELY well cast Julian Sands as the Warlock. The second movie, a fresh twist for the '90s fans of the first one, had its only highlights being that it still contained Julian Sands (in his chic look with shorter hair and designer black clothes) and a killer song by Napalm Death in the credits. But the third one, missing out on the Julian Sands action (he could shave his head and dance in a dress like in Mercy, worth renting just to see that part), has nothing going for it except for some kinky S&M (I don't remember the other two needing sex scenes to sell the movie). I could barely make it through it, because it was so boring. The only scares it had were rip offs from other horror movies. Personally, I don't find Bruce Payne at all intimidating. This movie makes me fear for the horror movies of the 21st century. Don't buy it unless you want to complete your trilogy (or if you liked Urban Legends 2 or Scream 3).

The End of Innocence, more like The Tragic Failure of a Good Series.

Ok, I thought I would give this movie a chance considering that the first 2 films were classics, After watching the movie I had mixed feelings about it. I thought that Bruce Payne made a pretty good warlock( but cant hold a candle to sands performance)I also liked the plot of the movie, but I DIDNT like the way that they played it out. I mean the plot is still pretty good, but all the kinky sex in the movie sorta gets in the way. And its so Damn slow through the first 45 minutes that you almost fall asleep. When it does finally start picking up, the special effects are all cheap and very low budget ( probably why it didnt get a theatrical release). The gore factor is pretty high with scenees like: throat ripping and a guy hanging from hooks( very hellraiserish). So what we have is a movie that has a great potential, but still falls flat on its face with a slow script and some very cheap speacial effects. Rated R for: a scene of graphic violence, some strong sexual content and language

Bruce Payne (Operation Intercept, Ravager) when given enough air time and a role he can flex his abilities in can keep a viewer interested. And he does it here in "Warlock III". There is the usual teenybopper horror storyline but Payne surprises one in what would be just another sequel. Mostly kept in low-budget roles, Payne is capable of a sense of presence and cultured delivery. He exhibits it here. He's glossy stuff. If you like his work and want to see him weave a character into his own, this is it.

Warlock 3 is at best tangentially related to any of the happenings in the first two movies in the series. The closest connection is that the warlock looks vaguely similar to the warlock in the first two -- evidently, Julian Sands refused to sign up for a third effort.

Warlock 3 breaks little new ground as it engages with the 'devil needs a sacrifice to return and establish his kingdom of evil' formula. A hottie coed receives a mysterious phone call telling her that the home of her birth family (she's adopted) is about to be demolished and that she has the weekend to remove artifacts from the house. Thinking that this will be an opportunity to find out more about her borth family, she sets out for the country with a group of friends. The house is decaying and eerie, a storm descends, strange happenings occur, and you can figure the rest out from there. Although originality is not its strong suit, Warlock 3 is a thoroughly competent movie which will please any devotee of the B-movie genre.

I watched this expeciting something good aside from the other 2 warlock movies which i really liked. first off, the movie is slow, the beginning dose not help you with the rest of the movie, but what really makes this movie bad is the base of the movie. This new warlock needs to kill the decendent of a wicca that killed him(what a surprise plot). but to be able to kill her, he must get her friends to betray her and give her to him for sacrifice, remember this includes her boyfriend. This plot is bad and you can see this plot mess coming from a mile away and what dose not help is that all of her friends sell her out, even knowing that they are going to die anyway. This is a movie where they have a smart intelligent warlock going into battle with unarmed victims, meaning, when this guy shows up out of no where, they don't have a problem with it. Warlock and Warlock II are very decent movies, this one just dose not help in the imagination or the horror department. besides, if a girls boyfriend was on fire, you know for sure that he would burn in hell before he would give her up, at least that is what some would think.

A lot of reviewers have mentioned the good performance of Bruce Payne in this movie. I just feel that I have to comment that unless you are a fan of his to begin with you will probably be bored to death by this movie.

In my humble opinion both the script and the actors are beyond bland and do not compare at all to the two previous movies neither in quality or content. I would never have made it to the end had it not been for a desire to see if it was possible to maintain the awful quality throughout the movie. Amazingly it was. If you liked the two first movies, do yourself a favor and don't watch this. Buy another movie at random, you're pretty much guaranteed to get better value for money.

That said, this is an interesting example of how you can make bland actors look worse by giving them a boring and inconsistent script and then letting a mad, drug abusing parrot do the editing.

Best scene: The warlock struggling(and failing) to pull the main character back while she is *knocking down a brick wall*. A study in how to portray the villain as an elderly lady in a warlock suit. God... I was crying on behalf of everyone involved.

Okay, firstly I'm a huge Julian Sands fan and admit I was a little disappointed that he wasn't in the third installment of the Warlock series.

It's of course your run of the mill horror flick. HOWEVER, I will say that I really enjoyed this movie with Bruce Payne as the warlock. Sands having a maleviolent air about him, you knew immediately that he was the villian of the movie. But in #3 Payne seemed much more beneviolent. I liked that he intentionally portrayed his charactor awkward and out of place as he would for warlock trapped within his own house for 350 years lacking human contact. He seemed innocient and likeable. Also, I especially enjoyed the individual dialoge he had speaking with each one of the charactors as he methodically tricked them into handing over their friend for the sacrifice.

I haven't seen Bruce Payne in a lot of films, but he's a good actor and it's a shame he's not in more mainstream movies. He shines under thick clouds and I'd really like to see more of him.

Oh, look mom, another Scream style movie. Unlike the first two Warlock movies that actually had original and decent stories, this one just copies the current trend of unoriginal story. Kids go to old house, strange man shows up, strange man is evil, kids are stupid, strange evil man kills them in weird and exotic ways, one person lives to defeat strange man, and live happily ever after. The only thing good about this was Bruce Payne, he plays a real excellent bad guy. Other than that this movie was not really worth the [amount of money] I paid for it.

...Julian Sands decided to grace this iteration with his presence. Oh well, not a perfect movie but its always good to see Ashley Laurence ala Hellraiser I, II, and Hellseeker. Ashley was just great to watch and played her character well in this film. I would have given higher marks if they actually cast the supporting characters with a little more thought. All of the characters seemed a little old to be college students, maybe they were getting their Master's... I doubt it though.

Ultimately, the supporting crew wasn't great but don't get me wrong Warlock III is actually decent and Bruce Payne makes a great warlock. The film proliferates the franchise, in a self contained sort of way and it's success lies in the fact that the film doesn't rely too much on continuity from the first two films, which is a good thing considering no Julian Sands. I just hate when they try to pass off another character as the original protagonist and while Bruce Payne looks vaguely like the original warlock absolutely no reference was made.

Another added bit of decency is that the story itself downplays gore and replaces the "horror" with commentary on relationships, or lack thereof. During the film we watch as the warlock slowly infiltrates the barrier's put up by the group hold-up at an old mansion. You would think with such an odd ball cast the acting would be all over the place. Instead they did a good job of keeping it minimal, subtle.

In the end Ashley Laurence's character finds out she is truly alone. *Gasp* The horror!

Gotta love that.

In Warlock III the horror is mere punctuation to the back story of Ashley Laurence's character, the protagonist and the commentary on relationships. There was one particularly decent interaction in the film with one of the characters, who happened to be a Wicca and Ashley Laurence's character's self proclaimed best friend. Warlock III is definitely a rent or if you're like me a watch on on-demand this month, via FearNet