Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
To honour the first anniversary of the death of actor Julian Sands we look back at the 1989 time travelling magic feature Warlock starring Richard E Grant as Redferne and Julian Sands as the titular Warlock along with Fame star Lori Singer as Kassandra. The Warlock has murdered Redferne’s wife and has been captured and sentenced to death. However Satan intervenes sending the Warlock forward to the 20th century to find the Grimoire, a book of great power which contains the name of God. If God’s true name is spoken backwards then all of creation will be unravelled allowing Satan to rise upon the Earth. Redferne and Kassandra race against time and across country to stop Hell from being unleashed on Earth.
Warlock is a great little movie that still stands the test of time. Sands and Grant as adversaries are pure magic. Sands’ voice is just smooth as silk as he murders his way across the country to find the book. Grant on the other hand with his thick Scottish accent is, switching from manic to the most human soul of all in a split second. His language is so charming and of his time that this fish out of water story makes for endless entertainment.
He is a passionate and emotional man driven by the grief of being a widower who has the chance to avenge his wife. More so when he learns of the Grimoire, the stakes are even higher. The initially skeptical Kassandra slowly realises that Redferne is their only hope and not a madman especially when she finds herself aging to death thanks to a Warlock spell. Now she must join forces with an ancient Scottish warrior in order to save not only herself but the entire world. While Kassandra starts off as a stereotypical character, all mouth and attitude, the further the movie progresses the more she moves beyond the stereotype and into a woman of action who can fight for herself. It is she who breaks the aging spell as she fights the Warlock. She now sees that the world is bigger than she thought and that it is something she just can’t ignore. In essence she ends up being the one that protects a very confused Redferne against 20th century idiosyncrasies. She has to get him over his fear of flying so they can locate the last piece of the Grimoire and keep him focused on the mission.
In return Redferne educates her in the ways of magic and how the Warlock operates. When they end up at a Mennonite farm, she learns that the farmers there know all about the ways of magic and have been waiting for the day the Warlock came to darken their door. Kassandra realises that this battle between good and evil has been going on all around her and through the centuries while the world trundled on with its McDonalds, MTV and staged chat shows that kept the human populace distracted. This is best shown when they find Redferne’s grave and it throws him. She does have a soft spot for Redferne but ultimately knows it will go nowhere as he must go back to his own time having avenged his late wife. Kassandra evolves from an eighties chick to a young woman that strides into the world with new eyes.
It is no wonder that Richard E Grant has been touted as and did play Doctor Who (in the animated Scream of the Shalka and Curse of the Fatal Death). He is utterly convincing as a mad Highlander in his pursuit of the Warlock. He is manic but this suggests that he has seen the full force of the Warlock’ evils somewhere in the past. One can only imagine how he found his wife’s body after the Warlock has murdered her. Their battle has clearly been going on for a while and see each other as mortal enemies. It is inconceivable to Redferne that the 20th century is not aware of the dark ways of the Warlock even though it is all around them. It is a relief to him when he finally meets the Mennonite family who are fully versed in the ways of magic. As a fish out of water, he is terrified of airplanes and cannot fathom how much women have changed from his century. He is a man of intense curiosity as well as faith. He queries why Kassandra needs to wear makeup as his wife was beautiful enough not to need such paint. You can tell he is a very simple living man with a deep compassion for others. When he learns that a boy has been murdered by what the locals believe is a coyote, he knows better. He finds the mother and tells her he grieves with her over her loss. Such is his demeanor, the mother confirms that her son was not baptised. Redferne emotes an air of comfort and reassurance that despite his strange clothes and manner of speaking the woman confirms such a personal detail to a complete stranger.
But such a hero needs an equally worthy enemy and that is the Warlock personified. Julian Sands made this role his own returning to the role in the Grantless sequel Armageddon. He is pure evil, promised to become the AntiChrist when reality is rewritten. Warlock will sit by the Devil’s hand. He has no care or compassion for anyone, just a desire to cause chaos wherever he goes in order to satisfy his own dark needs.
Visually he is striking. That angular face with brown eyes, immaculately dressed in ornate black with his long blond hair tied back in a ponytail is not the typical villain’s image. As Clive Barker would say he speaks eloquent evil, the deceiver. Blond hair is usually associated with the good guys but through his actions from the very beginning of the movie there is nothing good at all about the Warlock,
He murders and tortures as casually as you would pick up a apple from a grocery store shelf. He murders Kassandra’s room mate Chas before going to see a fake psychic. He watches her fake display of spirit channeling with mild amusement before Satan possesses her instructing the Warlock to assemble the Grimoire. Once done with her he pulls her eyes out, using them as compasses to locate the three parts of the book. Sands is so cool and collected when commiting such acts that he steals the show lighting up the screen. He and Grant are electric together in their battle scenes yet apart they both still hold their own.
Equally, he tortures as casually by cursing Kassandra with an aging spell and a glib turn of phrase like many stars of eighties movies.
Reportedly, Sands wanted to go even further with the wickedness of the character when he murders a boy so he can drain his body of fat. This will enable him to fly as the boy was not baptised. Sands wanted the audience to see him suck the fat from the dead body but it was deemed too much. The image alone of this conjured in the audience’s mind is enough to clue the audience into how sick he is. Imagine how easy children were as prey to him in the olden times without the trimmings of the 20th century. His unique British accent delivers the lines so eloquently that the poor kid has no idea what is going to happen to him. Even when he tells the boy that not all witches are females, he does so like a kindly stranger. But when Kassandra manages to bash nails into his footprints and cripple him, we see the demonic fury beneath his milky bar kid exterior. Similarly the Mennonite farmer is struck by the Evil Eye before she can shackle the monster and even threatens to cause a priest’s wife’s miscarriage if he does not get what he wants.
He is as determined as Redferne to accomplish his goal but not even a Warlock can survive salt. He underestimates Kassandra who fills her insulin pen with salt water and injects him in the neck causing him to burst into flame.
Warlock stands the test of time with great characters, a solid story and a solid story. It put Julian Sands on the super villain playing fields and together with Richard E Grant left us a great pairing right up there with Holmes and Moriarty. Magic.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 