Cast A Deadly Spell

 

This one is a little outside my usual vibe for this blog, but it’s a personal favorite that not a lot of people have seen, so I am making an exception.  Cast A Deadly Spell dates from a lost era in TV history, when HBO was still just kind of testing the waters on original content, and when fantasy and SF subjects were still considered a little bit odd, not mainstream like they are now.  This was years before HBO invented the “prestige” miniseries with And the Band Played On and other award-winning stuff.  This little 1991 movie stands out as an experiment.

You get the premise on a title card just as the movie opens: “Los Angeles 1948.  Everyone used magic”, and that’s all the explanation you get for it.  There are context clues that make it seem like maybe, in this world, magic really became a thing after the war, but it’s not made specific.  What you have is a film that replaces the fears of technology taking over with magic being the game-changer, with some people riding the trend and some people bucking it.

What’s surprising, for a movie, is how much they committed to the worldbuilding.  You get lots of little throwaway gags, like people lighting cigarettes with magic flames, kids blowing out tires by chanting curses, and waiters using magic to levitate glasses while they pour martinis.  A lot of work went into filling the background with these little details that help sell the setting, and it works surprisingly well.  A lot of these gags are essentially throwaway jokes, but they show that the filmmakers thought about their premise beyond the obvious.

A good cast helps immeasurably to make this work.  Fred Ward is at his craggy, straight-man best as H. Phillip Lovecraft – an ex-cop and private eye who is known for refusing to use magic in his work.  David Warner is pitch-perfect as the wealthy client who hires him to retrieve a book called the Necronomicon that was stolen from him.  Clancy Brown (who looks so young in this) is oily and thuggish as Lovecraft’s former partner-turned-gangster Harry Bordon.  Julianne Moore gets to wear a succession of fabulous gowns as Lovecraft’s ex and Harry’s current moll Connie Stone.  The screenplay goes hard with the period slang and getting the rhythm of the fast back-and-forth style of dialogue in those classic noir films.

The movie gives some great moments to lesser-known and character actors as well.  The late Charles Hallahan plays Lovecraft’s old boss, Detective Bradbury, Arnetia Walker is a delight every second she is onscreen as Lovecraft’s landlady Hypolite Kroptkin, and longtime character actor Raymond O’Connor is brilliant as Tugwell – Harry’s deadly, dapper, white-suited sorcerer hitman.

The overall plot is not as smart as the dialogue, and it is pretty much just throwing every noir fiction trope into the mix and seeing how it plays out with magic added, which is admittedly pretty fun.  There are some twists and turns along the way, but not that many.  The effects are often cheap-looking, as this was made in 1990, before the era of digital effects, and was reportedly made for just $6 million – a bargain-bin budget even in those days.  Director Martin Campbell (later to go on to Mask of Zorro, Goldeneye and Casino Royale) does a lot to keep things well-shot and well-paced, but even he can’t overcome the guy in a rubber suit playing a gargoyle and the extremely cheap-looking monster at the end.  This is a made-for-TV movie, and it looks like it.

The racial and sexual politics are not great, though not bad for the time.  The movie kills the hell out of its gays, but it does not treat them as punchlines or objects of revulsion.  Most of the black people in the movie are zombies imported from the Caribbean, except for Lovecraft’s landlady and her all-too-briefly seen lawyer brother Thadius Pilgrim.  It is weird to see a Los Angeles with no Hispanics in it, but rather par for the course at the time, as the movie is more interested in portraying LA as it appeared in movies than as it actually was.

Cast a Deadly Spell is pretty much the definition of a cult film, as it was broadcast on HBO, released on VHS, but was never put out on DVD except in PAL format in Spain of all places.  So the fact that it is up for streaming on HBO Max means it is finally possible for a lot of people to see this neat little movie.  If you have an interest in Lovecraftiana, Film Noir, or genre-mixing, I highly recommend it.