It's getting harder to stomache this stuff.

Warlock II: The Armageddon


Julian Sands is back in his role as an evil witch out to do the devil's bidding...and this time I was routing for him.

This movie peeved my sensibilities. It opens with some scene in a Stonehenge-like place, with a bunch of druid-like men performing some sort of exorcism-like ritual on a very pregnant possessed women, with a bunch of cheesy looking sacred gems.  Wait, maybe they were a monastic order.  Anyway, they get raided and stomped by some baddies who weren't really defined by any crest or dialogue or anything save (I think) Sands presence.  Next thing you know two of the dru-monks are exchanging lines about saving the rune stones.  Wait a minute, rune stones?  Those semi-iridescent Jell-O mold rejects?  Granted this was probably before we had such informed words and phrases as "cultural sensitivity" or "syncretism", but rune stones were actual stones with runes on them.  That's all they really  needed to be sacred; not the triviality of doubling as sparkly New Age jewelry.

Fast forward to modern times:  Dopey, Dumbo-eared Chris Young stars as a one of two druid warriors conscripted to stop the ascent to our realm, of Satan.  In the meantime, the witch - who was born on the East coast and is now on an evil road trip to collect the gem-er-stones - ditches his zombie cab and steals an orange muscle car.

After he's brought back from a shotgun blast to the gut (chest? whatever!) Young proceeds to talk to trees and use hovering baseballs to hone his ability to use the force a la Luke Skywalker.  This part just seemed to go on and on and on.  There's also a girl warrior whom he shares a birthday with.  Sounds familiar doesn't it.  She comes late to the tree conversations and psychic ball lobbing, but together they work to seal the opening portal - which is a big stone dais, marked with runes, in a Stonehenge-like place in the woods (that apparently no one has noticed until now).

Did I mention that this is in like California or something?  I'm not even going to get on how there's no possible way that the first paragraph's scenario could have happened in America, but now it seems like they happened in California.  First, historians widely dispute the existence of a secret fraternal order of powerful, knowledge-hoarders and self-fashioned magicians, but if they existed it seems their disappearance would have predated the New England colonies.  Second, I think someone might notice a mini Stonehenge ANYWHERE in the United States.  Third, such a place would not have been in California just by nature of when it was settled.  Who would be on the west coast carving celtic or norse runes into stone gateways to hell...which (in its association with Satan) is Christian, anyway?  Wouldn't Latin be the necromancer's language of choice?

I can't believe I used to like this stuff.