7Roulette - CAST A DEADLY SPELL

Every girl's fantasy is to live in a world where magic rules. Poof and there's a cute puppy. Abracadabra and swish and you're living in a mystical castle and riding unicorns. But the enchanting world to which these characters live is anything but beautiful. It's a place of fear and death, riddled with otherworldly creatures, and living gargoyles.

Detective Lovecraft must find the most important spell book before the evil magician brings about the apocalypse. Sounds fun right? Sadly it was boring. I found myself on my phone a lot and ignoring the movie. In absence of enchantment it just wasn't magical enough for me, or spooky. I suppose that's the little girl in me wanting wands and flying brooms. D

- Babes

Boy, nothing reminds me more of the early 90s than midcentury American Crime Noir. Seriously, between Roger Rabbit, Miller's Crossing, The Rocketeer, The Two Jakes, The Shadow, and a whole bunch more, fedora nostalgia dominated my youth to the point that they rarely stood out as the period novelty they were often aiming for. The lavish weirdness of 1991's Cast a Deadly Spell feels like the beautiful but crazy lovechild of Dick Tracy and Twin Peaks and has way more fun with its gimmickry than that year's overly self-serious Naked Lunch. The story follows Fred Ward as Harry Lovecraft, a hardboiled detective (which is exactly the role he should've played more often) who's been hired to track down the Necronomicon (as in The Book of the Dead), and in addition to hired goons and double-crossing dames, he's also gotta contend with gremlins, gargoyles, unicorns, demons, and, of course, magic spells. In this reality, 1940s Los Angeles is more like a literal Oz or Wonderland, and every resident dabbles in magic like it's a popular designer drug (though I'm sure the whole scenario is an analogy for something). Harry doesn't use magic, just his brawn and his wits - both of which fail him often. The dialogue leans hard into the snappy sing-song detective lingo and the very colorful and competent cast pulls it off with ease, with standouts from Clancy Brown, David Warner, and Raymond O'Connor. Julianne Moore comes across as a little stiff but she certainly looks the part - she's done better in better period stuff. But ultimately this is a Creature Feature through and through - enough to land the cover of Fango upon its release, and rightly so; most of the optical effects are predictably clunky, but all the makeup and puppetry moments are top notch. HBO Films was largely known for Biopics and movies that dealt with some social or political issue, so even in hindsight a movie where a giant rock monster gets kicked in the nards is still a breath a fresh air. B-

- Paul