Cast a Deadly Spell
Fred Ward puts the call of Cthulu on Hold in this criminally underseen 90's Horror Comedy Noir.
Hello all you happy people and welcome one and all to Pop Culture Buffet. I’m Jacob Mattingly and I review animation, comic and film for my tumblr and with this post now substack. And to start my career i’m reviewing a rarely seen 1991 noir detective film with ties to HP Lovecraft because I make nothing but stellar career choices.
Cast a Deadly Spell is a delightful little 90’s gem, the kind of film that seeps through the cracks for one reason or another. It’s a film so obscure i’d never heard of it till my friend Cory brought it up over dinner wanting me to cover it. The reason why is understandable: it’s an HBO Original, and I both never had HBO as a kid for longer than a tryout weekend and was born the same year as this film. So while it’s something i’m sure many a person has a fond warm memory of catching on cable and wondering
I was not one of those lucky few. I am glad Cory paid me for this as Cast a Deadly Spell is my kind of movie: it has an oily man complaining about gremlins tearing up his car and spraying for them as you would a roach, then going after the last one standing with a shot gun while our protagonist sniffs around for clues. It’s the only film i’ve seen done this but it’s what makes Cast a Deadly Spell so damn charming.
Cast a Deadly spell isn’t the first work to combine Film Noir with HP Lovecraft. It’s probably the only one to name it’s protagonist Howard Phillip Lovecraft, no relation, but it gets points for being that honestly on the nose. It’s not the first fantasy to combine magic with the mundane every day, see works like the Dresden Files.
What’s unique here is that the world is out in the open: Magic isn’t hidden like Dresden or American Dragon Jake long. The LA of CADS is one where everyone uses spells casually. Most just use them like a quick cheap tool: Lighting cigarettes, levitating files, or importing zombies as cheap muscle. Some are practicing sorcerers: our big bad Harry Borden uses a hex to make sure a singer under his employ can’t get a contract elsehwere and Borden’s enforcer , Tugwell frequently goes to “get some air”.. his code for “murder you with paper”. Tugwell uses hexes, sets a target on fire, finishes him with paper and in one of the more intresting scenes, scares the owner of a diner into tricking harry into reading a hex that, once finished, sicks a demon on anyone whose read it. On the side of good we have Hypoite Kropkin, a talented witch who opens the story and is also Harry’s landlady, only friend and dance studio owner. She’s also the only major black character in the film. The rest are either zombies or her cousin who helps Harry out of some police brutality at one point. The zombie thing is mildly questionable, as their used as cheap muscle or cheap labor, but it’s very clear this new form of slavery isn’t okay and Harry isn’t remotely fond of it, and the disposiblity seems like a slight commentary on how black people were treated at the time. Granted it’s just as likely to be some good old early 90’s racism, but it dosen’t age as badly as some other parts.
The supernatural is also just a fact of life as a result: as I mentioned, in what’s easily my faviorite scenes, Gremilins are just a common menace to machines (And look like some certain other gremlins, which I found fantastic). When Harry has to visit his old precinct (As noir standard he’s an ex cop), the standard sex workers brought in because their an easy target for cops to make their quotas are vampires and the police’s target is a werewolf. And the film’s main antagonist sends a truly awesome looking gargoyle to track harry. The effects in this film are damn impressive for what’s, essentially a tv movie. This isn’t to knock tv movies or their modern descendants, but they usually aren’t given this level of budget. There’s the occasional matte painting sure, but overall the film is just a joy to look at and has monster effects for days. The gremlins look on par with their brethren. Everything looks fantastic.
In this fantastic world though Harry is an odd man out. For noir he’s your standard hard boiled mug. He’s got a shaky past having left the police, his partner Borden having become a crime boss, and the love of his life Connie, having left him for Borden. He’s lambasted for his low station, cool looking snake skin necktie but more than any of that.. not using magic. Harry’s quirk as a detective is he refuses to use the stuff, something most people tend to point out and mock him for, pointing him out as a fossil in this modern world.
What they miss though, and what makes the character intriguing: Howard is a blunt dick, willing to mock most people and fitting his time isn’t afraid to make a joke about a 16 year old loosing her virginity or when talking about the romance between a man and a genderqueer woman, asks if they met at an f-slur party. Howard is a giant asshole to most people… but like most anti-heroes he gets by as an asshole with standards. He’s not racist, and while he tends to be prickly about magic, it’s not for nothing: Howard’s worry isn’t about magic himself. While he refuses any from Hypolite on prinicpal, to the point she has to attach a bangle to him for the climax that won’t come off, he dosen’t judge her as a witch. Howard simply sees magic as a short cut, and is at his most prickly when that’s the case: he’s baffled by Borden’s use of zombies, he chastises a cop for using a fire spell for a lighter, and he’s well aware that magic often exacts a price. As he puts it perfectly when arguing with Connie during one of the best scenes of the film “No one has a mortgage on my soul, I own it free and clear”. He’s fine if someone is responsible , but he gets like with most new technologies, most aren’t. Their using it to try and replace people with cheap replacements, make themselves unto gods, summon gods or just straight up murder. Harry dosen’t use magic because he feels he dosen’t need it and has seen how bad it can go. He’s not seen as a luddite textually for this. Sometimes progress simply isn’t ready or humanity abuses it. See the rampant use of ai: while spells aren’t as bad as that, they require more effort, like spells their a useful tool that too many people use as a shortcut and could have dire consequences if they overrun.
Harry is played to perfection by Fred Ward of Tremors fame and the film succesfully flipped my opinion on him: Originally I thought he was fine, a great foil to kevin bacon in tremors but faltered when put on his own. In this film he’s a true leading man, playing an engaging character with beautiful noir narration who might be a dick but he’s the dick we need. It made me realize the issue with tremors two wasn’t ward as I falsely assumed, instead reminding me it was that little shit they paired him with who was so damn annoying. Had they just paired him and burt together as the duo for it the film would’ve been way better. Free of any pissants and not having to go toe to toe (If successfully) with Kevin Bacon , we see Ward’s talent really sparkle. The man had a charm that’s sadly lost with his tragic passing and I’m glad I got to see him at his best here.
The rest of the cast is none too shabby: Julianne Moore sizzles as Connie, our standard femme fetale, Clancy Brown is nicely intimidating as borden. My faviorite is Ramond O’Connor as tugwell who looks like a pretty slimy standard mook.. but whose sheer power and flexiblity with his magic makes him terrifying. Lee Tergesen is also great as Lily Siwar, a genderqueer woman (best I can classify her) who dates the opening kill and is a genuinely kind person and weathers Lovecraft’s standard 40’s homophobia , all too used to it. Sadly she does not live long and it is a shame that of the five deaths in the movie, two of them are the film’s only queer characters.
Rounding out the cast are the legendary David Warner as Lovecraft’s employer, Amos Hackshaw, an unsettling man who totes isn’t evil and just wants Lovecraft to bring him the necronomicon by midnight the next night, setting off the plot. Yup totally not suspcious he sequesters his daughter Olivia, played by Alexandra Powers on his compound as she hunts unicorn. No sir.
Warner is fucking fantastic but to get to the true depth of his performance I have to get into the finale. So spoilers if you haven’t seen the film. Go watch it, it’s on HBO Max, and i’ts terrific.
SPOILERS
So Hackshaw is, brace yourself, evil
To the film’s credit it gives you all the clues and Howard seems mildly suspicious in the first place, and once he realized what the book was, had no real intention of handing it off to the man. Borden simply uses connie to track him, she double crosses him, and Lovecraft only lives because Hackshaw wants witnesses. But it’s made clear after a point the reason Hackshaw sequesters his daughter was to make sure she remained a virgin so he can sacrifice her to his dark god
Warner hams it up to high fucking heaven as the end comes, not even remotely upset when Connie double crosses Borden. He’d promised borden a chunk of the world.. but really he was just a means to the end. Hackshaw is a true beliver in the dark gods and gives one of the best summoning of an elder god i’ve ever seen, reverent and terrifying as he summons them, a giant horrifying entity rising to take his sacrifce. Also the gargoyle, his familiar unsurprisingly just.. fucking vibes this whole sequence. He just grooves out and frankly every cosmic horror story should have a gargoyle dance while his master summons his dark gods to rule our little speck.
Warner though gets eaten. In cosmic horror faction there’s nothing lovecraft can do, the protection bangle keeps him and connie safe, as well as Olivia, so instead Hackshaw is taken. To his credit even this monster is one Lovecraft tries to save.. but can’t.
And that leads to the most questionable part of this film. As i’ve discussed there’s some bits that haven’t aged well. Even in a period piece you wouldn’t have your lead casually drop the f slur unless your film was made by the daily wire. And just imaginging the daily wire version of this is a reality far worse than the one hackshaw tried to create. I can handle dark gods. But ben sharpio in a fedora stabbing leftist cthulu with a pen knife…. please Cthulhu take me now.
Anyways the world is saved.. by the fact a cop friend of Lovecraft’s slept with Olivia. Olivia is 16. The world was saved.. by statutory.
Yeahhhh while the film holds up way better than it has any right to, it has a future oscar winner and a future lex luthor in it so that defintely helps, this part is just.. bleh especailly how Lovecraft plays it off as “oh you”. Like yeah he saved the world but he still needs to actually go to jail for it. This isn’t something to just laugh off. Olivia feels like a punchline in the film: HAW HAW SHE WANTS TO SLEEP WITH FRED WAR WHOSE OLD ENOUGH TO BE HER DAD. HAW HAW SHE’S NEW TO THE WORLD. HAW HAW A MAN TOOK ADVANTAGE OF HER AND IT SAVED THE WORLD BUT OH NO HE’S MARRIED.
It sticks out badly in a film where for the most part the 40’s aren’t glorified: Lovecraft using the f slur isn’t played as seriously as it should but it’s not played off as a joke. He tries to make it a joke, but i’ts not one the audience should laugh at. He’s beaten by his former co workers for info. Borden runs pretty much unchecked. But comitting statutory to save the world when you didn’t know that’s what your doing no that’s just a wacky joke and i’ts gross. It’s a gross part of an otherwise exceptional film.
So yeah Cast a Deadly spell is well worth the watch.. it has the giant gaping flaw.. but otherwise is a solid noir that puts you into a creatviely built world. Instead of just smashing magic on top, it’s been recently adopted, so why cars still exist still makes sense. They just have gremlins in them and that’s wonderful.