Quest for the Runestones: Warlock: The Armageddon

Back in the halcyon days of yore, one force stood between the light and the darkness. The Druids had six magical stones they employed to keep evil from being born into this world, but the magical trinkets have since become lost. Every six hundred years, the dark powers align for a few days and a struggle commences. In the waning days of the twentieth century, that time has come again.

Reborn in New York, The Warlock (Julian Sands) arrives charged by the Devil to go in search of the stones. His journey will take him around the country, driven in a taxicab from hell for part and then in a lovely fast car for more. He will sow suffering in his wake, of course, and sometimes wind up on the defensive as his adversaries try to slow him down.

Who can hope to stand against him? A trio of small town, modern day druids, including Will Travis (Steve Kahan), Franks (R. G. Armstrong), and Ethan Larson (Charles Hallahan) have a prophecy and the tools to transform Will’s son Kenny (Chris Young) into a fabled warrior. However, they also need another, and that was intended to be Samantha (Paula Marshall), the daughter of local Reverend Ted Ellison (Bruce Glover), but he’s not really aligned with the druids, these days. In fact, the town doesn’t understand Will and his family’s religious alignment, thinking them to be Satanic when in fact they are guarding the world from that sort of thing.

Anyway, the Warlock and the Druidic guardian paths will come together in time, and both Kenny and Samantha had better be ready. If they fail, the world will be thrown into eternal darkness and all mankind will be destroyed. Are they up to the task? Or are they too busy trying to wrestle with family vendettas and young love to do what’s necessary? Anthony Hickox brings a stylish storytelling sense to the stuff of dark fantasy and gory horror with Warlock: The Armageddon (1993).

Returning to the second Warlock flick so long after I saw it is a bit of a treat and a bit of a trick. I was just out of high school when this thing hit video, and at least one of my buddies at the time was a huge Anthony Hickox fan. Coming to it thirty years on, I recall a couple of parts but not many, so some of the plot elements I thought happened early on in the production actually wait until past the halfway point to manifest. A little bit of memory still hears my buddy Jay singing Hickox’s praises, however, and I get little flashes of nostalgia. That writer/director’s original projects tend to stick with me best—his directorial debut Waxwork (1988) is a masterpiece of low budget horror in my none-too-humble view (and it makes a bit of an appearance here, since Zach Galligan shows up, possibly playing the same character).

Crafting a sequel is no easy task, no matter who takes the reins. That’s the reason that so few live up to the original, the efforts to balance new material with familiar fan service is a challenge on the best of days. Anthony Hickox has done several of them, trying to add his own unique vision and style to the mix of flicks that are already stylish experiences. Warlock: The Armageddon was the third of the director’s attempts to craft entertaining sequels for flicks between the years 1992 and 1993. The first of these was a direct sequel and expansion upon his directorial debut, the surprisingly zany Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992). The second of these was a more serious effort to follow up Clive Barker and Tony Randel’s work with Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992). After these, he tackled the Warlock franchise and the result is a very different animal from the first film with only one returning character.

And what a return that is. Staged as a bizarre demonic assault and immediate, literal birth scene, a comely female squirts a green slime monster from between her fishnet clad thighs, which goes through the motions of self-assembling into a naked, fully adult Warlock smeared with green and black slimy afterbirth. He then chases the poor woman into the bathroom, demanding a hug from Mommy, only to deliver an ear splitting, head bursting shriek when refused. Dude, bringing new ancient life into the worlds sucks.

That sequence’s blend of gloriously gruesome practical effects, WTF mojo, energized camera, and off the hook performance is one of the high notes from the opening half hour of the picture. Another is when the Warlock invades a fashion show where the camera flashes boom like gunshots or judge’s gavels, working his naughty magic to acquire one of the runestones big Daddy Satan has sent him to earth for. I honestly wish there were more moments of this caliber in there, but they are spaced out like little interest zingers, coming along when the A-storylines of Druid Guardians trying to fashion a savior or teen romance getting stymied gets a little too sedate.

This is a movie that is at its most entertaining when it is giving the audience some nightmarish weirdness.

However, the script from Kevin Rock and Sam Bernard is much more interested in giving humanity a savior. Once more The Bard gets invoked, but instead of a memorable Richard III inspired villain, we get a couple of young people in love whose parents cannot unite because of some bad blood matters from the past. Yeah, it’s that old Romeo and Juliet plot, jazzed up with demons, sorcery, and occasional appearances by a small town bully Tybalt and a decidedly wicked Richard III.

When Julian Sands is on screen, the movie really works. The scripting is at its best, performance is likewise at a high level, and the effects (sometimes crude CGI/opticals and sometimes terrific practical ones) often work nicely. The Warlock character is still a complete and utter bastard, but he’s damn cool as he goes through the motions of setting up the end of the world. Sands plays this character with a little more bravado, a little more swagger this time around. The Warlock is the most powerful person in any room he walks into, and he knows it. After all, his great and worthy opponent from part 1, Redferne, is nowhere to be seen, so who’s to stop him?

However, in the opening half of the film, whenever we cut away from this stuff to the small town romance and the urban fantasy heroic heritage stuff, the movie is less convincing. This is stuff I’ve seen a ton of over the years, and while it’s fun to see Norris from John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Lewis Vendredi from Friday the 13^th: The Series (1987-1990), and Captain Ed Murphy from Lethal Weapon (1987) teamed up to fight the forces of darkness, the scripting tends to stay a little too much in safe, small town Stephen King territory for my preference—I love some vintage Stephen King, but this stuff reeks of an imitation of an imitation these days. The stylish camera flourishes (that camera seldom stops moving, lending even inconsequential actions a kind of lunatic Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead energy) help keep up the energy, but the scenes themselves are somewhat weak. This stuff might have been better served with more strangeness going on and less attempts to give us a situation normal that it’s ramping up. Unfortunately, whatever charm those scenes evoke while at their best are overshadowed by the Warlock’s quest material. Of course, this could simply be that old Joe Bob Briggs’ criticism of too much plot getting in the way of the story.

However, as all the moving parts come together in the latter half of the picture, the thing hits its stride and pays off nicely. Julian Sands is still the star of the show, bringing a casual sex appeal and an appealing naughtiness to his character. But the picture’s wilder exuberances align with the way the material is presented to add a much needed relentlessness to the thing’s final half.

As sequels go, Warlock: The Armageddon is kind of a mixed bag. When it’s firing on all cylinders, it is difficult to look away from. The movie has style to spare and a pleasantly anarchic attitude. When it isn’t at that level of quality, it’s a cheesy story of young lovers caught in the grips of unknowable fate, taking up the mantle of a holy birthright and duty told with a kind of excitable, highly caffeinated camera. It’s the kind of flick where just about anything could happen, and so we sit in expectation of something glorious, but we have to wait for the conclusion to witness the payoff for that particular promise.

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Warlock: The Armageddon is available in stand along DVD and VOD editions. It is also included in the Warlock Collection Blu-ray set from Lion’s Gate’s Vestron Video imprint.

Next week, we finish off the Warlock series with a look at the third picture. Alas, Julian Sands does not make a reappearance, but Bruce Payne steps into the shoes to play the Son of Satan in Warlock III: The End of Innocence (1999). It is available in standalone DVD and VOD editions. As well, it appears in the aforementioned Blu-ray set.

Writing for “Quest for the Runestones: Warlock: The Armageddon” is copyright © 2023 by Daniel R. Robichaud.

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