The Total Bastard Database

The greatest killers, madmen, monsters and maniacs in horror movie history.

SPOILER WARNING!!

All entries in the TBDB are likely to carry spoliers so if you ain't seen the movie they relate to don't read 'em!

WISHMASTER

AKA:

Andrew Divoff, John Novak,
Jason Connery, Michael Trucco

Was a bastard in:

Wishmaster, Wishmaster 2, Wishmaster 3, Wishmaster 4

So what the Hell is he?...

The Wishmaster is a Djinn. The Djinn are an immortal race of genie-like malevolent beings with near limitless
power who dwell in the darkness between worlds. They’re not to keen on it there though (which judging by
its not terribly fun sounding name isn’t surprising) and spend most of their time trying to break into the
human world. For some reason or other the only way they can do this

is by one of their number being summoned from a special red stone he is imprisoned in and then granting three wishes to the ‘waker’ - the person who discovered the stone. Of course, being a right bastard, the Djinn’s interpretation of the wishes is always something murderously horrible like ripping their skeleton out of their body. It seems like a strange move on the Djinn’s behalf however to grant the Waker’s wishes so unpleasantly as this invariably discourages the wisher to make any more. Surely if the Djinn were to just grant the wishes that the wisher intended and be really nice about the whole thing he’d have a lot more success in the whole opening-the-portal-for-all-the-other-Djinn plan. A plan he spectacularly fails at in all 4 films by the way. Loser.

That’s not a knife…

Who needs weapons when you have the power to grant wishes?

Why, for the love of God why?!!?!

Being basically demons, the Djinn want the same old goal of your standard dominion over the earthly plane and mastery over humanity deal. Perhaps they should set their sights lower really…

So what’s the damage?

Lots of damage here as pretty much everybody the Djinn comes across ends up dying in some spectacularly creative way. The Djinn’s twist on the killing though is that it has to in some way grant the wish the victim made. This however is pretty liberally judged and allows for all manner of silliness – people turning into glass, people murdered by pianos and even people turning into a pimple on a stripper’s ass (this scene is by no means as cool as it sounds by the way)

There’s also a fairly broad set of rules as to what entitles a wish. A policeman yelling freeze is apparently enough of a wish to allow the Djinn to freeze the poor fellow alive. I don’t want to sound pedantic but ‘Freeze’ is a command rather than a wish surely, I guess that’s Djinns for you though – no respect for semantic accuracy.

It’s a million to one chance but it might just work…

The Djinn’s power is also their only weakness, they are bound by the wishes they grant. Although as already mentioned these wishes are pretty much interpreted at the Djinn’s whim he is still unable not to grant a wish that has been made of him. This usually proves his undoing as some bright spark ends up thinking of a wish that will seal him back in his little red stone. He really should have listened to my advice about granting wishes nicely, then nobody would want to seal him away again. That’s Djinn’s for you though – no respect for people offering practical advice. Tsk.

Oh, in the later films there’s a big magic sword that apparently has the power to kill him but frankly it’s rubbish.

Words of wisdom

“I don't need you dead, Alexandra. I just need you to wish you were.”

By Matt Compton

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