Halloween 2024: Day 16

Cast a Deadly Spell

Los Angeles, 1948. Everybody used magic.

There’s bad and there’s bad. But what I walked into when I left that night made all the magic and witchcraft I’d seen up ’til then look like a sideshow. My name’s Lovecraft… and I’m the guy who knows. Just about the only guy who knows it all who’s still breathing. It started that night and it started with a woman. It always starts with a woman.

Hard-boiled detective story meets weird fiction. Pretty fun, the main letdown is how accurate it is to period noir sensibilities; I prefer mine with more of the misogyny and racism filed off.

Made-for-HBO movie with a great cast: Fred Ward as Harry Phillip Lovecraft, Clancy Brown as his crooked ex-partner Harry Bordon, and Julianne Moore as femme fatale Connie Stone, to name a few.

The trans character gets killed, but doesn’t really seem to be the butt of any jokes so…that’s a wash? That whole scene shows us that our main character is transphobic and homophobic, but private dicks aren’t really supposed to be admirable.

The world is saved because a married police detective commits statutory rape by deception.

ACAB.