Cast a Deadly Spell

Quickflix has a copy of Cast a Deadly Spell available as part of its movie streaming package. This is worth the $9.99 I give them every month right now. It may even be enough to tempt me back, from time to time, once Netflix debuts and (hopefully) offers a slightly better range of streamable media that works better with the Chromecast.

Why has this got me excited?

Back in 1991, HBO released a made-for-TV movie titled Cast a Deadly Spell featuring Greg Ward as down on his luck PI Harry Lovecraft in an alternate era 1948 were magic is commonplace. It hits all the film-noir tropes right down the line, with Julianne Moore as the torch-song singer that Lovecraft loves and Clancy Brown (AKA The Highlander’s Kurggan) as a corrupt nightclub owner who used to be Lovecraft’s partner.

If you’re the target market for this film, you’re already salivating from that short description. It hits all the right notes for a cult classic – Lovecraft references, film noir, Highlander – and if you’re anything like me you’re probably going to spend a few fruitless weeks trying to track it down. Since it was made-for-TV, it never got DVD release, which means you spend your time haunting the back alleys of the internet trying to purchase a copy from some pretty shady characters. Occasionally, if you’re lucky, you’ll find someone whose love of the film outstrips their understanding of copyright and find the full film on youtube.

And now Quickflix will stream it for me, all nice and legal, for as long as my bandwidth holds out.

That’s been happening a lot over the last couple of weeks. Partially ’cause I love the film dearly, and partially ’cause it’s good background noise while I work on the project du jour, working title Valiant, where I’m doing a bit of a pastiche of Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled novella, The Goldfish, set in an alternate Brisbane where…well, magic is commonplace.

I’m also listening to this an awful lot, which is weird, ’cause the novella I’m writing has far less Lovecraftian influences than this post makes it sound.

And with that, peeps, I’m off to work. Catch you all latter.