Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 23, 1992 TAG: 9203220006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
It's a stylish black comedy and supernatural mystery-thriller that's sexy, scary and fun.
"Black Magic" declares its black comedy intentions in the first scene, an inverted closeup of the head of a sleepless Judge Reinhold. He is chewing gum.
"Insomnia is a curse like any other curse," says his voiceover. "It keeps you from entering that soft, blessed slumbering place, holding you captive in a night world until your mind starts to feed on itself."
During that solemn, spare, portentous monologue, Judge blows a bubble. Pop.
He plays Alex Gage, a New Yorker who's haunted by nightmares of his late cousin Ross (Anthony LaPaglia), a thoroughly coarse, vile, wicked man who has been missing and presumed dead for a couple of weeks.
Ross' profane ghost warns him not to visit Istanbul, N.C., the little town where Ross lived and died, but Alex's psychotherapist encourages the red-eyed Alex to go there and put the ghost to rest.
Welcome to Istanbul, a town with more eccentrics than Twin Peaks, where the sign at the railroad station says, "Enjoy the Fabulous Crows of Frogmore County."
And what about those crows? A local explains that it was the celebrated crows who delivered the people of the county from a plague of frogs that had been called down on the populace by a coven of malicious witches.
Ah, but that's not the way things are these days, a wise old local fellow tells Alex. "Many people would rather shoot them than celebrate them, because they're mean," the local explains.
"The crows?"
"The people."
In Istanbul, Alex meets Ross' ex-girlfriend, the sleek, exotic Lillian Blatman (Rachel Ward), who may or may not be a witch, who may or may not have murdered his cousin, who will fall in love with Alex, and who may or may not be trying to murder him.
Ross' ghost insists that she's up to no good and demands that Alex kill her. "Ross," says a diffident Alex, "you've been a pathological liar all your life. Why should I believe you now that you're dead?"
The mystery deepens. Brion James ("Blade Runner") plays Ross' ex-boss, a local labor leader with a mysterious hold on Lillian who seems to be laboring under a curse.
Alex, the epitome of rational man, goes so far as to suggest that Ross isn't dead, just out of town. Sure, says Lillian, he left town without taking his car, his clothes, his money or his girl?
"She had a point," muses Alex. "No one would leave her behind."
Writer-director Daniel Taplitz' screenplay is full of wonderful dialogue and delightfully screwy, deadpan humor. He takes giddy pleasure in piling plot twist upon twist and turn upon turn, yet you never feel tricked or cheated.
Reinhold and Ward have an immediate and electric chemistry, and LaPaglia is the best talking ghost since Griffin Dunne's "An American Werewolf in London."
"You putz!" he screams. "Kill the witch!"
"Black Magic" is sublime.
Memo: CORRECTION