In this atmospheric little fantasy film, Julian Sands plays the villainous magickian of the title. While awaiting his well-deserved execution in 1691 Boston, the Warlock escapes from his cell by magickally opening a hole in space-time, sort of like Keziah Mason in "The Dreams in the Witch House". Grant plays Redferne, the Solomon Kane-like hero who follows the Warlock through the time-warp to pursue him across the centuries. The Warlock lands in 1991 Los Angeles, where he is searching for (you guessed it!) a book - the Grand Grimoire, the “Bible of black magick" which can supposedly "thwart creation itself". A demon calling itself Zamael [1] promises him Antichrist status if he can take possession of the tome and utter the secret name of God -- found in the book - backwards, thus undoing the universe.
But the Grand Grimoire [2] has been separated into scattered groups of pages hidden at different sites across the country, and the Warlock searches desperately to find them as Redferne closes in for the kill. The pages of the book can heal themselves when torn, and will spontaneously reassemble themselves into a complete collated volume when brought into close proximity to each other. This less-than-grand-Grimoire is not exactly the Necronomicon, but then, this Warlock isn't exactly Joseph Curwen either.
[1] Zamael is no demon; according to Qaballistic tradition he is the Angel who rules Mars and Tuesday. Because of his association with violent, aggressive Mars, Zamael is sometimes viewed as being somewhat more sinister or “demonic” than other Angels, and is occasionally associated with the archdemon Samael. His name is sometimes given as "Camael" which is probably a variant spelling of "Kamael", the Archangel of Mars. See:
Godwin, David. Godwin's Cabalistic Encyclopedia. St. Paul, MN; Llewellyn. 1994. p. 348.
[2] There really is a historical grimoire called the Grand Grimoire, a magickal book of Italian origin generally thought to date from the seventeenth century, whose editor was supposedly one Antonio Venitiana del Rabina. Like many grimoires of its day, it was supposedly transcribed directly from the writings of King Solomon - a favorite legendary source for magickal lore. According to A.E. Waite, the Grand Grimoire was - among books of black magick - “regarded as one of the most atrocious of its class; it has a process of Necromancy which is possible, say occult writers, only to a dangerous maniac or an irreclaimable criminal.” Waite also considered the book remarkable in that it “contained what is probably the only printed method of making pacts”. In their book Pacts With the Devil, S. Jason Black and Christopher Hyatt have printed their own version of the Ritual of Lucifuge from the Grand Grimoire adapted to modern practitioners and substituting a sex magick ritual for the animal sacrifice required in the original text. See:
Waite, Arthur Edward. The Book of Black Magic. York Beach, ME; Samuel Weiser Inc. 1993. pp. 92-95, 239-260.
Black, S. Jason and Hyatt, Christopher S. Pacts With the Devil. Tempe, AZ; New Falcon Publications. 1997. pp. 151-161.
1998 © John Wisdom Gonce III. All rights reserved.