John Turner(Wishcraft)

## Biography

### Motivation:

Kill all of his misbehaving students who’s parents blamed him for their misbehavior

## Poster

**Mr. Turner** is the main slasher villain of the 2002 American slasher film, Wishcraft.

He is portrayed by **Austin Pendleton**.

## Personality

John is shown to be a nice man who admires only intellectual students such as Brett. He use to be optimistic about making a difference, but would often tolerate his students’ misbehavior. However, he doesn’t take any unjust criticism well and will take an chance he can get to get rid of his of problems such as murder. He can also hold a grudge for many years and can show a sadistic pleasure in carrying out his revenge.

## Background

John Turner was the history teacher of Martin Van Buren High School for 25 years. He believed he would make a difference and would gain respect, however, his students would always misbehave during his teachings and whenever he would bring this up to their parents in a parent-child conference, they would often place the blame on him. The only student who took the course seriously was Brett Bumpers. He was also unhappily married to his wife. John tried to endure the unfair criticism he was given until one day, during a Christmas vacation, John took a trip to Nepal where he comes across a totem, which is an old bull penis, that grants three wishes and buys it for $100. To test it, John wishes for his wife to die, seeing it as a cleaner way to end their marriage without going through a divorce, and she ends up perishing in a single car accident. Now knowing the totem’s power is real, John wished for 100 million dollars and placed it in a Swiss account. John then decided to use his last wish for greater physical strength as he intends to kill his misbehaving students such as the large, muscular ones. He then plans to disappear after killing them off and decides to bestow the totem’s power to Brett, his best student. He sends the totem to Brett in a package along with a note that explains that it will grant him three wishes and signed it as an “anonymous friend”.

## Biography

After Brett makes his first wish where he gets to go to the Spring Blast dance with Samantha, much to the dismay of her boyfriend, Cody, Mr. Turner begins his killing spree that night on the dance. One of his students, Jimbo, was taking his girlfriend, Christy, to the North Park Golf Course where they make love at until the sprinklers cause them to run back to Jimbo’s car. Jimbo heads back when he forgot his pants, while Christy waits at the car, where he finds them mysteriously hanging on a branch on one of the nearby trees. Thinking someone’s playing a joke on him, Jimbo yells out for someone to come out until Mr. Turner appears, wearing a hooded leather cloak and a corpse mask. Jimbo tries charging at Mr. Turner, but due to the wishes he made with the totem, he was able to easily push Jimbo over and starts slicing and stabbing him with a knife until he finally kills him with a katana. Christy tries looking for him only to discover his decapitated head hanging above on a branch with his pants.

When the police came and took the body to be examined, they were told that the head was decapitated with a survival knife, who killed Jimbo was very strong, and that Jimbo was still alive when the killer took the head off. The police question one of the students, Eddie, since he was a rival of Jimbo’s and had a survival knife kept in his locker. However, he tells them that it went missing.

After Brett makes another wish for Sam to be his girlfriend, he comes to Mr. Turner to ask him about magic while disguising the fact he was using totem. Mr. Turners lies, saying he has never seen magic in his life before, and points out how he wishes all the other students had the same intellectual curiosity like Brett.

The next school day, John and the principal break up a fight going on between Eddie and a student named Blaine. Later at night, Blaine showers in the locker room where John stalks him and turns off the lights just as Blaine was drying off. As Blaine looks around who was responsible for the lights, he finds one row of lockers with all of their doors opened up. As Blaine goes through the lockers, closing each of them, John slams one of the doors into Blaine’s face, knocking him out. Blaine recovers where he finds himself buried from the neck up in the ground in the woods. John appears, holding a bag, where he uses his supernatural strength to throw a bowling ball at Blaine’s head while he’s trapped in the ground. After the bowling ball misses, John throws another ball where the combination with his strength causes it smash into Blaine’s face. The police discover Blaine’s body and they arrest Eddie, since he was the one who had a fight with Blaine.

The next night, Desiree was just getting off her waitress where she walks through the vacant town. John stalks her as she makes it to a traffic light. Once she crosses the street, John lassoes her throat from above on the traffic light’s post with a rope of wire and pulls the other end as he jumps down, hanging her from the post. John ties the other end to a fire hydrant and prepares to leave as Desiree’s struggle starts to slow down. However, just as Desiree was about to save herself by pulling her body up on the wire rope, John notices this and jumps up to pull her down by her leg, causing her neck to snap.

Later, Brett, feeling guilty of using his wish to force Sam to be his girlfriend, decides to take her to his friend’s, Howie, parent’s summerhouse to confess his wish to her. Cody and two of his friends heard about the summerhouse so they head down to confront Brett for stealing his girl. That night, after Brett confesses, John arrives at the summerhouse and turns off the power just as Cody and his two friends arrive. While Cody finds a way inside the house to fight Brett, John kills Tony with a double-sided axe and chases after Terrance. Terrance hides in Cody’s car where John smashes all the windows. After a while, Terrance thinks John has left and sticks his head out to look around, only to find John on top of the car’s roof and gets killed by him.

John then breaks into the summerhouse where he comes across Cody and kills him as well. He then looks through the house for Samantha and realizes she’s in the attic with Brett. Using a sword, John stabs up into the ceiling until he stops to tell Brett, using a novelty voice modifier, to come down. Brett comes down alone while Sam waits in the attic and he confronts John in the summerhouse’s living room.

John takes off his mask to show Brett his identity and removes the voice modifier. After explaining his motives, the totem’s origins, and why he sent the totem to Brett, John expresses his disappointment in Brett for using the wishes to pursue Sam. He then tells him that Sam is the last student on his list to kill off, saying it’s for Brett’s own good. Brett tries to fight John to protect Sam, but due to John’s supernatural strength, Brett gets pushed away.

John heads up into the attic to look for Sam, but she pushes a chest at his face and knocks him down to the first floor. While John is out cold, Sam sneaks her way towards the door where she ends up discovering Cody’s corpse hanging on the door by a fire poker stabbed in his eye, causing her to scream. John gets back up and punches Sam out cold.

Wanting his last kill to be memorable, John ties Sam to the wall by her arms where he plays a Viking game where he throws hatchets at her, explaining the original purpose of the game was to see who can throw a hatchet closest to the woman without mutilating her. Fortunately, Brett manages to recover in time and he reaches for the totem to make his final wish: to be tougher, stronger, and faster than John. Using the wish, Brett manages to catch the last hatchet John threw at Sam. Hearing what his final wish was, John heads outside where Brett chases after him, after cutting Sam free. Using Cody’s car, John rams it into Brett, knocking him down. With Brett down, John starts kicking him and eventually gets him into a chokehold. Sam arrives and wrestles with John on his back, making him let go of Brett, until he throws her over. Sam grabs one of John’s hatchets on the ground and throws it at Brett. Brett was about to threaten John with the hatchet until John reveals his katana which he uses to slice the hatchet off. John slashes at Brett with the katana but Brett uses the summerhouse’s lawn ornament to defend himself and manages to knock the katana out of John’s hands. After knocking him down with the lawn ornament, Brett prepares to kill John with his own katana, but John tackles him and begins to choke him. Brett reaches for the katana on the ground and uses it to hack the back of John’s neck, finally killing him.

## Murder Objects

### Handheld Weapons

* Survival Knife
* Katana
* Bowling Ball
* Wire rope
* Double-sided Axe
* Fire Poker
* Hatchet

## Kills

* **James “Jimbo” Sternmeyer**: Body sliced up and left forearm stabbed with a survival knife, impaled to a tree with a katana, and head gets decapitated with the survival knife.
* **Blaine**: Face slammed with a locker door, then later buried from the neck up in the ground, and gets faced smashed by a bowling ball rolled at him.(Off-screen)
* **Desiree**: Hanged by a cord of wire on a traffic light post and gets neck snapped when pulled down.
* **Tony**: Hacked in the back of the head with a double-sided axe.
* **Terrance**: Hacked in the head with a double-sided axe.(Off-screen)
* **Cody**: Stabbed in the right eye to a door with a fire poker.(Off-screen, body later found)

## Trivia

* During the climax, John mentions that he was quite the soccer player in his youth as he kicks Brett.