THE WIZARD OF GORE – Herschell Gordon Lewis
Well if there's one thing that one can't accuse this movie of, it's false advertising. It has a namesake wizard and it has gore in fair amounts. What it essentially lacks is the secret formula that makes this combination really fun.
There's not much in the way of devious plot mechanics here. Montag the Magnificient (Ray Sager in a scenery-chewing act that's equal parts amusing and aggravating), as he calls himself, is a stage magician whose otherwise drab shows are enlivened by his climactic grand guignol acts of explicit butchery on female volunteers who appear to survive unscathed...only to fall apart shortly after the show. Later, the graves of these dead women are desecrated and we see Montag (Vampyr style, but bathed in red tint) carrying them off and depositing them into a literal hole in the wall. Montag's stage act is followed by a (fairly) hot TV show hostess who is intrigued enough to repeatedly attend his monotonous shows in the hopes of getting him to feature on her show.
And this is what the bulk of the movie consists of. Apart from the specific method of dismemberment followed the rest of the scenes could have as well been looped. Why does Montag do this? What does he want with the bodies? How come the police aren't even questioning him on suspicion of murder? Of course the script tries to be clever with this, using the whole 'what is real and what is a dream?' paradigm (to ridiculously contrived proportions in the final denouement). But it only comes across as a cheap trick to avoid explanations.
OK it'd be unfair to expect exquisite sensibility from what is a deliberate crock-shock venture and none of the actors are taking it seriously. But they don't seem to be having much fun either. There's boatloads of porn film level bad acting (but no porn), creaky sets and clumsy, utterly unconvincing gore effects. But this film lacks the breakneck energy that makes some of these cheap-house ventures worthy, and even the trolls are likely to feel lagged less than halfway thorough. The lead chick is nice looking in the leggy B-movie heroine vein but she's no actress and we don't even get as much as a tit-flash.
On the whole this one has its place in the history of cheap shock horrors and pure gore fans may find something to like, but apart from lead actor's camp-laden turn, there's precious little wizardry.
Well if there's one thing that one can't accuse this movie of, it's false advertising. It has a namesake wizard and it has gore in fair amounts. What it essentially lacks is the secret formula that makes this combination really fun.
There's not much in the way of devious plot mechanics here. Montag the Magnificient (Ray Sager in a scenery-chewing act that's equal parts amusing and aggravating), as he calls himself, is a stage magician whose otherwise drab shows are enlivened by his climactic grand guignol acts of explicit butchery on female volunteers who appear to survive unscathed...only to fall apart shortly after the show. Later, the graves of these dead women are desecrated and we see Montag (Vampyr style, but bathed in red tint) carrying them off and depositing them into a literal hole in the wall. Montag's stage act is followed by a (fairly) hot TV show hostess who is intrigued enough to repeatedly attend his monotonous shows in the hopes of getting him to feature on her show.
And this is what the bulk of the movie consists of. Apart from the specific method of dismemberment followed the rest of the scenes could have as well been looped. Why does Montag do this? What does he want with the bodies? How come the police aren't even questioning him on suspicion of murder? Of course the script tries to be clever with this, using the whole 'what is real and what is a dream?' paradigm (to ridiculously contrived proportions in the final denouement). But it only comes across as a cheap trick to avoid explanations.
OK it'd be unfair to expect exquisite sensibility from what is a deliberate crock-shock venture and none of the actors are taking it seriously. But they don't seem to be having much fun either. There's boatloads of porn film level bad acting (but no porn), creaky sets and clumsy, utterly unconvincing gore effects. But this film lacks the breakneck energy that makes some of these cheap-house ventures worthy, and even the trolls are likely to feel lagged less than halfway thorough. The lead chick is nice looking in the leggy B-movie heroine vein but she's no actress and we don't even get as much as a tit-flash.
On the whole this one has its place in the history of cheap shock horrors and pure gore fans may find something to like, but apart from lead actor's camp-laden turn, there's precious little wizardry.
