The Wizard of Gore

Plot synopsis:
Magician Montag the Magnificent delivers hectoring speeches about the nature of reality to his audience and then performs mutilation tricks on female "volunteers". The women appear unharmed immediately afterward but later collapse, dead, in public or at home—mutilated in the same grisly fashion suggested by Montag's stage tricks (cut in half with a chainsaw, drilled through with a punch press, etc.). Audience member Sherry Carson, a local TV talk show hostess, and her boyfriend Jack begin to suspect that Montag is somehow involved in the murders. Jack and fellow reporter Greg attempt to research the case but are unable to come up with any solid evidence.
Montag agrees to appear on Sherry's show to perform a fire trick; when the cameras roll, he hypnotizes not only everyone in the studio, but also the viewing audience at home. With a wave of his hand, Montag starts a blaze and is guiding Sherry and two plainclothes cops toward it when Jack intervenes and pushes Montag into the fire instead. Screaming, the magician dies.
Back at home, Sherry and Jack have a drink as they discuss their strange experience. Suddenly, Jack laughs and begins peeling his own skin from his face to reveal that he is actually Montag. "What makes you think you know what reality is?" he asks Sherry before disemboweling her with his bare hands. But Sherry, still alive and laughing maniacally, tells the baffled Montag that none of what has happened was real—and that even he is part of her illusion. "You are no longer even here," she informs Montag. "You'll have to start your little charade all over again."
"But I...I am Montag!" the magician stammers helplessly. Then he is back onstage, dazed, reciting the same speech that he delivered to his audience at the beginning of the film: "What is real? How do you know that at this second you aren't asleep in your beds, dreaming that you are here in this theater?" And in the audience an unimpressed Sherry turns to Jack, muttering, "You know what I think? I think he's a phony."

Tags: psychedelic, neo noir, murder, violence

Review:
What a totally crazy (yet highly admirable) ambition to remake a Herschell Gordon Lewis film and actually add story depth, detailed character drawings, mystery and an atmosphere of morbidity!
Another thing which makes "The Wizard of Gore" a must-see for horror fanatics is the presence of no less than three phenomenal genre veterans, namely Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif and Jeffrey Combs..
But not only this is a remake that manages to achieve the unthinkable (surpass the original movie and actually add a whole lot of depth to it), for me it's been a truly hallucinating trip, one that stuck with me like few others in the past.
In my humble opinion, this movie takes one of the most interesting premises in horror movies and manages to develop it with taste and twists that seem to be endless; some of the plot elements may seem unsubstantiated, some may feel rushed, and many moviegoers will just lose their will to follow the movie's overly convoluted storyline, since this is one of those films that REQUIRES a second viewing to be fully appreciated (maybe even a third one).
Whilst this version still offers viewers a fairly impressive level of on-screen carnage, the real butchery occurs in the narrative: in an attempt to add some kind of meaning to Lewis's rather slight original plot, the makers of this film have turned the story into a surreal, and very confusing hodgepodge of half-baked ideas.
In fact, just like one of the film's victims, it's all over the place.Crispin Glover plays macabre magician Montag the Magnificent, whose unusual carnival show involves inviting a member of the audience on to the stage and then killing them in an extremely gory manner.
This naturally freaks out the audience, but, just as they turn to leave in disgust and fear, Montag reveals the 'victim' to be very much alive.Spectator Edmund Bigelow (Kip Pardue), a journalist for a small underground newspaper, is intrigued by the bloody illusion that he witnesses, and returns to see the show night after night in an attempt to discover the secret behind the trick.
However, when the girls that appear to die on stage actually begin to turn up dead in reality, Edmund is plunged into a nightmarish world of dismemberment, psychotropic drugs, and deceit from which he cannot escape.Although director Jeremy Kasten's unusual approach at first seems to be paying off, delivering some truly weird sequences and a genuinely disturbing atmosphere, as the film progresses, he eventually loses control over proceedings and the film becomes something of an unfathomable disaster.
It's all an essay on the machinations that take place inside from our position as horror viewers.What lets it down for me is first the haphazard technique, a lot of dutch angles for no reason - but which of course the filmmaker would justify as reflecting a skewed state of mind -, I can look past this, and second the desire to pursue clues right to the end in an effort to piece together for us 'what really happened'.
Sooner or later this type of fictions must probe into the nature of abstractions, the film has its work already laid out with the stageshow, it's a perfect allusion to what we are watching from our end, the trick with smoke and mirrors, yet goes on to dangle a piece of string in our faces.So, in 20 words or less: imagine Naked Lunch re-assembled as a lengthy Masters of Horror episode - the murky colors, the hard lights and DV look - by a filmmaker with aspirations to articulate in feverish weirdness a little of what he has seen from Lynch or Greenaway.It may not look that way, but it's actually one of the more interesting straight-out horror films of the last 10 years..
Horror remakes are generally lamented by lovers of the genre, and for good reason - as not only are the majority of them lame and uninspired, but there's also the fact that we simply don't need new versions of perfect films such as The Omen and Dawn of the Dead.
The plot here focuses on Edmund Bigelow; a reporter who becomes entranced by the stage shows of Montag the Magnificent; a magician who as part of his act selects girls from the audience and proceeds to butcher them on stage - only for them to appear intact at the end of the show.
However, the magician's tricks take a more sinister turn when several of the girls used in the show turn up dead in mysterious circumstances and our lead character begins to question his own sanity.This film is really just a remake in title only as while the plot is similar to the earlier version; here it's expanded on so much to the point where the two are unrecognisable.
The show is a success but later Edmund discovers that all those girls were really killed with similar injuries to those performed in the illusionary show and here it starts his investigation on all those deaths and to find out who Montag really is.Since I've never heard that this was a remake of a film of the 1970's I think that it was a original plot, very surprising and thrilling most of the times.
Some of the investigation parts was confusing in some points much because the director wanted to recreate something closer to what films noir were (notice the look of the journalist, his voice over and of course the plot twist) but it was mixed with some strange visual effects (Pardue's delusional scenes).
In terms of horror it was okay, incredible makeup effects but despite the blood and all the gore I didn't find it a scary movie (perhaps I'm too insensible or I didn't care much for the characters).
Crispin Glover was magnificent (no jokes with his character here), Pardue was okay and the movie delivers the good performances of Brad Dourif ("Child's Play"), Jeffrey Combs ("Re-Animator") and Bijou Phillips.
Horror die-hard fans might find it boring or find nothing special about it but for those who enjoy different propositions and something more original in terms of story it's a great film to see.
Here we have some fairly good names as Crispin Glover plays the strange magician Montag and we also have Jeffrey Combs and Brad Douriff.
Kip Pardue, Bijou Phillips, Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif and The Suicide Girls (!) star in the 2007 remake of "The Wizard Of Gore" as directed by Jeremy Kasten.
Or is it all just a side-effect of some mind-expanding drugs?Kasten (whose previous credits are as thin as the movie's plot itself) tries to juice up a weak story with a bit of visual flare, but unfortunately wacky camera angles and color filters can't hide the lack of substance.
The bad attempt at mind-games – especially in the final act – kills any sense of enjoyment and strips the movie of at least earning the label of "enjoyable B-movie." Too pretentious for its own good and too nonsensical for what it attempts, "The Wizard Of Gore" is a messy failure, at best.At one point – somewhere in the final act – my wife turned to me and asked me if I "get this movie." The answer was "I think so," but the real question should have been "Are you enjoying it?" to which I would have answered a solid "no." "The Wizard Of Gore" doesn't have much to offer.
Eventually he finds out through a friend that the stage girls do actually end up dying at some point in ways similar to Montag's act.
As for Kip Pardue, he's more a never was than a has been and I guess is on par with the kind of lead a poor movie deserves.Ignore the high IMDb rating, unless you're in love with Crispin Glover or the kind of movie fan who has made it a mission to have the entire Brad Dourif collection..
Only watch this film if you can stomach a 'plot' with no focus, where you never know if the main character is awake or dreaming due to the fact that he keeps waking up in a cold sweat every five minutes covered in blood...
I've not a clue what the original film's plot is, but here we find Kip Pardue as some private detective, trying to make heads or tails out of Montag The Magnificent (Glover), who uses a combination of dark magic and dodgy airborne pharmaceuticals to trick his audiences into thinking he's dismembered assistants body's onstage, for real.
This film is a remake of the 1970 splatter classic, "Wizard of Gore", sometimes titled "The Mad Magician".
It wasn't a very good film, but it takes on a new luster compared to this garbage.The plot is that a magician is doing a show where he apparently dismembers volunteers from the audience, who later turn up dead from the same injuries they suffered on stage.
The idea of remaking the classic 1970 Herschell Gordon Lewis movie "The Wizard of Gore" did have potential.
This movie started out somewhat promising, but after the Main character had his first nightmare and grabbing a paper bag from his bedside table..things went completely downhill.Sadly Kip Pardue ruined the film, which is a real shame too, because Glover, Phillips, combs, suicide girls and Dourif acted perfectly.
The film has a plethora of gore, and the plentiful nude bodies of the Suicide Girls makes it totally worth watching.Thirdly, completely disjointed continuity which adds to the element of surrealism, which I do admit, is achieved in a highly clumsy fashion at times.
The entire movie was just trying to be a bit too much extraordinary for my liking.What kept this movie semi-afloat was aforementioned actors; Jeffrey Combs, Crispin Glover and Brad Dourif.
I really like Jeffrey Combs, Crispin Glover and Brad Dourif, but I HATE Bijou Phillips.
Being a fan of character actors Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif, and Jeffrey Combs, I sought out "Wizard of Gore".
Afterward I wondered if that was actually a flaw since the whole confusing paranoid vibe of the movie was actually one of its strong points, that whole drugged up not know quite what's going on thing.The movie did try to explain everything though and maybe that's where it failed, because it didn't make sense, or because it shouldn't have tried, either way it left an uneasy feeling where the journey to it had been kinda fun.I thought crispen glover was either good or bad, if that makes sense.
he had the required degree of creep about him, but he also seemed to be channeling a little of marty mcfly, luckily not so much that it threw off the movie.I kinda liked kip pardue, at first he was over stylised but then I began to like the predicament of his character being all into his retro style and then needing to watch a DVD couldn't cos his retro pad didn't have anything that could play it, a knowing poke at a thousand to arty for their own good scenesters.The punk chic of the suicide girls and the hip arts scene reeked a bit but viewed in a b movie way it almost worked, sort of,...The great points were the music, the editing and the camera work, all skillfully and creatively applied, and really up the stakes and perhaps the expectations for this movie.
I'm not a fan of Herschell Gordon Lewis cheap gore films,but they are better than this CGI-gore laden remake.Amateur journalist Edmund Bigelow becomes obsessed with the gruesome onstage magic of Montag the Magnificent(Crispin Glover),who seems to violently murder his female volunteers before the audience's very eyes.Bigelow discovers that the women are turning up dead-days later-from their supposedly illusionary wounds.Extremely boring remake with unconvincing dialogue and terrible script.The death scenes are eerie and grotesque,however I must say that I hated the use of digital blood.At least the film features some full-frontal nudity by feminist Suicide Girls.Skip this one and watch the original from 1970.You will thank me later!.
Herschell Gordon Lewis who gave us the video nastie Blood Feast, and came back years later with a follow up, Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat, originally did this film in 1970.Jeremy Kasten gives us this remake with The Suicide Girls and Bijou Phillips (Hostel Part 2).
Add in very good performances by Kip Pardue (Remember The Titans), Crispin Glover (Beowulf, Back to the Future), and Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "Deadwood") and you have a film worth watching.I like the cultish Suicide Girls, and I was mesmerized by the story which sometimes had my head spinning.I plan to see the original, and I want to see more Jeremy Kasten..
"The Wizard of Gore" is a remake of a 1970 movie of the same name by Herschell Gordon Lewis.
I am a fan of HGL's films (Two Thousand Maniacs, Blood Feast, The Blast Off Girls ) but have never seen the original "Wizard of Gore", so this review is on its own merits, and not a comparison between the two films.The story is about a reporter named "Ed".
At this carnival, they are handed a card by a "circus geek" (Jeffery Combs) advertising a show performed by "The Wizard of Gore," otherwise known as 'Montag the Magnificent' (played by an over-the-top-as-usual Crispin Glover) They go into the show, and watch the geek eat live maggots, then bite the head off a rat.
The Wizard of Gore is set in present day Los Angeles where Edmund Bigelow (Kip Pardue) publishes a small underground paper, always looking for the next big thing he decides to go to see a stage magician named Montag the Magnficent (Crispin Glover) after seeing an advertisement.
Soon after Edmund hears a news report in which Cayneene's body has been found horribly mutilated & he makes the connection to Montag's show & start to investigate which results in mind bending hallucinations, drugs, mind control & a sinister plot as his life starts to fall apart as Edmund struggles to know the difference between reality & fantasy...Directed by Jeremy Kasten this is maybe a result of the recent spate of big budget Hollywood remakes of classic horror films such as Halloween (1978) & Friday the 13th (1980) & as such is a very loose remake of the low budget Herschell Gordon Lewis exploitation gore film The Wizard of Gore (1970) & I have to say I really wasn't that impressed with this confusing mess of a film.
The original 170 The Wizard of Gore was a moderately effective exploitation film with some strong if fake looking gore & had a fairly simple & daft yet entertaining plot while the 2007 remake has a few flashes of gore which look more realistic but have less impact & are less frequent while the plot has been totally revamped & changed with Montag the Magnificent almost a secondary consideration as the script feels more like Naked Lunch (1991) with it's hallucinogenic & drug fuelled plot that gets very confused & has no big pay-off at the end either & the character of Edmund striking similarities to Peter Weller's character in Naked Lunch both visual & conceptual are not unnoticed.
The cast features some familiar faces including a barely recognisable Jeffrey Combs, Brad Douriff, the pretty Bijou Phillips with Crispin Glover as Montag in a really camp performance that makes the character just look silly rather than threatening or menacing.The Wizard of Gore is a low budget remake of a low budget film that didn't need or want a remake, in trying to make it substantially different it strays too far from the original's concepts & anyone who liked the original for what it was probably won't like this anywhere near as much..
Jeffrey Combs is Montag's "opening act", a filthy alley-cat who eats maggots and bites off rat heads as a means for sickening the audience in preparation for the really nasty stuff to come afterward.I was excited when I rented this just because Crispin Glover was in it, as the magician who seems to be actually killing those he performs fake murders on stage.
As expected(..with my hopes fulfilled), Glover brings his glorious weirdness to the film, creating such a strange stage performer in the magician, Montag.
The film mostly features CGI gore(..and even this is shown from a distance probably to be on the safe side as to not expose the special effects)when Glover performs his grisly stage acts on female victims(..the film proudly proclaims that the Suicide Girls perform the demanding tasks of standing on stage naked as Montag mistreats/humiliates them).
The original sucked, too.This does preserve some aspects of the first one: a dream like atmosphere so overwhelming it becomes irritating, and, yes, gore.The plot is something about a boring stiff who takes his sexy girlfriend to a weird geek show where a magician gets people up on stage, gets them to strip, and then kills them while rambling garbage.
Remake of the 1970 Herschel Gordon Lewis Film follows an underground reporter named Edmund Bigelow (Pardue) to a master illusionist known as Montag The Magnificent (Glover).
Updating and complicating of the Herschel Gordon Lewis gore classic about Montag the Magnificent a magician who performs gory stage tricks on young women.
I liked the film somewhat but can't recommend it to anyone who's not a horror fan.(Hey any film that actually make good use of the weird Crispin Glover gets an extra point or two).
We are treated to a different plot than the original, marking this update as a reimagination rather than a direct remake.The story follows journalist Ed Bigelow (Kip Pardue), interested in the hype generated around Montag the Magnificent (Crispin Glover).
Master magician Montag the Magnificent (the divine Crispin Glover in peak lively'n'loopy form) performs ghoulish stage tricks on female audience members that go awry when said participants start turning up dead for real.
Montag the Magnificent(Crispin Glover)is a master of illusion who performs at rave-like venues.