The Wizard of Gore (1970)

My first experience with this film was the scene in Juno when she came across the tape in her baby's future adoptive father's collection. The scene that the film showed was none other than the world class Punch Press Trick. Something about the scene, with all the blood and retro early 1970's grainy film, made it stick in my mind for years after until I finally decided to watch it just recently. It centered around Montag the Magnificent, a magician whose dark powers was the top of their time. While the audience views a clean, harmless illusion, Montag slaughters his pretty female with immense gusto. Yet after the trick, they hop up alive and well. That is, until they show up dead only a few hours later. Meanwhile, a female talk show host tries to get him on her show, unaware of the trick he has prepared for her. It was strange, very strange. All the gory, violent scenes were hazy nightmares filmed on stock that made it look as if I was watching it through a millimeter thin sheet of red tissue paper. Even the scenes in between, dealing with our plucky (some would say pesky) heroine and her obsession with Montag had a certain surreal feel to them that bled over from the stage acts like blood leaking from the attic. Even its flaws, operatically bad acting, blatant plot holes that make Inception make sense, seem to work for this movie. By the end of it all, you feel as if you're waking up. You aren't sure what you just saw, but you know that it's in your head now, probably for good.

A dreadfully repetitive script, coupled with an abysmal central performance from Ray Sager as the titular character (who delivers every last syllable of his many boring monologues in a drawn out manner guaranteed to irritate) make Herschell Gordon Lewis's The Wizard of Gore a real chore to sit through at times; however, several delightfully outrageous moments of cheesy Grand Guignol splatter and a jaw-droppingly daft ending thankfully prevent it from being a complete waste of time.Curvacious Judy Cler plays Sherry Carson, a TV talk show host who becomes intrigued by mysterious, mesmeric magician Montag the Magnificent (Sager), who uses his hypnotic powers to lure female volunteers to take part in incredible illusions in which they appear to be mutilated and killed on stage, but are finally revealed to be very much still alive.When these same volunteers are found murdered not long after the show is over, with wounds that match those inflicted by Montag during his act, Sherry's boyfriend, a sports reporter, becomes suspicious and alerts the authorities. But the police are unable to tie the grisly murders to the magician, and so Montag is free to continue his act, with his latest and deadliest performance to be broadcast live on Sherry's TV show...Montag's messy on stage antics—sawing a woman in half with a chainsaw, removing a girls brains after hammering a spike into her head, using a punch press to squish a lady, forcing swords into throats, and gouging out eyeballs—just about compensate for the terrible acting, poor editing, and a script that leaves so many unanswered questions that it even feels compelled to mention them all at the end. Unsurprisingly, Lewis is unable to deliver many satisfactory answers, and so opts instead for a WTF finalé that somehow transforms The Wizard of Gore from a gleeful slice of low-budget splatter into a totally whacked-out piece of existentialist horror cinema.Now that's what I call a trick!

* Just to get this out of the way: Just because I give this a low score does NOT mean it isn't an enjoyable movie. It simply means it's inferior to other movies.1970s horror cinema seemed to be in conflict with itself. It's obvious that a lot of horror directors of the time wanted to make serious, mature, realistic, truly terrifying pieces— Straw Dogs, Alien, The Exorcist. It's also obvious that a lot of horror directors of the time wanted to make immature, cheesy, ridicules pieces—Suspiria, The Omen, The Wizard of Gore. It's almost impossible to believe the two polar opposites could come out of the same decade. But I guess every generation has filmmakers who grow up and those that don't. With all of that said, The Wizard of Gore is the only movie in the latter group that I can actually find pretty cool. It's no masterpiece. I'm not even sure it's even worth a watch, but if you do watch it, it's not that bad.The plot is very creative for a 70s movie, and that threw me off guard. I was planning on typing this section of the review ranting about how unoriginal the movie was, but I can't do that, for which I'm grateful. The first 20 minutes are an absolute blast. However, sadly, after that point the plot takes a predictable average-man-turned-detective turn strait into a pit of boredom. The scenes that were initially pretty cool just turned repetitious and even a little annoying as they replayed over and over again throughout the movie. By the end of the movie, you'll easily start to see that you've just watched a predictable episode of The Twilight Zone, complete with cheesy reversal-of-expectations ending. The acting is laughable, as you probably expected. It's really saddening how such a great premise received such terrible execution.Speaking of executions—how was the gore? Well, first and foremost, the gore effects are some of the worst I've ever personally seen in a 70s movie. People are replaced by obvious mannequins. The blood looks more like ultra-red clown paint than realistic plasma. Guts are represented by what appears to be red and black wads of paper and look about as much like real organs as jelly doughnuts do. The actually amount and intensity of the gore isn't even that special. This is an exploitation film, so, obviously there is going to be a decent amount, but it's nothing compared to today's standards whatsoever. The pretentious losers who call this the goriest movie of all time, or even one of them, really need to watch popular movies. Just because a movie is obscure like this one does not mean it's gory. Just because a movie is popular doesn't mean it's made by weak pansies. In this case, that generalization I just made proves true.But regardless of all that, this is still a decently fun movie. It isn't going to make you throw up, but it will make you laugh, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you're a hardcore horror fan that must see any and all horror films, this isn't going to be the worst you see. If you're just a casual viewer, there is no reason for you to even waste your time here. Go watch a Takashi Miike movie—like Gozu—and you'll get the same experience, but with a much better story and much better production value. If you want over-the-top gore in similar style, check out Brain Dead. There is just no reason to watch this movie unless you absolutely are forcing yourself to do so.Overall, The Wizard of Gore is fun, but not fun enough. It's gory, but not gory enough. The story is creative, but quickly falls into clichés. I give it credit for trying, and I'm glad I viewed it, but it's no classic. Then again, neither are most of the movies that are labeled such.1/10

While its strange, mystical sense of suspense aids it, this movie is pretty mediocre in all other aspects, and yet I still find myself enjoying it. It's got terrible acting, bad picture quality and shaky, flawed transitions between scenes (and even stranger ones when it tries to demonstrate the Wizard's "power"), but it's still enjoyable. I wouldn't call this a horror movie so much as a strange combination of fantasy and gore, but it fits my Halloween bill well enough. The Wizard of Gore doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but then, like Phantasm, it isn't really supposed to.There is a 2007 remake of this around, and I might just be inclined to check it out, to see what modern film-making could do for this little gem...