The Wizard of Gore

I haven't seen the original HG Lewis film this is based on, but his reputation as a PT Barnum of basement-bargain schlock could not prepare me for this. It is actually a clever self-referential movie about horror, and I reckon we haven't had one that cuts as incisively in what it means to want to see beyond the pale since Peeping Tom.

It's a simple idea, very smart; a magician who every night stages a different horror movie, but always the one we paid to see. He purports to offer us a glimpse of our insides, quite literally so, but of course we can wave it away as a trick of smoke and mirrors. The gruesome event is framed, thus obscured, reversed, in a smoke mirror.

His victims, always females, he seems to select from a nearby stripping joint. The girls are again stripped naked for a paying audience. So the fantasy about the naked flesh is transferred from one place inside another, except now as meant to dispel the safety of illusions.

All of this is being investigated by a guy who dresses up like a reporter or private dick from the 40's, he's into it for the scoop. He assembles together the plot that we see, doing the detective work for us like in a Philip Marlow film.

It should have been really good by all accounts, the material is at least right. What appears the incomprehensible rumblings of a feverish mind - our reporter is under the grip of a powerful hallucinogen - makes sense if we understand what side of the mirror we're looking from.

So of course the magician is the trick, the stage of illusions supplied by the mind. It vindicates the destructive impulses that we come to know he harbors in reality, allowing the unspeakable to be articulated as a show. However madly. 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.

One thing you have to give to Wizard of Gore is that it is aptly titled, because it is indeed very gory and definitely not for the squeamish. Fans of this repetitive, tired genre will certainly be entertained, while the rest of us will be puzzled and forget the film as soon as we have seen it.

"Gore"'s most notable flaws are as follow: 1-The script is terrible. The movie is poorly written and yet, it appears they were overambitious in their attempt to give meaning to the mess.

2-The direction is just awful. Poorly shot, confusing scenes, repeatedly failing to engage us with the characters or even to shock us in the least.

3-Crappy actors not at their best. The mind boggles as to why a cult is centered around Crispin Glover. He is doing his prototypical, mediocre impersonation of himself. Always one-dimensional and incapable of subtlety in the ironic touches he tries to inject in his roles. Bijou Phillips, who once held promise she might develop into a solid indie actress has failed to develop further and continues on her path to b-movies and other forgettable roles. Beyond being pretty, you need a certain gravitas and I now wonder if she will ever get it. 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.

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! But it works. At least, … partially it works. Horror fanatics familiar with Lewis' oeuvre know that his films are entertaining and sensationally gross, but they always severely lacked in the plotting department. Of all Lewis' splatter films, "The Wizard of Gore", released in 1970, was definitely the one with the greatest potential and it's actually most unfortunate that the basic concept ideas weren't properly elaborated. Director Jeremy Kasten and writer Zach Chassler obviously must have felt the same way, as their remake cuts down on the gore (but luckily not to much) and attempts to give meaning and background to the whole idea of a maniacal magician. "The Wizard of Gore" is actually quite a unique oddity in the area of horror cinema nowadays! People always complain about the overload of needless remakes and modern directors' lack of own creativity (and they're right, too) but here's finally one remake that doesn't aspire to just bluntly copy the original, but to complete and perhaps even "improve" it. The result may not be entirely successful, but it's definitely a courageous approach and an overall enjoyable and recommended experience.

This new version largely maintains the same plot as Lewis' original film. Montag the Magnificent is a thoroughly uncanny magician/illusionist who, along with his hermit assistant, tours around with a quite unique and nightmarish act. He butchers seemingly random girls from the audience live on stage, yet when the audience panics and tries to flee, the light go on and the victims are standing there back in one piece again. A young reporter quickly discovers that the girls turn up dead the next day after all and their corpses are damaged exactly like they appeared to be on stage. Severely against the will of his girlfriend, he becomes obsessed with Montag's show and becomes entangled into a web of surreal nightmares, primitive drugs, physical agony and mental deterioration. "The Wizard of Gore" is still a pretty incoherent mess in which a lot of twists make absolutely no sense and a lot of vital questions remain unanswered, but at least you get the impression that Kasten and Chassler put thought and effort into providing an explanation for the events, and that is already an accomplishment to itself. Especially given the entirely illogical mishmash of half-decent ideas Herschell Gordon Lewis left behind. Moreover, this 2007 version benefices from a supremely macabre atmosphere and all the decors and set pieces look very grim. The gore and splatter effects clearly can't hold a candle to those of the original (at least, when it comes of outrageousness), but still there's some excellent carnage on display. Gore, nudity, atmosphere and immensely creepy carnival music … These are all great elements that allow you to overlook the occasionally senseless subject matter. 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.

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. But that is not such the case with Herschell Gordon Lewis' oeuvre, as while many of his films were entertainingly bloody, they also wouldn't be considered perfect. 1970's The Wizard of Gore was certainly one of the director's most promising features given the plot line - but unfortunately the resulting film was not so impressive. 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. Indeed, I would even say that the film takes more influence from modern day magic films such as The Prestige and The Illusionist. It has to be said that the film is not completely perfect as the plot gets a little too complicated after a while and we soon get the point where explaining everything that is happening is simply not possible. However, it's all carried off with such a great style and so long as the plot is faintly coherent, it's easy to enjoy the film for its style which encompasses a supremely macabre atmosphere and some great grisly death scenes (although sadly, HG's completely over the top blood scenes are lost). The cast is impressive with Crispin Glover giving a whirlwind performance as the central magician; his dialogues are a real highlight. He gets good support from the likes of Jeffrey Combs (in a role that is far too small and insignificant!) and Brad Dourif. Kip Pardue makes for a good lead also. Overall, this may not be great modern film-making; but it's very decent for a remake and is at least worth a look.

The Wizard of Gore (2007), a remake of H. G. Lewis's 1970 splatter classic, is an extremely messy film, although not necessarily in the way one might expect. 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. Glover does what Glover does best—act bloody strange—which is perfect for his part, and he is ably supported by a great cast which includes cult actor Joshua Miller, and horror favourites Jeffrey Combs and Brad Dourif. However, with such a difficult to follow plot, not even their presence can save The Wizard of Gore from failure (hell, even loads of nasty deaths with graphic splatter and full frontal female nudity don't stop this one from being a disappointment).