The Wizard Of Gore (1970) So there's this group of people out there who spend a great deal of time on
things like web sites expressing their slavish devotion to H.G. Lewis, the
self-professed founder of gore movies (just ask him!), which I find to be
interesting because his movies sure aren't. We took a look at Blood Feast awhile back and discovered that it was notable only for its status as the
world's first gore film (at least that's what H.G. Lewis will tell you if you
just ask him). In all other respects it was an amateurish mess that had me
longing for the technical prowess of Lucio Fulci. At least Fulci's gore movies
have style.
Lewis' movies can best be described as backyard filmmaking taken to its natural
limit (which ain't so hot). A Lewis film means you'll have to watch bland,
fake sets, actors so bad it looks like they're doing it on purpose (Ed Wood's
"actors" looked simply incompetent, while Lewis' look as if they are working at
giving these atrocious line readings), plots that either make no sense or just
fall into the dumb category and the same bargain basement music in every movie.
I've been wondering what it is about his films that makes some people champion
him as some kind of master (of course they always says he's a master of gore,
or of schlock or something like that, they never trumpet him as a master
storyteller or skilled director). Maybe once upon a time when you were sick
and tired of seeing Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price team up to make horror
movies, Lewis' work seemed fresh and exciting (and I really doubt that - these
films had to be just as boring when they came out as they are now), but
anymore, watching somebody's uncle pretend to act and wiggle his hands in raw
meat coated in sweet and sour sauce just seems like a primitive version of 80s
Italian horror movie, but without the attitude. One can almost see H.G. deciding to make this his defining movie, the title
referring not only to the mad magician but to its allegedly maverick filmmaker
as well. The movie is basically an exercise in how many creative and gruesome
ways a person can be dispatched. You've got a woman sawed in half, a woman
mashed with a punch press (whatever that is), a woman with a metal spike driven
through her head and two women who have problems after swallowing swords. All
of this would be fine and I don't have a problem with a movie that's going to
slather on the gore (in fact, I would prefer it - it helps keep me awake), but
the problem here is that I just listed off the entire contents of the movie.
You've got these four or five gore scenes with the rest of the movie kind of
serving as spackle to paste over the remaining running time.  The movie also suffers from one of the dumbest, least logical, and overlong
endings you'll see in the genre. Before getting into that, you need to get a
flavor for the level of incompetence you'll suffer through as you watch this. A
side to note is that this is a good lesson to all you aspiring DVD collectors
out there - buy only one disc of a collection at a time - I bought this and Blood Feast simultaneously, thinking that all the cool stuff I'd heard about H.G. and his
movies meant that I was being conservative by only buying two at once. After
watching Blood Feast and realizing I had another one exactly like it, but thirty minutes longer, I began to search around for a metal spike.
The titular wizard in question for this movie is this crabby guy named Montag,
which sounds a lot like a brand of washing machine. Montag is one those movie
magicians who wears a top hat and has an evil looking beard that you spend most
of the movie wondering whether he actually grew it for the part or whether they
just used spirit gum to attach some of his back and chest hair to his chin.
Montag plays to a packed house of about fifteen to twenty people every night at
this seedy little auditorium. I did note that on each night, they reused the
same audience members (afros on white guys are so easy to spot) and I was
wondering if H.G. was just really short on extras (who wouldn't want to be in
this?) or whether these characters were supposed to be Montag groupies or
something.  Montag opens his act with a lecture on reality and illusion and car accidents
that can only be described as off-putting. He is one of those guys that thinks
shouting is the same thing as being persuasive. Besides we're there to see
Penn and Teller style magic not hear some loser pontificate about the meaning
of magic. All the while things come to a screeching halt while the opening
credits take five minutes to unspool. Do any of these people really want
anybody to know their unprofessional hands were on this pile? At some point,
to demonstrate how reality and illusion can be intertwined, Montag sticks his
head in a guillotine and then pulls the lever. His head plops off into a
basket and his hands reach around to pick up the head! This would be really
amazing, but the alert viewer (but really - how alert did they expect us to be
at this point?) can see the side Montag's real head sticking out from behind
the guillotine. At the show is television personality, Sherry Carson and her sullen boyfriend
Jack. Sherry has dragged Jack to Montag's show against his will. So Jack sits
in the audience pouting and saying stuff about how fake everything is, while
Sherry shushes him constantly. We all know that even though Sherry forces him
to go to sissy-boy magic shows, Jack is a man's man, because he is a
sportswriter. That has nothing to do with the plot (except that he harasses
his co-workers that do real reporting for info on all the Montag-related
slayings the city is about to experience), but I guess he needed to have an
occupation so that was it.  Montag has finally ceased his dull spiel and is about ready to actually perform
some of his patented gore magic. He needs a volunteer and he gets some young
thing (he always gets these young women, who because of budget reasons have no
abilities acting wise or physical wise) by staring at her. Montag shows his
lack of grasp on the showmanship aspect of the whole illusionist gig because
instead of employing one or two comely assistants dressed in slinky outfits to
assist him, he has a couple of union guys in jeans do it. The first trick he's
going to pull is the old saw the woman in half gag. He does this by having her
strapped to a table and then saws her in the midsection with the saw. This is
when you get one of those patented H.G. Lewis gore scenes with bright red goop
and animal guts being squished about between Montag's hands. He's making these
ridiculous faces as he does this and the audience is watching and then it's
over and the girl gets up and there's no sign of any gore or injury. Later the
woman goes to a restaurant and drops over dead with the gaping wound in her
midsection visible! Somehow Jack catches on that this is the same woman from
the magic show and begins to wonder if there is a connection. The next day,
his girlfriend demands that he go to the show again (she's a big Montag fan)
and he pisses and moans about it in completely unconvincing fashion before
predictably acquiescing.
Following more incidents of Montag's magical murders, we are treated to an
ending that is as messy as one of Montag's gory tricks. The ending involves Mission Impossible-style masks, some double-crosses, the return of Montag after his apparent
demise, one of those stupid things where everything starts over, and a bunch of
non-explanations about reality and illusion. Actually the ending involves
everything except the audience. By now, you've sat through an hour and half of
bad gore scenes, guys in short-sleeve dress shirts and all this awful early
seventies fashion involving ugly carpet, bad make up and terrible color
schemes. By now you would like some explanation for what the point of it all
was. I guess the only point to it, was that H.G. Lewis was smart enough to rip
me off again. Jaw-droppingly bad, this movie was merely an excuse to showcase a couple of bad
gore scenes that H.G. must've conjured up while he was in fifth grade. The
scary part about it all is that this has all the awful aspects of Blood Feast (bad acting, effects, music, sets, etc.) along with being completely bereft of
any narrative sense at all. Oh and did I mention it takes H.G. an additional
30 minutes to tell this non-story as compared to Blood Feast? I did? Oh, then I guess this is the end...or is it just the beginning?
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