[This piece is by Paul Clark, but his computer's down, so I'm posting it for him. — ed.]
Special thanks to reader Steve for requesting this week’s review. If you’d like to recommend a movie for the next installment of Reviews by Request, please read the procedures at the bottom of this review.
Unlike many film lovers I know, my cinematic education began fairly late. Sure, I’ve been watching them all my life, but I didn’t really get serious until I turned 17, and since I started reading movie reviews around the same time, I mostly tended to seek out the acknowledged classics. Throughout my college years, I would watch as many canonical titles as I could, and since then I’ve been working on trying to plug up the major gaps in my viewing- major titles by lesser-known filmmakers, lesser-known titles by major filmmakers, recommendations by friends and Screengrab readers, etc. Because of this, I’m pretty well versed in “quality” films, but much less so when it comes to exploitation favorites. I suppose this is as good an explanation as any of why The Wizard of Gore is my first Herschell Gordon Lewis film.
Now, all of you Lewis aficionados who are reading this (especially sleaze hound extraordinaire Steve, who requested this review) are probably wondering if I liked the movie. But while I did enjoy the film, it’s difficult for me to explain why, since The Wizard of Gore isn’t remotely good by any of the typical critical yardsticks. It doesn’t work as suspense, the plot is a non-starter, and Lewis isn’t director enough for it to be an effective horror movie. Heck, it doesn’t even have the saving grace of good performances or solid production values.
So the movie’s only remaining opportunity to work is to be schlock, and on those grounds it’s pretty successful. Practically the entire purpose of The Wizard of Gore is to gross out the audience with creative killings, and Lewis delivers on this front. The film’s title magician Montag the Magnificent (played by Ray Sager) is seen subjecting his onstage volunteers/victims to all sorts of depraved acts in the name of showmanship (especially twisted is the punch-press machine), which allows Lewis to show the resulting grue in loving close-up. By today’s standards, the gore isn’t remotely realistic- the blood’s too bright and the makeup effects are very latex-y looking. But I thought the lack of realism in the gore added to the old-fashioned entertainment value- Lewis is out less to horrify the audience than to disgust them, and it is pretty darn disgusting, but entertainingly so, especially when Montag leers at the camera while gleefully running his fingers through the crimson-colored entrails.
Another old-school aspect Lewis brings to the movie is his use of a narrative backbone that’s both bizarre and almost arbitrary to bridge the gaps between the gross-out scenes. In most movies of this sort nowadays, the filmmakers place a great deal of weight on their stories, expecting audiences to really care the characters and their personal dramas and demons. And while I respect any movie that actually pulls this off, most of the time this tactic backfires. Consequently, I find the half-assed filler material has a kind of charm. The story’s pretty much a meat-and-potatoes murder mystery, light on the potatoes, giving the movie a repetitive structure that would make formalists drool in ecstasy- gory magic show, aftermath, death, Montag stealing the bodies, investigation, lather, rinse, repeat. The perfunctory nature of these scenes feels like Lewis acknowledging that they’re primarily there to make the audience wait for the good stuff.
Then there’s the movie’s final reveal- obviously foreshadowed by Montag’s opening “is it all a dream?” monologue- which is brilliant in its sheer idiocy. Whereas most twist endings (even some of the bad ones) give audiences a chance to piece together how it all works, Lewis just drops this one on us and almost immediately ends the movie. Like most of The Wizard of Gore, it doesn’t really work in any conventional sense, but it’s sort of irresistible on its own terms. And while the film doesn’t reach the awful-awesome heights of Juan Piquer-Simon’s Pieces (for me, still the benchmark for blissfully bad schlock), it’s still a good time, and a worthwhile introduction for me to the now-intriguing career of Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Want to recommend a movie for the next installment of Reviews by Request? Be the first to submit (via the comments section below) the name of a movie that meets all of the follow criteria: (1) it must be something I’ve never seen before, and (2) it must be available via Netflix. The first person to submit a title that meets these criteria will have his or her chosen movie reviewed two weeks from today. Please- only one recommendation per person. See you in two weeks!