The Wizard of Gore

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...

'The Wizard Of Gore' is one of H.G.Lewis' goriest movies but it is also one of his dullest. More explicit than any of the "blood trilogy" which his reputation rests on, but without a tenth of the entertainment value. In fact I'd say it's even worse than his non-gore turkey 'She-Devils On Wheels'. At least that one had one or two laughs. Ray Sager plays Montag The Magnificent and could be Lewis' most wooden leading man (which is saying a lot!). He plays a magician who causes a sensation by dismembering female volunteers on stage then apparently making them whole again and none the worse for it. However afterwards the girls turn up dead, injured as they were in his "illusions". An ambitious TV talk show host (Judy Cler) and her sceptical sportswriting boyfriend (Wayne Ratay) try and solve the mysterious deaths and determine just what, if anything, Montag has to do with it. Some people seem to inexplicably rate this snoozefest very highly, but if it was the first H.G.Lewis movie I'd ever seen it would probably be my last. The acting is terrible as expected, and the gore is ridiculously unconvincing, but this time round the plot drags, and I found the whole thing terribly unamusing. For Lewis beginners I'd recommend you avoid this one and go straight to his hillbilly horror 'Two Thousand Maniacs!'. It may not be as in-your-face as 'The Wizard Of Gore' but it is a lot more fun.

This might have been an excellent short. And it works wonderfully as a fetish movie if seeing young women getting tied up and mutilated is your cup of tea. As a feature movie it's just dire.

Unusually for a horror movie, it features a young professional woman in one of the leading roles -- and she doesn't even get raped and mutilated in the first five minutes for being a harlot! She investigates a magician who performs gory tricks in his show, with the same girls he performed his tricks on later dieing accordingly. This repeats itself no less than four times (if I counted correctly), each scene lasting maybe ten minutes and being as linear as train tracks in a desert, until her boyfriend muses: "All those girls who went on stage in the show died in the same manner later in the evening. Maybe there's a connection?". His girlfriend is so impressed by his cleverness that she proceeds to fornicate him out of gratitude -- and rightly so. It was the most intelligent moment of the entire movie.

I'm not asking for too much, am I, here? I just want to be entertained. For that, I'm willing to forfeit good taste, intelligent plot, competent acting at the door. In the Wizard Of Gore, though, Herschell Gordon Lewis reveals himself as a gore fetishist. The premise of blurring reality and imagination may be interesting, but it's never developed into a story. Fail!

Some say the Wizard of Gore is one of HG Lewis' weaker flicks, but I must disagree. Blood Feast may have been more ground-breaking and unintentionally hilarious, but W.O.G. stands up fine against that movie and any of his other gore films. There is a certain cheesy charm to Lewis movies, no matter if they are skin flicks, gore flicks, or even kiddie flicks. In this movie, the wonderfully hammy Ray Sager plays the Wizard and his main occupation seems to be delivering quasi-fascistic prattle to audiences with mutton chop sideburns, interspersed with running his fingers through the tomato-sauce covered animal organs that erupt from his victims, all to the audience's delight. There is some weak storyline involving an independent woman reporter and her well-tanned boyfriend, who try to solve the mystery of the Wizard, the fools. However, this is pretty much just window dressing for the 5-6 gory scenes of the Wizard doing his thing. In particular, there is an eyeball poking and manipulating scene that would have done Lucio Fulci proud. And please don't forget the awesome furniture and late 60's bourgeois home furnishings and polyester pantsuits that make all of these late 60's films look like "Barbarella" by todays standards. If anything, you have to love the fact that there was actually a time in this country where you could make a movie like this and it would be distributed. Thinking about the time period when Lewis was doing his thing and the way he was doing it is enough to blow your mind even more than his movies. If you haven't checked them out, you are doing yourself a disservice!

In a role for which the filmmakers were originally hoping to get Vincent Price, Ray Sager dominates the proceedings for "The Wizard of Gore". A stock company player for gore master Herschell Gordon Lewis, Sager was the last minute choice to play the title role. Montag the Magnificent is an illusionist who hypnotizes pretty female members of his audience into participating in elaborate gags. (Sword swallowing, being punch pressed, chain sawed in half, etc.) They seem to be fine after the performances, but hours later, they suffer horrible and fatal wounds. Inquiring journalist Jack (Wayne Ratay) and his TV host girlfriend Sherry (Judy Cler) decide to investigate the illusionist.

"The Wizard of Gore" has got to be one of HGLs' all time grisliest exercises in sadism. He really seems to take a perverse delight in having Montag run his hands through the pulpy innards of his volunteers. The gore is pretty tacky, but there's just so damn much of it that it's sure to amuse lovers of cinematic violence. As for the movie itself, there's not really that much going on, but at least HGL and his screenwriter, Allen Kahn, prevent this from being purely ordinary shenanigans by injecting a healthy dose of strangeness and surrealism. They definitely push the whole "what is reality and what is illusion" idea, which is brought home by the denouement.

The main drawing card is Sager, who exhibits a welcome theatricality. Judging by his work here, he could have easily had more leading roles, even if only in HGL movies. The rest of the acting is no more than passable, but it doesn't leave one rolling their eyes quite as much as the acting in some of HGLs' other works.

If one wants to see Lewis at his gory best, "Blood Feast" and "Two Thousand Maniacs!" are a safer bet. This one is dragged out much too long.

Six out of 10.