Exoticalot
People are voting emotionally.
CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
lost-in-limbo
Well, I just got through my first experience of film-maker Herschell Gordon Lewis; "The Wizard of Gore". The pioneer of gore. Quite a pleasant surprise. Still there are obvious flaws (wooden acting led by Judy Cler and drawn-out pacing could have seen certain sequences trimmed), but I was simply engaged by this seedy, crackpot, low-budget exploitation. There's a certain charm to the Grand Guignol shocks. Primitive style, but it's creatively staged and fairly unpredictable despite its outrageous, low-rent execution. Some moments had me snickering, especially that of the character's reactions to what's occurring and eye-boggling plot developments.Ray Sager's oddball turn as the subtly menacing small-time magician Montag the Magnificent is a delight. While his unconventional handy-work is a neat mix of raw blood and guts drenched with its strange sense of surrealism. Intentional or not with its strange turn of events(?)... It interestingly does blur the line, between reality and fantasy. The haphazard editing that pieces the scenes together, almost makes it feel like you're part of the illusion.
Scott LeBrun
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.
Mr_Ectoplasma
"The Wizard of Gore," one of splatter pioneer Herschell Gordon Lewis's later films, follows a local TV reporter and her boyfriend who become fascinated by a local magician, Montag the Magnificent, who horrifically mutilates women onstage; the magic is that his subjects inexplicably survive their ordeals, restored and unfettered. But when the women begin dying offstage, things get even weirder.Herschell Gordon Lewis is an acquired taste—his films have the late '60s aesthetic of a "Brady Bunch" episode, except they are excessively and elaborately gory. They are classic B-movies of a bygone era, one that is impossible to be recapture, and that is why fans still flock around films like "The Wizard of Gore" or "Two-Thousand Maniacs"—they are relics of the genre."The Wizard of Gore" has been touted as one of Lewis's most bizarre offerings, and it's understandable why people have said so. While there is a plot strung between the moments of grand guignol of blood spillage (rooted in hypnosis and journalism), what really is on display here is the elaborate, gross-out special effects. This in and of itself makes the film a bizarre viewing experience, as an audience mediated through an audience—the characters look on at the victims, and we look on at the victims while looking on through the characters. It's a strange dynamic, and the film plays with our tendencies toward fascination when it comes to freakshows, and moreover, violence.The effects themselves? They're at times disgusting, at others bizarrely edited, but the truth about them after all these years is that, in spite of their being aged in some respects, they're still visceral. It's hard not to wince as a woman is impaled by a steel pipe, and then is playfully eviscerated on a wooden slab in front of spectators. It is these gross-out moments that punctuate the film, and are what give it its singlehanded punch.Overall, "The Wizard of Gore" is a gory, macabre effort, and one of Lewis's more memorable films; it's also one of his most surreal. Some will dismiss it as cheap exploitation, which is fair, but it's also worth taking into consideration the film's phantasmagorical thematics and the ways it presents explicit violence to its audience. What are we watching? And why do we watch? 7/10.
Woodyanders
Deranged small-time magician Montag the Magnificent (a gloriously histrionic performance by Ray Sager) murders female volunteers from his audience in assorted gruesome ways on stage and passes off the atrocious killings as "illusions" in his lurid stage act. Snoopy talk show host Sherry Carson (the pretty, but hopelessly wooden Judy Cler) and her drippy boyfriend Jack (the extremely insipid Wayne Ratay) try to stop Montag. All of notorious goremeister Herschell Gordon Lewis' entertainingly sloppy and low-rent hallmarks are present and accounted for: a plodding pace, hilariously horrendous acting (Sager in particular totally hams it up with unrestrained eye-rolling relish like some kind of bargain basement Vincent Price), a slight script, a general air of pervasive lethargy, chintzy cinematography, a heavy-handed illusion vs. reality theme, badly dubbed in screams, a groovy swinging score, a ridiculous surprise ending, and, of course, loads of hideously graphic and excessive carnage (gross highlights include a gal being cut in half with a chainsaw, a metal spike pounded into a woman's skull, another lass getting split open with a punch press, and swords being rammed down two ladies' throats). Sure, this flick is without a doubt complete garbage with zero artistic merit to speak of, but it's this movie's very artlessness that in turn makes it such a lovably lousy marvel to behold.
