THE WIZARD OF GORE

Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sager, THIS STUFF'LL KILL YA!; PROM NIGHT 4: DELIVER US FROM EVIL) strides on to a stage, imposing in his long black cape and tall magician's hat. He addresses his audience, questioning what is real and what is illusion, and challenging their lust for violent cinema and TV.

To meet their need for violence, he offers them a stunt where he places his own head on a guillotine and severs it before their very eyes. By the end of the opening credits, however, Montag's head is back safely on his shoulders - and his point about the blurring of reality and illusion has been expanded.

Then, after berating his audience for being the type who would be drawn to looking at car accidents, he asks for a volunteer. A crafty bit of hypnotism provokes a female spectator to offer her services. She lies on a bench as Montag tells his smirking onlookers that they are about to witness the classic "woman-sawn-in-half" routine ... only this time, Montag proposes to keep the woman's torso in full view at all times, and use a chain saw!

The results are predictable gory, with Montag leering over the woman as he fingers her entrails. Yet moments later the woman emerges from the stage seemingly unharmed. However, later that day, she dines at a restaurant and falls from her seat with her intestines spilling from her shredded stomach.

It's then that we meet the pretty Sherry (Judy Cler), A TV presenter who tells her viewers of an amazing magic show she's witnessed by Montag, and promises to try and get him onto her show as a guest. But when Sherry visits Montag backstage one night and asks him to make a TV appearance, he is curt and disagreeable. Until, that is, he has a vision of blood on her hand. Suddenly he turns on the charm and offers free tickets for his show to her and her boyfriend - news reporter Jack (Wayne Ratay).

On the night they attend, Sherry and Jack witness a woman suffering a spike being hammered into her head, followed by Montag fondling her brains and poking her eyeballs in spectacularly gory fashion. All of which seems like a very clever illusion until Jack reads a newspaper the following day and learns that the very same woman died later, as a result of strikingly similar injuries ...

So, Jack's suspicions are aroused. But, what are Montag's motives? Why does he have a psychic attraction to Sherry? What is the message he is hypnotically selling to his audience?

THE WIZARD OF GORE is enjoyable hokum, and gets away with its lousy acting and plasticine-type FX work due to it's gusto in the gross-out stakes. However, it must be said that whenever the wizard is not on stage the film tends to sag, and is therefore wildly uneven. Fortunately, there's enough grisly set pieces at regular intervals to keep things interesting. Just.

It is, in other words, typical Herschell Gordon Lewis fare. But as dubiously enjoyable as that may be, Lewis never reaches the heady heights (lows?!) of his BLOOD FEAST films in this outing.

In fact, the main point of interest in THE WIZARD OF GORE is that Lewis seems to commenting upon his own audience's lust for violence - and questioning that need. While thrusting shitloads of it under our noses.

Odeon's R0 disc presents the film uncut its original 1.33:1 ratio and it looks very good indeed. Colours are bight and vibrant, and free from bleeding. There's very little grain or print damage evident - which is good to report on a low-budget film that's well over three decades old.

The 2.0 English audio is equally clean and reliable.

Extras are scant, but include the original theatrical trailer, which is fairly ravaged by age. There's also a trailer for SATAN IN HIGH HEELS, which is in slightly better shape.

Elsewhere we're offered a "Something Weird Promo Reel". This is the 3 minute intro which opens all of their US and UK DVD releases ... so to list it on the packaging as an extra is taking the piss!

Finally, there's an untitled short film which sees a gimp beaten up by a couple of women in lingerie. They then dress in leather and force him to suck their tits, spank his arse, etc. It's an odd, pointless and every so slightly entertaining way of spending 8 minutes.

It's a shame the commentary track from the Region 1 release has been carried over.

THE WIZARD OF GORE is episodic, plodding and shoddily put together. But it's also enthusiastically gory and in touch with it's ridiculous B-movie trappings. Ultimately, the film is hard not to like, and the presentation here is as good as it ever was on the previous Something Weird and Tartan releases. For R2 consumers, a worthy purchase. Otherwise, seek out the superior R1 release.

Review by Stu Willis