31 Nights of Halloween Horror - Night 1 - The Wizard of Gore

31 Nights of Halloween Horror - Night 1

The Wizard of Gore

94 minutes

Dir. Jeremy Kasten

2007/ USA

OK, let's get things started. 

What do you get when a mix Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif as a leech wearing Vietnam Vet, Jeffrey Combs as a homeless geek (the head biting kind, not the comic book reading kind), Bijou Philips, the little kid from Near Dark and River’s Edge all grown up, a bunch of Suicide Girls and a remake of a 1970 H.G. Lewis film?  You get a bloody mess…and not in a good way.

Remakes, I know we all hate them and complain about them, but seems they are here to stay.  True some are good, but honestly most are horrible.  But not to worry because honestly all these bad remakes have no longevity or staying power.  After their initial run they are long forgotten and fall into obscurity.  When you think of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Carrie, House of Wax, April Fool’s Day or countless others, do you remember the remakes at all or do you only think of the classic originals?  Of course there are exceptions, The Thing, The Fly, Evil Dead.  Some of the remakes have made more of a lasting impression.  The Wizard of Gore falls in the category of the former.  Really the only reason I wanted to watch this movie was to see Crispin Glover’s take on Montague the Magnificent.

The only similarity with the two films is Montague the Magnificent himself.  Crispin Glover does not disappoint playing the role, he is perfectly cast.  Thrilling the audience with speeches blurring fantasy with what is reality.  Dressed in a white suit, he brings “volunteer” girls up on stage (played by various Suicide Girls), strips them and then performs grisly acts of mutilation upon them and just when the audience shun the grotesque and can’t take it anymore, the house lights go off then back on to reveal the girls are whole again, no dismemberment, all back in one naked piece.  Like in the original though, a day later the girl ends up dead from the same type of wounds she suffered on stage.

Though the original showed a little more of the gruesome and red stuff in the acts, this is where the similarities end.

The remake really extends the story and delves deeper into character development and while that may sound like a good thing, it really is what is the downfall of the movie.  It over complicates what should be a simple story.  The main character Ed, is a reporter for a small paper yet dresses and lives his life like it is the 1940s which really makes no sense and adds nothing to the movie.  He constantly huffs into a paper bag, which may or may not be filled with a chemical found in puffer fish which can have the power of suggestion over people when rubbed on them.  Apparently, this is also what Montague uses to perform his illusions to the audience.  And where does one get such chemical, only Brad Dourif knows.  Ed becomes obsessed with Montague’s show attending each night and soon his sense of reality becomes blurred as to what is part of the show and what isn’t.  It all starts to become really convoluted and drawn out by the end, and not in a good David Lynch or Cronenberg kind of way.  More in the, we are trying to cram so much into this story than is necessary and we are not a good enough writer to really explain it all in a way that makes sense.

Bottom line, we are here to see Montague perform his “illusions.”  And while Glover's performance does not disappoint, and the gore is enjoyable, it is never too much over the top like in the H.G. original.  Montague only really appears about 3 or 4 times throughout the movie and always on stage performing.  There is never any character development with Montague, he is only there to entertain.  Despite the nudity and gore, while H.G. Lewis’s Wizard of Gore may not be his finest work it will always be remembered, this version is already forgotten.  But as far as remakes go, at least one tried to expand upon the original.  Unsuccessful, but a fair attempt.