The Wizard of Gore (1970) Starring Ray Sager, Judy Cler & Wayne Ratay Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis Written by Allen Kahn

The Wizard of Gore (2008) Starring Kip Pardue, Bijou Phillips & Crispin Glover Directed by Jeremy Kasten Written by Zach Chassler

“Sit down bitch! You die tonight!”

A few of you might remember a film that came out last year by the name of Juno. It was a quirky, fun Indy film that had three major impacts on society. First, it introduced the mainstream world to the talented Ellen Page (and had a cameo by the delicious Emily Perkins, but more on that another day), secondly, it vindicated my desire to impregnate High School students, and lastly, it referenced Wizard of Gore by Herschell Gordon Lewis, declaring it to be better than Suspiria. (Ummm…no.)

This reference, and the three seconds of video that followed, drove many a curious moviegoer to the rentals and brought HGL’s classic exploitation film thousands of new viewers. And dozens of new fans…literally dozens.

Prompted by the reference in this Oscar winning film, Hollywood decided that it was time for a remake, this time with boobs.

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and become an instant pariah amongst the fans of this cult film, but I’ve always thought that the original Wizard of Gore (WOG, from hereon out) sucked. Really, really sucked.

Is it gory? Hell yeah its gory. But the gore isn’t staged well at all. I realize there’s a limited budget on this film, but there are so many other exploitation films out there with better-looking blood and guts; and since that’s all this film has to offer why waste the time? The scene highlighted in Juno with the girl getting killed under the can presser, that’s really the best scene in the film. Skip right to that clip if you rent the film, its all that’s worth seeing.

For the uninitiated, here’s a breakdown: WOG is about a reporter with her own Good Morning America-ish talk show who decides to go looking for hot new acts for her variety section. She comes across magician Montag the Magnificent working in some back alley club, and is immediately fascinated by his act. His act is this: get up on stage, ramble on and on and on for about ten minutes about the unseen world, then brutally kill a volunteer from the audience. Everyone in the audience is repulsed by the show, but can’t leave their seats… but all of the sudden, Voila!, the show is done and the volunteer is actually ok and free to go. The end. Get used to this format, you’re going to see it four or five times during the film.

Rather illogically, the film’s heroin believes that her audience would really enjoy seeing Montag eviscerate someone on live television… I guess the demographic for morning talk shows has changed since 1970…and returns to his act over and over again trying to recruit him, eventually doing so. Strangely enough, however, all of Montag’s show volunteers die the next day of wounds strangely similar to the ones they would have received on stage. Figuring Montag to be a real murderer, the show hostess decides to use her show to capture the killer in the act, all leading up to a terribly, terribly stupid twist ending.

The original film had three major flaws that turned me off of it, aside from its repetitive nature. First off, the acting. Jesus Christ, the acting. I realize I shouldn’t expect Sir Laurence Olivier to pop up in one of these films, but does Montag, your most verbose character, really have to be cast by the worst actor in the stable? Between his bizarre delivery and the poor make-up, I couldn’t help but think that I was watching a Saturday Night Live sketch about a magical Mark Twain.

Secondly, the plot makes absolutely no sense. Montag is essentially a hypnotist. Cut in with the shots of him killing the shit out of his volunteers are shots of him actually just moving around, pretending to kill them with no blood and guts at all…one of the two images is fake, but its never really determined which one its supposed to be. Could be he’s really killing them, and the hypnotized audience THINKS they see him pretending to kill the person…but if that’s the case, it would be about the most boring show ever, not worthy of a live TV broadcast, and if the victim has been sliced up at the show, how do they get to the spot where they actually die later? Even hypnotized to believe it was all an act, I’m pretty sure being decapitated kills you instantly. OR he really isn’t killing the victim at all, the hypnotized audience just thinks that’s what they see, which makes more sense, but then why do his victims’ guts explode out later? It really makes no sense at all, which might explain the tacked on stupid, stupid, twist ending.

Finally, it’s just lazy. The film saunters on with no energy, no verb, and no pep. Montag just drones on and on and on for about half the film about some transcendental crap without ever changing the tone of his voice…most of the actors just stumble around like they don’t give a damn, in fact. Beyond that, though, are things like Montag’s first victim, who loses their head in a guillotine, but of course, that’s just a dummy’s head, and I know that because the actor behind the guillotine stands up too quickly after the shot, and you can see their real head behind the prop. And the disemboweled girl’s death might have been more of a surprise had her booth and she section around it in the restaurant not been the only one covered with plastic tarps so they wouldn’t have to clean the floor later. Lazy. And if HGL cared this little about his movie, then I care even less.

So finally, we get to the remake. Sorry to keep you waiting.

WOG has a good premise, though the execution was horrendously poor, so I was actually excited to check this one out. Throw in Crispin Glover (Friday the 13th Part 4), Jeffery Combs (Re-Animator), and Brad Dourif (The Two Towers), the three kings of weird all in one film, and I had a cinematic boner all ready to go. Speaking of boners, the Suicide Girls also make a series of cameos in all their naked, tattooed glory.

What’s different? Well, to a degree, the story makes more sense. This time is a male reporter who writes a fanzine for the underground goth-rave-lunatic scene. He’s naturally attracted to Montag’s show, and checks it out a couple times to do an article, thinking its all staged because he recognizes the volunteers (all Suicide Girls, if you hadn’t guessed) as prostitutes from around the area. Of course, when those prostitutes show up murdered later, he’s led on a mystery, obsessively trying to figure out how Montag’s show works, and how it connects to him, since he knows all the victims.

The new WOG drops the hypnosis bit and claims that Montag, running around the stage in a Clockwork Orange jelly, is using a derivative from puffer fish toxin on the audience to tell them what he wants them to see. Virtual zombies under the drugs effect, they believe the girls are dying when nothing is further from the truth. They just happen to get murdered later. Much more workable, and I like that. I dunno how scientifically feasible it is, but hey, at least the timeline works.

This remake has a few good things going for it, and so I liked it better than the original WOG. I realize I’m in the minority among cult fans here. Bite me.

First off, this one looks good. Visually its pretty well put together, and has crazy psychedelic effects and tones that work well with the movie’s themes of drugs and excess. A lot of this is helped by the budget this second WOG had to play with; but even without that, it still has more creative angles, and a greater speed and energy about it than the tepid original.

Of course, just because it's better doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a great film.

There are a lot of little nitpicks you can find to complain about in this movie. You can complain that Jeffery Combs as the Geek and Brad Dourif as Dr. Chong are both horribly underutilized (they are) or that Crispin Glover phones in his performance (he does, though is still 1,000 times better than the original Montag) and you can complain that the fact that main man Edmund’s cracking his neck with a really cheesy sound effect every five minutes is incredibly annoying (it is) and you could even complain about how, despite the effort that Screenwriter Zach Chassler put into the film to build a compelling mystery, it all falls apart at the end of the movie (it does… I mean, c’mon his goal is domination of the local brothels? What?). But despite those failings, it could still be a respectable effort.

The part where it loses my respect is that it tries so hard to shirk away from the gore. While I’m obviously not a fan of HGL’s original, at least he had a balls to the wall, in your face approach to the deaths. He’s totally shameless. That’s a man who said, “I want to see intestines and spleens and livers all over the screen.” And he made it so. Crappy as the movie is, its unrelenting approach to blood that has kept the movie in circulation for 28 years. I mean, c’mon, the damn title is Wizard of GORE! So, when the first kill comes up, and Montag slices open his volunteer’s belly, reaching into pull out her guts… and then they pull out a sheet of mist to COVER UP THE GORE. Well, I kind of lost it. I grant you, they sell this at Wal-mart, and for the Wal-mart audience, just the implication of disembowelment or beheading by bear trap will be enough to make a lot of viewers flinch. But for those of us who remember the original, and how it killed and pushed the envelope with no discretion…well, its just a little disappointing.

flux = yummy

Seriously though, the Suicide Girls were an excellent choice for the film. There’s some interesting cross-market appeal in horror and girls with tattoos. WOG is also an exercise in misogyny; there isn’t a female with a speaking part in the movie that isn’t murdered and typically beaten and humiliated before hand. The lean, pierced, heavily-mascara’ed look of the girls fits the tone and nature of the film perfectly. And they’re absolutely beautiful, so even if you think the film sucks…well, at least it LOOKS good. My personal favorite is Flux Spice, who plays Dell. Probably the best murder in the film, certainly the most brutal, and my pick for most beautiful Suicide Girl. According to the extras on the DVD, she’s also extremely well read and a film buff so… Flux Suicide, will you marry me? I digress…

Both films could be worth a rental, though I think it’s an extreme minority that will find either one really worth owning. If you have to decide between the two though, pick the remake (very seldom will you hear me say that). In its reverence for the original, it accomplishes more than the HGL production ever could, even if it doesn’t go as far as it should. It’s a self-defeating effort, but hey, it kept me entertained for a few hours.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to look up Flux on the internet…oooh, she’s holding a katana…