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Madman (1981)

Dir: Joe Giannone

We start with the typical scene of teens sitting around the campfire (in this case at a camp for supposedly gifted children, although they all seem as dumb as a box of rocks) listening to scary tales. First though the poor little sods have to put up with one of the counselors, J.P. (Tony Fish), singing a tuneless ditty about spooky madmen. If this wasn't traumatizing enough, the irritatingly worldly-wise head of camp, Max, (Carl Fredericks) tells them the true story of Madman Marz. Marz was a brutal farmer who lived in the house by the campsite and who beat his wife and two kids. During one such fight he even had part of his nose bitten off! What a guy. Well, one night the freaky farmer took his axe and chopped up his family as they slept, and for such a nasty deed the locals decided to whack him across the face with his axe and string him up from a tree.

One their return (hey, even vigilantes need their beauty sleep) they find Marz has vanished, taking the bodies of his family with him. Now it's said he roams the woods looking for people to chop and string up. If you say his name above a whisper...HE'LL GET YOU!!

Upon hearing this dire warning it is of course natural for one of the kids, Richie (Steele, who will be doomed to spend the rest of the film walking around doing nothing), to shout 'Madman Marz' at the top of his lungs and rudely hurl a stone through the window of the mad guys house. Oh dear. You don't need a degree (and believe me none of this lot has one) to figure out what happens next. Yep, it's slice 'n' dice time as Marz swings his mighty chopper around not caring who gets a taste of it…

 

"Madman" is a classic example of the 80's Drive-In/Grindhouse circuit, slasher/body count film and it has been re-released by 'Anchor Bay' in a lovely looking, uncut print, making it ripe for reappraisal.

What we have here is a period piece, and it should be looked on as such. This film and it's ilk are just as much movies of their time as the old Universal and Hammer films are. They made them like this then, they don't now (unless its a know, in-joke filled patiche like 'Scream') and Madman should be critiqued with this in mind.

All the staple ingredients of the slasher film are here inluding the ever present romantic entanglements between the Councillors, the main one being J.P and Betsy, played by "Dawn of the Dead's'"Gaylen Ross (hiding behind the alias of 'Alexis Dubin'), and characters creeping about spouting "Hello, is anybody there" type of dialogue. But in the case of Madman we have the extra bonus of deep philosophical musings like "Feel the flames devour the wood. Who say's there's no beauty in destruction" and my favourite, spoken by the ultra annoying counselor Dave, "I'm letting my emotions overcome my intellect". What? Oh, shut up and die.

We are given the very nice sight of Ms. Ross's breasts though (and the slightly less appealing sight of Tony Fish's backside) during a bizarre hot tub scene that makes you wonder where the horror film you were just watching vanished to. But these dull periods are the same as the stuff in all 'kill the teen' flicks. Be it the walking around, who's sleeping with who parts of "Friday the 13th", to the "Animal House" style antics in "The Burning".

The music by Stephen Horelick that plays over the excellent opening titles is a suitably funky, if simplistic, little tune and the rather dreadful songs written by the Producer Gary Sales aside, the electronic warbling does a satisfactory job in moving the action along. The new 5:1 sound mix does a great job in increasing the effect of certain scenes (even this cynical old critic jumped at one point) with huge bombastic flourishes highlighting the shocks.

The Cinematography is surprisingly striking with some lovely blue tinged night scenes (looking exceptional in this new transfer) and spooky silhouettes of trees and the hulking Marz enjoyably pile on the visual clichés. Talking of which we have an obvious but fun sequence of an axe embedded in a trunk that no man has ever been able to pull out. Hardly giving anything away to say a certain psycho has no problem. The worrying thing is, if the axe had been Excalibur, Marz would now be the King of England.

Madman Marz himself (played by Paul Ellers) is a suitably weird creation, built like an ox with a shock of long white hair that almost becomes a separate character in itself. Add the essential scarred face and you have a highly effective, bull in a china shop, psycho.

The effects by Jo Hansen are more than adequate, even though they never reach the exceptionally clever heights of Savini's work during the murder scenes in films like the aforementioned "The Burning". We are treated to such delights as a couple of powerfully nasty axe strikes during the highly effective re-telling of the Marz family massacre. A messy throat slitting. A cruel lynching. A couple of severed heads (including the famous, head under the car hood scene). A wonderfully gory axe in the chest murder and a meat hook demise. So it does deliver the gory groceries, but just be prepared to wait for their arrival and to find that not all of the items are as tasty as you hoped.

The action is handled effectively enough by Writer/Director Joe Giannone, who slipped into obscurity after this but has since been dug up again by' Anchor Bay' to take part in the enjoyable commentary on the DVD. The biggest surprise though is the unexpectedly downbeat ending. A nice bit of cynical scripting that leaves a delightfully nasty taste in the mouth.

So what we have is a film that is a history lesson in what was wrong, but also in what was right, in U.S horror flicks in the heyday of 80's trash. The main point being, it was fun. It entertained. And that's the reason these films exist in the first place. So enjoy.