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The Wizard of Gore (1970)

Dir: H G Lewis

Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sagar) is a 'shock' style Magician who performs gory 'tricks' on Female volunteers. These 'tricks' include cutting them in half with a chainsaw, sticking spikes into them etc etc.
The only trouble is, although the Women walk away from their gory demise on stage, they later drop down dead from the same wounds that were inflicted on them during the act.

A Female TV talk show host named Sherry Carson (Judy Cler) is fascinated by Montag and wants an interview, but her Newspaper Reporter boyfriend Jack (Wayne Ratay) is suspicious and decides to investigate the link between the dead Women and Montag…..

 

Lewis's penultimate gore film (up until the recent 'Blood Feast 2") is also one of his strangest, and for anyone who knows HG Lewis that's saying something.

The highlights are of course the gory set pieces, and for the most part these deliver the sick goods with glee. Some of the highlights are when Montag rips brains out of a hole in a Woman's' head and then rips her eyes out (from a less than convincing dummy), and splatters entrails with a chainsaw and a metal punch press (which actually packs no punch at all, as it's a rather fragile looking thing that has to be slowly wound down by hand!).
Despite the crudity of some of these effects, Lewis revels in the grue with such joyful abandon that you just have to warm to the on screen limitations.

These gore sequences are filmed in a very strange way though. We see the press lowered down and guts slop out, then we are shown it again, two more times, from the start with all the gore missing. This happens on most of the acts in fact. Add the fact that the music and screams accompanying these scenes vanishes when we are shown the audience (who are obviously not even in the same room as Montag) then jarringly appears again when we go back to the stage and you have a very disconcerting viewing experience.

These strange set-ups could be something to do with the amazingly cryptic hypnosis sub plot. A story idea that at first seems simple but is later (in the totally bizarre and damn near incomprehensible ending) revealed to be something more complex and obscure.

And talking of obscure, if anyone can explain the red tinted sequences that show Montag carrying the stolen bodies of his victims and shoving them in a crypt, I would be most grateful. As this, Along with how exactly the Women die when off stage, is never explained and leaves a far from satisfying taste in the mouth. I for one was looking forward to the explanation of the deaths, as it was a clever idea. Sadly it was not to be.
Even for HG this is a bad bit of plotting.

Sagar (who's surprisingly active in the film World, being 2nd Unit Director on "My Bloody Valentine" and Producer of the "Prom Night" sequels) is a curious mixture of the wooden and the outrageously hammy in the title role, and his gray powder hair/mustache make-up is so inconsistent it goes from almost white to mostly brown!
Other roles are acted in the typical Lewis fashion, of stilted delivery and hyperactive mania.

As one of Lewis's longer films, it is sadly bogged down during a tedious night-time (almost impossible to see) Police trailing sequence and some overlong build ups to the actual gore acts as Montag rambles on in less than lyrical style about all the strange ways of the World.
There's also an obvious dialogue mistake. When the body of the 'press punch' victim is found, she is normal except for the hole in her stomach, yet in a phone conversation it's said that her Husband was found cradling her head, with the rest of the body on the bed.
Are we to assume the Husband is a twisted Man and secretly chopped off her head himself? Or did HG mess up? I go for the latter explanation myself.

But that's not to say that "Wizard" does not deliver some wonderfully trashy entertainment. The gore is fun and as messy as anything Lewis has done. The scenes of Montag swishing his hand around in the spilled entrails are a sight to warm the heart of any gore hound. The films just drips it's own simple, full on exploitation, cheesy atmosphere that was unique to Lewis's films. That curiously satisfying mixture of camp, violence and enjoyably forgivable screw-ups.
More fun is to be found, as usual, involving the Police in the film. Check out the crazy 70's ties that one of the Police Detectives wears (surely not approved Police dress code) and the hysterical, looks like it was drawn by a child, ID sketch on the Police notice board. And let us not forget the typical wacky, Lewis penned, Jazz soundtrack that is normally wildly out of place with the images it accompanies. Tasty cheese indeed!

I can't say I was a fan of the finale (was Lewis trying to make a 'deep' film, surely not!), the technical mistakes were even more evident here than in other HG films, and it's certainly, along with "Color Me Blood Red", one of the lesser Lewis gore flicks.
But it still has a certain special something and a lovable, cheap personality of it's own that make it well worth one visit at least.
Thankfully HG Lewis would be back on form for his, at the time, movie swan song with the vastly superior "The Gore Gore Girls".