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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Image Entertainment
Salesrank: 10324
Released: April 4, 2000 |
| Our Price: $4.98 |
| Used Price: $3.70 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Is it magic? Or wholesale slaughter? Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sager), The Wizard of Gore, is a seedy small time magician with a shocking stage act. Hypnotizing pretty young women from the audience to be his obedient volunteers, Montag then proceeds to mutilate them in a series of Grand Guignol illusions. A woman is cut in half with a chainsaw, another is drilled through the stomach with a giant punch press, a metal spike is driven through one gal's head, and two ladies are forced to swallow swords. Trouble is, after the show, the "illusions" become all too horribly real. Blood, guts, and offbeat surrealism in another crackpot classick from "The Wizard of Gore" himself, director Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Description of Wizard Of Gore (Special Edition):
"People ask me, 'What does this scene mean?' My answer is, 'Why are you looking for significance in my films?' It's just part of the overall impression of unrealism." Director Herschell Gordon Lewis, speaking on the commentary track of The Wizard of Gore special-edition DVD, refers to the film's incomprehensibly red-tinted graveyard scenes, but he could have been referring to any number of moments in this Grand Guignol gross-out. A seedy, histrionic magician caked in cheap pancake makeup cuts a female volunteer in half with a chainsaw, hammers a spike through another woman's head, and eviscerates a parade of unlucky stooges in full view of his audience. They witness an amazing bloodless illusion, but we see what's really going on: a nasty spectacle of blood and guts and gaping wounds and the homicidal wizard rooting around in the gore like a kid in a mud puddle. It has something to do with mass hypnosis, but that doesn't explain how his victims zombie-walk out the door, falling apart minutes later. But that's hardly the attraction of the film, one of the notorious blood feasts that earned Lewis the nickname "Godfather of Gore." The performances are wooden, the dialogue hackneyed, and the effects unconvincing at best, but the film delivers gross-out gore by the buckets and ends with a crazy mind game of a coda. It's not exactly surreal, but it is most certainly unreal. --Sean Axmaker
Wizard Of Gore (Special Edition) Reviews:
Not up to the hype 
2008-10-19 - I thought this was going to be a lot better than it actually was. Maybe i'm just jaded, but i could not believe the effects for a second, and the acting was terrible. I know this is supposed to be in the category of "so bad it's good" but maybe with a commentary track by Mike Nelson (Mystery Science Theater 3000) it would be worth owning. Other than that, i found it just boring.
Gore-galore 
2008-07-17 - The Movie was just as god as any B-Rated movie I could hope for why can't movie be like this now just over the limit badassness. Its all about remaking and stealing Asian horror movies or trying to add twist just be bloody and brilliant.
$ per blood, you best gore purchase
2008-02-25 - Grrrra-la la la la la la....
My little gore heart is singing!
What a great endeavor beyond the outskirts of the blood-stained offensive sickening boundaries of cinema! This movie is bloody brilliant. Very entertaining and fun for you lovers of the red stuff.
This was my first look at ole H.G. Initially, when I seen the shady magician and heard his hokey speech to the crowd, I thought man, this is really gonna suck. But Montag the Magnificent backs up his words when he pulls a volunteer from the audience.
1 woman + 1 chainsaw = splatterparty
He's got lots of other vicious little tricks to make you wince. All of his victims later appear to be fine. But what is real and what is merely an illusion?
This movie isn't scary, it's not real believable. Then again, maybe I'm suffering from delusions. But anyway, I do know this is just good plain gory fun. M your stock is rising.
Gore or illusion?
2008-01-25 - Ahh The Wizard of Gore, they just don't make 'em like this anymore. This has got to be one of the most entertaining horror flick's of all time. It's a film from H.G. Lewis, the man that single handedly invented the gore craze with his early 60's gore epic Bloodfeast. This man was pulling off effect's in the early 60's that people can't (or won't) pull off nowaday's. He is the king of drive-in/grindhouse cinema, and one of my favorite director's of all time. Whenever I watch an H.G. Lewis movie (this in particular), I'm reminded of why I love horror so much.
Wizard of Gore is one of his later 70's flick's and my personal favorite H.G. Lewis film, also one of his last. The story is about a magician that like's to dismantle his viewing audience with extremely brutal magic trick's (or are they magic trick's at all?) after hypnitizing them to volunteer for the show. Some of his "trick's" include crushing a girl with a punch press, a nice little sword swallowing act, a spike driven through the brain, and a girl sawed in half (by chainsaw I might add), among some other gory treats.
What I really love about Wizard of Gore is how H.G. Lewis plays with the audience's mind by drawing a fine line between reality and illusion by using cut's during gore scenes from what is really happening to what the audience is actually seeing happen. Of course all of his classic trademark's are in full swing here, the trippy jazz/fusion music, the hilariously brilliant dioluge, awesome screenplay, the glorious gore effect's, and not to mention it has the coolest name and box-art for a horror movie ever. Any fan's of extreme horror/grindhouse/drive-in cinema must see this film. Highly recommended.
"Torture and terror have always fascinated mankind, perhaps whatever made your predisesors see the sadism of the inqisition and the gore of a gladiaters arena, is the same thing that makes you stare at bloody highway accident's and thrill to the terror of death".
Chris Angel Should Try Some Of This Stuff 
2007-09-22 - Here's another pointless, yet entertaining gore for gore's sake flick from Herschell Gordon Lewis. This time there's a touch of the supernatural as in Two Thousand Maniacs. Montag The Magnificent is an extremely hammy magician who's whole act makes David Copperfield look Shakespearian. Through some kinda hynosis(which is never explained in any kind detail at all) he manages to snag a female "volunteer" from the audience. He then performs an illusion that includes some kind of dangerous stunt(sawing a woman in half, sword swallowing, etc.). The audience must be under some kind of hypnosis as well coz they see an amazing, yet seemingly harmless and bloodless stunt, while us viewers see what's really going on. What's really going on is that Montag is actually savagely slaughtering and dismembering these women...and having fun doing it! After the stunt is done, the volunteer returns to her seat, unharmed yet looking like she's in a trance. Later after the show, the hypnosis must wear off or some goofy thing coz her injuries from Montag's trick magically appear for real and she dies. Police think some whacko from the audience is following the victims out of the theater and killing them in the style of the illusion they participated in, but we know better, don't we? A tv show host and her sports writer boyfriend smell something rotten in Denmark and decide to look into this whole thing. By the time they've caught on, Montag has agreed to do an illusion live on tv in the hopes of killing all the viewers! Scary, huh? This movie is rather fun, but I do have one complaint. The scenes of Montag pontificating endlessly about "what is reality?" and mankind's innate desire to see horrific things gets tiresome. His whole act before the actual gore scenes could be trimmed down a bit. The gore in this movie is classic Lewis, yet it's the furthest he had taken it at that point. Though fake as hell, it's rather unsettling, moreso than in alot of other films. I think it's because he likes to linger on it so long. Most gory films that have someone's intestines ripped out are usually done rather fast. Even Romero's zombie films, while gruesome, tend to execute the gut munching a bit fast(though he lingers on it more than alot of other directors). Lewis keeps the camera still on those intestines and he has Montag dig his hands in there and squeeze them and play around with them like a kid with Playdough or something. It's rather sick and brutal. At one point he nails a spike through a volunteer's head and pulls out her brains. Now, we can all see very clearly that this head is a fake dummy head, but it's unnerving to watch Montag's hands smearing brains all over, sticking his fingers into the eye sockets and squeezing the eyeballs. Some desensitized gorehounds might even say, "whoa" at this one. Lewis would up the ante a bit with his next gore flick, The Gore Gore girls, which features the same kind of brutal, lingering gore scenes, but jacked up a notch. Needless to say, this film is not for everyone. The gore, the cheap production values and putrid acting will surely narrow this film's audience. Alot of people will shut this off after just a few minutes, be grossed out or say, "what the hell is it I'm watching?" Recommended for fans of Lewis(of course), exploitation, gore and camp.
