The Wizard Of Gore is an inspired little oddball of a flick, based on an obscure oldie that I've never seen, but the absurdity of Crispin Glover as a psychotically evil pseudo Vegas showman is worth the price of admission alone. I've not a clue what the original film's plot is, but here we find Kip Pardue as some private detective, trying to make heads or tails out of Montag The Magnificent (Glover), who uses a combination of dark magic and dodgy airborne pharmaceuticals to trick his audiences into thinking he's dismembered assistants body's onstage, for real. Tricks of the trade, right? Sure, only problem is there's girls turning up dead for real, and the trail leads right back to this spindly, well dressed agent of evil in magician's clothing. I thought it was pretty cool, especially the slick production design and actual effort put into a plot with more tricks up it's sleeve than Criss Angel. Not too mention some jarring gore, which of course the title more than suggests. Brad Dourif, who you may have guessed by now is a favourite of mine, appears as an Asian man named Dr. Chong, with creepy ties to whatever magic is being used in the murders. That's right. Brad Dourif. As an oriental man. I laughed hard, especially since nothing about his appearance or costume is remotely of the orient. Throw in appearances from various cutie pie pinup girls from the Suicide Girls troupe, and you've got something memorable indeed. Check er' out.

I haven't seen the original HG Lewis film this is based on, but his reputation as a PT Barnum of basement-bargain schlock could not prepare me for this. It is actually a clever self-referential movie about horror, and I reckon we haven't had one that cuts as incisively in what it means to want to see beyond the pale since Peeping Tom.It's a simple idea, very smart; a magician who every night stages a different horror movie, but always the one we paid to see. He purports to offer us a glimpse of our insides, quite literally so, but of course we can wave it away as a trick of smoke and mirrors. The gruesome event is framed, thus obscured, reversed, in a smoke mirror.His victims, always females, he seems to select from a nearby stripping joint. The girls are again stripped naked for a paying audience. So the fantasy about the naked flesh is transferred from one place inside another, except now as meant to dispel the safety of illusions.All of this is being investigated by a guy who dresses up like a reporter or private dick from the 40's, he's into it for the scoop. He assembles together the plot that we see, doing the detective work for us like in a Philip Marlow film.It should have been really good by all accounts, the material is at least right. What appears the incomprehensible rumblings of a feverish mind - our reporter is under the grip of a powerful hallucinogen - makes sense if we understand what side of the mirror we're looking from.So of course the magician is the trick, the stage of illusions supplied by the mind. It vindicates the destructive impulses that we come to know he harbors in reality, allowing the unspeakable to be articulated as a show. However madly. It's all an essay on the machinations that take place inside from our position as horror viewers.What lets it down for me is first the haphazard technique, a lot of dutch angles for no reason - but which of course the filmmaker would justify as reflecting a skewed state of mind -, I can look past this, and second the desire to pursue clues right to the end in an effort to piece together for us 'what really happened'. Sooner or later this type of fictions must probe into the nature of abstractions, the film has its work already laid out with the stageshow, it's a perfect allusion to what we are watching from our end, the trick with smoke and mirrors, yet goes on to dangle a piece of string in our faces.So, in 20 words or less: imagine Naked Lunch re-assembled as a lengthy Masters of Horror episode - the murky colors, the hard lights and DV look - by a filmmaker with aspirations to articulate in feverish weirdness a little of what he has seen from Lynch or Greenaway.It may not look that way, but it's actually one of the more interesting straight-out horror films of the last 10 years.

Never saw the original 1970 version and not sure if I want to after viewing this one. I am sure it is vastly different in terms of plot, but from what I have read about that one its performances are less than stellar. Here we have some fairly good names as Crispin Glover plays the strange magician Montag and we also have Jeffrey Combs and Brad Douriff. Actors known for their horror roles and they could not even save this one so I really do not want to see a version with less talent. It was not entirely bad, had a couple of good kills and some nice nudity. I was also wondering where the story was going. Unfortunately, it did not end up in a good place for me and so I must say I found for a lot of this movie I was just getting a headache from the way things kept flashing here and there. The story follows a man who sort of owns an underground newspaper or something. I am guessing he is looking for a story as he and his girlfriend are at this strange goth like carnival. Well they end up going to a show titled the Wizard of Gore featuring the magician Montag. The show features this man talking to his audience and disrobing usually a female and then dispatching her in a gruesome way and when the audience starts to flee the lights go out and come on and the girl is apparently fine. She does, however, turn up dead later. So we follow this guy as he goes to each of Montag's shows looking for a story or perhaps more. I will give it credit for trying to do some different things as from what I read about the original it really does not follow that movie's path, but in the end it tries to be to clever and fails a bit.

Brutal remake of a H.G. Lewis classic. The original in these days feels dated, primitive, but it still keeps the unique charm of the master H.G. Lewis.The remake does something really good. It adds a more complex plot, character development, and sub-plots that make it more interesting and not so cheesy. The movie looks surreal, brutal, and at some points, very real. The black comedy is still here. The sex is still here. Bijou Phillips looks extremely hot! The gore is also very good. So we can say this is a revolutionized remake. Crispin Glover is great in his role as the demented Montag The Magician. Kip Pardue is just good. I didn't expect more from him. Brad Dourif, Jeffry Combs are just spectacular. Dourif in a character that looks like Rob Zombie and Combs is hysterical. I love both of them. The gore is beautiful, nasty, exaggerated. I liked it. It has the H.G. Lewis feeling on it. The settings are dark, and even look terrific. The ending will please everyone. I love when problems are solve WITH EXTREME GORE!A worthy remake that should please fans of the original and make newcomers adore H.G. Lewis.