Product Description

Magic, madness and mayhem join in this diabolical remake of the 1970 horror cult classic. Crispin Glover (Willard) stars as a master illusionist whose female audience participants (The Suicide Girls) are hideously murdered onstage, only to miraculously reappear untouched. But when a smart reporter (Kip Pardue, Remember the Titans) finds they re later turning up dead with the same wounds as those inflicted during the performance, his investigation leads to unimaginable terror. Featuring Bijou Phillips (Hostel: Part II) and Brad Dourif (Rob Zombie s Halloween), Wizard of Gore takes you on a terrifying journey deep into the heart of evil.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12309 in DVD
• Brand: GENIUS PRODUCTS INC
• Released on: 2008-08-19
• Rating: Unrated
• Formats: Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 95 minutes

Amazon.com
Remade as a tribute to the original Wizard of Gore, directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis of Blood Feast and The Gore Gore Girls fame, this "post punk" version of Wizard of Gore is actually better as a concept than as a filmic success. Director Jeremy Kasten’s hopes and visions for the movie, revealed during ample making-of and interview footage, eclipse what unfolds on screen, which is a convoluted bloodbath somehow held together by Crispin Glover’s bizarre portrayal of Montag the Magnificent, the alleged perpetrator of violence. Plot-wise, Edmund Bigelow (Kip Pardue) drags his girlfriend, Maggie (Bijou Phillips) along to underground magic shows where Montag hypnotizes the audience into believing they are witnessing the dismemberment of his victims. Opening the first performance with maggot eating, the beheading of a rat, and Montag’s swallowing of a neon lightbulb which explodes in his stomach, one senses ample gore to come. Kasten does manage to make the goriest scenes the sexiest, mainly because he cast the tattooed strip-tease troupe, the Suicide Girls, to take Montag’s heat. Montag’s first victim, Cayenne (Cricket Suicide) is sliced like a holiday ham while others like Cecelia (Amina Munster) utilize prosthetic legs and more to beef up the already carnivalesque element throughout the film. But Wizard of Gore gets confusing as Edmund develops an obsession for discovering Montag’s magic, only to face his ultimate horror. As the entire film takes place in dark alleys, dingy nightclubs, and in secluded rooms owned by perverts and criminals, the tone is so secretive that it is hard for the viewer to figure out who is actually dying, and who is doing the killing. Though the idea of aesthetically updating Lewis’s version to reflect the Los Angeles post-punk scene sounds potentially interesting, this version unfortunately has nothing on the original, which at least retains shock value when reminding oneself that it came out in 1970. Indeed, the best aspects of this Wizard of Gore DVD are the extras elucidating how the blood was made, how it was shed, and how the victims felt about getting slaughtered on set. The short documentary, "From Volunteer To Victim," for example, splices interviews with Kasten between clips of the Suicide Girls being cast in roles then braving the weaponry, which is great entertainment in itself. --Trinie Dalton

Customer Reviews

Bloody heads above recent horror re-makes
Just caught a screener of this one today, and wow - i was really floored - It's a thoughtful (and surprisingly less explicit!) remake of H.G. Lewis's campy existentialist horror trash-flick clas-sick from 1970 which really delivers... Crispin Glover was great as Montag, the infamous Wizard of Gore, and the story really takes some neat twists the likes of which were only hinted at in the original. Not a perfect horror movie, but compared to the rest of the ones i've seen lately, it was pretty neat. The special effects were well done, and the acting was pretty damn good - especially the un-recognizable and over the top turn by Jeffrey Combs. (See if you can spot him - i had to wait for the end credits.) i liked this movie a lot more than i was expecting to, and i'd highly recommend it to any horror afficianado as both an unexpected surprising thought-provoker, and a remake which actually improves upon the original.

I hope you enjoy
Hi! I'm Maxx Gillman. I actually got to work on this movie. I'm friends with the director, Jeremy Kasten, and committed endless hours to help make this movie (and DVD) as good as I could. It became my (and Jeremy's) passion project.

This unrated cut basically is the "director's cut". Sure it has a bunch of blood and effects that were always meant to be in there...but there's other stuff too. A bunch of the music is different (we actually got original music from Black Heart Procession! and Danny Lohner! And Stanton LaVey! and Eric Powell of 16 Volt! You have no idea how giddy I was as these pieces started coming together). And there's little editing things too. Crispin, Brad and Jeffrey all seem a little bit more evil...or a little bit crazier...something. They're just more fun in this cut.

But enough about the movie. I'm gonna let that speak for itself. I love it.

When the DVD was getting made, I was explaining what i think makes a good DVD. And managed to be given creative control on a bunch of the content. (holy crap!)

There are 8 Deleted Scenes. Good ones. and I remembered on the DVD of Pi, Darren Aronofsky introduced the deleted scenes. I thought about how rad that was and how it was really interesting to understand why a scene didn't make the cut. So I got Jeremy to introduce all the deleted scenes and add some insight to them.

There are 3 Featurettes. I'm sick of DVD extras being like "It was so fun making [say movie name] and working with the other famous people." It's so generic and why bother. So I was really careful while making them to make sure they actually had CONTENT.
-We've got a general "making of" covering everything from casting the actors to production design and costumes (codpiece!) to the spooky haunted elevators (no...really).
-The piece about the effects talks in detail about all the practical and digital effects ranging from an animatronic puppet of Flux Suicide to chopping off Amina Munster's leg to setting fire to a mannequin head in the producer's backyard and using that for a shot. It was low budget and fun and the stuff we managed to get away was awesome.
-The SG piece gets into casting the part of Dell with a bunch of audition footage of SGs trying out for the roll. And also carefully painting all of amina's tattoos onto her fake body. and the blood wrestling. oh the blood wrestling.

I researched the commentary by running off and watching what i heard were some of the better commentaries out there (UHF, Fight Club, Goonies, Seven Samurai, Orgazmo. the list goes on and on) I took notes of what I liked and didn't like and i got to invite the people who really made this movie awesome and had war stories to add to the commentary. No, none of the actors are in it. I think their work shows itself excellently in the movie. But we've got the writer, director, DP, producer and...me. I gave a everyone a speech about how not to say "oh! I like this scene. let's watch it." because i HATE when commentaries do that. We just opened the whiskey and let the stories fly. I hope you enjoy it.

I've just realized how much I've written so i'm gonna stop now. Let me close by saying that I'm not making a dime if you buy this DVD. But there is a lot of my blood and sweat in it. This DVD is made because it's what I want to see in a DVD. And the movie is made by people who really cared and really enjoyed it. And I hope you enjoy it too.

A Labyrinthine Trail Of Insanity
While I have yet to see Herschell Gordon Lewis' original, I was fairly impressed with this horror remake. Crispin Glover was amusing in the role of Montag the Magnificent, and his monologues with his unsuspecting audience made gave me goosebumps. This film keeps you constantly guessing what comes next in it's downward spiral of insanity. I highly recommend it.