Anonymous Andy (Minus_The_Beer) If you never had any reason to be suspicious of magicians, well, strap in for "The Wizard of Gore." Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1970 cult splatter fest introduces us to Montag (Ray Sager), a vicious virtuoso with a seemingly psychic link to his audience. As his skeptical patrons look on, he prompts random "volunteers" (usually of the buxom and blonde variety) to participate in his nightly show- stopper. Seemingly hypnotized, these poor women are strapped in place as the titular wizard appears to make mince meat of their fine figures. But wait, there's more! After playing around with their guts, Montag sends them back into the audience, and back to their evening they go, inexplicably turning up dead the next day. Lather, rinse, repeat. After watching this about three or four times, a TV reporter and her boyfriend (Judy Cler and Wayne Ratay) launch an impromptu investigation into the wonders of Montag's wizardry. Is it all an illusion? Or is he a maniacal, if inventive serial killer?Shot with all the precision of a drunk dad filming a grade-school talent show, "The Wizard of Gore" is an admittedly cheap affair. Lewis clearly spent what little budget he had on the gore effects (read: re-purposed sheep carcasses) and left little room for hiring actors or a competent director of photography. This doesn't work against the film. If anything, the lack of refinement only adds to its charm. The gore looks real because, well, it is real, and the lead actors have chemistry even as they try not to giggle their way through the whole thing. Judy Cler, in particular, deserves an honorary Oscar for carrying the weight of the film on her shoulders. She is in turns funny and feisty, and proves to be a worthy adversary for Sager's smug svengali. Sager, for his part, does his best as he gleefully toys with his participants' giblets. It's all a little revolting here in 2017, especially a scene in which a metal spike is put through a woman's head while Montag roots around in her eye sockets. So, needless to say, it shocked audiences back in the day who somehow stumbled upon it by misfortune or fate, just as it will you, should you choose to settle in with it some bored, sleepless night."The Wizard of Gore" is a schlocky shocker of the highest variety. True, it's not for everyone, but Lewis was clearly onto something here. Birthing a style that Tobe Hooper would turn onto the mainstream a few years later and which Rob Zombie would... well, whatever Rob Zombie is doing these days, Lewis eschews standard film-making conventions for something more efficient, effective and downright surreal than the average exploitation fare. Don't be surprised if you find yourself needing a shower afterwards, but if nothing else, this "Wizard" does not fail to entertain.

preppy-3 Magician Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sager) performs illusions of murder in front of audiences. In his show he cuts a woman in half with a chainsaw--but she's perfectly OK minutes later. However, soon after leaving the show, she drops dead cut in half. Another woman gets a spike driven into her head...but is OK. Still, after leaving the show, she dies when her head opens. TV host Sherry (Judy Cler) and newspaperman boyfriend Jack (Wayne Ratay) knows something is going on...but what? What a lousy picture! There's not one thing done right. For starters the plot makes little sense and REALLY derails at the end of the picture. The dialogue is ludicrous (the speeches Montag gives before his illusions are unbelievable), the gore is so laughably fake it's impossible to take seriously and the direction is (at best) uninspired. It also has a music score that appears and disappears with no rhyme or reason. Some people love this because it was done by Herschell Gordon Lewis (who did other "masterpieces" like "Blood Feast" and "2000 Maniacs"). He's been crowned the Godfather of Gore (he was making gore movies WAY before anyone else) but it doesn't mean his movies are any good! Boring, sick and makes no sense (especially at the end). Avoid.

BA_Harrison A dreadfully repetitive script, coupled with an abysmal central performance from Ray Sager as the titular character (who delivers every last syllable of his many boring monologues in a drawn out manner guaranteed to irritate) make Herschell Gordon Lewis's The Wizard of Gore a real chore to sit through at times; however, several delightfully outrageous moments of cheesy Grand Guignol splatter and a jaw-droppingly daft ending thankfully prevent it from being a complete waste of time.Curvacious Judy Cler plays Sherry Carson, a TV talk show host who becomes intrigued by mysterious, mesmeric magician Montag the Magnificent (Sager), who uses his hypnotic powers to lure female volunteers to take part in incredible illusions in which they appear to be mutilated and killed on stage, but are finally revealed to be very much still alive.When these same volunteers are found murdered not long after the show is over, with wounds that match those inflicted by Montag during his act, Sherry's boyfriend, a sports reporter, becomes suspicious and alerts the authorities. But the police are unable to tie the grisly murders to the magician, and so Montag is free to continue his act, with his latest and deadliest performance to be broadcast live on Sherry's TV show...Montag's messy on stage antics—sawing a woman in half with a chainsaw, removing a girls brains after hammering a spike into her head, using a punch press to squish a lady, forcing swords into throats, and gouging out eyeballs—just about compensate for the terrible acting, poor editing, and a script that leaves so many unanswered questions that it even feels compelled to mention them all at the end. Unsurprisingly, Lewis is unable to deliver many satisfactory answers, and so opts instead for a WTF finalé that somehow transforms The Wizard of Gore from a gleeful slice of low-budget splatter into a totally whacked-out piece of existentialist horror cinema.Now that's what I call a trick!

Lawrence Griffin While its strange, mystical sense of suspense aids it, this movie is pretty mediocre in all other aspects, and yet I still find myself enjoying it. It's got terrible acting, bad picture quality and shaky, flawed transitions between scenes (and even stranger ones when it tries to demonstrate the Wizard's "power"), but it's still enjoyable. I wouldn't call this a horror movie so much as a strange combination of fantasy and gore, but it fits my Halloween bill well enough. The Wizard of Gore doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but then, like Phantasm, it isn't really supposed to.There is a 2007 remake of this around, and I might just be inclined to check it out, to see what modern film-making could do for this little gem...