Along with Blood Feast (1963) and Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), The Wizard of Gore (1970) sits proudly atop a triptych of terror camp created by director Herschell Gordon Lewis – the much-lauded king of US low-budget splatter.
Whereas Feast and Maniacs are disturbingly antic in their violently antisocial tendencies, Gore exhibits a more measured and sinister pace. The plot revolves around Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sager), an arrogant magician who, while verbally hectoring his audience, performs unimaginably gory stage tricks. Or are they mere tricks?
On his spartanly decorated set, Montag proves himself a sinuous-tongued performer whose inflections may – or may not – have inspired a later generation of drolly seductive thespians as John Malkovich and Kevin Spacey.
Inspired by Grand Guignol
In the pre-titles sequence, Montag kicks thing off with a treatise on solipsism, before launching into what appears to be a fake decapitation trick. It feels like pure Grand Guignol, set to a soundtrack which would not be out of place in a Quentin Tarantino film.
Then the conjuring gets creepier and the pace more measured as he performs that old magician’s chestnut: sawing a woman in half. Montag hypnotically draws from the audience a volunteer to cleave open with a chainsaw. He does this in open view. Blood sprays everywhere. The victim screams in pain. Montag toys with her intestines. Behind the camera, Lewis no doubt smirks at his ingenuity. Then, with a dissolve and a corny sound effect, the viewer discover the woman is whole again. It has all been a mind trick! The audience applauds approvingly. But something is awry…
Soon Montag’s zombified-looking victim wanders into a café and collapses in a bloody heap, the ‘fake’ evisceration perpetrated on stage now manifesting itself in reality. What exactly is this wizard up to?
Audience member Sheri Carson (Judy Cler ), a pert and pretty daytime television talk show host, is impressed by Montag’s showmanship. She meets the magician (who off-stage oozes the charisma of a limp wand) and invites him onto her show. Resistant at first, Montag – upon sizing her up as potential prey – agrees.
Movie get gorier
The viewer is then treated to more of Montag’s stage antics, as he ramps up the gore. He pounds a stake into a pretty blonde volunteer’s head and yanks her brains out. Another is disembowelled by a giant punch press. As was the case with the first volunteer, both depart the stage apparently in one piece, only to die of their wounds soon after.
Fortunately, Sheri’s boyfriend is the kind of can-do 70s guy who can put two and two together. He discovers Montag’s victims expire soon after their stage appearances. The couple decide to investigate. Is Montag actually a murderer? Or is a serial killer loose in his audience?
It is a with the next performance Lewis begins to play with the viewer’s mind as much as Montag plays with his audience’s – indicating that despite the technical inadequacies of his production, and the ham-fistedness of his dialogue, he may in fact be a director not completely devoid of talent.
The reality - conjuring or carnage?
Two female volunteers are drawn from the audience to swallow swords. As the sword is forced down the first woman’s throat, the seated audience sees her miraculously take the entirety of the long blade effortlessly. But the viewer witnesses what Montag and – both ingeniously and insidiously – the other terrified volunteer sees: the poor woman belching blood as the sword cleaves through her oesophagus and into her torso. It would be a stretch to call Lewis’s twist Rashomon-like. But the use of multiple-perspective is startling. And the effect of seeing the two female volunteers inert on stage, sword-handles protruding from their mouths, is unforgettably disturbing.
Now the viewer finally realizes the conceit: Montag’s audience sees a bloodless illusion; the reality is the gore. In ensuing scenes, both women are found dead with bloody mouths and eviscerated innards.
As Montag’s appearance on Sheri’s show looms, the stage is set for twist upon twist upon twist. It would be a crime to reveal the ending; for the devotee of cult film, this is truly an offering one should force oneself to sit through. In its own loopy way, it delivers a climactic twist to make even Descarte’s head spin. After all – what is reality? As the Wizard himself puts it in the film’s gory denouement: ‘You’ve been living one long dream’.
Grant Osborn - Author of 'Ghost Hunt' (2005), 'Unexplained New Zealand' (2007) and 'Something is Out There' (2010). Producer of television show 'Ghost ...
