The Wizard of Gore (2007)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Highly Overrated But Still Good

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I've heard this remake of HGL's "Wizard of Gore" described as "a disgrace to the original", which is a bit harsh. The original sucked, too.This does preserve some aspects of the first one: a dream like atmosphere so overwhelming it becomes irritating, and, yes, gore.The plot is something about a boring stiff who takes his sexy girlfriend to a weird geek show where a magician gets people up on stage, gets them to strip, and then kills them while rambling garbage. Afterwards it appears that the people weren't really harmed, but then they turn up dead anyway.The original didn't use this moronic plot well, and neither does the remake. It's not scary. It's not interesting. It's not creepy. It's just a lazy excuse to show some gore. Surely they could have come up with a better way to do it. Something that actually worked. I mean, the people who are gutted by the magician weren't really harmed, and then later they show up dead anyway? I assume the filmmakers are trying to make us think "perhaps the magician is really killing the people he brings on stage", but this is obviously not true, because we see them survive. So what's the deal?The "Wizard of Gore" remake does have one other thing in common with the original: it also feels about an hour too long. Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif and Jeffrey Combs couldn't save it. Nor could a few Suicide Girls, who do what nude models are good at: get naked and keep still. The direction is so intrusive and irritating it's hardly watchable, and when you do watch, you get nothing out of it.

The idea of remaking the classic 1970 Herschell Gordon Lewis movie "The Wizard of Gore" did have potential. But in its actual execution, this remake fails in just about every way you can think of. True, Crispin Glover does add a little life into his scenes, and the movie does boast some okay gore sequences. Other than those things, I can't think of anything positive to say about the movie. It's terribly shot, looking like it was photographed with a camcorder and with extremely bad lighting. (And just about every shot of the movie has the camera at an odd tilt.) The lead character is annoying and unsympathetic. And the story moves at a crawl, and often doesn't make that much sense. The movie is so bad at times that one could almost swear that the filmmakers were trying to do as bad a job as possible. Like when it comes to most remakes, stick with the original.

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.

Kip Pardue, Bijou Phillips, Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif and The Suicide Girls (!) star in the 2007 remake of "The Wizard Of Gore" as directed by Jeremy Kasten. While the box-art seems enticing – an intense Glover beckons you to join him amidst scantily clad females – the movie itself is rather flat and self-indulgent. Glover plays Motag The Magnificent, a bizarre magician who is fond of dismembering and torturing his volunteers to horrified audiences on a nightly basis. It's all fun and games in the crowd's eye, as each would-be victim emerges unharmed. However, when a young reporter by the name of Edmund Bigelow (Pardue) catches onto some crazy coincidences – namely, the participants turning up dead the next day in a fashion similar to their staged fate – the line between his reality and Montag's stage-show is blurred. Is Bigelow somehow responsible for their fates? Is Montag playing a game with him that he doesn't know about? Or is it all just a side-effect of some mind-expanding drugs?Kasten (whose previous credits are as thin as the movie's plot itself) tries to juice up a weak story with a bit of visual flare, but unfortunately wacky camera angles and color filters can't hide the lack of substance. The film is almost redeemed by its strong cast, though. Brad Dourif plays a creep well, and it serves his role appropriately. Following up "Hostel II," Bijou Phillips turns in one of her more likable roles, but it is Glover who truly steals the show. With his hilariously over-sized codpiece and Conan O'Brien-from-Hell hairstyle, it's hard to imagine he didn't know he was involved in a train-wreck, but he makes the best of things, hamming it up and his scenes are the best the film gets. Genre fans will appreciate some of the creative death scenes, although, the way they are presented (with some truly obvious and offensive CGI) kills any effectiveness whatsoever. The biggest problem, though, is the air of self-importance this film carries, especially considering how weak the story is. The bad attempt at mind-games – especially in the final act – kills any sense of enjoyment and strips the movie of at least earning the label of "enjoyable B-movie." Too pretentious for its own good and too nonsensical for what it attempts, "The Wizard Of Gore" is a messy failure, at best.At one point – somewhere in the final act – my wife turned to me and asked me if I "get this movie." The answer was "I think so," but the real question should have been "Are you enjoying it?" to which I would have answered a solid "no." "The Wizard Of Gore" doesn't have much to offer. It may confuse you into thinking it is actually a smart movie, but nothing could be further from the truth. The film is too amateurish to be convincing (think late-night HBO/Cinemax fare) and too pretentious to be enjoyed on the most basic level. I personally can't comment on how it compares to the original movie as I've never seen it, but that is irrelevant, since the movie – on its own merits – is one sorry piece of work.