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| The Wizard of Gore | 
 enlarge | Director: Jeremy Kasten
Actors: Crispin Glover, Bijou Phillips, Kip Pardue, Jeffrey Combs, Brad Dourif
Studio: Genius Products (TVN)
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.97
Buy Used: $6.23
You Save: $13.74 (69%)
New (40) Used (28) from $6.23
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 14722
Format: Color, Ntsc, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 95
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 81427
UPC: 796019814270
EAN: 0796019814270
ASIN: B0018PH3M4
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: August 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Watch the original January 8, 2009
I purchased this because I like the 1970 original Wizard.I really was hoping to see a new modern twist to "Wizard of Gore" and after watching the new remake I felt as though I'd been cheated.I think Crispin Glover makes an excellent creep,but Kip Pardue seemed to take up all the screen time and to me thats a bad thing(not that he's a bad actor)but he just doesn't bode well in horror.As for the rest of the players, Bijou Phillips she doesn't have any nude scenes(Ah...Shucks!!!)and Jeffrey Combs and Brad Dourif are solid as usual for the whole 5 minutes you see them.Again Mr.Pardues scenes seem to drag on forever(I want to see more Montag)The gore level was disappointingly low(this is supposedly the WIZARD OF GORE!!!!remake).The CGI was okay in some parts and the makeup was decent,but as I said the CGI was okay in some parts,other parts it was really cheap looking.Don't get me wrong the original Wizard of Gore had cheap sets,cheap lighting,cheap special effects,cheap everthing,but it was great in a way that this remake isn't.I would say it was okay for seeing just once,if your watching this while your doing your taxes.I traded in my copy of this remake the very next day as it was totally unworthy of being in my collection next to the original.My 1 star rating gets a split with 1/2 star for Crispin Glover as Montag and 1/2 star for The Suicide Girls getting naked,zero stars for everting else. Not worth seeing for the allstar casting alone because Mr. Pardue takes up about 90% of the movie.Go pick up the original,it is so much better and goes for less then half the price of this remake.
 Gore takes center stage December 24, 2008
"Where do you think you're going...yes you.Sit down b!tch.YOU...die tonight."Looking like a demented Siegfried and Roy want to be,Crispin Glover delivers his lines with joy and a weird charisma that you can't turn away from.White tail coat,pompadour hair style and disturbing cod piece, he's like a twisted televangelist of blood and gore. His shows take place in an underground goth club and feature some of the most inventive and gory death scenes I've seen in a while.The fact that all of his victims are hot naked chicks covered with tattoos(collectively known as the suicide girls)does'nt hurt.Edmund(Kip Pardue)is a reporter and Montag The Magnificent's(Crispin Glover)most avid patron,trying to figure out his secrets while unknowingly becoming part of the show.Very psychedelic,trippy and crime noir like feel.
Top stars(Crispin Glover,Bijou Phillips,Jeffrey Combs and Brad Dourif),bloody gore-ific death scenes and an excellent soundtrack make this a sleeper hit of a horror film. Watch this movie...or YOU die tonight.
 Reality/Illusion/Somewhere in the middle is Neither October 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I announce, with trembling, the remake of Hershell Gordon Lewis' "The Wizard of Gore" is a dazzling, brain jarring, reality bending and breaking masterpiece. The oft-asked, Why don't they take a crummy film and make a classic?--they have. A merging of so much complexity, directed and written and acted and lensed to highest artistry-this is a film to be noticed. It is one of those movies that says at the first minute, you are going to have a good time. Jim Thompson's killer inside me. Film noir of much assured perfection.
Fragments of pain and magic and resurrection, with a meat puppet allegory-as we use the inside of ourselves and find that ticket to the magician show is all we live for. The blood and gore used for ink is no accident and it is an assiduous audacious idea.
That one of the worst filmmakers ever could be used to bounce this bunny trail of towering, biting intelligence is cause for celebration. Crispin Glover, Kip Pardue and Bijou Phillips are honed to the nth degree in this land of going thru the lowest basement and finding the clue to the whole baffling thing is crafted right in front of your eyes, keeping you guessing, keeping you running it back and in your memory too--this is a friend of a movie. Take all the crack reviews of "Five Across the Eyes," which was a joke, and put them on this film instead. And the SuicideGirls are hot of course. Slam land and lower binges and who gets theirs first? And again.
Zach Chassler has written, and Jeremy Kasten has directed, a main wire to the most complex circuits of the brain, in a journey to a depth that is so cleverly and so deliberately muscularly ennervated, and excised something more than film, something that is in the province of what we call us.
As we come flying apart. As we come seizing the night and the lostness that is more than a theoretical concept. This movie picks up the bloody pieces and throws us back in our faces and these things become hauntings. From the oily Glover, to the burnt-out reporter, Pardue, to the girl he "met at church," Phillips, all on a canvass of blood red and dark time neon signs.
All the backgrounds, all the dialogue, all the music, the effects, the mixed up time periods, the horror fun house mirror, all the formenting and tricks that are not tricks. These are to love as only a horror film fan can.
Where we are set up for reality, in all its grotesqueness, without the veneer of fakery, which most of us see it in, this film does not pretend, does not look to make a quick buck, in low budget is a crashed world of a type of splender. It throws bear traps on us and says look again, the wizard dares you--what indeed are we afraid of?
And after the ending of everything--find yourself still horribly alive--the roles played don't care about the actors switched round--that's the great joke of the thing. Imagine getting ready. Imagine the reality of what you don't see. Who doesn't, after all?
A great movie. A classic. One not to be missed. One to be noticed. To be talked about. Written about. Congratulations to the film makers, you are geniuses, wrapping up pieces of puzzles in burlap and then tossing the burlap bag in our eyes straight to our brain, to constantly challenge us to unravel it. And is it worth it?
Most assuredly.
Improved Cinematic Wizardry...and Better Gore, Too! October 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Director Herschell Gordon Lewis' THE WIZARD OF GORE (1970) is a cult exploitation film with a reputation that is greater than the actual quality of the film itself. Still, it has an interesting, if poorly executed, premise--a magician uses his exceptional hypnotism skills to prevent his audience from realizing that, before their very eyes, he is literally killing people during his act--that is compelling enough to hold an audience through the entire film despite the poor acting, the egregious special FX, and a plot with more holes than a brick of Swiss cheese. After viewing the film, one can't help but wonder what would happen if that premise could be used in a film that has a good writer, a skilled director, great actors, and convincing special FX. Well, one need wonder no more: Jeremy Kasten's 2007 remake is everything Lewis' original film could have been...and then some.
In the 2007 remake of THE WIZARD OF GORE, screenwriter Zach Chassler takes the premise of the original film and spins it into a contemporary urban mystery that takes place in the post-punk underground of present-day Los Angeles. In the midst of the murder mystery, Chassler's story also raises interesting questions about the nature of reality and the trustworthiness of human perception. Visually, the new film's aesthetic is based on the tattoos, piercings, and dreadlocks--not to mention the copious T&A--of the Goth pin-ups known as the Suicide Girls (a few of whom even appear in the film in minor roles), providing a dark atmosphere that matches the grim nature of the film's overall theme. And the oozy, sanguine special FX (by Autonomous F/X, Inc.) are both clever and gut-wrenchingly convincing, living up to the titular gore in ways that put to shame the butcher-shop leftovers of Lewis' original film.
The cast of the 2007 remake is an outstanding mix of hip young actors and genre veterans. As the title character (a.k.a. Montag the Magnificent), the always-entertaining Crispin Glover is both bizarre and mysterious, yet he somehow achieves this while refraining from his usual tendency to go way over the top. Glover is reunited with his fellow RIVER'S EDGE (1986) castmate Joshua Miller (genre fans will also recognize Miller from his role as the youngster vampire in 1987's NEAR DARK), who here plays a cynical young coroner introduced to Glover's magic show through the efforts of an underground journalist. Said journalist is played by Kip Pardue, whom some may recognize from a recurring role on TV's ER, and playing his girlfriend is Bijou Phillips, known to genre fans from her appearance in Eli Roth's HOSTEL: PART II (2007). Rounding out the cast are genre greats Jeffrey Combs (barely recognizable under heavy make-up) and Brad Dourif, as well as the most famous (and arguably the most beautiful) of the aforementioned Suicide Girls, Amina Munster.
The DVD release of THE WIZARD OF GORE remake offers a pristine digital transfer of the film in its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 (anamorphic for 16x9 TVs). Also included are an informative and entertaining feature commentary by the filmmakers, a making-of featurette, a featurette on the special FX, a mini-documentary on the Suicide Girls, and more. Gorehounds and other horror fans will definitely want this disc in their movie collections.
So... Was The Point Of This Remake To Prove... October 9, 2008
What a horrible actor Crispin Glover is? To be honest, yes, I did purchase this film, and I didn't make it to the end. The only thing Crispin did convincingly was to portray Marty McFly's father in the first Back To The Future movie. Other than that, he's worthless. OK, so he did a decent job in the remake of Willard, but that's not saying much. He even did a horrible job in the Friday The 13th Part IV. Especially his death scene which was pleasing only to know he wouldn't return.
I made it about 45 minutes into the movie before I took it out and literally threw it in the garbage. But CG is mostly to blame for this terrible POS, and his acting as well. Why he was even chosen for this role is beyond me. I guess nobody else tried out.
Do NOT waste your time on this movie, don't even rent it. It was even a struggle to make it as far as I did, and I bought it. Rent a movie you've never even heard of before you try this garbage. I'm sorry I did. Thumbs down, with the thumb reaching below hades standards. Move on.
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