BLOOD
OVERALL
BEASTS
BREASTS
Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Writer: Allen Kahn
Cast---
Ray Sager ... Montag the Magnificent
Judy Cler ... Sherry Carson
Wayne Ratay ... Jack
Phil Laurenson ... Greg
Jim Rau ... Steve
Don Alexander ... Det. Kramer
John Elliot ... Det. Harlan
Runtime: 95 min
Writer: Allen Kahn
Cast---
Ray Sager ... Montag the Magnificent
Judy Cler ... Sherry Carson
Wayne Ratay ... Jack
Phil Laurenson ... Greg
Jim Rau ... Steve
Don Alexander ... Det. Kramer
John Elliot ... Det. Harlan
Runtime: 95 min
THE WIZARD OF GORE (1970)
H. G. Lewis is the original gore-man. Without his early attempts at shocking us with gore as the main
course there would be no gore films, no splatter films. For that I thank him. He made a handful of these
pictures and this one is not one of his better ones. The idea itself is brilliant to speak frankly, but the
execution is dull and quite flavorless. The onscreen crimson blood does not fully satisfy because the
rest of the film is poorly developed on so many levels. But, let me quit complaining because this may be
a tame B flick, but the gore is amusing and “in your face”.
Montag the Magnificent is not your typical pull a bunny out of a hat trick kinda magician. He gets
psychological and philosophical on your ass. He asks the audience questions about what is reality and
what is a dream? He reminds us of our primal curiosity about torture and witnessing death and enjoying
sadistic entertainments. Then there is his trademark show where he performs a barbaric act of torture
on a female volunteer, pawning it of as an illusion. The thing is that after the show the volunteer
becomes the victim, being found dead in a similar fashion of that performed in earlier show.
Jack is a sports writer and Sherry hosts her own show on local television. They suspect Montag in the
killings around town and join the police in piecing the puzzle together. They go to four of his shows
witnessing a different act each time. I will go through them all now for you. In the title sequence Montag
beheads himself with a guillotine. In the first show he saws a woman in half with a chainsaw. In the
second show he drives a metal spike through the brain of a female volunteer. In the third show he uses
an industrial metal punch press to the woman’s abdomen and in the fourth performance he forces two
tied up women to swallow swords. The gore is fresh, cheap and abundant. Montag likes to play with the
bloody bits of intestine, liver, brain matter and anything else that he extracts from your body during the
show. Now we are never really sure if Montag has hypnotized the audience or if this is real, or a dream?
The movie likes to keep us guessing up till the end.
Sherry has been hounding Montag for an interview and she gets more than she bargained for when
Montag agrees to also do a show for broadcast on air. By now the police are as puzzled as we are
because all the previous volunteers have turned up dead, just like in the hellish show. Montag opens
with a dialogue as usual and follows it up with hypnotic talk. Everyone that has their eyes glued to the
television set at home or anywhere is instantly hypnotized. That is except Jack, who suspected Montag
of hypnotic powers and refused to watch. He now races to the studio to try and stop Montag’s latest
stunt: leading Sherry and some others into a fire. Jack arrives in time to push Montag into the flames
instead and watch him burn to death. In the next scene we are presented with a twist which really makes
no sense. Jack, Montag, and Sherry all come into question as either being real, or illusions. Or maybe
this is all a dream, but who is dreaming? The movie does not explain this but only starts the film back at
Montag’s first performance with Jack and Sherry in the audience. Now can you believe that ?
Montag is not as memorable a character as I thought he would be. He is nothing like the great Fuad
Ramses from the “BLOOD FEAST” film. The gore here is abundant, but in it’s early stages of
development. You can’t really compare it to what we see today. The acting is quite bad and the film is
unnecessarily long at 95 minutes. Believe me when I say we could have seen this in 80 minutes tops. If
you’re an H.G. Lewis fan you must see this at least once and if your not you are not missing much
though I do recommend it to gore enthusiasts.
- Jorge Antonio Lopez
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N / A
BLOOD
