WIZARD OF GORE
(Herschell Gordon Lewis / 1970 / USA / DVD / Cert 18 / 70 mins)

Mongoose leaves the Cube with his legacy of ‘Killer Klowns’ and the sheer horror that was ‘Attack of the Killer Tomatoes’ and scampers off to follow his true calling … Grindhouse! This is the seedy underbelly of cinema that people always thought should be best forgotten or totally ignored. Not any more! In the first of his ‘new – look’ nights he proudly presents The Wizard Of Gore. Made by legendary film maker Herschell Gordon Lewis, this is about as good an
introduction to Grindhouse Cinema as you could get.

The story of the movie goes basically like this. Montag the Magnificent is a magician who does grisly illusions on stage, which involve things like cutting a woman in half with a chainsaw, poking holes in someone else with a punch press, driving a spike through yet another person's head, and pushing swords down the throats of yet two more “unfortunates” who were standing on stage tied up like marionettes. He uses his hypnotic powers to get the "volunteers" up on stage and to keep them quiet while he does his thing. When they get up to leave the stage, it's like nothing ever happened to them physically, but they're still hypnotized. After they leave the theatre, the hypnosis eventually wears off, and when it does, all the wounds they sustained during the show instantly return and kill them, leaving lots of blood and gore all over the place. After the second murder, a man whose girlfriend is infatuated with the show begins to investigate on his own until finally, they manage to stop the evil magician. Or do they?...