Product description

Madman [1981]

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Average customer rating: 3.5

Binding : DVD
EAN : 5060020700613
Label : Starz Home Entertainment
Manufacturer : Starz Home Entertainment
Publisher : Starz Home Entertainment
Release date : 2006-10-23
Title : Madman [1981]
Actor : Array
Audience rating : Suitable for 18 years and over
Format : Array
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Original release date : 1981-01-01
Region code : 0
Running time : 88
Studio : Starz Home Entertainment
Theatrical releaseDate : 1981

Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-03-31 rating:

They thought they were alone.....
You know the scene, camp counsellors gather round a campfire telling ghost stories and we get to hear of Madman Marz who killed his wife and children with an axe before he was lynched by the townsfolk. Saying his name aloud is supposed to make him appear and boy does he, working his way through the cast with his axe, rope, a car bonnet etc.
It has dated and one scene in particular, the well lit Gaylen Ross hot-tub scene, does show some vertical scratch lines. There may be others but they would be masked as most of the film is quite dark.
It is by no means a classic of the slasher genre but is definitely worth watching and is certainly not a dud.
The commentary by writer/director Joe Giannone, producer Gary Sales, actor Tony Fish and the Madman himself Paul Ehlers does rescue it. It is very informative and well worth listening to, what might have happened to the movie if they had got Vincent Price? This commentary gives it a head up on the 3 stars the movie alone would have deserved.

review by: Lain date: 2008-03-21 rating:

Poor slasher film. Excellent commentary.
I won't bore you with a synopsis of this movie as it has already been detailed in another review, so I'll go straight in to what I thought of the film.

Overall Madman was a pretty poor movie. There are better, and worse, late 70's/early 80's horror/slasher films. I give it 2 stars because you can see that they at least tried to make this a decent film in the Halloween & Friday the 13th style. It starts off quite promising, but goes downhill fairly quickly.

The effects were poor, which is a major downfall for a film of this genre. The execution of the 'scares' were also poor and unexciting. Unlike the other reviewer, I found Madman to be distinctly lacking in atmosphere and creepiness. Possibly this was partly down to under-developed characters, meaning I neither cared if they lived or died.

The 'Madman' prosthetics are really quite bad. The film is cheesy and also kind of silly. It doesn't make a lot of sense that this mini-camp for kids is situated right next door to an old house that is supposedly the den on an insane killer monster!

On the flip side, the commentary with the producer, director and various others is very entertaining and insightful from a film makers point of view. I put it on a par with the excellent commentary's for Evil Dead I & II for sheer entertainment with the added bonus of being quite detailed in all the aspects of creating the film. I would watch Madman again with the commentary, but wouldn't bother without it.

review by: s.vernon date: 2007-11-03 rating:

ONE OF THE BETTER SLASHERS

While sitting around a camp fire, a group of counselors at a summer camp decide to waste time by telling spooky stories. Max (Carl Fredericks) ends up revealing the story of Madman Marz, a local serial killer legend that is reported to kill people in the woods nearby. T.P. (Tony Fish) doesn't believe in the legend, and begins mocking the legendary killer, much to the chagrin of the fellow counselors. Betsy (Gaylen Ross) is mostly offended by the story, and Max agrees to tone it down. He goes into town for supplies, leaving T.P. in charge of the counselors. Dave (Seth Jones) begins to act mysteriously, talking about killing people and destruction, which Ellie (Jan Claire) and Stacy (Harriet Bass) don't take lightly. During the night, T.P., Ritchie, (Jimmy Steele) Stacy and Dave all disappear mysteriously. Betsy is worried that no one has returned, and Ellie and Bill (Alex Murphy) volunteer to go search, but they disappear as well. Left alone at camp, Betsy finds herself facing off against Madman Marz, a brutish serial killer who has killed the other counselors.

The Good News: I'm surprised this isn't a better known film. This falls in the "Friday the 13th" rip-offs that dominated the early 80s, and does a great job of wearing its influences on its sleeve while also having its own voice. The film features a pretty remarkable sense of atmosphere that rivals Friday in the creep factor. There are tons of scenes of people walking around in the woods by themselves until they spot the handiwork of Marz or they meet him themselves. The best parts of the film are the several scenes where we see someone trying to escape from the stalking Marz and the silence that we hear in the scene is just unnerving. We understand that anyone who sees Madman Marz is going to die, and we know that he's around, and the waiting that transpires in between is so suspenseful that we are on the edge of our seats waiting for Madman to come out and kill them. The death of Ellie is a standout, where she walks through several empty rooms in a cabin, and when she comes to a closed-in room, she walks out, only to run into Marz stalking her. She runs and makes it into the kitchen and hides in the refrigerator, escaping the killer. When she comes out, she wanders back out into the cabin, only to run into him in the same place as before, where he delivers the death blow. The ending is also a great highlight, as Betsy is wandering around the house looking for Madman Marz, and the long drawn-out stalking game between her and Marz is great. We only see him in one shot, catching her and dragging her away after a short fight. The ending is one of the best I've seen, and it really makes you wonder why this isn't more well-known. The stalking scene before it, though, is a great element of suspense that works because it focuses on her wandering around the house searching than it does on the killer, and again the silence works in the scene's favor. With all the suspense in the film, the gore is kind of overlooked, but this is a pretty gory film. For it's time, though, this is pretty toned down. We get two decapitations, an impalement on a spike, strangulation, an ax in the chest, and having a back broken in half. The second of the decapitations, with Marz jumping onto a car hood, with someone checking under it when he does, is about as clever as it gets in the kill department, and the effect is pretty nice. Lots of blood spurting, but nothing much more than that. As for Marz himself, that is one creepy hillbilly.

The Bad News: With some more gore, this one might age a little better. It's one of the driest films from this time, and that might be a reason why this isn't that well-known. Other than that, I really liked this one. It came out when the genre was starting to die out, but that is no excuse for why this film is tagged with the "Forgotten" title.

The Final Verdict: As I said, it needed more gore to have a better chance at being remembered, but this is something all slasher fans should seek out. Gore-hounds, take caution, it isn't as gory as some of the others from that time, but this is made up with more eeriness and atmosphere.

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