I have proclaimed in the past my
upbringing as a monster kid and my love for horror hosts near and far. What I haven’t discussed in any sort of
detail, however, is the horror host we had right here in our own backyard. The first time I saw Uncle Ted, he was guest
hosting The Land Of Hatchy Milatchy
(think WPIX’s The Magic Garden, only
cheaper and without the folk singing), the Rosemary Clooney song being used as
the program’s namesake and theme song (I can only assume with permission). The show’s regular host, Miss Judy (played by
Lois Burns in my youth, who took over from the original host, Nancy Berg) was
rumored (and rumored is the only word for it, since there is no evidence I
could find on this, and it sounds like the sort of thing dipshit children would
say around a playground) to have been incarcerated for drug possession, so
Uncle Ted had to fill in. I’m certain
the truth, as it so often is, was much more mundane.
Back to my point, Uncle Ted
literally looked like someone’s uncle.
He was tall and slender, had a walrus-ian mustache and a stentorian
voice, and dressed a lot like Mehemet Bey from Hammer’s 1959 version of The Mummy (that is, like a Shriner, fez
and all). A short bit after seeing him
on Hatchy Milatchy I would discover
that Uncle Ted (real name Ted Raub) hosted a late night monster show titled Uncle Ted’s Ghoul School (which would
move over to PBS and change its name to Uncle
Ted’s Monstermania before cancellation sometime in the Nineties). Unfortunately, it’s time slot prevented me
from being able to actually sit and watch many of the early shows (I’ll tell
you sometime about my abortive efforts to watch the show using a mirror), but
somehow just knowing he was putting the energy in was almost enough.
So, what has any of this got to
do with Herschell
Gordon Lewis’s Wizard Of Gore? Well, just like Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sager), Uncle
Ted was a magician. He would cut strings
in half, and they would magically reappear whole mere moments later, pour a jug
of water into a paper cone from whence it would disappear, and so on. Also like with Montag’s illusions, you could
usually see the how trick was being done with my old Uncle Ted. Whether his sleight of hand wasn’t quite up
to snuff or he was not used to staging for television, I can’t say. Yet, these seeming deficiencies didn’t drag
Ted’s esteem down in my eyes (or in the eyes of those who remember him to this
day). If anything, they only further
endeared the man to me. He really was
that uncle who shows up every now and again, does some fun stuff with the kids,
and then leaves. And that’s a sort of
charm that money and artfulness cannot buy.
The film opens with Montag taking
the stage and delivering a monologue, which includes such lines as, “What is
real? Are you certain you know what reality is? How do you know that at this
second you aren't asleep in your beds dreaming that you are here in this
theater?” Then he asks for a volunteer
from the audience (Karin Alexana) and proceeds to chainsaw her in half in full
view of the spectators. Moments later,
she appears fine, but when she goes to a restaurant after the show, she
literally falls to pieces as the wounds she received from the chainsaw recur
(and topples onto the conveniently plastic-covered carpet). Meanwhile, television personality Sherry
(Judy Cler) is completely taken with the morbid spectacle, though beau Jack
(Wayne Ratay), who is incidentally one of the largest dickweeds I have ever set
eyes upon, absolutely hates it. Sherry
attempts to get Montag on her show, but the eponymous wizard evades her, while
continuing to invite her and Jack to his shows for each new depraved
delectation.
Like every other Lewis film I’ve
ever seen, The Wizard Of Gore is
shot in the most utilitarian manner possible.
Most scenes play out predominantly in master shots with the occasional
closeup inserted in the least fluid way possible. Focus varies from shot to shot, but with a
piece like this, it’s not a detriment. The
lack of gloss, the stilted filmmaking, the grandiloquent acting, the constant
habit of actors looking straight at the camera lens (though it should be noted,
there are, in fact, times when this practice is intentional) all give this film
a verisimilitude that the presence of a big budget would tend to erase. And I like that about this film and its
ilk. Sadly, the story itself is about
enough to fill up a short film of about thirty-five minutes at the maximum, but
the film clocks in at ninety-five minutes.
Thus, the plot goes like this:
Montag does his act, Montag spends an inordinate amount of time toying
with his victims’ innards, the stage victim leaves and dies, Jack and Sherry
argue, repeat.
And this is not to say that the
film doesn’t have some ideas at work (as Montag’s purple dialogue attests), but
this is, essentially, a gore show. The
prestidigitator’s tricks are little more than Grand Guignol displays of blood
and animal parts, and Lewis’s camera blithesomely leers at every square inch of
meat on display. As previously stated
Sager really goes for the gusto, wiggling fleshy bits in front of the lens and
practically smooshing chunks of grue between his fingers like wet Play
Doh. It’s like watching psychic surgery
ramped up to the nth degree. The level
of graphicness is fairly startling for the time (but so was Lewis’s
groundbreaking Blood Feast seven
years prior). What’s interesting is, for
the animal scraps principally used in these scenes, there are also several
manufactured body parts (I’m thinking here of a couple of papier maché heads)
which totally undercut the effect.
Nonetheless, the incongruities do a lot to augment the level of
amusement herein. I’d wager it can be
safely stated that Lewis’s films were never intended to be viewed forty-odd
years from when they were made. They
were meant to bring young folks into a theater or drive-in, give them something
they more than likely didn’t see every day, and then be forgotten (the order of
which could most likely be shuffled around depending on how much necking was
going down). But have them we do, and
the filters of modernity and the level of sophistication of the modern viewer
can sometimes fog the intended reception of a film, for better or worse.
**POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHOY**
Speaking of which, The Wizard Of Gore is a film very much
concerned with Jacques Lacan’s concept of the Gaze. When Montag calls for volunteers from the
audience, his eyes lock onto a woman.
Lewis cuts to an extreme closeup of Montag’s eyes. Next thing, you know, a woman is on stage
being eviscerated. Women are objects in
a very literal sense. They are meatbags
to be dismantled for Montag’s amusement.
Their insides are playthings for the magician. By that same token, the viewer is implicated
in this objectification, since we gathered specifically to watch this. Montag’s monologues are directed largely at
camera, and the camera is placed in the position of an audience member. Montag gives sly, knowing looks at the
audience at a couple of moments in the film when he’s not doing his act,
letting us in on the sick joke and forcing a feeling of commiseration upon
us. The idea of being unable to look
away from car accidents is suggested, and this is reinforced when Jack uses his
press credentials (he’s a sports writer) for he and Sherry to have a peek at one
of the crime scenes. When Montag does
appear on television, he again looks straight out at the audience, but this
time the intent is to turn us into objects like the women he slaughtered in his
show, rather than sharing some twisted mischief with us. The film is carnage for the sake of carnage,
but notions like this give it just a hint of substance. It’s like a plate of bread with a miniscule
piece of steak on it. At least you got
some steak with your bread, but with this film, ironically, the more gruesome
bits are the metaphorical bread in the meal.
MVT: When the gore gets
going, it’s difficult to not look (thus pretty much proving Montag’s point) and
be repulsed at the same time. And Lewis
has a knack for filming the color red which appears both dirty and painful
onscreen. He’s not “The Godfather Of
Gore” for nothing, you know.
Make Or Break: The scene
where Montag hammers a spike through a woman’s head moves things into a higher
realm of outlandishness. Not only does
the man pierce the lady’s melon and haul out her grey matter, but he also digs
his fingers into her sockets and plucks out her bulbous eyes. It’s a piece of gratuitousness that goes just
one step beyond, and the extraneous bloodshed lends a layer of true madness to
Montag’s methods.
Score: 6.25/10
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