Friday, February 26, 2021

'Madman' (1981) - Joe Giannone.

While oft compared to the slicker, larger budgeted 'The Burning', independent filmmaker Joe Giannone's mountainously macabre mountain man massacre has not only weathered the vicissitudes of time but has deservedly garnered its very own sizable cult following, due not only to the innate axe-murdering awesomeness of Madman Marz himself but that his indomitable legend was so extraordinarily great it deserved its very own hungrily ear-worming, toe tapping, skull-rapping ditty! Unlike his equally sinister 80s-era slash-happy compadres, Marz expresses pure evil for its own edifying sake, no mewling mommy issues, no Freudian sibling shenanigans, he's not simply a vengeful burns victim, but a forest-lurking, hangman's noose jerking, deliriously decapitating, free spirited Madman, stalking his blood-soaked domain, gruesomely mutilating all those that trespass his crepuscular domain simply because he's so wicked good at it, and that is fundamentally why 'Madman' rules so heroically hard to this very day! 

During the film's oft parodied introductory fireside yarn, the closely-huddled kiddie-winks and cosy counsellors anxiously learn of Marz's cruel, infamous Amityville-like slaughter, thereby eerily foreshadowing the imminent danger born of so frivolously calling out his fearful name in earshot of the benighted Marz homestead! To his great credit Giannone plays it pretty straight, no sly references to the innate absurdity of the scenario, resourcefully eking the most out of the simple slasher schematic of relentlessly bellicose bogeyman and plentiful teen quarry extinguished in multitudinously gory ways, and running contrary to the naysayers erroneous slurs, Giannone's slay-tastic 'Madman' is not quite the plasma-shy, slasher-lite affair they frequently claim it to be; since his maniacal, out-sized okie gorily dispenses some inordinately nasty kills, not the least of which being a gnarly rupture to one poor victim's windpipe that still has the shocking intensity to take more than just the beleaguered counsellor's breath away!

'Madman' is demonstratively superior to many of the shrill, photo realistic, gore-obsessed, Jump-scare bore-fests of today as there is something palpably ancient and altogether mythic about the pitilessly perfidious peregrinations of murder-Magus Madman Marz, as his grave, malefic presence perhaps infers a more classical origin, sharing the monstrous qualities of some no less hateful Homeric nemesis; so the lovelorn T.P (Tony Fish) and his camp counsellor chums discover all too painfully that by merely whispering his malign moniker their camping trip would end in a nightmarish tumult of blood-curdling calamity! 

'Madman Marz is the true Axes of Evil!' - Weirdlingwolf.

 

 


 

 


 

















No comments:

Post a Comment

The Rage (1997) - Sidney J. Furie. Dower Mindhunter agent Travis (Lamas) teams up with sexy/sparky FBI pistol Kelly McCord (Kristen Cloke) ...