Mad Magician, The (1954)

... aka: El mago asesino (The Murderous Magician)

... aka: Il mostro delle nebbie (The Monster of the Mist)

... aka: La máscara siniestra (The Sinister Mask)

... aka: Le tueur porte un masque (The Killer Wears a Mask)

... aka: Magier des Schreckens (Mage of Dread)

Directed by:

John Brahm

Due to the monumental success of the 3D release House of Wax (1953), which was the highest-grossing horror film of the entire decade (also one of the highest grossing horror films of all time when adjusted for inflation), this project made perfect sense. Another 3D horror film starring Vincent Price from the same producer (Bryan Foy) and writer (Crane Wilbur), and released the same month almost exactly a year apart? Money in the bank, right? The only big change was in directors, with John Brahm subbing for André De Toth, but that in itself was promising. Brahm had a good track record with genre films, having already made The Undying Monster (1942), The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945); all very solid efforts. Seems like this was destined to be another big hit and yet... it somehow wasn't. 

Despite a pretty extensive PR campaign, The Mad Magician pretty much tanked. Based on the box office numbers I was able to drum up for 1954, it didn't even break the top 100 by the end of the year. That's quite a fall from grace considering Wax was the fourth largest North American box office draw just a year before, selling a whopping 39+ million tickets.

There are many reasons this likely happened. For starters, the film simply isn't as good as Wax, reviews were poor and back then word got around. Second, there were a number of major 3D horror releases that beat this one to theaters, including the hit Creature from the Black Lagoon, which was released just two months earlier. The tipping point of audience disinterest in 3D seemed to occur right after Creature when Phantom of the Rue Morgue, a March release from the same studio behind Wax (Warner Bros.) fell well below box office expectations. Magician landed a month after that. 

Other factors that potentially could have contributed was this one being shot in black-and-white (as opposed to the color Wax) and the fact there were a number of notable horror, sci-fi and suspense films released this same year. Alfred Hitchcock had two big hits alone: Dial M for Murder (another 3D release) and Rear Window (the second most popular film of the year). 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Them!, The Naked Jungle and the aforementioned Creature were other high-performing films that audiences of the day apparently were more interested in.

Don Gallico (Price) has spent years coming up with showstopping magic tricks for other magicians. Now it's his time in the spotlight as "Gallico the Great." He puts together his own elaborate stage show that he hopes will wow audiences and eventually land him a lucrative gig on Broadway. Part of his act involves doing impersonations of other popular magicians (like a full prosthetic make-up job and curling his hair into little devil horns when he's imitating "The Great Rinaldi"), but the show mostly hinges on his one "prized shocker" of an illusion called "The Lady and the Buzzsaw." Though he's made it as fool proof as possible, there's still an outside chance for disaster. After all, it uses a REAL giant saw blade. He even bills it as "The most dangerous exhibition ever attempted."

Right before Gallico and his sweet / naïve assistant Karen Lee (the lovely Mary Murphy) can perform the trick, the curtain suddenly goes down and the show is canceled. Ross Ormond (Donald Randolph), who owns Illusion Inc., a company that makes tricks for magicians that Gallico works for, serves him with an injunction. Turns out that part of his contract stipulates that anything created by any of his employees is owned by him and cannot be used without his authorization. It doesn't even matter that Gallico made his contraption on his own time and using his own money, Ormond now has complete control over it and who uses it. He orders the saw be transported back to his workshop and then offers it to the REAL Great Rinaldi (John Emery - ROCKETSHIP X-M) to use in HIS show.

The greedy Ormond is using his leverage to advance the career of Rinaldi because he's part owner of his show and doesn't want any competition. Not only that, but Ormond has already stabbed Gallico in the back once already. Years earlier when he met the struggling aspiring magician working for peanuts in a carnival, he not only offered him a contract, he also stole his wife. Gallico's money-grubbing ex Claire (third-billed Eva Gabor, who's in just two scenes) decided to divorce him and marry Ormond instead because he had the means to provide the luxurious lifestyle she desired. After being hit with one too many blows, Gallico snaps, grabs Ormond, strangles him, punches him and then goes into a screaming fit ("Why don't ya laugh at me now? Go on, laugh! Laaaahh-yef!") as he decapitates him with the saw!

An expert sculptor and mask maker, Gallico crafts a very lifelike mask of Ormond, disposes of the body during a college bonfire and proceeds to impersonate him. He starts calling himself "Ward Jameson" and rents a room from (oops!) mystery novelist Alice Prentiss (Lenita Lane) and her husband Frank (Jay Novello), where he can come and go as he pleases and work on his "experiments." 

As he's trying to hide out and stay low key, various characters cause problems for him. Claire is now searching for her missing husband, and even attempts to seduce the same ex-husband she stabbed in the back to tide her over in the meantime. The Great Rinaldi is still snooping around and now wants dibs on Gallico's latest contraption, "The Crematorium." Karen happens to be dating Lt. Alan Bruce (Patrick O'Neal), who's put in charge of finding out what happened to Ormond and is employing a new (for the 19th century setting, that is!) policing method: fingerprinting suspects. And when Alice isn't writing books like "Murder Is a Must," she fancies herself an amateur sleuth and starts looking into Gallico herself. More murders follow.

Asking whether or not Price gives a fun performance is basically like asking if water is wet. Of course he does! This can even be seen as a dry run for his later The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Theater of Blood (1973), which also allowed the actor to don a succession of different disguises. His presence alone is enough to bump what is otherwise a 2 star / average movie up by half a point. That said, this is far from his best showing and probably the worst genre film he made in the 50s; "worst" being a relative term because the others are all quite good. Though the murders are almost entirely off-screen (bloodless and tame even for the time), the quirky side characters, sense of humor and production values at least partially make up for it.

After this failed at the box office, Price ventured away from the genre for a number of years until the likes of The Fly (1958) and HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) put him back on top. His status as a genre icon was then solidified by his run of Roger Corman Poe films and a number of key titles (mostly British productions) from the late 60s through the 70s.

Corey Allen, who'd appear in Rebel Without a Cause the following year before becoming an Emmy-winning TV director, has a small uncredited role as Gus the stagehand. Lyle Talbot (Plan 9 from Outer Space) also has a small role as a program hawker at a Rinaldi show, as does Roy Engel as a detective and (supposedly) Conrad Brooks as an extra in the bonfire scene.

Obviously Columbia was in no big hurry to get this out to the masses as a home video release. It was one of the only Price genre films from the time to have never received a legit VHS release during the entire video era. In 2012, it finally made its DVD debut courtesy of Sony, which was followed by a Mill Creek release in 2015 and then a Blu-ray in 2017 from Twilight Time. The latter comes with 2D and 3D viewing options, a commentary track (with David Del Valle) and the 20-minute featurette Master of Fright: Conjuring the Mad Magician.

★★1/2

Silent Madness (1984)

... aka: Beautiful Screamers

... aka: Hiljainen tappaja (Silent Killer)

... aka: Locura sangrienta (Blood Madness)

... aka: Nightkillers, The

... aka: Omega Factor, The

Directed by:

Simon Nuchtern

I only vaguely remember seeing Silent Madness many years ago and the only thing that really stood out to me at the time was just how ludicrous I thought the entire premise was. I mean, an obviously still-unhinged psycho / serial killer with a long history of violence gets accidentally released from a mental institution and goes on to kill, kill and kill some more? That kind of stuff only happens in the movies, right? Well, no. First of all, I suppose I wasn't really paying close attention because that's not exactly what happens here. Second, I wasn't putting this in context and looking at what was going on at the time this was made. Now that I have, I can at least now see why it was made...

As Governor of California, Ronald Reagan had already slashed the state budget for mental health facilities, which resulted in many closures, nearly three thousand health care jobs cut and tens of thousands of mentally ill people forced into either nursing homes, privately owned group homes or out onto the streets. This resulted in an increase in the California homeless population but also an increase in homicides. Edmund Kemper, Herbert Mullin, Edward Allaway and Charles Soper were just four examples of former patients who weren't adequately treated and released prematurely and then went on to mass murder / serial killing sprees. This problem then went national in the 80s when Reagan became president. One of the first things he did was throw out the Mental Health Systems Act passed by the previous administration. By the end of the decade, hundreds of thousands of former mental patients were unaccounted for and thought to be among the homeless. Many of them were eventually ending up in prison for committing various crimes. Others were committing suicide or freezing to death on the streets. And then there was an uptick in homicides being committed by former patients (many of them diagnosed schizophrenics) who had no business being out roaming the streets.

Silent Madness seems to be trying to comment on all of the above but that doesn't necessarily mean this is an intelligent or thought-provoking movie. It's not. In fact, it can be filed away in a peculiar category we'll call the "socially conscious slasher," where a film alludes to, or at least pays lip service to, topical social issues of the time to give it a veneer of respectability, yet doesn't delve into that subject matter in any meaningful, affecting way. It can then take a seat right next to VISITING HOURS (1982), which found its writer (Brian Taggert) and star (Lee Grant) trying to make a feminist statement within a slash-and-hack format but not pulling it off due to a high implausibility factor. Madness is also notable as one of a handful of 3D horror releases from a brief early 80s 3D revival. Unfortunately, this one came out a year too late to really capitalize on a craze that audiences had grown tired of after just a few years.

Psychiatrist Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) is a new employee at Cresthaven, a scummy Manhattan psychiatric hospital packed to the rafters with loons and staffed with slovenly orderlies who flick their cigarette butts on the floor and bitter, cynical doctors who appear to have stopped caring about their work a long time ago. The compassionate yet thoroughly professional Joan has a particular problem with budget-obsessed Dr. Michael Kruger's (Roderick Cook) release program, which has been recently turning patients loose, even ones with no ability to function on the outside world, at an alarming rate. She tries to voice her concerns to the flaky Dr. Roger Vandice (Ed Van Nuys), but he doesn't even know the patient's names let alone their status, and then goes to administrator Dr. Margaret Anderson (Stanja Lowe), who rolls her eyes at her as she informs her that they're "desperately overcrowded and understaffed" and that they barely have enough money to take care of the patients they do have.

Dr. Kruger notices that one particular patient, John Howard, is still there even though Dr. Vandice had already signed his release papers. Seeing how easily the two doctors just brush that aside, a suspicious Joan sneaks into Kruger's office, gets on his computer and discovers they've actually released the wrong person. Instead of the docile John Howard, they've let mute, criminally insane maximum security patient / serial killer Howard Johns (stuntman Solly Marx) loose. Oops! By the time Joan discovers the error, Howard has already picked up where he left off, started with camping couple Paul (Paul DeAngelo - SLEEPAWAY CAMP) and Susan (April Daisy White). This scene is a good example of how effects filmed specifically for 3-D release don't always translate over to a regular viewing, particularly a shot of the psycho throwing a silly-looking cartoon hatchet right at the camera. After killing these two, Howard makes his way back to the Barrington College for Women (he was arrested for a previous set of slayings called the "Barrington Sorority Murders") and starts slaughtering coeds again.

Back at the hospital, Joan discovers that Dr. Kruger has been conducting unorthodox, inhumane and illegal experiments on patients in an off-limits, locked wing of the hospital. Most of the patients he's been experimenting on have been deemed the worst of the worst and one of them was Howard Johns, whom Joan now suspects has been intentionally released by Kruger and his toadies. (The story of it being an accident is merely a smokescreen.) When Joan brings this up to the administrator, Kruger brings in a new set of forged documents stating that Howard has actually died, not been discharged.

Joan's given the weekend off and decides to do some freelance investigation work. She goes to the useless, lazy, drunk Sheriff Liggett (Sydney Lassick) for information but he just turns around and informs the hospital what Joan is up to. Next, Joan visits the local newspaper office where journalist Mark McGowan (David Greenan) hatches a plan. Suspecting Howard will return to the scene of the previous crimes at the Delta Omega sorority house, he suggests Joan pose as an alumnus passing through town needing a place to say. She could nab the patient and he could nab a great story.

Joan goes to the sorority and meets a few stragglers left behind (the college is on "mid-semester break"); good girl Jane (Katherine Kamhi, another Sleepaway Camp vet), fitness freak Pam (Tori Hartman) and blood-and-guts-loving Cheryl aka My Kinda Gal (Katie Bull), as well as overly-protective house mother Mrs. Collins (Viveca Lindfors); a lonely widow who's lost her only son, seems a bit unhinged herself and is first seen screaming at one of the girls and calling her a "whore" for exposing her bra. Unbeknownst to Joan and the sorority girls, the psycho is already in the house and has been hiding out in the (hilariously labyrinthine) basement, where he's already killed Barbara (Elizabeth Kaitan) and Lorraine (Paige Price).

As if the level of danger isn't high enough already, the evil Dr. Kruger and rest of the corrupt Cresthaven staff decide to send out a pair of sadistic orderlies; Virgil (Dennis Helfend) and Jesse (Philip Levy), to do some damage control. They're given specific orders to do everything possible to apprehend Howard. As for Joan, the orderlies hope to drug her ("I'm gonna shove this hypo in her tight ass and twist it around!"), rape her, kidnap her and then take her back to the hospital to be used as a guinea pig in Kruger's secret experiments.

While pretty preposterous at times, this is still surprisingly well-acted by most of the cast (experienced actress Montgomery in particular makes for a very good heroine) and extremely busy plot-wise to keep your attention from waning too much. For the exploitation fans, you get two topless scenes, black-and-white trauma flashbacks of the killer murdering four sorority girls with a nail gun after they ply him with alcohol and spank him (!) and a fairly wide variety of deaths, including a sledgehammer to the face, a hatchet to the back, a crowbar impalement, a face roasted with hot steam, a head smashed in a vice, a guy getting drilled in the back of the head during an attempted rape and, most cleverly, a girl hanging upside down on an inversion bar having her neck broken after the psycho ties a rope around her neck, attaches a weight to the other end and then tosses it out a window.

As for the finale, it's a mix of fighting, killing, running, hiding, climbing up and down ladders, going in and out of rooms and the air conditioning ducts, a Roto-Rooter attack (!) and assorted, sometimes hilarious over-the-top chaos. There's a pretty predictable plot twist, some cool lighting touches in a long boiler room chase scene and a couple of unintentionally funny bits, but, hey, at least it's not boring! And I am actually glad I revisited this one after all these years. It's still not great but it IS entertaining and much more fun than I remembered it being.

Made on a budget of 600,000 dollars, Madness was filmed in 1983, played in theaters in 1984 (where very few people got to actually see it in 3-D due to booking problems [supposedly NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET was hogging all the space!]) and then hit the home video market in 1985 courtesy of Media. It was then reissued on VHS by Video Treasures a few years later. In 2020, it was given a 4K restored Blu-ray release from Vinegar Syndrome. Their release comes with 3-D glasses and has three viewing options: Digital 3-D, Anaglyph 3-D and Flat 2-D. It also comes with a 45-minute making of documentary Method of the Madness (directed by Michael Gingold), which features interviews with director / producer Nuchtern, writer Bill Milling, make-up artist Carl Morano and actors DeAngelo, Kamhi, Price, Hartman and Shelly Gibson.

★★1/2