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The Conception of Gore #5: “The Godfather of Gore” Herschell Gordon Lewis’ The Wizard of Gore (1970)

To celebrate the appearance of one of the genre’s greatest names on The Calling Hours Horror Podcast next week (2/3 at 8 PM EST), I am going to remind the old school fans and educate the newer generation to the films of “The Godfather of Gore” Herschell Gordon Lewis, the innovator of the Gore film…

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“A magician performs a show where he selects a female volunteer and appears to put swords, drills, and such through them. They walk away and everyone applauds, then they show up somewhere else, dead of the same injuries they sustained in the magic show. Police are baffled and can’t tie the murders to the magician. A man whose girlfriend is infatuated with the show begins to investigate on his own.”

Three years would pass, but Lewis returned to the sub genre for a fourth time when he created the ultra bloody Wizard of Gore in 1970. A little bit more of a mindscrew than Lewis’ earlier films, the use of hypnotism as a device and then a counter device could leave an audience scratching their heads. The gore is plentiful as beautiful young women are the brought on stage and have their tongues ripped out, drilled into with a punch press, cut in half with chainsaws and disemboweled by hand. The various degrees of torture are gleefully performed by Montag the Magnificent, but a TV reporter thinks he is somehow behind the murders of these women, even after they leave to show under their “own” power. The whole dream inside of a dream trope takes us back to the beginning of the film with Montag reciting the same speech that he delivered to his audience at the beginning of the film: “What is real? How do you know that at this second you aren’t asleep in your beds, dreaming that you are here in this theater?”

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Directed: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Produced: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Written: Allen Kahn
Starring: Ray Sager, Judy Cler, Wayne Ratay
Music: Larry Wellington
Cinematography: Alex Ameri and Daniel Krogh
Edited: Eskandar Ameripoor
Distributed: Mayflower Pictures

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Blu-Ray and DVD Editions

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The Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection from Image Ent (2004)

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The Wizard Of Gore/ The Gore Gore Girls Double Feature from Image Ent (2012)

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The Wizard of Gore from Image Ent (2000)

Dedman13

Owner of Slit of the Wrist FX and producer, actor, FX artist and writer.

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