Madman

Madman (1982)

The campers and counselors from nearby camp for gifted children are sitting around a campfire telling stories. The head counselor tells the story of the man who used to live in a nearby farmhouse. He name was Madman Marz and he was a mean old farmer who went crazy one night and killed his family. When the locals caught up with him they hung him from the nearest tree and hit him in the face with the axe he killed his family with. The next day they came back and he was gone. The legend is that he still stalks the forest looking for victims. Right after telling this story one of the more obnoxious campers tosses a rock thru the window of the old farmhouse, and sure enough Madman Marz comes out to play. Bodies pile up as he takes his revenge on everyone that crosses his path.

The early 80s were the golden age for the slasher film and Madman fits nicely with the rest of them. The story is follows the basic premise as most of the slasher subgenre movies do with nice looking young people at a camp being picked off one at a time by a crazed killer from the surrounding woods. But sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to make for a fun movie; you just have to do it well. While the movie starts off slowly once Marz shows up things speed up and get really fun. We don’t go too long between kills and are treated to many scenes of Marz moving around out of the vision of the characters. It seems like that killer is skulking behind every corner, just waiting to jump out. This makes for some great jump scares and is honestly much of the fun. Madman also has a pretty surprising ending that I didn’t see coming and won’t ruin by talking too much about. The cast is fairly solid, but nothing to write home about. This is fine since they really are only here to be fodder for the body count.

Speaking of the body count lets talk special effects. Madman is a low budget movie and it shows. The effects aren’t up to the standards of the better slasher from the early 80s. That said the kills are innovative and memorable, in spite of not being too graphic. You have a decapitation by truck hood, a nice hanging, and a very familiar (TCM anyone) pinning to a wall. None of these are particularly bloody, but I can appreciate the effort that went into them doing the best they can on a limited budget. While this might disappoint the gore hounds that are always looking for the bloodiest and most graphic kills it works well for the movie. Where the special effects team did their best work is on the look of Madman Marz. The character looks awesome, and makes some of the creepiest sounds that I’ve heard in a horror film. The guy looks and sounds like an animal, which makes for a really effective and brutal killer. One other thing that I wanted to mention about Madman is the music. The theme song is very memorable and used thru the entire movie whenever Marz is about to make an appearance. I really had a blast with it. Though you can’t discuss the music without mentioning the awful song used for the infamous hot tub love scene. Yeah it is bad, but then that has now become part of the fun when watching Madman.

To me if you dig slasher movies then I can’t see why you wouldn’t like Madman. It delivers the goods. Now the bad news is that the DVD is out of print and hard to find. But if you can find a copy then it is worth picking it up. I’m glad that I did.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer