"They thought they were alone."
"They thought they were alone."
directed by: Joe Giannone (back of video blurb): 'MADMAN' is a unique tale of
terror which incorporates the physical passion of young lovers as a
counterpoint to suspense and horror, deep in the woods of a summer youth
camp.
Old Max, the camp proprietor, tells the tale of a local farmer
named 'Marz' who, in a fit of maniacal rage, axe murdered his entire family
and then escaped justice by disappearing into the woods never to be seen
again.
Richie, a cocky young camper, ridicules the tale and challenges
Max's story by scoffing and shouting aloud, 'MADMAN MARZ'. And as the
words reverberate through the dark woods, the wheels of terror are set in
motion.
choice dialogue:
starring: Alexis Dubin (Gaylen Ros), Tony Fish, Harriet Bass, Seth Jones, Jan Claire, Alex Murphy
"You
must not say his name above a whisper!
(review by Kit Lively)
MADMAN opens with a group of camp counselors and
their youthful charges telling scary stories around the campfire.
Actually, MADMAN opens with a counselor SINGING a scary story around the
campfire. For one dread-filled moment of true horror, I feared that I
might have unwittingly stumbled upon the world's first and only
slasher-musical. But the next story-teller up at bat, kindly camp-owner
Max, doesn't break out into song, and I breathed a well-earned sigh of
relief. Max's tale is actually pretty spooky, even though he doesn't sing
it. His tale concerns the fate of one Madman Marz, a simple man of the
land who, one night many years ago, in Max's words, "for no apparent
reason, went stark, raving mad." In the case of Madman Marz, going stark,
raving mad involves chopping up his wife and two children while they sleep,
and then hooking it down to the pub for a cold one ("I just sliced up my
entire family with an axe, and you give me LIGHT BEER?!"). The townspeople
are understandably angered by this sudden act of random nuttiness, and
procede to visit upon Marz some good, old-fashioned frontier justice. They
hang him from the nearest (or perhaps sturdiest) tree, and one of the
members of the lynch mob even takes a fair-sized chunk of Madman's face off
with the aforementioned axe. The following morning, of course, he's
nowhere to be found, and the legend is born. Part of this legend, Max
relates, is that if anyone in the woods says Madman Marz's name above a
whisper, he'll hear you, and then you're pretty much out of luck. It's not
much of a surprise then that the stereotypical smart-ass of the bunch
shouts "MADMAN MARZ" at the top of his lungs before proceding to hurl a
large rock into the darkness, where it smashes through a window in what we
assume must be Madman's little ranch house. The group shares a chuckle
about the lengend of the insane farmer, but before preparing to head back
to camp (which, I must mention, involves some sort of odd running in place
type of activity), Richie, the previously referred to smart-alec, spots a
really creepy looking guy with long, ragged hair in sillouette spying on
them while perched in a tree in the distance. Instead of being scared
shitless by this sight (I can practically guarantee that I would've cut a
new path through the woods.), Richie decides to check it out. The
remainder of the film involves all of the counselors going into the woods
to find the missing wiseacre, and instead coming face to face with Madman
and his trusty axe.
While obviously not ground-breakingly original, MADMAN is still a very decent horror flick, and the strenghs of the slasher sub-genre are effectively played up. The colors used throughout (lot's of dark blue in the woods, etc.) work in the film's favor, and create an uneasy, eerie mood. Madman himself is seen sparingly, or in sillouette, which adds to his overall creepiness (and speaking of overall creepiness, Madman does wear overalls, which in this case is very creepy). Some of the suspense really does work, and there are a couple of decent jolts. There's quite a bit of gore, including a lingering shot of a neck-stump squirting blood and a really messy throat slitting. And if that weren't enough, the heroine of the piece in portrayed by none other than Gaylen Ross, she of DAWN OF THE DEAD fame! The dialogue, while not particularly noteworthy, carries us from one scene of horror to the other without too many groaners. MADMAN even manages to stray from the conventional 80's slasher path in a couple of minor ways, which I won't ruin for you. MADMAN is probably the best of the FRIDAY THE 13TH inspired camp-slasher flicks, which may not seem like much of a compliment, but let me assure you that it is.
BODYCOUNT 10 
female:5 / male:5
1-3) Madman Marz's family, two females and one male, all axed to death in flashback.
4) male- throat slashed.
5) Male- neck broken
6) male- decapitated with axe.
7) female- decapitated with car hood.
8) male- back broken.
9) female- axed in chest.
10) female- slashed; impaled on hook.
