Touches You

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

I missed this when it came out in theaters, I happened to pick it up in a local store used for $2.00. Probably one of the better investments I have made recently.Firstly Crispin Glover, perfect casting choice. I have followed his films since the 80's, and he never disappoints when portraying weird, misguided, misunderstood, or otherwise socially awkward and/or puzzling characters. Bravo. I was not convinced by the lead male character's pseudo William Burroughs persona. But hey, who can really impersonate the legend as well as Peter Weller did in Naked Lunch? I don't think anybody could.Secondly, gore? Yes! The film has a plethora of gore, and the plentiful nude bodies of the Suicide Girls makes it totally worth watching.Thirdly, completely disjointed continuity which adds to the element of surrealism, which I do admit, is achieved in a highly clumsy fashion at times. An homage to the original on purpose, or overzealous and pompous directing and editing? You decide. This film was better then most of the tripe that was released at the same time(2007), and has been released since. Not perfect by any means, but well worth my $2.00.

The Wizard of Gore is set in present day Los Angeles where Edmund Bigelow (Kip Pardue) publishes a small underground paper, always looking for the next big thing he decides to go to see a stage magician named Montag the Magnficent (Crispin Glover) after seeing an advertisement. Taking his girlfriend Maggie (Bijou Phillips) with him they are shocked & thrilled by Montag's performance & show in which he appears to rip the guts out of a stripper named Cayenne (Cricket Suicide) only for her to reappear moments later seemingly unharmed. Soon after Edmund hears a news report in which Cayneene's body has been found horribly mutilated & he makes the connection to Montag's show & start to investigate which results in mind bending hallucinations, drugs, mind control & a sinister plot as his life starts to fall apart as Edmund struggles to know the difference between reality & fantasy...Directed by Jeremy Kasten this is maybe a result of the recent spate of big budget Hollywood remakes of classic horror films such as Halloween (1978) & Friday the 13th (1980) & as such is a very loose remake of the low budget Herschell Gordon Lewis exploitation gore film The Wizard of Gore (1970) & I have to say I really wasn't that impressed with this confusing mess of a film. The original 170 The Wizard of Gore was a moderately effective exploitation film with some strong if fake looking gore & had a fairly simple & daft yet entertaining plot while the 2007 remake has a few flashes of gore which look more realistic but have less impact & are less frequent while the plot has been totally revamped & changed with Montag the Magnificent almost a secondary consideration as the script feels more like Naked Lunch (1991) with it's hallucinogenic & drug fuelled plot that gets very confused & has no big pay-off at the end either & the character of Edmund striking similarities to Peter Weller's character in Naked Lunch both visual & conceptual are not unnoticed. The script tries to set the events up as a mystery & some hallucinogenic drug plays a major role as the boundaries between fantasy & reality become blurred in some elaborate plan which just has the effect of the film going weird as you never really know what's going on & the script does a poor job of explaining itself as little resolved. The more I think about it the more the original The Wizard of Gore seems like a masterpiece compared to this.The 2007 The Wizard of Gore does actually look quite nice although it is set in the seedy sleazy underground world of the Los Angeles night life where everyone seems to have copious amounts of tattoo's, piercings & dress in fetish gear, unlike the 1970 The Wizard of Gore which was set very much in the real world the average person can relate too this one isn't. There's some style here with scenes mostly shot using neon lights although there are some seemingly random moments like the cross hatch grid that keeps flashing into view & distortion of background images for no apparent reason. I was disappointed with the gore here, most of Montag's tricks take place behind a literal smoke screen & little is seen, there's some blood splatter, a decapitation with a bear trap, some guts are pulled out, someone is burnt, someone is impaled on glass shards & rats heads are bitten off. One area where this one differs from the original is that there is lots of female nudity on show if that's your thing.Probably shot on a low budget this looks quite nice with decent production values & effects. The cast features some familiar faces including a barely recognisable Jeffrey Combs, Brad Douriff, the pretty Bijou Phillips with Crispin Glover as Montag in a really camp performance that makes the character just look silly rather than threatening or menacing.The Wizard of Gore is a low budget remake of a low budget film that didn't need or want a remake, in trying to make it substantially different it strays too far from the original's concepts & anyone who liked the original for what it was probably won't like this anywhere near as much.

Kip Pardue, Bijou Phillips, Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif and The Suicide Girls (!) star in the 2007 remake of "The Wizard Of Gore" as directed by Jeremy Kasten. While the box-art seems enticing – an intense Glover beckons you to join him amidst scantily clad females – the movie itself is rather flat and self-indulgent. Glover plays Motag The Magnificent, a bizarre magician who is fond of dismembering and torturing his volunteers to horrified audiences on a nightly basis. It's all fun and games in the crowd's eye, as each would-be victim emerges unharmed. However, when a young reporter by the name of Edmund Bigelow (Pardue) catches onto some crazy coincidences – namely, the participants turning up dead the next day in a fashion similar to their staged fate – the line between his reality and Montag's stage-show is blurred. Is Bigelow somehow responsible for their fates? Is Montag playing a game with him that he doesn't know about? Or is it all just a side-effect of some mind-expanding drugs?Kasten (whose previous credits are as thin as the movie's plot itself) tries to juice up a weak story with a bit of visual flare, but unfortunately wacky camera angles and color filters can't hide the lack of substance. The film is almost redeemed by its strong cast, though. Brad Dourif plays a creep well, and it serves his role appropriately. Following up "Hostel II," Bijou Phillips turns in one of her more likable roles, but it is Glover who truly steals the show. With his hilariously over-sized codpiece and Conan O'Brien-from-Hell hairstyle, it's hard to imagine he didn't know he was involved in a train-wreck, but he makes the best of things, hamming it up and his scenes are the best the film gets. Genre fans will appreciate some of the creative death scenes, although, the way they are presented (with some truly obvious and offensive CGI) kills any effectiveness whatsoever. The biggest problem, though, is the air of self-importance this film carries, especially considering how weak the story is. The bad attempt at mind-games – especially in the final act – kills any sense of enjoyment and strips the movie of at least earning the label of "enjoyable B-movie." Too pretentious for its own good and too nonsensical for what it attempts, "The Wizard Of Gore" is a messy failure, at best.At one point – somewhere in the final act – my wife turned to me and asked me if I "get this movie." The answer was "I think so," but the real question should have been "Are you enjoying it?" to which I would have answered a solid "no." "The Wizard Of Gore" doesn't have much to offer. It may confuse you into thinking it is actually a smart movie, but nothing could be further from the truth. The film is too amateurish to be convincing (think late-night HBO/Cinemax fare) and too pretentious to be enjoyed on the most basic level. I personally can't comment on how it compares to the original movie as I've never seen it, but that is irrelevant, since the movie – on its own merits – is one sorry piece of work.

The movie starts with the main character Ed, who writes a zine, stumbling all covered in blood into an Asian massage parlor to drop of copies of his zine to his friend Chong. He will tell us how he got to this point.He and his girlfriend played by the lovely Bijou Phillips go to some party. There he's given an ad for a magic show. Out of boredom they decide to go. The magic show features an introductory act by an unrecognizable Jeffrey Combs doing something repulsive. The main act is Montag who'll have a girl from the audience (a Suicide Girl) come on stage. There he kills them brutally and gorily while delivering some social criticism to the audience. Once the audience is utterly horrified and disgusted, lights go on and the girl is intact.Ed, who is bored by society in general and his subculture of different people, is mesmerized by the show. He keeps going again and again, which gives us a chance to see Suicide Girls torn to pieces. But he also investigates what is going on. He notices that the girls and audience are hypnotized or under the influence. From Chong he finds out about a drug that can cause those effects, the same drug used to turn people into zombies in Haiti. He also notices that Montag makes sure to shake the hand of every audience member as they arrive to the show.Ed becomes more and more obsessed with the magician and his act. Eventually he finds out through a friend that the stage girls do actually end up dying at some point in ways similar to Montag's act. But Ed is also getting ill, he sweats, his bones crack, he's constantly breathing into a paper bag to calm him, but his friends think there's something else in the bag.From here the story is somewhat predictable, as Ed descends into madness and reality and fantasy are combined, or rather, try to separate from his mind. The story here though is rather convoluted, even though you know what's coming.This movie failed to engage me. It has a couple of good things going for it: plenty of story, some good acting, good gore, some nudity, all of which should add up to a pretty decent horror flick. There's an interesting sense of time, or rather lack of it. It has a noir vibe while also being contemporary. Ed is an interesting character, at first. Well dressed, well-spoken, sophisticated. Brad Dourif as Chong is excellent as always.And yet it doesn't work out. I don't like the look of the movie or the camera work. Everything looks dreamy, not sharp, everything is filmed at a distance and the camera often is not straight but at an angle. One can't identify or empathize with any character. It's very odd that Montag is not featured more prominently. This is a horror movie without a villain. And Montag while acted idiosyncratically, is not convincing. His monologues are delivered as speeches to himself not an audience. Ultimately the story is more convoluted than it needs to be, giving you nothing to look forward to. This is another instance of a horror movie degenerating into a weak psychothriller.