9. Wizard Of Gore (1970)
NOT to be confused with the dreadful 2007 remake, the original Wizard of Gore is the piece de resistance in the HG Lewis canon. It is an utterly loopy film which features Montag the Magician whose stage tricks are very different than the average magician. The words "Grand Guignol" come to find as Montag makes his volunteers (always pretty young women) swallow swords, take a spike through the brain, have their guts punched out with an industrial press and he rummages through their disembowelled guts with glee. This is apparently all magic, the women return to normal after these hideous deeds. However, a short while after they leave the theatre, they collapse and die of their injuries. For some stupid reason, a daytime television hostess called Sherry invites Montag onto her show. She is suspicious about Montag but wants him to come on her show to do a fire trick. Now this is silly for several reasons. She obviously knows Montag's extremely gruesome tricks. How the heck could they be shown on daytime TV? Especially since he wants to hypnotise the audience into immolating themselves! Sherry's boyfriend Jack ends the spell by pushing Montag into the fire. And then there is the ending. Jack reveals himself to be Montag and tears into Sherry's guts saying that the movie and everything in it was his illusion. Sherry just laughs despite her disembowelment and says that no, the whole thing has been her illusion. She tells Montag/Jack he is her creation and he must go back on stage and do it all again. We see Montag on the stage and Sherry whispers to Jack that she thinks Montag is a phoney. Completely deranged gore capers from HG Lewis which features his trademark terrible acting. With Ray Sager as Montag, the only scary things about his hammy performance are his eyebrows and the fact that his hair is different shades of grey in every different scene due to the variation in the amount of talcum powder used. There is also the trademark animal innards, the utterly dreadful direction and gravity defying leaps of logic. For instance, what is the deal with Montag dropping bodies down a shoot? The film does not transcend its ultra low budget. It looks cheap and tawdry the whole way through. I am not sure if Lewis intended to make a funny film but all of the above mashes together to make a screamingly hilarious piece of high camp. Unlike the other films on this list, you laugh at the film and not with it. But it deserves its place in the list to wave the flag for the Grindhouse posse.