I, Madman

1989

Action / Drama / Fantasy / Horror / Thriller

7
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 67% · 6 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 40% · 1K ratings
IMDb Rating 5.9/10 10 3711 3.7K

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Plot summary

A bookshop clerk starts seeing the disfigured killer from her favorite 1950s pulp novels come to life and start killing people around her.


Uploaded by: FREEMAN
April 01, 2016 at 10:42 PM

Director

Top cast

Clayton Rohner as Richard
Jenny Wright as Virginia
Bruce Wagner as Pianist
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
648.24 MB
1280*694
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds 1
1.35 GB
1920*1040
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds 2

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by BandSAboutMovies 8 / 10

I love this movie

How is this movie forgotten? It boasts a director whose other movie is well-known - Tibor Takács also made The Gate - and it straddles the line between the fantastic, a slasher and giallo all at once without falling apart. It also has artistic pretensions, as it's based on Julio Cortázar's La Continuidad de Los Parques (The Continuity of the Parks), a short story that is at once three stories that all are aware of one another in a place where fiction meets meta-fiction.

Man, I love this movie. I want you to love it, too.

Virginia (Jenny Wright from Near Dark) has become obsessed with Malcolm Brand's (Randall William Cook, a special effects man whose career stretches from Laserblast to Peter Jackson's Tolkein films) book I, Madman. Within this story within the story, the deformed Dr. Kessler (also Cook) is attempting to win over actress Anna Templar by killing people and adding their faces to his own.

The more our heroine reads the book, the more she realizes that it is real and that Kessler has entered our world. Virginia is exactly the kind of lady who would be content to sit in the back of a musty used book store, reading her way through seedy pulp novels and gothic horror fiction and dreaming of being part of those worlds until she truly is.

Bruce Wagner, who plays the piano player, used to be married to Rebecca De Mornay. He wrote Maps to the Stars, the book that Cronenberg based his movie on, as well as the graphic novel and TV series Wild Palms, co-produced and helped write Tracey Ullman's State of the Union, has a story credit on A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and wrote Paul Bartel's Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. Even cooler, after interviewing Carlos Castaneda for Details magazine in 1994, Wagner became part of the mystic inner circle of the shaman, using the name of Lorenzo Drake.

Writer David Chaskin was also behind A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 and The Curse, which has Ovidio G. Assonitis as an executive producer and Lucio Fulci as an associate producer and special optical effects designer.

This is one strange movie that sadly no one really remembers. It doesn't have the body count that some slasher fans look for and it may be too dream logic for many - the ending is completely out of reality and beautifully poetic - and it may honestly be just too much a piece of artwork when it should have been commerce.

Maybe this isn't a movie that everyone can love and that's just fine. However, I do recommend you watch it and become part of its world. Just watch out. If reality is truly a continuity of parks, Kessler could become part of your world.

Reviewed by poolandrews 8 / 10

"It makes Stephen King look like Mother Goose." Surprisingly good slasher.

I, Madman starts in a hotel during the 50's. A guest named Dr. Kessler (special make-up effects man Randall William Cook) leaves the building as the front desk clerk (Raf Nazario as Rafael Nazario) receives a phone call from the room next to Dr. Kessler's complaining about animal noises, the manager (Bob Frank) goes to investigate & is attacked by a monstrous half man, half jackal creature which Dr. Kessler had created. Virginia Clayton (Jenny Wright) stops reading her horror novel entitled 'Much of Madness, More of Sin' by Malcolm Brand at this point. Virginia works in a used bookstore & enjoys reading, recently she has discovered Much of Madness, More of Sin & has been engrossed. The next day at work Virginia tries to find the other novel by the same author called 'I, Madman'. Virginia has no luck but when she returns home she finds a copy waiting for her outside her apartment door, she starts to read as the book once again features Dr. Kessler who is madly in love with an actress named Anna Templar (Jenny Wright again) who doesn't return the sentiment saying that he is ugly. As an offering to Anna, Dr. Kessler slices off his facial features with a scalpel & starts to collect various bits 'n' pieces from unwilling donors that he grafts on his own face. Of course this is all fiction & the book goes on to describe him brutally murdering a woman & scalping her. The next day Virginia sees a report in a local newspaper which tells of the murder of an actress & one of Virginia's friends named Colette Berkowitz (Michelle Jordan), after this event & a face to face meeting with Kessler before he kills & slices the ears off a pianist (Bruce Wagner) who lives near her, Virginia is convinced that the character of Dr. Kessler is responsible & comes to life when she reads I, Madman. Virginia's boyfriend Detecitve Richard Channing (Clayton Rohner) is on the case but has a hard time believing Virginia's story about character's from a horror novel coming to life & committing murder's, as the murder's of people connected with Virginia continue in the same vein as I, Madman she realises that the novel ends with Anna, whom she think's she is in reality, having her heart cut out by the deranged Kessler...

Directed by Tibor Takacs I was pleasantly surprised by just how good I, Madman was, I'd never previously heard of it but I think I've uncovered a bit of a hidden gem. The script by David Chaskin has a lot more depth than you might expect & offers a little more originality than most. At heart I, Madman is a slasher but it tries to do something different with the premise & tries to stay away from the clichés which was both refreshing & something I wasn't expecting. It does a nice job of blurring the lines between the fantasy world of the novels & the reality in which Virginia lives. How a character from a novel can suddenly become real isn't explained that well but the story felt solid still & it didn't really matter to me that much as I, Madman just seemed work. The killer's motives are actually quite good & have at least some thought put into them, his connection with Virginia & why he focuses his attentions on her is also believable & not just coincidental like her being in the wrong place at the wrong time, there's a method to all the madness in I, Madman. It takes a while to get going but I never found it boring or felt my interest was waining, the characters are pretty strong & enough happens to satisfy & entertain. There isn't much blood or gore but what's here is effective & quite brutal looking as Kessler runs around killing people with his straight razor, there's a scalping, someone has his ears sliced off, someone's lips are cut off too & a gruesome scene where Dr. Kessler reveals his face early on minus his nose, ears & lips. There is a monster in I, Madman as well brought to life with stop-motion animation which looks impressive considering the budget, I believe the people involved in making I, Madman had enthusiasm & cared about the finished product which goes a long way. Technically the film is very good & well made, director Takacs manages to create some really good sequences especially the ominous moodily lit & shot murder set-pieces which are more effective than they have any right to be. The acting is very strong throughout which also helps give I, Madman a certain credibility that other cheap horror/slashers simply don't have. Overall I didn't think I would but I actually rather liked I, Madman, don't like that title though. A bit of a sleeper & I highly recommend I, Madman to horror fans, as for everyone else I still think it's a worthwhile film & definitely worth watching.

Reviewed by Woodyanders 8 / 10

Enjoyable and original horror sleeper

Sweet and intelligent bookstore clerk Virginia (a fine and sympathetic performance by the lovely Jenny Wright of "Near Dark" fame) obsessively reads tacky old 50's pulp novels. Virginia's fixation on the morbid writings of the mysterious Malcolm Brand (well played with maximum creepy menace by ace special effects artist William Randall Cook, who also did the excellent and grotesque make-up) enables Brand to return to life in our world as a vicious and horribly disfigured scalpel-wielding psychopath. Alas, Virginia can't convince anyone that Malcolm is real and coming after her in order to win over her love. Ably directed by Tibor Takacs, with a supremely eerie and misty atmosphere, a clever and imaginative script by David Chaskin, a steady pace, a fair amount of grisly, but never too gross or excessive gore, polished cinematography by Bryan England, a wonderfully wholehearted affection for trashy 50's pulp fiction, some nice touches of dark humor, a nifty briefly glimpsed stop-motion animation monster, a spirited shuddery score by Michael Hoenig, good use of the gritty Los Angeles locations, and a tense and thrilling off-the-wall conclusion, this neat little B movie makes for a welcome and refreshing departure from the glut of run-of-the-mill slasher fare that was fashionable in the 80's. This film further benefits from sound acting from a capable cast: Wright registers strongly as an appealing and attractive heroine, Clayton Rohner is likable and credible as Virginia's amiable, but skeptical detective boyfriend Richard, Cook rates highly as one extremely scary and hideous villain, plus there solid supporting turns by Stephanie Hodge as Virginia's brash gal pal Mona, Michelle Jordan as ill-fated aspiring redhead actress Colette, and Murray Rubin as sleazy publisher Sidney Zeit. A hugely fun and worthwhile low-budget fright flick.

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