1981 was a banner year for slasher cinema.
Michael Myers got into the franchise game with Halloween II. It turns out Jason Voorhees wasn’t dead at the bottom of Crystal Lake and he picked up right where his mom left off in Friday the 13th Part 2. And beloved one-off slasher classics such as My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler, and The Burning all took their turns staining the silver screen red in ‘81.
One other slasher film from that year has managed to make a modest name for itself in the intervening years – Joe Giannone’s Madman. This other, other camp-set slasher of ‘81 actually shares some fun history with The Burning. Believe it or not, Madman was conceived as a Cropsey film and the production had to tweak itself when they caught wind that another Cropsey-based horror film had just beaten them to the production punch.
So while The Burning got to keep Cropsey, Madman gifted us with Madman Marz – a backwoods brute with a frizzed out mane of white hair and his own set of facial scars.
It’s the sheer simplicity of Madman that keeps me coming back to it. And dare I say, what has made the fanbase so fond of it over the years. Slasher films have a reputation among critics and the wider public as low rent, trashy, exploitative, and artless. Well, some of that is true – but that’s why we love them.
The iconography and language of the slasher film has been referenced, parodied, and mocked for decades; sometimes lovingly by fellow genre fans, sometimes quite the opposite.
When I think of the “slasher movie,” a few obvious titles pop into my head. Friday the 13th. Halloween. A Nightmare on Elm Street. But always right behind them is Madman, a film that’s home to everything appealing about slashers wrapped up into one simple package.
The film opens with the story of Madman Marz told to a group of camp counselors and staff around a crackling fire in the dead of night. I’m sorry, but I’m a sucker for this stuff. More horror movies need scary campfire storytime.
Shot on location in Southampton, Long Island, Madman takes place exclusively at night. The darkness swallows the woods surrounding the cabins and is constantly aglow with eerie, steely blue moonlight. A mild wind is ever-present, giving the woods an even more unsettling feel. The hapless victims may as well be on, well, Mars for how isolated they feel. The film builds up quite the potent atmosphere without much to work with thanks to the admirable work by cinematographer James Lemmo. It’s a dark fairy tale by way of your quintessential camp slasher.
To some, Marz may not be the most fascinating slasher villain as he’s just another play on the backwoods killer. I love the guy. He stalks and creeps and roars and howls. He’s a revenant summoned by the irresponsible campers meddling where they shouldn’t belong and invoking his name. Think proto-Victor Crowley. He’s constantly backlit by the moon, he hides in trees like Pumpkinhead, and he loves lopping off heads.
The characters aren’t all that memorable, but they get the job done by infusing the film with that laid back, hangout vibe that makes early ’80s slashers so special. They’re mostly horny (the hot tub scene provides the biggest unintentional laughs of the film), mostly a little stupid, but not hateful or unlikeable. We even have Gaylen Ross from Dawn of the Dead as our Final(ish) Girl!
The kills in Madman are respectively above average and decently gory. Nothing quite like The Burning’s slaughterfest, mind you, but it’s not lacking for any spilled blood or mean-spiritedness. Highlights include a decapitation by way of truck hood and a gnarly hanging kill.
If we’re talking “slasher franchises that never were,” I do wonder about the alternate timeline where we would have gotten at least two more Madman flicks. In truth, however, I’m glad Madman is a one-off. It’s a scruffy little jewel that represents all of the tropes and clichés fans admire and celebrate about the slasher subgenre. It’s about as no-frills as a slasher film can get.
There may be better, more accomplished slashers films from the era out there, but there’s something about the slasher film purity of Madman that just feels like home.
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