Synopsis
Lose Yourself in a Good Book.
A bookshop clerk starts seeing the disfigured killer from her favorite 1950s pulp novels come to life and start killing people around her.
1989 Directed by Tibor Takács
A bookshop clerk starts seeing the disfigured killer from her favorite 1950s pulp novels come to life and start killing people around her.
Lectures Diaboliques, Sola in quella casa, Sola... in quella casa, Lecturas diabólicas, Hardcover, Безумная, С твърда корица, Я, божевільний, 하드카바, 疯狂之人, Hardcover w sztywnej okładce, Histórias de Terror aka Prefácio da Morte
Horror, the undead and monster classics Thrillers and murder mysteries Intense violence and sexual transgression Gothic and eerie haunting horror Gory, gruesome, and slasher horror Chilling experiments and classic monster horror Creepy, chilling, and terrifying horror Terrifying, haunted, and supernatural horror Show All…
Dispatches the usual slasher tropes for a fantastical, lurid literary mixture equal parts gothic fiction and seedy pulp novel, devilishly galavanting right off the page and onto your screen courtesy of that special (and undervalued) stylistic Tibor Tikács touch.
Super fun and often overlooked after an overload of nightmare fiction maniac movies, I, Madman is just different enough and far more daring than one would think, exploiting its scuzzy pulp side with a true gothic sense, some great makeup effects, a totally dynamite villain, bookstore heavy setting, one of my all time favorite posters, and the very missed Jenny Wright.
This is a gem, absolutely worthy of its cult status and one of my go to popcorn munchers easily watchable on…
#SlasherSaturday
I had never heard of this before (or anyone in the production) but it was surprisingly good. I loved the production design from the start—framing, lighting shadows, camera angles and a classic horror score—I thought everything came together really well. (The stop motion elements stuck out a bit, but aside from that it’s a great looking feature.). The mystery novel / Dr Frankenstein monster is a pretty fun premise overall. I read that Randall William Cook designed the makeup for the film, then convinced the director to let him wear it himself for the film. Well done. Overall really enjoyable slasher.
Degrees of Kevin Bacon: 2
1. Jenny Wright and Christian Slater in Young Guns II
2. Christian Slater and Kevin Bacon in Murder In The First
What an absolutely delightfully overlooked gem!! Like really! I remember seeing the VHS cover in my video store, but I never got around to watching it until now! It’s so surreal and that’s always a winning quality in my book. I love the idea of the killer coming to life in a book that may or may not be a work of fiction. It’s got just enough of a nod to A Nightmare on Elm Street without ever feeling like it copies or even leans too far toward that movie.
The killer himself is quite grotesque and that’s always a winner for me, but it’s the scenes where the characters find themselves in their own “ever so slightly” alternate realities that…
#SlasherSaturday
What a weird twisted treat! A vintage Hollywood slasher with a Freddy feel, although the nightmares are taking place when she's reading instead of sleeping. In many ways it also belongs in the realm of dreamland and supernatural horror.
The overused trope of constant gaslighting from all sides - as realistic as that may be! - led me to deduct a star only because those conversations took up a lot of screentime unnecessarily... They're just too typical to be interesting I think - No matter whether it's fiction or in real life!
I thought that the ending was going to be a predictable one but I am glad that they had the conviction to stay with a whacked-out one...…
Stormy nights and lurid frights abound as pulp horror prose bleeds into reality, clawing its way off the page and into your life.
As a fan of Tibor Takács' cult classic, The Gate, I'm not sure how I never got around to this. I love the aesthetic here, with the blend of old-school pulp horror and 80s slasher sensibilities. It's also the third film I've seen, in just the last week or so, that feels like an extended episode of Tales from the Crypt, and I automatically love anything with a stop-motion creature in it, especially when that creature looks ripped out of The Gate. So glad I finally got around to this.
#SLASHERSATURDAY
First off, the premise is dope. Things do feel mostly original and overall, I found it pretty entertaining. I was expecting a more straightforward slasher, so it was a surprised to see some of those fantastical elements. We also get some interesting stop motion in those final moments and the effects/kills were decent/fun. Plus the killer looked pretty gnarly. A good leading performance too and nothing too gory, yet still felt brutal on the slashin side. 6.5/10📖
This was so much fun. It’s always good when a slasher turns out to be better than what I anticipated. The concept here was a cool idea that I instantly connected. A book reader who couldn’t keep a book down, so relatable. The atmosphere and the vibes this movie provides were amazing and eerie. The lead character played wonderfully by Jenny Wright was very interesting. A character that I could connect with and root for, which is usually not a regular thing in majority of the slashers. The main villain was very exciting and messed up, his character gave the much needed tension and anxiety to me, the story and our lead character. The kills were awesome and the…
A woman obsessed with horror novels finds a story that ends up being a frightening tale of non fiction. As her obsession grows her reality twists into a terrifying world where a mysterious and crazed doctor is stalking and killing women. No one's body parts are safe as the doctor kills and collects the parts to create a shocking new identity.
A supernatural slasher with gothic vibes I Madman is an engaging story that keeps your interest peaked along the way. There are dream sequences, good and laughable SFX, a creepy atmosphere and an interesting killer. Somewhere between Dr Giggles and Darth Vader with his helmet off. That sounds silly but he's actually pretty scary looking.
Some of the dialogue…
Other than Monster Squad and The Goonies, Hungarian born director Tibir Takâcs was responsible for the two other movies I watched most frequently growing up, The Gate and The Gate II: Trespassers. Sandwiched between them was this gothically-tinged pulp fest and it’s probably my favorite of his films!
Upon release it didn’t quite make the same sort of splash as The Gate did, but I certainly remember it’s creepy VHS box art at the video store. Over time it’s earned and maintained a fairly decent cult audience, and rightfully so! It sets itself apart from your average slasher movie by not sticking to the usual Friday the 13th or Halloween formula, instead choosing to root itself in the classic horror…
In a Los Angeles rich with stormy nights, a woman sits alone next to a rain tattooed window. She reads a pulp horror novel written by a psychopath. Thunder rattles. A lightning machine off camera bursts, strobing new contours and razor edged shadows around her room. With every word she reads she opens the door between fiction and reality.
It is the end of the 80s, the final sleepy yawn of the last great horror deluge, and director Tibor Takács take on kid-friendly horror has already delivered a surprise hit in “The Gate”. Next he leans into a work of meta-80s goth horror monster fiction that, while sporting some of the trappings of the decade, is really more old school…
Going to TRY and explain how much I LOVE that I forgot to review this, completely forgetting it even existed. The story is, I bought a VHS to go with my media titles and felt so much like I had already seen it in the best possible way, so many great outfits and used to Jenny Wright's sort of non face in Near Dark it really IS this parallel, meta version here! On in the background for what feels like years, so soothing. This is the best sleepy drug of all time, the feeling of being locked inside a dream but you are entirely too weighted down with soft blankets and penguin plushies to try and escape. (Escape sounds way…
Rec by Child of Chaos Jamie
letterboxd.com/forgotten78/
Challenge my reality here
boxd.it/cmQoM
I always like to talk about how I don't care about certain elements in horror like sexual assault and extreme violence, even on animals because it is fake. However, I do know that is not always 100% true. There is a story I've shared a few times I don't feel like typing out again, go read my Last House on the Left remake review for it.
So the cinema we watch can effect our reality. We may not manifest a killer, but we may manifest a trauma. We can also create an echo chamber where we feed toxic ideas we have. I.E. the edgelord who watches racist stuff…