Madman (1982)
** (out of 4)
Minor slasher has a group of kids and their councilors in the woods telling scary stories when one is told about Madman Marz, a deranged farmer who killed his wife and kids with an axe. Before the night is over Marz is called out of his cabin to start chopping people up one by one. This film has gathered a small cult following over the past few years and it's easy to see why because there is some good stuff here but overall the movie just doesn't work well enough to put it along side such classics like Friday THE 13TH and THE BURNING. What does work is a very good killer and it's somewhat of a shame that he was never brought back for any sequels. The visual look of him is quite good and it perfectly captures the mood of the story being told at the start of the movie. Another good segment is the start of the film when his backstory is being told. This small sequence is qutie good and actually manges to build some nice atmosphere. We get some interesting kills as well but the biggest problem for me is the pacing of the film, which is all over the place. There never seems to be any real pace built as everything just seems to be falling over itself and never really flowing together. This eventually makes the film seem a lot longer than it actually is and there are some very (unintentional) funny scene like one loving making sequence in a hot tub that just falls flat on its face. Seeing Gaylen Ross, from DAWN OF THE DEAD, is always fun but neither her nor the rest of the cast adds too much to the film. One more thing that does work is the fact that the filmmakers don't play by any rules, which leads to characters being killed off and those you'd expect to survive end up being slaughtered early on. It terms of a slasher this movie isn't too bad but there's still a lot of work that needed to be done with it in order for it to become a classic.
