I, Madman

1989 "Lose Yourself in a Good Book."
5.9| 1h29m| R| en
Details

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

Director

Producted By

Trans World Entertainment (TWE)

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Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable
Beanbioca As Good As It Gets
Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
cpu-4 The trailer made this flick look like fun - it seemed like I had stumbled on some forgotten 80s horror gem - but what a piece of crap it turned out to be! It sucks on so many levels, that while watching the movie, I was already looking forward to reading a couple of funny reviews on IMDb completely trashing it. However, even this turned out to be too much to ask.Who was the intended audience? The arty farty crowd will probably find it too stupid, while the average horror fans will be bored out of their minds by the pretentious arty crap and the complete lack of nudity and real gore. Perhaps it was for lonely women, who may identify with the annoying bookworm girl? Twilight for housewives? The script is very, very dumb, yet it seems to takes itself quite seriously... infuriating! This was made in 1989, before the advent of hipsters, but it pisses me off in a way that only hipsters tend to. Perhaps they will like this flick then. It has this kind of "ironic" half arsed pussy vibe over it, and for sure they will love the stop motion clay crap that shows up in the final scene to magically save the helpless bookworm girl and her pussy ass boyfriend. That's right, the flick ends with a shot of the stupid girl staring satisfied and romantically out of the window that the villain and the clay stop motion crap just crashed out of minutes before she was about to be killed.
Scott LeBrun "I, Madman" is an inspired, imaginative low budget horror gem, one that may well be overlooked considering it was released in a decade dominated by one slasher film after another. It's worth seeking out, as it has a neat premise, is better acted than a good deal of B movies, features some enjoyable visual effects, and comes up with an effective finish. The sometimes literate script is the work of David Chaskin ("A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge"), and in the directors' chair is Tibor Takacs of "The Gate" fame.The lovely Jenny Wright ("Near Dark"), an interesting actress who really should have been more of a star, is top billed here as Virginia, a book store employee and acting student who begins reading the pulp writings of an obscure author named Malcolm Brand. What she finds is that reading the lurid but compelling material somehow causes events from the book to be manifested in reality. The demented Brand, played by visual effects specialist Randall William Cook (whose credits in that capacity include "The Thing", "Ghost Busters", "Fright Night" '85, and the "Lord of the Rings" series) is then able to go about his life's work, which results in the deaths of several people.Any horror fan who gets tired of the "same old, same old" needs to give "I, Madman" a try, especially if they're an avid reader and believe in the power of the written word. It's gory at times, but never gratuitously so, and features an incredible creature creation, a "jackal boy". Wright is appealing in the lead, and Clayton Rohner ("April Fools' Day" '86, "The Relic") is likable as her weary boyfriend, a police detective. Cook is quite good as the antagonist; he really does get under your skin. Steven Memel as Lenny and Stephanie Hodge as Mona provide engaging supporting performances. The pacing is acceptable and the movie does deliver some great shocks. Overall, it deserves to be better known.It would make a good double feature with John Carpenters' "In the Mouth of Madness".Eight out of 10.
savagerocks This review is assuming you've seen the movie. In case you haven't a woman releases a murderer through reading his books. The killer becomes infatuated with the woman. This movie has a nice simple feel to it, it is graphic at times. There is a creepy atmosphere created with shadows. It's like a Grimm's fairy tale to the nth degree. There is some really good transitions to what she thinks she is seeing versus what she is really seeing. A small simple scary movie, no big name actors but, has a good story to pull it all together. Interesting idea that the killer fuses his victims facial features to his own face. The story uses the familiar police don't believe the woman scenario.
tedg The setup here is a typical fold. An actress has a day job in a book store. She reads horror books and imagines herself in them. One day, she comes across an author who, when writing, had the story and real life merge. In reading the books, they "come alive."Her actor and book friends (plus a pianist) are murdered to provide parts of the writers face. This is such a clever idea that it attracted me to dig out this old project. The writer even understood the redhead thing: the first murder is to get the red hair of an actress we see playing Desdemona. Natch, the boyfriend is a police detective assigned to the case.What we see is simply turning the crank, but when do poor production values bother kids? The idea is the thing. It isn't a folded gialli, instead a dim reference. But its better at root than "Stay Alive," a similarly folded kiddiething with which I saw this.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.