Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

tomgillespie2002 At a camp in the woods for gifted youngsters, a group of senior counsellors sit around a fire telling spooky stories. Max (Frederick Neumann), the eldest head counsellor, recalls the urban myth of Madman Marz, a notorious local drunk and brute, who butchered his family one night with an axe not too far from where the camp now lies. The locals hanged him from a tree and left his body for the crows, only to return the next day to find an empty noose. He will re-emerge if his name is spoken, and so cocky youngster Richie (Tom Candela) takes the bait and challenges Marz to show himself. As the various couples break off into the night in the hope of sex and fun, Richie notices a shadow in the woods and stays behind to investigate. Meanwhile, a hulk of a man starts to bump off the teens.The slasher genre produced a seemingly endless list of badly executed sex-and-murder-in-the-woods movies during the 1980s, all following a set formula, usually suffering from minimal cash injection and often made by directors never heard from again. As trashy as the majority of these movies tend to be, there's a morbid comfort to be had in their predictability, especially amongst horror fans. Just why I keep returning to the genre I know will ultimately disappoint is a question I asked myself at various points as I watched Joe Giannone's Madman, despite the film being one of the genre's better offerings, at least aesthetically speaking.Shadowy lighting and a subtle use of music to announce the arrival of Marz help the film drum up some atmospheric set-pieces, and a few gory moments offer the desired amount of blood and just a little in way of invention. But these highlights are too fleeting, and for the most part we are made to suffer through terrible dialogue, sex scenes filmed like soft-porn, and some utterly atrocious acting from its young cast. The main group of characters are even more annoying than those commonly found in these types of movies, especially T.P. (Tony Fish), a grating douchebag with a belt buckle displaying his nickname. In order to flesh out the running time, characters are forced to repeatedly make stupid decisions so they can wander endlessly through the woods in search of each other. For slasher enthusiasts only.

Mr_Ectoplasma "Madman" is essentially an early '80s retread of the summer camp slasher (done exponentially better by "Friday the 13th" and "The Burning" before it, and "Sleepaway Camp" after it). In the beginning of the film, a group of camp counselors and preteens are around a campfire— it's the week before Thanksgiving (who goes to camp in November?), and since the camp is shutting down, the counselors decide to tell the story of a local farmer named Madman Marz who hacked his family to death with an axe. One of the counselors decides it would be a good idea to call out his name to the surrounding woods, and lo and behold, when they come a'calling, he comes a'killin'.Hailed as a cult film by many fans, I'm halfway baffled as to why so many consider "Madman" to be as extraordinary as they do. It's not that the film suffers from being routine — that's expected from an '80s slasher epic— but there are a lot of other issues with it that leave something to be desired. The script, for one, is beyond hokey, and the villain himself is about the least scariest maniac I can recall on film— an ogreish redneck in overalls with a clearly prosthetic face? It just ain't scary, folks. Lackluster performances and truly indistinguishable characters don't help much either.The film does feature some really great photography at times, especially during the nighttime sequences in the woods, which make up the bulk of the film, but incredibly dodgy editing and an abrasive synth score detract from the moodiness of the proceedings. Even the darkness of the upstate New York forest and the musty cabins of the camp fail to establish a solid sense of atmosphere here, and the film suffers for it. There are a couple of gruesome killings, but by and large even the murder sequences are anticlimactic. Perhaps the film's most indubitable sin, however, is that it flashes the murder sequences of each character across the screen in the opening campfire scene. I mean, obviously we know that most of them are going to die anyway, but why strip any potential surprise from a virtually incredulous film?It's not that I have a bias to the summer camp/backwoods slasher either, nor did I want to dislike this film. There are dozens of films that follow this thread which I am a fan of: "The Burning," "Friday the 13th," "Just Before Dawn," "The Final Terror"— the difference with those films though is that, despite their formalities, they excel in other areas and are able to distinguish themselves because of it. "Madman" doesn't do that; the most it has to offer is some neat nighttime cinematography, a ridiculous hot tub sex scene, and perhaps the most absurd theme song in film history. Highlights: the eerie silhouette of Madman in the tree (as depicted on the 2003 Anchor Bay cover art), and the downbeat ending. 4/10.

trek79 As a kid, growing up in the 80's in Australia with a Beta video player, I was quite limited in my movie watching range; I had films such as The Evil Dead 1&2, House, Return of the Living Dead, a range of Feldman/Haim movies, as well as River Phoenix, and Cannibal Apocalypse (starring John Saxon, known as Nancy's Dad in Nightmare on Elm Street) but I also had this little gem, Madman.Now by todays standards this may be quite laughable, but this and another movie called Bad Dreams (starring Richard Lynch) I considered up there with Freddy and Jason.So before you call this film crap, I ask you to consider the perspective of a 7 years old kid, who had not been exposed to the CG revolution.

Toronto85 The movie begins around a campfire with an older man telling a scary story about Madman Marz, a psychopath who killed his family years ago in the area. Here's the kicker - he escaped capture and legend says if you call out his name in the woods, he'll hunt you down and kill you. Of course, one of the happy campers yells out "Madman Marz" and it isn't long before all hell breaks loose. After a camper goes missing, our main camp counsellor characters go out and search for him one after the other. And as per rules of slasher films, they are murdered when they go out in the woods leaving us with a remaining female counsellor.So the plot sounds a bit similar to Friday the 13th, and it is (except for the legend of Marz). Madman is an above average backwoods slasher, it's flaws are some unrealistic things such as why are their only ten kids at the camp...and why, after seeing shadows of a large creepy guy, would the characters go out into the woods and into Marz's creepy deserted house? And about those characters; They seemed so out of place for this movie. The counsellors looked to be in their thirties playing supposed twenty year olds and most of the campers were older teenagers who looked way too old for camp. The gore is decent, I may have watched a cut version though. We get some beheadings and some broken necks, but none of the gore is too over the top. What I liked about Madman was the use of shadows and the glimpses of Marz that were shown just before he'd attack. I thought that was done well. There was of course a big chase scene like in almost every horror movie. This one involved Marz chasing Ellie through the entire woods and back to the campgrounds where she hid in a refrigerator. I thought it was pretty cool. There were some awkward moments like the "jacuzzi sex scene", the cheesiest music ever used in a slasher, and some of the interactions between the counsellors and the campers. The acting wasn't good at all from pretty much everyone. But while it doesn't provide the higher quality of The Burning or Friday the 13th, Madman is an enjoyable camp slasher film that should be seen by every horror fan at least once.7/10