October Horror Challenge - Wizard of Gore (2007)

   

Synopsis

Montag the Magnificent is a shocking magician who seemingly kills audience members on stage. The trick is that the beautiful ladies survive. That is until the wind up dead days later with wounds resembling their on stage death...

Review

I grabbed this one on DVD a few months ago because I'd never seen it and heard it was a remake that held up. The fact I've always had a thing for alt chicks and the cover advertised the Suicide Girls, didn't hurt. As a millennial that's always been into alt-chicks, I'm quite familiar with them and used to be a big fan. Honestly the SG are probably the best part of this movie. There are a lot of hot naked goth girls. Unfortunately all the scenes with them involve sleaze and misogyny (though given the title and lineage of the film, that shouldn't be shocking). The flick references The Serpent and the Rainbow and shares some elements with that Wes Craven flick. Now on to the cast. 

Kip Pardue is our modern noir lead. He's a trust fund kid and pretentious as Hell. His performance is fine, I suppose. It's not memorable and you could probably replace him with any reasonably attractive pretentious white guy and the film would be the same. Bijou Philips plays his love interest, Maggie. She does the best with what she has and I appreciate that she calls out the films main issue, it's misogyny. Crispin Glover plays Montag and isn't on screen as much as you'd expect. His character is greasy and misogynistic and chews up scenery in the right way. Brad Dourif plays Dr. Chong which is problematic. While he definitely plays to Asian mystic stereotypes, the character is an American veteran with a shady past, rather than Dourif in straight up yellow face. The character is definitely memorable. Jeffrey Combs plays the Geek. Won't say too much about the character, but he's also quite memorable.

Despite everything wrong with it, I didn't hate this one and don't regret snagging a copy for my collection. There are some interesting visuals and I dig the noir vibes. Plus there are hot naked goth girls. Not that I recommend it, but if you want to watch it's on Tubi.

Your Game

Honestly not really sure how to add elements of this one to your game. You could definitely do some interesting stuff with tetrodotoxin, especially if you want something fantastic but are playing in a non-magical setting. Also, I think the social scene of the flick would fit right at home in a World of Darkness or dark urban fantasy game.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026

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Pretentious and misogynistic