"Madman"(1983)d/Joe Giannone

"If you say his name above a whisper out in the woods...he'll come for you.And if he comes for you,HE'LL GET YOU."
Around a campfire at North Sea Cottages,a retreat for gifted children,some counselors are chilling the blood of a few of the kids with awful vocal renditions of scary folk songs when Max(Carl Fredericks)grips the gathering in fear with the tale of a farmer who once lived not too far from their campsite,a brutal drunk with the strength of an ox who abused his wife and kids,before going crackers,killing them and wandering into the local watering hole and ordering a drink,slamming the bloody axe onto the bar.When the townspeople discovered his gory deeds,ten of the men dragged him out,slashing his face with his own axe,and hanging him from a tree.The next morning,the farmer and his family's bodies have all disappeared.So the legend begins.The hulking giant of a backwoods maniac lurks just out of view in the forest,and anyone who speaks his name above a whisper,will end up beheaded by his axe.Of course,one of the counselors,a snotty-looking kid from New York(isn't it always?)thinks Max's tale is hilarious,mocks the farmer out loud,and chucks a rock through a window in his abandoned farmhouse,condemning everyone involved to a grue-stained death at the blade of his heavy axe.

Marz could have gotten his swing on right here,and spared us forty brutal minutes of forgettable struggling actor-types.
The counselors,packing up for a break,are unaware of the forthcoming vengeance,save for snotty-little Richie who lags behind,inadvertently discovering Marz's homestead in the process.Madman wanders down into town,pulling his axe from a stump,Excalibur-style, after two men can't budge the headchopper.He quickly dispatches the cook,Dippy(!)with a throat-slashing,as Betsy(Dawn of the Dead's own Gaylen Ross,credited here as Alexis Dubin) and TP,her former beau, share a sexy whirlpool together.Whether TP is hung enough to sate Betsy in the tub,he most certainly is once Marz slips a noose around his neck and hangs him like a pinata minutes later.He then 86es the other counselors,one by one, with well-placed chops to the neck,and even decapites one by jumping down upon a car hood!Score!As the mist clears,Betsy is the last counselor left to face the murderous scar-faced bumpkin,who hangs her on a hook in the basement of his farmhouse,but not before she knocks over a candle,setting the place ablaze.Max,who had been conveniently away from the mayhem for the length of the picture after opening up the can of psycho-worms with his campfire story,drives back to camp where he finds the Big Apple smartass,Richie,in a state of delirious shock,repeating over and and over again that Madman Marz is real.

"That's what I get for hiding in a refrigerator!"
A sociopathic axe-chop above others of the ilk,"Madman" delivers inventive,grisly deaths,oozes creepy atmosphere(especially in the campfire/backstory sequence),and offers up an ornery hulkish woodsman with a taste for murder,played by Paul Ehlers,that you'll not soon forget.I remember speeding home the Thorn EMI vhs the day it was released,eager to screen it with my blood-hungry buddies,and not being disappointed in the least with the finished product.You can imagine my happiness when Anchor Bay finally released a beautiful print of this late-night classic on dvd years later.With Halloween right around the corner,cue this sleeper up and be prepared for some genuine chills,or if you're brave enough,wander out into the upstate NY woods,and call out the name of Madman Marz.He's on MySpace friends list,so I'll just send him an e-mail,if I feel so inclined.
Three out of four B.W.'s

"The Chooper/Blood Shack"(1971)

Ray Dennis Steckler,of "Rat Pfink a Boo Boo" and "The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" fame,directed this poop-a-thon under his favorite moniker Wolfgang Schmidt(filmgoers must've mistaken this snoozer as a forgotten piece of torture propaganda from the interment camps at the time)in 1971 somewhere in a remote southwestern dust bowl.If his position as one of the most inept filmmakers of all time was ever in question,one mere viewing of this boring celluloid turd will do the trick for ANYONE.I'm pretty sure Steckler had a lot of footage of his then wife,Carolyn Brandt,his two dirty kids,and a banal local rodeo lying around when he was struck with a z-grade epiphany...why not piece together a horror movie around it?Brilliant.It seems there's this 150 year old dilapidated shack in the middle of nowhere that Carolyn Brandt(showing her acting chops playing...herself) happens to have dibs on,probably one of the fringe benefits of her previous appearances in late '60s no-budget nudie flicks,apparently a lucrative piece of dusty real estate cursed by indians and lusted after by local property buyer,"Tim Foster".He never quite purveys why he wants the blood shack,he just knows he wants it and it becomes painfully obvious he'll do ANYTHING to get it before too long...Luckily for Ms. Brandt who spends the entire film talking to herself in echo-laden voice over,"Daniel" is in her employment as caretaker of the sanguinary shed,and from the looks of his wardrobe,which usually consists of a filthy pair of jeans and shirt that's three sizes too small(when he's not shirtless,which is even more terrifying),she's not paying the poor guy very much.Daniel doesn't do much save for barking at curious thrill-seekers who get too close to the shack,"The Chooper'll git ya!",and shooing the two dirty kids from playing with broken furniture outside.Before too long a skeevy looking blonde shows up,abandoning her boyfriend,ignoring Daniel's barking,and deciding to spend the night on a ratty mattress inside the blood shack after stripping down to her bra and panties,oblivious to the rash she may get from touching anything in the one room hovel.The Chooper gets her.

One of the scarier moments outside the "Blood Shack".
The Chooper,a vengeful Indian god,is dressed entirely in black,wielding a Civil War sword,and hopping out in front of his victims,giving a blood-curdling "AAAAAAHHHHHHH!" before stabbing them with the sword repeatedly,and looking like one of those novelty birds that dip their beaks into a glass of water so popular in the seventies, while removing them from their miserable lives.
Dirty Dan discovers the bodies in the morning and quickly burys them so Ms. Brandt can take the two little dirt merchants to the local rodeo,where they meet "Peanuts the Pony"(even the horse looks a little embarrassed to be seen in this picture) for a good chunk of the film's running time.In fact,she takes them TWICE.
Mercifully,around the sixty-five minute mark,Daniel is attacked by the Chooper outside the Blood Shack,as he jumps down from the roof(!) and goosesteps/limps screaming after the terrified caretaker in circles around the shack,mortally injuring him before Carolyn shows up to brain him with a shovel,revealing...it can't be...Tim Foster.He's been killing people all along to scare Brandt into selling the property to him,and he'd have succeeded if it wasn't for Stecklers two filthy meddling kids...yeah,it DOES kinda play like a bad Scooby Doo episode minus the Great Dane and the Mystery Machine.As Daniel dies in Brandt's arms he mentions that Tim isn't the Chooper,he's not 150 years old.(And we had him pegged as an illiterate,dirty piece of dust bowl trash.Boy did he make us eat our words,eh?)And that the Chooper WAS out there and he WOULD git you.B.W. note:The Chooper wasn't actually out there,and we were spared from ever enduring a sequel,thankfully.I also doubt I'd even recommend this film to my worst enemies,knowing they'd die a horribly slow and painful death via boredom from a singular viewing,but if you like the crappiest scare fare,you might actually get some laughs out of it.But don't say I didn't warn you.The Chooper WILL bore you,and Ah know it!
Zero B.W.'s

A Tribute to the World's Greatest Sinner,Timothy Agoglia Carey

‘What I want I gonna get and no dirty Yonkee from swell country is gonna take it away from me!’-Ulysses(Tim Carey),"Bayou/Poor White Trash"(1961)
Easily one of the greatest method character actors of all time,the late Timothy Agoglia(!)Carey left behind a legacy of memorable B-movie villain characterizations,a play (The Insect Trainer)about a deadly fart,and one of the most original,underrated,independent films ever made,"The World's Greatest Sinner".He spent his cinematic career scenery-chewing and upstaging co-stars at every juncture,which hurt his memorable body of work in the long run,being passed up in Coppola's "Godfather" trilogy after shooting Coppola with a gun filled with blanks that he'd pulled out unexpectedly from a lunch box during a meeting with the film's producers(one can only imagine what Carey would have brought to the screen as Luca Brasi),Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs"(the script of said film partially DEDICATED to him,Harvey Keitel,executive producer,eventually snubbed him in the Lawrence Tierney "Joe" role,because Carey was unfamiliar with Keitel(!)),and being cut out of Coppola's "Apocalpyse Now" as a marine who petted and talked to his dogs' fleas(!!).Always an amazing,unforgettable presence on camera,Timothy was a favorite of Stanley Kubrick(The Killing,Paths of Glory),John Cassavetes(The Killing of a Chinese Bookie,Minnie and Moskowitz)and Francis Ford Coppola,discovering Frank Zappa,who scored Carey's own World's Greatest Sinner,racking up parts in "East of Eden","One Eyed Jacks","Bayou/Poor White Trash",The Monkees' "Head",and countless television appearances up until his death in 1994.

"Me, I fart loud - I can't be a hypocrite. I get these parts, but I never get to play 'em because I fart out loud. Why can't we all fart together ? Let thy arse make wind!"-Timothy Carey at a screening of "Worlds Greatest Sinner"
Tim vs. Peter Graves,in Bayou(1961):

Tim being outrageous on Art Fein's Poker Party,1989: