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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1980s
    Movies - 1980s Movies - M 2 Mins Read

    Madman (1981)

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    Joe Giannone’s Madman was possibly the first knock-off of Friday the 13th (1980).

    It’s the final night of the season at a summer camp and a group of camp counsellors and preteens sit around a campfire attempting to scare each other with spooky tales.

    Max (Frederick Neumann, appearing here as Carl Fredericks) – the head counsellor – tells the story of a local farmer named Madman Marz who hacked his family to death with an axe before vanishing into the dark woods. Legend has it that if anyone speaks his name above a whisper, he will return for you.

    Cocky teenager Richie (Tom Candela, billed here as Jimmy Steele) decides it would be a good idea to call out his name to the surrounding woods – and when they come a-callin’, he comes a-killin’.

    Madman is hailed as a cult film by many fans but it really is a tedious, unremarkable, by-the-numbers offering: the script is beyond hokey, the acting is poor, the editing is sloppy, the synth score is annoying and the villain is the least scariest maniac in film history – an ogreish redneck in overalls with a clearly prosthetic face.

    There are a couple of gruesome killings – a couple of headless corpses that are clearly shop dummies splashed with fake blood, a reasonable hanging from a tree, a few dreadful axings, and an impalement on a hook – but even the murder sequences are largely anticlimactic.

    The entire film is shot at night with poor lighting, making the action very difficult to see.

    Originally based on the upstate New York urban legend of Cropsey, the film’s premise and villain were both changed at the last minute when the production team discovered that The Burning was filming at the same time.

    Betsy
    Gaylen Ross (as Alexis Dubin)
    TP 
    Tony Nunziata (as Tony Fish)
    Stacy
    Harriet Bass
    Dave
    Seth Jones
    Ellie
    Jan Claire
    Bill
    Alex Murphy
    Richie
    Tom Candela (as Jimmy Steele)
    Max
    Frederick Neumann (as Carl Fredericks)
    Dippy
    Michael Sullivan
    Madman Marz
    Paul Ehlers
    Tommy
    Tom Veilleux
    Jimmy
    Stephen Clark
    Mary Ellen
    Vicki Kenneally
    Shirley
    Shelley Mathes
    Jeanie
    Lori Mathes
    Marz’s Wife
    Jane Pappidas
    Marz’s Son
    Travis Sawyer
    Marz’s Daughter
    Deidre Higgins

    Director
    Joe Giannone

    Video

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