I had a fleeting memory of the opening scene of this film which I knew involved someone telling a story round the campfire about a psycho killer living in the woods whose name, when uttered loudly enough, will summon him to kill again. Then some dick calls out, "Madman Marz! Come and get us Marz!" I thought I had another memory of the ending of the movie, but watching it for this series I discovered that I might never have seen the whole thing and that other memory must belong to some other movie.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
Madman is an
obvious knock-off of Friday the 13th,
which was itself trading on the success of Halloween.
It’s the old premise of sticking a group of young people in the woods and
sending a psychopath after them. Like Friday
the 13th, this is a camp of some sort. The opening titles inform
us that it’s a camp for “gifted children,” a fact that is not once made
relevant during the course of the film’s 90 minutes. In fact, we rarely see the
children and they have virtually no bearing on the story except as an
explanation for the presence of several young adults for the slaughter.
