Madman with a campfire story, which serves as the backstory for the ax-wielding maniac. The group of campers consists of teens and small children. The children’s plot armor will prove extraordinary, but shouldn’t they be the easiest victims to dispatch? The teens are all played by adult actors who will become predictably easy pickin’s for the titular madman. The audience will have to endure one plodding POV shot after another, the pickup truck will fail to start when the characters need it the most, and people will amble about the woods to fill the targeted runtime.
The star of Madman is Gaylen Ross, who was also the star of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, my favorite horror film of all time. She’s more than adequate in the role, which isn’t particularly demanding, but appears uncomfortable in a sex scene and it doesn’t feel like acting. As soon as the awkward scene is over, her lover wanders the woods to get himself killed. Naturally, another character goes looking for him and also gets himself killed—off screen because Madman just isn’t a very remarkable slasher flick, notable only because it was among the first.
Later, a chick pokes her head into a tent where a couple are getting freaky. It would have been great if the killer chose that moment to decapitate her, so that her head would tumble into the tent with her horny friends. In another scene, the killer is hot on the trail of a young woman who takes an excruciatingly long time to empty the contents of a refrigerator so she can hide in it. The killer is so close when she does this, he’s literally in the same shot… worst attempt to hide ever. “Hey, just pretend you didn’t see me go inside, okay?”
The expected tropes, clichés—whatever you prefer to call them—are all here. Madman hits its notes with such soulless precision it’s artless and robotic. As a carbon copy, it’s perfect. As a movie, it’s fucking terrible. Ross appeared in Creepshow the same year and never acted again. I don’t know why she quit acting, but I’m going to go ahead and blame Madman. The film is so joyless, I feel like I want to quit watching movies.
It turns out there’s a documentary about Madman. Early on, those involved admit the production was only a stepping stone to the art film they actually wanted to make. Perhaps that’s why it feels so lazy. How a documentary got made about this forgettable film, I’ll never know.
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