“When I shoot blood scenes I get really enthusiastic because it’s my favourite thing to do,” exclaims director Jeremy Kasten. “Dumping blood on naked girls – who wouldn’t love that?”

Watch Wizard Of Gore trailer here

With the promise of naked, plasma-drenched Suicide Girls being butchered by Crispin Glover as a white-tuxedo-clad magician, there is a curiously compelling potential in this remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Wizard Of Gore (1970). Supported by a cast that includes Brad Dourif, Jeffrey Combs and scream queen Bijou Phillips, the blood-hounds are even thirstier at the red-carpet Los Angeles Film Festival premiere, where stocking-clad goth kids are buzzing like flies around Marilyn Manson.

Read our interview with original Wizard of Gore director, and film legend Herschell Gordon Lewis here

The central premise from the campy original remains: Montag the Magnificent, played with evangelistic glee by Glover, performs horrific dismembering of young women onstage, then magically displays they are intact, only for their dead bodies to show up later with the same fatal wounds.

When filmmakers ‘re-imagine’ classic films, disaster is almost always the result. Yet the original Wizard Of Gore is a considerable distance from the best of the cinematic canon.

“Even Herschell Gordon Lewis admits it’s not perfect,” reveals director Kasten. “But this is the very reason it’s a good film to reinterpret. It’s nice to go back over a film that even the original director believes deserves a second look.”

The film’s characters inhabit a modern industrial wasteland mixed with retro-styled fashions of fedoras and art-deco furniture. With gallons of blood being pumped in the process, Kasten has created a new sub-genre that he describes as ‘splatter-noir’.

Crispin Glover’s Montag is a Liberace-styled, pompadour-sporting Las Vegas showman, crisply attired in white. Strutting the stage like a maniacal peacock, his magic act is eerily backed by a swirling dementia of circus carousel music inspired by Anton LaVey.

“I felt that a goth look wouldn’t be good, that Montag should be opposing to that on some level,” explains the dapper Glover, who has recently been touring with a print of What Is It?, his all-mentally-handicapped-cast art epic where the mentally challenged eat snails. “I had once gone to see Siegfried and Roy’s show with Werner Herzog and the costuming always stuck in my mind. I also spoke to people in the magic world and realised there is a big difference between magicians and stage illusionists. I’m sure this isn’t an absolute, but I was told that basically the illusionists are ‘straight’ and the magicians are ‘gay’. The illusionists are into the pageantry of the stage, whereas the magicians are more into the cards, cigars and the coins. As soon as I was told that, I realised it fitted in with the element I wanted.

“I had to feel that I was really performing this stuff too and we generally had a few takes of it all as one sequence so I could genuinely sweat and feel like you do when you are really performing in front of an audience. But there is definitely a difference between getting used to the angles of playing for the camera lens, versus the large arch of the stage.”

Any movie with ‘gore’ in the title needs to have its fair share of spurting haemoglobin. But while this remake does suitably turns up the blood content, the director’s interest lies more in augmenting the techniques of Herschell Gordon Lewis, and increasing the hallucinatory and druggy aspects of the original film.

“He raised the bar of how people died in horror,” Kasten explains. “This version is entirely different, because, for the most part, people are under hypnosis or drugged when they die – they don’t even react to it. They’re of course terrified, but there’s not necessarily a lot of screaming and terror on show. You have to have a couple of deaths you’ve never seen before. The towel in the throat shoved down by the broom and then torn out – that’s a really nice one.”

A plethora of Suicide Girls on set promised plenty of outrageous and raucous behaviour, and fans will be delighted to hear that three of them get sliced and diced by our villainous hero. Amina Munster was overjoyed at getting naked on the project, despite missing her right leg from below the knee.

“When auditioning, I asked her, ‘Would it bother you if we filmed that?’” says Jeremy. “‘Absolutely not,’ she said. Which was the greatest thing any girl has ever told me! Amina ended up balanced on one leg with a blood tube running out of this false prosthetic. Crispin spouted a giant speech while poor Amina was stood naked with beartraps attached to her bleeding stump.”

The filming for the ‘circus of horrors’ party scene ended with gallons of gore being pumped all over the cast. It was a suitable close to shooting of this anticipated remake.

“We found crack pipes under beds when setting up rooms at the motel,” laughs Kasten. “At least 20 Suicide Girls had come in from out of town and there was no way to prevent the shoot from descending into madness. We brought in the corn-syrup blood mix and they all tore off their clothes. The girls started jumping around in the sticky blood. I heard these screams of, ‘Take him down! Take him down!’ and the actresses started piling on me and tearing off my clothes. As fun as it sounds working on The Wizard of Gore, having eight or nine Suicide Girls doing this is actually terrifying. I looked like I was about to cry.”



Meet The Girls

Amina Munster

Age: 25
Stats: 5ft2in, 112lb
Number of tattoos: Way too many to count
How are you killed in the film?
I die due to decapitation by a beartrap that is thrown at me by Crispin Glover. I also die while making out with Kip Pardue. It’s a little strange.
What would your preferred method of death in real life be?
A very violent death that leaves my face pretty. And hopefully I’ll be wearing clean underwear at the time.
What are your thoughts on the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis?
I have only seen the original Wizard Of Gore, but I was happy to be in the remake. It would be cool to see what he would be able to do with the resources available today.
Aminamunster.net

Nixon

Stats: I’m short
Number of tattoos? Six-ish
How are you killed in the film?
I'm not. I survive.
What influence have gore movies had on your life?
I love horror films in general. Really, I'm a vampire and zombie buff, but I do like the aesthetic of gore films.
What would your preferred method of death in real life be?
Drifting off to sleep when I'm old, surrounded by loved ones would be ideal.
What are your thoughts on the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis?
His films are interesting – he doesn't follow the standard gore formula.

Flux

Age: 23
Number of tattoos: Only two
How are you killed in the film?
I'm stuffed into a giant metal bull (aka ‘the Bull of Phalaris’), which becomes a furnace and I burn to death.
What influence have gore movies had on your life?
They have had no particular influence on me, but I have a longtime love of horror.
What would your preferred method of death in real life be?
To stand at the top of a very tall bridge, attach piano wire to it and loop said wire around my neck and possibly around some of my joints. Jump. Preferably at rush hour.
What are your thoughts on the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis?
I've always been a fan; though he’s not my favourite horror director, he redefined the genre and made some damn good movies.
What was the worst thing that happened on the shoot?
During the dozens of takes for my intimate pre-death scene with Kip, I was drenched in iced tea, was accidentally punched in the head and ended up falling down some stairs unintentionally. Oh, and I was naked for most of it. Yowch.

Cricket DeManuel

Age: 25
Number of tattoos: Too many to count
How are you killed in the film?
Disembowelled and gutted.
What influence have gore movies had on your life?
I've never been into gore movies. I have no problems seeing blood, or the injuries of a person, but I've never been able to watch while those injuries were being inflicted. I can't even watch cartoon violence! Funnily enough, though, I loved seeing my own guts! I loved the process of making my body casting and seeing my guts hanging in the special-effects studio.
Any difficulties with filming?
I’ll tell ya, it was VERY hard to keep a straight face shooting my scene with Crispin. The script required him to cut my dress off with a bone-cutter and grab one of my breasts. I was supposed to be in a trance so I could not make any real facial expressions. I just kept thinking, “McFly is feeling me up!” It was so hard to focus. In that scene, I swear to you, I am singing Christmas carols in my head to keep myself from giggling!