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Madman
[Blu-ray 4K]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Vinegar Syndrome Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (1st March 2022). |
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The Film
 On the eve of winter break for the North Sea Cottages camp for gifted children, senior member Max (Working Girls' Frederick Neumann) regales the kids around the campfire with the legend of Madman Marz, a farmer who drank heavily, brutalized his wife and children, and brawled with the locals. When one night he went mad and murdered his family with an axe, the locals lynched him only for his body and those of his family to disappear the next day. Legend has it that if you call Madman Marz, he will reappear in search of new victims for his axe. Young Richie (Tom Candela) rises to the bait and calls out for Madman Marz to come and get him. When he sees a dark shape in the trees, Richie breaks off from the group to explore Marz's abandoned house. As the frightened young campers settle in for the night, T.P. (Tony Fish) goes off in search of Richie after a hot tub tumble with fellow counselor Betsy (Dawn of the Dead's Gaylen Ross, billed as "Alexis Dubin") who is glimpsing the kind of strange sights final girls see in slasher films, and stoned counselors Stacy (Harriet Bass), Bill (Alex Murphy), Dave (Seth Jones), and Ellie (Jan Claire) each go off in search of T.P. when he fails to return. Meanwhile, a hulking, disfigured mountain of a man has made his way to camp with an axe and a noose. Made in 1980 at the same time as The Burning and Friday the 13th Part 2 (and sharing the Cropsey legend with the former), Madman was not released until 1982 when the slasher genre was already looking for novel variations. While poorly received upon that late release, Madman has gained its cult adoration on VHS tape from those either too young to see it theatrically – being particularly popular in the UK where it was briefly considered a "Video Nasty" – and those in territories where is just was not released. While not as vicious as The Burning, Madman remains the more ambitious entry in terms of style and the crafting of atmosphere. Although director Joe Giannone did not have Halloween's Dean Cundey at his disposal, he and cinematographer James Lemmo (who lensed Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45 as well as Bill Lustig's Vigilante and Maniac Cop) do keep the compositions menacing with camera movements and shifting light and shadows revealing Marz lurking in the foreground or backgrounds of shots (and the understated electronic score effectively suggests Marz's presence even when he is not on the screen). The personably performers also give us characters that are far more warmly human than some of their slasher counterparts – even with a minimum of character development – and the filmmakers usually do not skimp on the splatter (however technically primitive). The gore and Marz's prosthetic make-up was created by Richard Alonzo who worked for Craig Reardon (The Blob) in the eighties and then Stan Winston (Wrong Turn) from the nineties onwards. Producer Gary Sales also served as music director and penned the lyrics to the TP's opening song, the "Madman Marz" theme (as memorable as the ballad from My Bloody Valentine), and the easy listening song for the hot tub scene while composer Stephen Horelick went on to scoring the Reading Rainbow educational television series. 
Video
Released theatrically by Jensen-Farley Pictures (Curtains) and then on Thorn/EMI VHS in a murky transfer, Madman first hit DVD in 2001 via Anchor Bay in a non-anamorphic letterboxed transfer with an audio commentary (see below), the film's trailer, and five TV spots. An extras-rich thirtieth anniversary two-disc edition followed in 2010 – produced by Gary Sales and distributed by Code Red – utilizing an HD master struck for Monsters HD that drew criticism because it was lacking the film's distinctive blue tint (this transfer has also been available on Amazon Instant Video). Vinegar Syndrome was first out of the gate with a 4K-mastered Blu-ray/DVD combo in 2015 – with near-identical editions following soon in the UK from Arrow and Germany from Subkultur – but Vinegar Syndrome has taken advantage of newer technology to produce a new 4K restoration with an HDR10 layer for their new UHD/Blu-ray combo.  The upgrade is not a major step up from what was a great-looking seven-year-old disc of a dark low-budget film, with the newer restoration now framed at 2160p24 HEVC UHD and 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC Blu-ray now framed at 1.85:1 (the older transfer was opened up to 1.78:1). The grading is faithful to the 2015 master which retained the blue tinting of the Anchor Bay disc – where it washed out some available detail – but absent from the Code Red. The newer transfer looks similar but the enhanced resolution does better delineate actors from the forest exteriors even if the deepest blacks do still exhibit crush, there is slightly more facial detail in some of the long shots – with the exception of the opening shot which is part of an optical – while the heightened detail of Marz's make-up in some shots may be a bit more subjective (although the fall chill of this supposedly summer-set film is almost palpable). Also more evident than before are some of the more minute focus shifts necessary to follow action in low-lit scenes with the aperture wide open including the hot tub scene where the focus has to shift back and forth a couple times between foreground and background as the two lovers circle around the edges of the tub. Vinegar Syndrome could not quite erase all evidence of a couple rare vertical scratches on the negative. While this newer 4K scan of the original camera negative does not net a massive upgrade over the earlier 4K-mastered disc, it should be more palatable an upgrade as a UHD release coming seven years after the earlier edition and not just slapping the previous 4K master (or regrading the older raw scan).
Audio
The sole feature audio option is a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless mono track that cleanly delivers the electronic scoring, synthesized stings, dialogue, and some of the more aggressive foley effects like axe strikes and cracked bones. While Vinegar Syndrome probably have remastered the audio, it does not sound significantly different from the original Blu-ray edition. A Dolby Digital 2.0 option is also available via remote. Optional English SDH subtitles are also provided. 
Extras
Extras are virtually identical to the 2015 Blu-ray. The only new extra is "I’m Not a Screamer" (19:30), an interview with actress Ross who had been rumored to not want to discuss the film in the past. She recalls having known producer Sales at the time and initially being interested in the film when it was to shoot in summer only for funding to be delayed until the fall. She recalls wearing long underwear under her clothes and eating a lot to keep warm as well as the set decorator taping paper leaves to the trees and spraying brown leaves with green spray paint. She also recalls offending Fish by giving him direction about their kiss during the hot tub scene, with the blocking of them circling the edges of the pool the result of not wanting to set him off again. She also notes her disappointment in not surviving like most final girls, and telling Sales to have Claire dub her screams because she never wanted to be a running and screaming female character. Ported from the Anchor Bay DVD and previous Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray is the audio commentary by co-writer/director Joe Giannone, co-writer/producer Gary Sales, and stars Tony Fish and Paul Ehlers which is a major addition since Giannone and Fish are no longer with us. Giannone and Sales discuss the influence of Halloween and The Legend of Boggy Creek but how Warner Bros. acquisition of Friday the 13th and its box office success meant that low budget horror films became more attractive to distributors. They discuss the learning experience of pitching their project unsuccessfully to investors for eight months, and how that ultimately served as rehearsal when once they actually found interested parties, notably executive producer Sam Marion who agreed to bankroll the entire thing. Sales traces the origin of the story to the Cropsey legend he heard at his summer camp as a child and that they kept it under wraps until an actress on the production told them that one of the scenes played exactly like a scene in a film her boyfriend was doing which turned out to be The Burning. After getting a copy of the script through the film's production manager, they halted production and restructured their script and changed the character to Madman Marz. They recall the luck they had scoring a location that had everything they needed including the hot tub and could house the actors since it was so far away from the city. Ehlers recalls how he was initially hired to do the poster and graphics (including the opening titles border) as well as working in the prosthetic make-up (and how they had to delay shooting some of the scenes since they had to order some prosthetic feet because the cameraman pointed out that he had ballerina feet).  Carried over from the previous Blu-ray is the audio commentary by podcasters The Hysteria Continues!, which was rather atypical at the time in that their brand of comedy was restrained, firstly by a few of them being under the weather as well as their obvious admiration for the film's achievements in terms of style and effective chills. In addition to discussing the ways in which they each first encountered the film, they cite similarities to Friday the 13th Part 2 and The Burning made the same year (specifically the legend told around the campfire and the false scare) as well as how the film may have influenced the more recent Hatchet. They discuss Ross' po-faced performance and how Bass' sympathetic and wise character seems like more of a happy medium – between Ross and Claire – for a final girl. The rest of the extras are identical to the earlier edition including an optional introduction by producer Gary Sales (0:52) touting the (earlier) restoration. The 2010 documentary from the Code Red disc "The Legend Lives: 30 Years of Madman" (91:42) featuring producer Sales, actors Ehlers and Bass, key grip Claude Kerven, Ehler's son Jonathan (who was born during the production of the film), as well as a number of super fans. Sales overlaps quite a bit with the commentary when it comes to the origins of the project, finding out about The Burning, scoring the film's locations (which they visit later on in the documentary to find them completely changed), and the film's poor reception. Ehlers expands on the story of how he was hired to play Marz once he explained his concept to Sales for the character as depicted in the artwork. Bass talks about the congenial atmosphere on the set with the cast and crew living in such close quarters as well as her death scene. Kerven talks about how his first job out of film school here lead to connections that kept him working afterwards. The latter half of the documentary following discussion of the film's theatrical reception leads to a series of interactions between Sales and Ehlers with various fans of the film who have created artwork, collected memorabilia, and discuss here how they first encountered it and later rediscovered it (most of them pre-Anchor Bay DVD). It's a pretty comprehensive piece, although possibly more than most viewers will require. New to the previous Vinegar Syndrome edition was "Madman: Alive at 35!" (21:02) with Sales, Ehlers, and Candela. In contrast to the previous documentary, this is a rather loose interview with Candela intercut with his reunion with Sales and Ehlers after thirty-five years. It is not particularly informative, but Candela does reference a scene that did not make the final cut because he had tired himself out while attempting some "method" preparation. Sales also appears in "The Early Career of Gary Sales" (14:18) in which he discusses his education in film and stumbling onto a job on the XXX film It Happened In Hollywood as a production assistant followed by transportation for the R-rated Cherry Hill High, but it is not long before he rehashes the conception and funding of Madman. In Memorium (5:46) is an audio extra in which Sales discusses his friendship with the late Giannone while "Music Inspired by Madman" (13:14) has Sales presenting some fan music inspired by the theme song (headlined by a piece from C.K.Y.'s Deron Miller, also a Don't Go in the Woods fan), and the 2007 Deadpit interviews with Gary Sales (3:37) and Paul Ehlers (5:13) offer little more than discussion of the proposed remake (penned by Ehlers' son). Also included is the original Jensen Farley theatrical trailer (1:48) and a series of neat TV spots (1:59) as well as a still/artwork gallery. 
Packaging
The combo comes with a reversible cover while the first 6,000 copies ordered directly from Vinegar Syndrome include a special limited edition embossed slipcover designed by Tom Hodge of The Dude Designs.
Overall
"The Legend Lives" again in Vinegar Syndrome's UHD/Blu-ray combo release of the 1980s slasher sleeper Madman getting its second 4K restoration in the space of a decade.
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