Film Review: I, MADMAN (1989, Tibor Takács)

Stars: 3.8 of 5.
Running Time: 89 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Starring Jenny Wright (NEAR DARK, ST. ELMO'S FIRE), Clayton Rohner (APRIL FOOL'S DAY, JUST ONE OF THE GUYS), Stephanie Hodge (BIG TOP PEE-WEE, EVOLUTION), and Randall William Cook (who also did the visual effects and stop motion on HIGHWAY TO HELL, GHOSTBUSTERS, FRIGHT NIGHT, Q: THE WINGED SERPENT and won three Oscars for Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS). Written by David Chaskin (NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE, THE CURSE). Directed by Tibor Takács (Hungarian-born director of THE GATE, METAL MESSIAH, and the SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH TV movie).
Tag-line: "Spend the night with a madman."
Best one-liner: "It makes Stephen King read like Mother Goose!"

When you've been a horror fan as long as I have, it can become difficult to find vintage gems you haven't already seen. You sift through a lot of straight-to-video nonsense, and, sadly, it's often not even "so-bad-it's-good." You make it through a lot of movies that not only lack star power, they even lack "character-actor-power." While reading about visual effects legend Randall William Cook (because of the excellent HIGHWAY TO HELL), I decided to take a chance on I, MADMAN, where he not only did the visual effects, he stars as the villain (!).

I, MADMAN was pitched to me as the story of a bookworm whose voracious consumption of horror novels leads to a blurring of reality (sort of a proto-IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, at least in the abstract), as the villain of these books begins to pursue her in real life.

It sounded intriguing, self-reflexive, and artistic, but also a bit like a feature-length episode TALES FROM THE CRYPT (which is not a bad thing, necessarily). And it's my pleasure to report that this is while it's not quite a masterpiece, it certainly lives up to its pitch.

Jenny Wright (of NEAR DARK) plays Virginia, our heroine. She has a Joan Cusack/Gillian Anderson vibe and was fairly ubiquitous throughout the 1980s, though she hasn't appeared in much at all since 1992's THE LAWNMOWER MAN. As a bookstore employee who loves scary novels, her performance taps into the nostalgia/cozy feeling of curling up with a good book and entering another world, like THE NEVERENDING STORY (for horror fans).

All of the scenes set at her bookstore also feel nostalgic and extremely lived-in, 

 

and her co-worker (played by the hilarious Stephanie Hodge)

does her best to steal every scene she's in.

The director, Budapest's own Tibor Takács, imbues the film with true style. He views Los Angeles through a very European lens, romanticizing all the rundown 1950s apartment buildings and decor, and presenting an extremely stylized vision that, in my opinion, owes a great deal to the films of David Lynch, particularly BLUE VELVET.

This could easily be a screencap from BLUE VELVET, or RABBITS



WILD AT HEART hadn't even been released yet, nor BARTON FINK, if we want to include the Coens

Fetishized vintage lamps, peeling wallpaper, creepy bellhops, flickering lights, beckoning darkness... it's all here!

As the books begin to bleed into reality, we have the aforementioned Randall William Cook playing a character who's equal parts Dr. Moreau, Jack the Ripper, Darkman, and The Shadow... and he embarks on a series of giallo-style murders

across this David Lynch-ian/Edward Hopper-verse. They're formally very effective, employing vivid lighting, surprising visuals, and Sam Raimi-style camerawork. 

There's a track-zoom down this hallway that feels straight out of EVIL DEAD

 

Virginia's policeman boyfriend, "Richard" (Clayton Rohner, a real Jeff Fahey-type)

becomes more instrumental to the plot at this point, though, thankfully, it never truly veers into a police procedural. I won't reveal how it proceeds from here, though I will say there is some unexpected creature work from Randall William Cook (very similar to his FRIGHT NIGHT monsters)

 

 

with that dreamlike, uncanny feel that can only be achieved by a stop-motion master.

 

In a weird bit of trivia, the legendary author and screenwriter Bruce Wagner has a cameo as a sinister piano player, only glimpsed from afar (again, very Edward Hopper via REAR WINDOW), who always plays late into the night.

(You've probably seen some of Wagner's films––MAPS TO THE STARS, WILD PALMS, SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS, or A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS––but I also must shout out his novels, like I'M LOSING YOU or THE CHRYSANTHEMUM PALACE; he has a spiritually twisted vision of Hollywood/L.A. as a perverse, feudal New Age cult dystopia and he always manages to shock and engage his audiences.)

 

Finally, I must address one of my longstanding cinematic rules: I've often said "it's not an action movie unless they blow up a gas station," and "it's not a horror movie until you're in the microfiche room," and I'm happy to report that by the latter criterion, this is indeed a horror movie.