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When a particular genre movie makes a lot of money, it immediately spawns imitators trying to cash in on the formula. Asylum is an American film company that produces what are kindly known as “mockbusters,” films that are clearly derived from major pictures and made on the cheap. Pacific Rim becomes Atlantic Rim for Asylum, and why remake I am Legend when you can just call it I am Omega. Madman is like that, although it wasn’t made by Asylum. This is a film that is clearly derived from Friday the 13th, and it’s not shy about its source material. That being the case, it’s not a shock that this begins like The Fog, with people around a campfire telling scary stories. However, rather than this being about an important anniversary for a town, we’re at a summer camp, listening to the head counselor Max (Carl Fredericks). What Friday the 13th discovered, either by genius or by chance, is that summer camps are the natural habitat of what Siskel and Ebert used to call “dead teenager” movies. The kids in question are isolated, horny, unsupervised (since they are the counselors), and vulnerable.
Anyway, the story that we get to hear is about Madman Marz (Paul Ehlers), a farmer who went crazy and murdered his family with an axe. When he was captured by the other locals, they attempted to lynch him. According to the story, though, Marz escaped, and naturally the campfire is right by his house and if you say his name too loud, he’ll hear you and come to get you and everyone else. And, of course, there is a counselor who is a clown and immediately stands up and yells out to Madman Marz to alert him of their presence. Thanks, Richie (Jimmy Steele). You’re the reason we have this movie.
As tends to be the case with any slasher movie, all of the characters are more or less interchangeable. We can name them, but other than the fact that Ellie (Jan Claire) looks like an early-‘80s Rachel Dratch and spends then entire film beet-red from crying, they are all more or less just axe fodder. The one that we do need to talk about is Betsy (Gaylen Ross), who is very obviously established as our final girl.
But, really, we’re not here to learn anything about the characters. It’s not really going to matter who is sleeping with whom, what their aspirations after the camp actually are, or anything else. We know that all of them are, one way or another, going to be fodder for Madman Marz’s axe, and the whole movie is more or less us waiting for him to strike. Because this is so obviously a knock-off of Friday the 13th, we’re not even provided any real mystery, either. We know exactly what’s going to happen, and since the only sell here is in doing something remotely different, our titular killer is going to himself look like a monster. This isn’t a man who has been driven crazy; this is a monster who looks like a devolved human.
The problem with a film like Madman for me is that I have general goals in terms of how much I write in these reviews. I always shoot for a word count of 800, realizing that Word registers all of my HTML tags as words, too. I don’t really have an upper limit, but I do feel like I should write a certain amount to justify the full review. And Madman gives me nothing to talk about. Teens at camp, monster ael rives, kills teens.
It is definitely a movie that was set up to have a sequel. It’s standard fare for a movie like this, of course. If it turns out to make a few bucks on the screen, you need to have a sequel ready to go to cash in. In fact, the only real surprises come in this part of the film. There are a few things that happen at the end that are clearly opposite genre tropes, and for that I’m at least a little bit impressed. But it’s not enough to rescue this film from being depressingly derivative, and not in any good way. Friday the 13th honestly isn’t even that good past an initial watch. There are plenty of movies that are far more worth emulating.
The point is that you’ve seen this before. In fact, you’ve probably seen it a bunch. Unless you’re a completist for the genre, there’s almost nothing new here except at the end and the subverting of a few genre conventions, and really, you can still do a lot better.
Why to watch Madman: The ending is actually surprising.
Why not to watch: Aside from avoiding a trope or two, you’ve definitely seen this before.
