I, Madman (1989)

Despite my affection for the period, 1989 wasn't the strongest year for horror movies. There were a lot of sequels and retreads. Horror comedy was still going strong, but for a lot of us the joke wore thin.

Look at the sequels we endured: A Nightmare on Elm Street 5, Friday the 13th 7, Halloween 5, Howling 5, The Fly 2, Amityville 4, C.H.U.D 2, The Curse 2, Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, The Stepfather 2, Sleepaway Camp 3, and least of all, Toxic Avenger 2 and 3.

I like most of them, but as I said, the genre was in need of an adrenaline injection.

We saw some original productions. Wes Craven unleashed Shocker on us. It isn't a high spot in his career. Tobe Hooper's Spontaneous Combustion fizzled. Charles Band's Full Moon assembly line cranked up with the first Puppetmaster.

There were some bright moments. Brian Yuzna's Society is a good one. Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, from Waxworks director Anthony Hickox, went under the radar for most, but it's well worth watching. The Sam Raimi troupe bled new life into the slasher movie with Intruder. Steve Minor's Warlock is a minor classic in the field. J.R. Bookwalter's The Dead Next Door took horror back to its grassroots. Michele Soavi's The Church kept our faith in Italian horror strong. Mary Lambert's Pet Sematary is a passable King adaptation. Bob Balaban's Parents is like a David Lynch suburban cannibal movie. Nicholas Cage was the most bugfuck bloodsucker in history in Vampire's Kiss. Anthony Perkins was a crackhead Victorian-age psycho killer in Edge of Sanity.

And then there was a little number called I, Madman.

I, Madman was made by Canadian director Tibor Takács. Takács had a small coup two years earlier with The Gate, which is a fun little teen horror movie that featured some very cool stop motion animation and forced perception photography. Its success led to I, Madman which unfortunately never developed the cult appeal of The Gate.

Jenny Wright, a good actress who should have had a bigger career, plays a nice young woman working in a used bookstore. She finds an old horror novel called Much of Madness, More of Sin, by one Malcolm Brand. An obscure author published by a porno house, Brand only wrote two books. The other is I, Madman. A fitting title from the disturbed writer.

Brand mutilated himself by cutting off his own ear, mouth, and scalp. He was institutionalized and thought dead. But now a copy of I, Madman mysteriously appears at Jenny's apartment door and murders start to happen. It seems as though Brand's literary villain, the sinister Dr. Kessler, is somehow alive and killing people.

This is a pretty good movie, if not a mandatory view for all horror fans. I, Madman is well made and most of the performances are satisfactory. Jenny's boyfriend, a skeptical detective, isn't particularly credible. They should have gone for a more grizzled, hardened look for him and not so much like a fresh-faced drama class student.

There's another nice stop motion creature. Most of the killings are offscreen, but that's not always a bad thing. The filmmakers weren't going for a full-blown splatfest. The key word here is suspense, and it mostly works.

I like the literary framework in I, Madman. It was fun to catch sight of some choice horror paperbacks in the bookstore. For what it's worth I like it a little more than both In the Mouth of Madness and The Dark Half.

Kino is releasing some of the best movies from the past in nice editions. I was glad to see the announcement for I, Madman, and it was good to pay another visit to its pages.

Written by Mark Sieber