Pretty bookworm Virginia (Jenny Wright) likes nothing more than to curl up in her flat with a good book and, in her opinion, a good book is anything written by Malcolm Brand, a pulp horror author with a decidedly mysterious past.
Virginia gets her paws on a copy of Brand's second and final book, 'I, Madman', which he wrote whilst in an asylum. The book tells the tale of a poet who, rejected by the one he loves for being too ugly, hacks off his features with a razor and replaces them with pieces from those he kills. Virginia soon regrets her choice of reading matter when the killer from the book appears in reality and begins to murder those around her.
Tibor Takács, who gave us the silly but fun monster movie THE GATE (1987), tries hard with this tragic tale of a writer whose unrequited love drives him to madness and murder, but he ultimately fails to deliver anything special. The film is fairly slow and has more than its fair share of dumb moments, which I would have been willing to forgive had the movie been much much scarier; but with the killer eventually sporting the red hair of an actress and the pouty lips of a bookstore assistant, I couldn't help but be decidedly unafraid. A dodgy looking stop-motion monster also brought a smile to my face, the supposedly terrifying creature looking like some kind of bow-legged dog-boy.
I, MADMAN is a good example of a nice idea trapped in a mediocre film.
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