Something of a minor cult classic, I, Madman stars The Lawnmower Man‘s mattress mate Jenny Wright as Virginia, a frustrated actress and employee of a used bookstore who’s spending dark and stormy nights with her nose buried in an all-but-forgotten pulp thriller by one Malcolm Brand, featuring a disfigured maniac named Dr. Kessler. She’s my kind of girl, not only because she reads for pleasure, but because she does so wearing only a satin half-camisole and white panties.

Anyway, once she’s through with Much of Madness, More of Sin, she seeks out Brand’s only other novel, titled I, Madman. This being the days before the magic of the Internet, she can’t track it down. Oddly, it shows up at her apartment door one day, but who left it there? In that follow-up book, Dr. Kessler continues a string of murders, seeking body parts from his victims in order to put his own disfigured face back together. These scenes play out before our eyes as Virginia imagines herself as part of the story, with Kessler played by the film’s makeup effects artist, Randall William Cook, later a three-time Oscar winner for The Lord of the Rings.

Much to the consternation of Virginia’s cop boyfriend (Clayton Rohner), the murders begin to play out in the real world. No one believes Virginia when she tells them it’s the work of this fictional Dr. Kessler, especially since he’s described as wearing a cloak over half of his face, and the scalp of a redheaded victim over his bald head.

There’s more than a little Phantom of the Opera flavor to I, Madman, and its bleeding of the garish murders on the page into the real world is an interesting idea. John Carpenter tried it — and failed — with his H.P. Lovecraft tribute In the Mouth of Madness, but here, of all people, The Gate director Tibor Takács succeeds. He didn’t have a lot of money to do so, but he appears to have a grasp on the cheap thrills that paperback thrillers offer, and approaches the movie with the same kind of go-for-broke attitude. —Rod Lott

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