I, Madman (1989)

Dir: Tibor Takacs

Quirky 80s horror sees a bookstore clerk (Jenny Wright) becoming obsessed with a series of old, obscure pulp novels from a mysterious author called Malcolm Brand. The more she gets into them - most notably a graphic tale of self-mutilation called "I, Madman" - the more she notices that friends of hers are dropping dead in ways taken straight from the books. The basic idea here is not a bad one and there's one particular twist that had me going, "ooh, that's NICE!" at the screen, but it all falls apart in the final third and fails to tie up in a coherent way, instead descending into cliché and silliness. There's some cool stop-motion monster FX (what did you expect from the guy who directed "The Gate"?) and Jenny Wright looks great in nerd glasses, but the script is too sloppy to really work. **