How Long Is “Madman”?

Set at the North Sea Cottages, a wooded retreat for gifted children, the film begins with the campfire retelling of the legend of Madman Marz (Paul Ehlers), a mean, drunken farmer who went nuts one night and hacked up his entire family with an ax. Marz was lynched by ten locals and hung from a tree to die, but when they came back for the body in the morning, he had vanished. Now, the story has it, he roams the woods and will come and kill anyone who says his name above a whisper. Of course, a moronic teenaged counselor screams his name, and on the final night before Thanksgiving break, the crazed madman starts hanging and hacking the horny counselors one by one. This all might sound like it has potential to be a rousing gorefest along the lines of Friday the 13th or The Burning (both of which it slavishly imitates), but that would ignore the wretched songs, tedious pacing, bad acting, and ludicrous makeup. Leading man Tony Fish was never heard from again, and co-stars here with Harriet Bass, Seth Jones, and Jan Claire.