The Wizard of Gore (1970)

The Wizard of Gore is a 1970 American splatter horror movie directed by Herschel Gordon Lewis ("The Godfather of Gore") and starring Ray Sager as a stage magician who specializes in gruesome on-stage performances. The film also starred Judy Cler and Wayne Ratay.

Plot Summary
Stage magician Montag the Magnificent (Sager) has a modest but popular act in which he hypnotizes a woman from the audience, brings her on stage, and then tortures her with gory and seemingly fatal results. Each act seems to end with the volunteer coming out of her trance and returning to her seat completely unharmed, to the delight and amazement of the audience. However, local TV talk show host Sherry (Cler) and her boyfriend Jack (Ratay) discover that the volunteers are turning up dead a few hours later, suffering from the same injuries they sustained on stage. Sherry and Jack both try to investigate but come up wth no solid evidence. Bodies continue to pile up.

While investigating Montag, Sherry invites him to appear on her show to perform magic tricks. Montag has other ideas. Once on TV, he hypnotizes the entire TV studio and the viewing audience, causing the victims to begin bleeding from the hand. As he prepared to lead the mesmerized Sherry into a burning fire, Jack appears and pushes Montag into the flames instead, killing him and freeing the TV audience.

In a double twist ending, after Montag reveals to Sherry that his death was just an illusion, she reveals that everything was an illusion, and a bewildered Montag suddenly finds himself back at the opening scene of the movie.