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U.S.A.
- France - Canada
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2011
Directed
by Richard Stanley, et.
al.
Starring
Udo
Kier
Catriona MacColl
Tom Savini
Color |
114 Minutes |
Not Rated
Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC)
Image Entertainment
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Review
by
Brandon Tenold
Film:5
DVD:6
|
|
| Known
for distributing horror movies on DVD and Blu-Ray, Severin Films
has branched out into film production with The
Theatre Bizarre. Assembling some respected names in horror
like Richard Stanley (Hardware,
Dust Devil) and Tom Savini (the 1990
Night of the Living Dead) along with
some lesser-known directors, The Theatre
Bizarre is an attempt at the horror anthology in the vein
of Creepshow and Tales
from the Darkside. However, despite the talent involved,
the results often feel more like something created for TV than
a cinematic feature, though it does have some good moments. |
|
In
the framing segment, a troubled young woman (Virginia Newcomb)
stares at a derelict theater across the street from her apartment.
Going inside the seemingly abandoned building, a doll-like automaton
(played by horror veteran Udo Kier) springs to life and proceeds
to tell her six tales of terror. |
The
Mother of Toads (dir. Richard Stanley): While traveling
through the French Pyrenees with his girlfriend, an occult-obsessed
young man meets a witch (Catriona MacColl, House
By the Cemetery) who tells him she has a copy of the
fabled Necronomicon in her possession. Unable to resist,
the young man goes to her home to see it firsthand, but soon
gets more than he bargained for...
|
|
I
Love You (dir. Buddy Giovinazzo): Axel, an overprotective
and paranoid man, suspects his wife Mo of being unfaithful. His
suspicions soon prove correct, and Mo cruelly devastates Axel
with tales of her infidelity. Mo tells Axel she's leaving him,
but she may have underestimated the lengths Axel will go to be
with her. |
|
Wet
Dreams (dir. Tom Savini): An abusive husband is having recurring
nightmares of a sexual nature. He asks his psychiatrist (also
played by Savini) for a way to make them stop, but he shouldn't
worry. After all, they're just dreams... right? |
|
The
Accident (dir. Douglas Buck): After witnessing an accident
in which a motorcyclist is killed, a young girl asks her mother
various questions about why people have to die. |
|
Vision
Stains (dir. Karim Hussain): A mysterious woman kills people
in order to take the fluid from their eyeballs and inject it into
her own, gaining their memories in the process. Writing the memories
down in various journals, the woman only kills people who "want
to die", like junkies and homeless people. One day though, she
decides she wants to know what the memories of an unborn child
are like... |
|
Sweets
(dir. David Gregory): Lovers Estelle and Greg are going through
a rough patch in their relationship. As Greg pleads for Estelle
to stay with him, we flashback to happier times in their relationship,
which usually revolve around the consumption of large amounts
of sugary foods. Estelle eventually decides to give Greg another
chance, but maybe she was doing him a favor by breaking up with
him. |
|
Anthologies
can be uneven due to their very nature, and that's very true of
The Theatre Bizarre, which has some
effective segments sitting alongside some duds. However, there
are some shorts that make The Theatre Bizarre
worth seeing, and oddly enough, it's the lesser-known directors
who end up making the biggest impact. The standout short, Buck's
The Accident, is also the most unconventional. A somber,
hypnotic examination of when a child first grapples with the concept
of death, the short is more of an experimental drama than a horror
tale, so much so that it actually feels out of place among the
other stories. Nevertheless, the effective way that it deals with
its subject matter makes it the most memorable segment, and it
easily stands on its own as a great little short. Giovinazzo's
I Love You is also strong, a character and dialogue driven
story that's anchored by the performances of its two leads. Much
like The Accident, Giovinazzo's segment eschews horror
conventions until its bloody finale, instead detailing the disintegration
of a relationship. |
|
The
rest of the shorts are a lot more hit and miss. Stanley gets things
off to a mediocre start with his Mother of Toads short,
which despite Stanley's best efforts to create a Lovecraftian
sense of supernatural dread, doesn't end up going anywhere that
interesting. Its central twist, which basically amounts to "Oh
shit! I drank something weird and ended up banging a frog monster!"
is actually pretty comedic, but Stanley treats it completely stone-faced
and it's also hampered by some shaky acting and dialogue. Savini's
segment, dealing with the line between dreams and reality has
a lot of potential, but in the end there isn't really a whole
lot going on story-wise. The segment does however have
some truly squirm-worthy Freudian nightmare imagery, such as a
woman with a monster vagina and a severed penis being served alongside
some eggs at breakfast. Vision Stains and Sweets
also have some effectively icky visuals (who knew people eating
candy and ice cream could be arguably the grossest part of a horror
movie?) but the stories to both don't match up to the visuals,
though I do give Sweets credit for being one of the only
segments with a sense of humor. |
|
The
Theatre Bizarre
is not a great example of the horror anthology. It's not nearly
as fun as something like Creepshow
or Trick 'r Treat and too uneven
to work as an 'artsy' horror anthology. Still, its best segments
are good and some of the grotesque visuals will stick in
your mind after you've seen it. |
|
|
| Image
Entertainment's DVD of The Theatre Bizarre
is presented in 16x9 enhanced 2.35:1 widescreen, and much like
the film itself, the image quality is something of a mixed bag.
At times, the video is crisp and clean, if a bit unspectacular,
but there are also some parts with noticeable grain and artifacts,
the I Love You segment being particularly bad in this regard.
The audio is more consistent than the video, and although it's
nothing you would ever show off your speakers with, I wasn't really
expecting this to be an ear-shattering disc anyway. |
|
Extras
include director's commentary for each of the shorts with the
unfortunate exception The Accident. Each director uses
the limited amount of time available to them well and manage to
pack in a good amount of information on what went into making
each short. Also included are interviews with three of the film's
directors (originally made for shocktillyoudrop.com)
that range between 10 and 15 minutes long. Rounding out the extras
are some extremely brief making-of featurettes (which average
around 90 seconds each) plus the film's trailer. 5/14/12 |
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