Review:The Theater Bizarre (2011)

The Theater Bizarre

Directed by: Douglas Buck (segment "The Accident"), Buddy Giovinazzo (segment "I Love You"), David Gregory (segment "Sweets"), Karim Hussain (segment "Vision Stains"), Jeremy Kasten (framing segments), Tom Savini (segment "Wet Dreams"), Richard Stanley (segment "The Mother Of Toads")

Stars: Udo Kier, Virginia Newcomb, Amanda Marquardt, and many more

I absolutely love horror anthology films, that reason alone is why I’m a bigger fan of Amicus over Hammer. There have been a number of new horror anthologies to be released in recent years, some outstanding like “Trick R Treat,” others downright horrid like Creepshow 3.

So where does this particular film fall into the spectrum of bad to good? I have to say for me it’s somewhere down the middle, I liked some of the shorts others I didn’t care for as a whole It’s kind of hard to judge. Which I guess is a weird thing considering how polarizing this film is. Look up six random reviews and you’ll find three people who hated it and three people who are saying it’s the best damn thing they’ve seen.

Since this really is 6 films with a wraparound story that frames them it would be fair to judge the stories separately, and then look at it as a whole.

The wraparound story is an odd one, a woman who lives across the street from an abandon theater looks to be a bit obsessed with it.  One night the doors mysteriously come ajar. The woman brightens up and makes a beeline to the theater. 

Once inside what appears to be a clockwork dummy (played very well by the always cool Udo Kier) host a show segmented into five parts. Each part is played by people dressed like more clockwork mannequins. These mannequins act out a scene that works as a segue to the shorts.

The first short is titled “Mother of Toads.” It’s a pretty straight forward monster tale with Lovecraft undertones. For what it is it’s just okay. The acting by the male lead was a bit amateurish, but the creature make up was pretty cool.

Our second segment is “I love you.” About 98 percent of this film is dialog, not spooking dialog either. Another factor some people are sighting for not liking this particular segment is the fact that the two main characters that do most the gabbing have thick German accents. Despite all these factors I found the dialog to be interesting and all though the payoff literally just last a couple of minutes I thought it was a job well done.

The third mini feature is Tom Savini’s “Wet Dreams.” Knowing the directors past work (and who doesn’t?), I was a little surprised at how abstract this one was. The story itself is a strange Freudian dream within a dream complete with genital mutilation and limb dismemberment sequences. As you might have guessed these effects were all wonderfully practical in-camera effects. As much as I wanted to love this one it really only gets a so-so rating on account of the fact it’s a little to non-linear for me. 

The fourth feature is probably the most controversial of the lot. Not controversial because of extreme gore, or frightening scenes but rather the lack there of. “The Accident” is really nothing more than a young girl and her mother reflecting on life and death. This short is very well shot from a technical aspect and is actually one of the more aesthetically pleasing films. Too bad it’s not really horror or really all that bizarre and just kind of falls flat.

“Vision Stains” is the fifth short and presents an interesting premise. Not a lot can be said without giving too much away but the film is has some nice special effects. I didn’t like where the story ultimately ended but it was a cool idea at its core. 

The last segment is titled “Sweets.” It’s probably the goriest of the bunch and really has some convincing acting. The story itself is about food fetishes from hell and has a great ending. I liked it as a great bookend to the film. 

The wraparound story comes to an end with predicable results but is still effective as a framing piece.

In the end I there was more that I liked than I didn’t, not to say it’s not a mixed bag because it very much is. I can comfortably recommend it to horror anthology lovers as it’s definitely better than a lot of them out there.