The Theatre Bizarre
2012 Directed by Buddy Giovinazzo, Douglas Buck …
Synopsis
Down a seedy city street in her neighborhood, young Enola Penny is obsessed with what appears to be a long abandoned theatre. One night, she sees that the front door is slightly ajar and impulsively decides to sneak inside. But there in the dark, decrepit auditorium, a show unlike any other unfolds before her eyes. Its host is an eerie human puppet named Peg Poett who will introduce Penny to six tales of the bizarre: A couple traveling in a remote part of the French Pyrenees cross paths with a lustful witch; A paranoid lover faces the wrath of a partner who has been pushed to her limit; The Freudian dreams of an unfaithful husband blur the lines between fantasy and reality; The horrors of the real world are interpreted through the mind of a child; A woman addicted to other people's memories gets her fix through the vitreous fluid of her victims' eyeballs; And a perverse obsession with sweets turns sour for a couple in too deep.
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This horror anthology does pretty much what it says on the cover; It's set in a theatre, and it gets pretty bizarre.
The wrap-around, fitting-everything-together story follows a young nameless woman as she obsesses over a theatre before sneaking in one day when the door is ajar. This sounds like this would at least take up few minutes of screen time but no the sequence lasts all of 30 seconds before we are inside the theatre. As for the theatre bits in between the shorts, they are actually some of the best bits, giving us a weird and genuinely creepy kind of reminiscent but not as good as Mulholland Dr's Club Silencio.
The first short, The Mother Of Toads is…
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This was one of two horror anthologies (the lacklustre CHILLERAMA was the other) which I was gutted to miss at FrightFest 2011 due to their twilight screening hour and my need to catch the last train home.
Having finally caught up with THE THEATRE BIZARRE its some way short of previous FrightFest fave TRICK 'R TREAT but a welcome addition to the modern portmanteau horror film nonetheless.
The film is bookended by an effective wraparound story revolving around a silent female spectator drawn into an abandoned and eerily strange cinema - the titular 'Theatre Bizarre' - where upon genre icon Udo Kier acts as our guide introducing each of the film's six tales (Mother of Toads, I Love You, Wet…
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Interesting set of short films, I could have done away with a couple of the stories. While most mainstream horror films shy away from intense gore (such as ripping off limbs and sticking needles into your eyes) this film embraces it and shows it off in all it's gory glory. I like it when films make me feel squeamish and uncomfortable, if that's not you then I suggest you not watch this, or if you do, just cover your eyes.
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Another horror anthology that misses the mark. It starts off really promising, with the effectively sinister, Lovecraftian "Mother of Toads," directed by the one and only Richard Stanley (Dust Devil, Hardware). It then degenerates into alternating fits of weirdness for its own sake, and endless tedium, with a wrap-around story that involves Udo Kier playing a wooden puppet that comes to life and spouts random, existential nonsense before and after each short film.
There is such a huge divide between the good moments and the bad moments, and unfortunately the latter is responsible for the taste in your mouth afterwards. Not even a brief, poignant short about a little girl's first understanding of death can save the film, but rather…
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meh feel the same way about this that I did about VHS..
not amazing, a few of the stories were ok
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All Hallows' Eve descends on the Movie Matters podcast as co-hosts Lee Howard and Michael Mackenzie, accompanied by special guest Daniel Sardella, brave the terrors of three spine-tingling horror movies in the show's third annual Halloween special: Ti West's THE INNKEEPERS, the horror anthology THE THEATRE BIZARRE, and Richard Donner's classic THE OMEN.
Listen to our review of THE THEATRE BIZARRE.
Subscribe to Movie Matters via iTunes .
This episode also features Movie Matters' first ever competition, open to all listeners worldwide. Listen to the show for details on how to win a Blu-ray Disc of one of the films covered in a previous episode...
The music sampled in this episode is from THE THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS by Danny Elfman, THE INNKEEPERS by Jeff Grace, THE THEATRE BIZARRE by Pierre Marchand and THE OMEN by Jerry Goldsmith.
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This America/France co-production is an anthology horror film. A young, mentally disturbed artist is drawn across the street from her apartment to a grand guignol theater. She takes a seat, and a macabre puppet person (played by the great Udo Kier) comes to life and shows her six separate bizarre and horrific stories - each of which is directed by an established horror film director.
Since this is basically a European film, it feels quite different from American anthologies, like "Creepshow". While the first story is a straight-up monster film based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the other five are more mature horror stories. That is, they all have to do with relationships or death. Or both. My favorite…
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Anthology horror that never quite hits the mark despite the presence of the mighty Udo Kier ... the first half is infinitely better than the second.
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Interesting set of short films, I could have done away with a couple of the stories. While most mainstream horror films shy away from intense gore (such as ripping off limbs and sticking needles into your eyes) this film embraces it and shows it off in all it's gory glory. I like it when films make me feel squeamish and uncomfortable, if that's not you then I suggest you not watch this, or if you do, just cover your eyes.
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Appropriately titled movie. VERY bizarre short films in this. Similar to The ABCs of Death. If you can get past the awful acting in the first film then you're set for some refreshing entertainment!
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Unless one director does all the stories himself (like CREEPSHOW and BLACK SABBATH), these horror anthologies are just a bad idea. Even Udo Kier couldn't save this one.
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I thought this was a good anthology and it was nice seeing Richard Stanley directing horror again!
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It was trying to be like Creepshow, but it failed.
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An exhaustingly long and sub-par anthology film. The highlights are the wrap-around, Tom Savini's segment and a portion of Karim Hussain's before it gets all silly. I was most looking forward to new horror material from Richard Stanley but what he delivers here is so goofy and poorly acted it comes off as a giant disappointment even though it contains some interesting bits.
This is totally skippable.
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Weak horror anthology that had one decent story ("I Love You") and one that that is poignant, well done and has no place in a horror film (The Accident). Otherwise, the stories are dull and there is nothing scary here (I suppose men may disagree about that when watching the segment Wet Dreams). One short over relies on people disliking eye violence. Do try harder. Overall, there's little to recommend in this uneven, over long mess.