In the tradition of movies like George Romero’s Creepshow, Trilogy of Terror and Asylum comes The Theatre Bizarre, a collection of six short films with plenty of blood to fling around, but sadly not much else. The film opens with a woman who enters an abandoned theater and encounters Udo Kier, playing an automaton host who introduces these six stories to an audience of just one.
Mother of Toads is the first story, presenting a nod to Lovecraft transplanted to France. Catriona MacColl plays a street vendor who entices a young man with the promise of getting his hands on a copy of the fabled Necronomicon. He takes the bait, leaving his girlfriend behind at their hotel and discovers too late that he must pay for his curiosity. The short seems to be inspired in part by the film The Maze, one of the first 3-D horror films that dealt with a similar Lovecraftian curse. MacColl gives an interesting performance as the street merchant and she is nearly unrecognizable physically and vocally from her performances in Fulci’s films of which she is known. The actors portraying the young couple do what they can with fairly bland roles, but it really is MacColl’s piece.
I Love You tells the story of a married couple, of which the husband is a bit obsessive. Basically a two-hander, the film is a fifteen minute argument about why their relationship is ending and it’s about as exciting as it sounds. I respect this conceptually, but it’s in dire need of some emotional shading and depth. There is no reason why this man loves this woman so much when she is so terrible to him. The two actors who carry the short are fine, but the problem lies in the script, and the “twist” ending is unnecessary.
Wet Dreams follows with a thematically similar tale of a disintegrating relationship that is drowning in dreams, deception and deceit. Tom Savini who directs and stars alongside B-horror queen Debbie Rochon are fine in their respective roles. However, the story of a man plagued by nightmares of his wife is muddy and is let down by some bad audio and fairly flat photography outside of the dream sequences, which aren’t very creepy or inspired.
The Accident is the real standout in this collection. A young girl witnesses a fatal motorcycle accident while on a drive with her mother. Naturally, she is curious about the hows and whys of death and what follows is a really nice meditation on life, death and a child’s natural fascination with the unknown. There is some great acting on display in this segment, it has a nice style about it, and is the most relatable in terms of its story.
Next up, Vision Stains follows a young woman who murders homeless people to extract the vitreous fluid from their eyeballs in order to tell their stories so they are not forgotten by time. This interesting concept is lost among its focus on shocking scenes. While the story is fascinating at the start, they should have exploited the concept in a more meaningful way.
The film’s last segment is Sweets, yet another tale of a crumbling relationship. The stylized flashbacks into the relationship are nice and tell an odd story, but it tries too hard to be quirky. However, I can respect it for its concept and the style it exhibits.
Because a different director helms each segment, this creates a disjointed feeling that doesn’t do the film any favors. The format begs for some cohesion when you don’t have a continuous narrative to follow. A few of the stories are thematically too similar to have much impact after the first, and by the time you’ve seen the same story for the third time, I don’t see the point. However, The Accident is strong and Udo Kier is interesting as always.
All of the stories were shot independently of each other and the DVD image is surprisingly consistent in terms of quality. They all exhibit a nice amount of detail and clarity, but at the same time, none of them are going to blow you away either. For a low budget indie feature, it’s more than acceptable. The soundtrack is full and robust, outside of some muffled and badly recorded dialogue in the Savini segment.
It’s a good thing there are some fairly entertaining bonus materials on this disc because they’re the saving grace. A commentary by several of the cast and crew is stitched together to cover most of the running time, with The Accident being the only omission. There is also a series of interviews, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and a trailer for the film. Sadly there are no subtitles on the disc.
I am a huge fan of anthology movies, and even when there are more weak segments than good, I can forgive them usually because it's a trap of the form. In this case, I kept waiting for a great story to show up among this collection and didn’t really get one. Fans of anthology horror may want to watch this for curiosity's sake, but don’t expect anything on the level of Creepshow or other popular anthology films.
Film Score: 1.5/5 Disc Score: 2/5
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