Year: 2011
Directors:
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”)
Summary: 6 Tales of the Bizarre.
My Short Review: I’m a big fan of anthology movies. Recently my favorite were V/H/S and The ABCs Of Death, and I also really enjoyed the Thai Movies 4Bia and Phobia 2.
Therefore, I was looking forward to seeing The Theatre bizarre a US/Canada/France co-produced compilation of 6 shorts.
The least I can say is that it was a major disappointment. From all the movies 3 were decent and the other 3 ranged from bad to awful.
Let’s start with the positive: The grand-guignol stage with Udo Kier as the narrator was a very good idea and fits directly with the movie’s title. The second short “I love You” has strong acting a good enough script and wraps up nicely. The short “The Accident” was well made (probably the best short quality-wise) but felt totally out of place and Tom Savini’s effort, “Wet Dreams” while not feeling fresh (it would have made a great episode of Tales From the Crypt) brought some nice fun gory moments.
Now with the bad: The first short, “The Mother of Toads” was so poorly acted and shot, I was about to call it quits right there. “Vision Stains” just bored me to death (even with repeated shots of a needle going into people’s eyes) and “Sweets” was useless, poorly acted and just felt plain cheap (I think the director wanted to make an artsy kind of film but it just did not work for me).
As most anthology movies, there are hits and misses in The Theatre Bizarre but the hits aren’t good enough to justify sitting through the rest of the movie.
My Rating: 4/10.
