Moviecut—Anguish

source: Anguish

Angustia

The core concept of this film is watching a slasher movie about people in a theater... who are watching a slasher movie themselves. The main idea certainly has merits and a lot of potential but alas, writer and director Bigas Luna never achieves it. The first slasher (the movie within the movie) has occult and psychedelic overtones but is rather silly. It does feature the only two actors worthy of the title in Lerner and Rubinstein. The second film is uninspired at best and features awful acting all around. Both suffer from drawn out scenes that go absolutely nowhere. The most excitement regarding Anguish is when you first discover you are watching a movie within a movie and then, you wait for something clever to happen... except it never does. Poorly written, shot, acted and edited, Anguish will mostly be remembered as a cool idea that may have been ahead of its time.

This movie plays with the audience expectations in a level and maybe it have some characteristics of the terror genre that can be seen in a lot of movies but have some features of its own that makes the movie an original one. It's clear that this movie was not made with a big budget but the cast and crew give life to an imaginative screenplay .Rubinstein and Lerner are really great here. What surprised me of this movie are the original ideas . I will not spoil you the movie at all but after watching so many movies this one still surprise me.The Spanish director Bigas Luna directed this somehow atypical movie in his career , that usually treats themes far from the terror genre or the thriller. It's a good achievement .

ANGUISH is the sort of film where you must walk into it blindly. Read nothing about it, no reviews, or even the back of the video box. This is by far one of the best films you've never heard of! Average horror film fans who flock to see SCREAM and SIXTH SENSE, (if they can really claim to enjoy good horror films) will probably dislike this one. It takes a true love for the genre to realize the beauty of ANGUISH. I've said to much already, see this at once!

I first saw ANGUISH years ago and really enjoyed this film. I have yet to buy it only because I can find either only tattered VHS copies or over-priced DVD versions...Anyway the film starts off with a telepathically controlled "mama's-boy" who kills people and collects their eye's as souvenirs for his freaky mother. This goes on for a while, and then you find out that THIS part is just a film, and cuts to the audience. One of the members in the audience is "hypnotized" by the film and begins picking off the other audience members. ANGUISH is a really original and stylish film. Good story, decent acting and some cool gore make this an all-around winner...now if I could just find a cheaper copy....Recommended 8.5 out of 10

This is one of those films that starts out promising and then a quarter of the way through you realize that you've picked up something that is going to be a disappointment. And you'd be right. This is also one of those films that shows the audience watching the film and that in itself is a novel idea if done right and this isn't. What starts out as atmospheric and intense ends with a somewhat predictable and annoying end. Too bad too because the acting is actually quite good. Lot of money went into the sets and production design. Lot of work went into picking out just the right props. The film has a lot going for it including the original story but it isn't executed well. Why didn't they just make this a straight film? It could have been a great horror flick. I say skip this and hunt out a different horror flick. If you want eyeball horror watch "Mansion of the Doomed".

John Pressman (Micheal 'I shoulda called Ditech' Lerner) works at a doctor's office as an orderly. His mother (Zelda 'Poltergeist' Rubenstein) hypnotizes him to off the people who see thinks wronged him. But this turns out to be a movie within a movie, but the lines soon blur as John goes a movie theater to kill. Prompting a guy who's watching the movie to do the same. Lerner is suitably over the top in this, but Zelda repeats lines of dialog over and over again. That gets annoying fast. But not as annoying as the two girls who are watching the movie within a movie.As a horror film this one fails, it's too busy trying to be clever, trying to impart a message and seems to forget a slasher film must evoke a sense of tension, or at least a jump or two. No, what we have here is the worst kind of slasher: An art-house one. My Grade: D+

I'm not sure why this 1980s horror film is so overlooked. It is a very unique film, if a bit gimmicky. It stars Tangina (wait, I mean, Zelda Rubenstein, of course!) as a psycho-mommy whose relationship is a bit too tight with her son. In fact, she hypnotizes him on a nightly basis and has him going out about town, gouging out people's eyeballs for her personal collection! Just when you think the story couldn't get more bizarre, it does. This is definitely for fans of films about messed-up mother/son relationships. For those who can't stomach Tangina, you still might get a kick out of this truly original 80s horror flick. It's been compared to "Demons," but such a comparison is superficial. Beware, most reviews on this one feature major plot spoilers!