Anguish
by Bigas Luna
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Product details
Actor: Àngel Jové, Clara Pastor, Michael Lerner, Talia Paul, Zelda RubinsteinDirector: Bigas Luna
Writer: Bigas Luna
Producer: Andreu Coromina
Producer: George Ayoub
Producer: Norm Hill
Producer: Pepón Coromina
Writer: Eva Lesmes
Writer: Michael Berlin
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: Spanish (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 89 minutes
Release Date: 1988-07-07
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: Fox Home Entertainment
Studio: Fox Home Entertainment
VHS Movie Reviews of Anguish
Movie Review: Anguish? Yeah, that's about what I was feeling while watching this
Summary: 2 Stars
Malformed, distorted, misshapen, deformed... all words that could be used to describe the plot and delivery of this (as well as starring actress Zelda Rubinstein... I know, I shouldn't have gone there), 1989's little known "horror" film Anguish. A somewhat interesting premise that features a movie inside of a movie angle, where the film that we initially are watching turns into the background of a second story taking place within a movie theater (think 1985's Italian splatterfest Demons for a good example of this), ultimately gets bogged down by an unintelligible script filled with unapealing characters (to downright obnoxious... Zelda, I'm talking to you again). In the first film, Michael Lerner (Barton Fink, Maniac Cop 2, Elf) stars as an unstable eye doctor who is hypnotized by his mother (Zelda)to kill... and also to remove the eyes of the victims. Some decent scenes of grue take place but more time is wasted on the scenes of hynotization which try REALLY hard to be unique and artistic but David Lynch this ain't (with Zelda spewing lines of psychobabble such as, "you once where like a snail... hidden... happy"). The second part involves a man obsessed with the movie loosing it inside the theater while the first film plays on in the background. Fairly tame from this point forward as our new antagonist's weapon of choice is a silenced pistol (and he has no interest in removing the victims eyes... bah!). Maybe the director was attempting to make a visionary piece of filmaking about how life can imitate art? Maybe... but this is schlock through and through (the "twist" ending solidifies this statement), whether you want to put a fancey bow on top of it or not (at least movies like Friday The 13th know exactly what they are). Looking at the other reviews on here, Anguish has a following that feel it's a really good film (although so does Boogeyman...)so there may be something I'm missing, but if you are on the hunt for anything mildly scary or disturbing I'd look elsewhere... though those looking for something with a little originality, or in the need of a Zelda Rubinstein fix, could certainly do worse (you could just watch Poltergeist again though?). Movie Review: A Movie Worth Experiencing
Summary: 5 Stars
They sure did a great job at cleaning up the picture and sound for this 1986 flick. Zelda Rubinstein is a trip in this movie. Well the movie itself is quite a trip. This movie deserves more credit than what it received. You can really tell that alot of effort and thought went into making this movie. So as a viewer and customer of the dvd I can appreciate that. You should try too.Movie Review: Way cool frights, but listen!
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this in the movie theatre when it came out. I was looking around in my seat a bit. You had to see it in the theater to really appreciate it, and if you did you know what I mean. Also, Michael is a close personal friend of mine, so for me, it was especially frightening to think that my good buddy..."gulp"...would...do that...could do that...to ME while I watched it in the theater was intensely wierd. I have paranoid schizophrenia, as well, so it was gripping, and very hard for me not to acknowledge the "real" possibility of a grand-scale evil joke being played on me personally. Whew! It's hard to explain, but in the end, all things considered, I decided it was a way cool experience. I am going to buy it for nostalgia's sake, and also because I like watching movies with people in them that I know, especially strange people like Michael. His very strange personality also shines through in "Barton Fink", and an episode of some serial show like "Dark Shadows" or something like that, I can't exactly remember though, in which he plays a unique sort of ice cream man. Oh gross!Movie Review: A Bit Different
Summary: 2 Stars
This hypnotic horror film from 1986 is for the movie fan with a different taste. The cheap blood and guts scenes are worse off because of the roller coaster movements. The interesting but nauseating movements of the camera are intense if you?re stuck in the eighties. In my opinion they could have cut the fat and made this a short 30 min. T.V. show. One plus is that it?s a little freaky which makes it scary to a degree. The other plus is it get boring when you give up trying to understand the movie in a movie concepts they intend to entice you with. I watched this with my girlfriend so when she got bored with the movie or somehow scared by the odd images, I was there to hold.Movie Review: AN EYE FOR AN EYE
Summary: 3 Stars
A middle-aged momma's boy runs rampant in a movie theater cutting out patron's eyeballs, while the movie onscreen depicts the same man as an optometrist who is driven to his evil acts by his overbearing, overweight squeaky-voiced mother. (The film's movie-within-a-movie THE MOMMY).An interesting idea is well played out even if the end result is rather awkward. There is one funny scene of one of the victim's slobbering before having his throat slit with a scalpel. Presumably it's just a matter of taste. All in all, ANGUISH isn't a bad movie, I just expected it to be a lot better.
Summary of Anguish
Michael Lerner (looking uncannily like Roger Ebert) is a clumsy eye clinic intern under the sway of his psychic, psychotically vindictive mother (Zelda Rubinstein, the diminutive spiritualist from Poltergeist). "All the eyes in the city will be ours," Mom commands, declaring war on the orbs of humanity. Hypnotized by swirling spirals and screechy bursts of electronic wails, the dutiful son packs up his surgical tool set and goes out collecting. Suddenly we pull back to find ourselves staring at the nervous reactions of a matinee movie crowd watching our same horror flick (though it's entitled "Mommy"). The audience watches Lerner carving skulls onscreen (in a darkened movie theater, of all places) while a killer obsessed with the movie unleashes his own rampage on the unsuspecting patrons. Soon it becomes clear that the parallel plots lock together in sinister synchronization. It's one of the most original uses of the movie-within-a-movie device, and an ingenious avenue for exploring the hypnotic power of cinema. Director Bigas Luna (Jamón Jamón) makes the two killers symbiotic blood brothers, the "real" killer feeding off his cinematic inspiration. It's often more cerebral than scary, and the home video experience unfortunately robs the film of its final layer (this movie within a movie was really meant to be seen by moviegoers). But it's smartly designed and stylishly directed, and Luna delivers the horror movie goods--plenty of suspense, buckets of blood, and more gory ocular excavations than eye-obsessed Lucio Fulci managed in his entire career. --Sean AxmakerSpanish Video
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