And so the opening night of Frightfest 2011 came to a close with an anthology film called The Theatre Bizarre. Featuring stories directed by Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, Tom Savini and Richard Stanley, The Theatre Bizarre like most anthology movies is a mixed bag with some good, some bad and some very ugly. After the first bookend piece introduced a girl wandering into a strange theatre full of seemingly paper mache audience members, a strangely powdered meat puppet played by Udo Kier entered the stage and introduced the first film – Richard Stanley’s Mother of Toads.
Mother of Toads (Richard Stanley)
Mother of Toads. Just say the name to yourself. Somewhere at sometime, a great movie is destined to team up with this awesome title. Unfortunately, just saying Mother of Toads is a million times more interesting than actually watching this opening short. The film surrounds the story of an old woman who tells a young couple the tale of the mother of toads, giving them a rare book featuring the story. The man then tracks down the old woman, entering her home and sleeping with her. The rest is entirely predictable (guess who the old woman actually is), the actors have about as much charisma and energy of a skid-mark and I’ve never seen someone suck all the impact out of an expensive ‘Mother Toad’ suit just by wearing it. Stanley directs his segment with all the skill and verve of a baked potato and when his film is lagging, as it does for most of its running time, he throws in a few arse-shots of the man’s girlfriend in a swimming pool. Why? Who knows? Aside from a brilliant ‘morning after’ shot that is obliviously played straight when it should have actually gone for laughs, Mother of Toads is a train wreck. A limp, dull short that feels long with no story, no flair, nothing of interest and without any tone or atmosphere, Mother of Toads is just plain bad despite the potential for amusing strangeness. The worst short of the lot, it could only get better.
I Love You (Buddy Giovinazzo)
Up next was I Love You, one of the more unconventional love stories of the night. The film stars Susan Anbeh as a wife telling her husband, Andre Hennicke, that their marriage is over. She has met someone else who is currently waiting in a car outside ready to whisk her away to her new and improved life. Hennicke shines in this piece and the moment that he asks for a more in-depth explanation into the demise of his marriage results in one of the best moments in the entire film. The line between comedy and tragedy has never seemed finer and Giovinazzo takes pleasure in slipping from one tone to the other. With a gruesome twist providing a neat ending, I Love You helped ease the pain inflicted by the toad and proved to be one of the best shorts of the film.
Wet Dreams (Tom Savini)
Savini’s tale is arguably the most complex as a couple battle it out in their dreams, dishing out gory and brutal punishments for each other; it’s the Inception of the group. After a brilliant opening establishes some of the man’s sexual insecurities, the film slowly descends into the doldrums as Savini struggles to capitalise on what could have been a really interesting idea. The dream-within-a-dream structure quickly becomes tiresome but fortunately a grim final act of vengeance pulls the film back up to the high standards of the opening. Not the best of the bunch by some way, but Mother of Toads it ain’t.
The Accident (Douglas Buck)
Douglas Buck created The Accident, the fourth and by far the best segment in the anthology. A bedtime conversation sees a mother explains to her daughter the idea of death, a concept that seems to have smashed its way into the child’s psyche due to an earlier accident that left a deer blankly gazing at her through the car window. This story features hardly any blood, guts or gore but is so much more haunting than anything else seen in The Theatre Bizarre. The image of the deer haunts us just as much as it does the little girl and aside from this truly unsettling dreamlike apparition, the mother’s words prove to be extremely consoling and moving. As it stands, The Accident is the best story of the film and one of the best things seen in the entire festival. Both powerful in its ability to haunt, move and engage with the life-changing moment that is our first confrontation with the idea of death, The Accident would be an award winner if it travelled as a stand alone short. This makes it all the more sad that it is likely to be remembered as ‘that good bit in The Theatre Bizarre’.
Vision Stains (Karim Hussain)
Someone had to follow it and that task fell in the lap of Karim Hussain with Vision Stains. The story follows a woman who kills people but not before extracting the fluid from their eyes via a needle and injecting it into hers, allowing her to see their lives flash before her eyes. Addicted to the stories of others, she writes down everything that she sees. One of the more gritty tales in the collection, this film struck a chord with me in particular due to my struggles with any up close eye action on a cinema screen. (Final Destination 5 also hit this nerve). With several nasty, close up eye injections and extractions, Vision Staines is initially a tough watch. However, there really is only so many times you can see a needle going into an eye and react to it and unfortunately it happens so many times in the film that by the end it completely fails to pack a punch. Combine this with the irritating voiceover of the main character and a ‘story’ that’s paper-thin, Vision Staines ends up as merely an icky concept that runs out of steam, fast. Something that shouldn’t happen in any film, let alone a short one.
Sweets (David Gregory)
Despite being one of the most visually interesting and well filmed pieces in The Theatre Bizarre, Gregory’s Sweets ends up biting off more than it can chew. There isn’t much of a story here aside from a girl who enjoys feeding her boyfriend all sorts of sickly sweets. With enough disgusting imagery of food on show to ruin an appetite for days, Sweets does succeed in its primary aim of revolting. However, it gets old fast and those looking for a truly interesting, scary and vom-inducing take on the subject of feeders should check out Brett Leonard’s Feed (2005) rather than stay and witness this disappointing final chapter of the anthology.
As the wrap-around cemented its position as being both dull and pointless, The Theatre Bizarre remained a bag mixed with more bad than good. Whilst I Love You is a funny and interesting short and the must-see The Accident is worth skipping to, the rest are a muddled bunch of interesting concepts generally poorly executed. Except Mother of Toads, a short that even a toad with breasts couldn’t save.
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