The Theatre Bizarre-2011

Directors Tom Savini, Jeremy Kasten, Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, Richard Stanley

Starring Udo Kier, Lena Kliene

Scott’s Review #77

Reviewed June 28, 2014

Grade: B+

The Theatre Bizarre is a little-known horror treat from 2011 that was shown only at horror festivals upon release and is otherwise shamefully unknown.

Horror buffs must give this film a chance.

The main story centers on a young woman’s attraction to an odd theater in her neighborhood and her hesitant pursuit of the theater. Once she musters the courage to enter, she is treated to six stories told by the strange owner of the theater, who is a wax figure.

The audience also experiences the stories in one-by-one vignettes.

A puppet host (or Guignol) introduces the six short films: “The Mother of Toads”, “I Love You”, “Wet Dreams”, “The Accident”, “Vision Stains” and “Sweets”.

As each is shown, the host becomes more human, and Enola becomes more puppet-like.

The stories range from the morbidly gruesome (A bitter, angry woman castrates her cheating boyfriend. An unstable woman serves her boyfriend to her friends for dinner), to poetic, (a young girl and her mother discuss the process of death upon witnessing a deadly motorcycle crash).

The first vignette (Mother of Toads) wasn’t the best, but the subsequent stories fascinated me.

The ambiance, especially inside the theater, is dark, dreamlike, and surreal, which adds a lot of atmosphere to the film.

It reminded me quite a bit of Masters of Horror, a popular series on Showtime in the mid-2000s.

Highly recommended gem for horror fans.