Review: The Theatre Bizarre (2011)

by

23, January 2012Horror, Reviews

Cast: Udo Kier, Virginia Newcomb, Amanda Marquardt
Director: Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, Jeremy Kasten, Tom Savini, Richard Stanley
Country: USA | France
Genre: Horror
Official Trailer: Here

The horror anthology is an interesting beast. Usually, even if all the stories aren’t quite your bag, there’s at least one to satiate your personal appetite for depravity. In The Theatre Bizarre, your appetite is guaranteed to be more than satiated. By the end, you’re gasping for breath, eager to escape a sea of grotesque images, while at the same time, wanting to remain submerged in their murky waters. Like I said, it’s an interesting beast.

By the end, you’re gasping for breath, eager to escape a sea of grotesque images, while at the same time, wanting to remain submerged in their murky waters.

Although the film does carry a peculiar sense of stylistic continuity, it plays like a horror shorts festival; a collection of interesting, shocking and horrifying stories with varying degrees of quality. Some boast terrific performances, some don’t. Some have intricately design effects, others use poor rubber suits. There are many different flavours at work, which is both a strength and a weakness. On one hand, the lack of cohesion creates an unsafe environment where anything goes, on the other, it can appear aimless and scattered.

The film itself starts simply enough with a troubled girl entering the theatre bizarre to indulge in some harmless escapism. What she finds inside is a group of crude animatronic paper-mache dolls lead by Udo Kier who tells her stories of carnivorous toad queens, memory stealing junkies and murderous love triangles. One of the standout segments, directed by Tom Savini, revolves around a reoccurring nightmare showing the many different and colourful ways a man can be castrated. This story in particular has a true Tales From The Crypt vibe complete with an ending that, if you give it a chance, rivals the vicious brutality portrayed in either the Saw or Hostel franchises. At the end of each segment, we inevitably return to Udo Kier who not only bookends the story, but also speaks to the notion of authorship and stories in general.

A seemingly unavoidable theme that rears its head in every anthology is the idea of storytelling. Whenever you have a film in which more than one story is told, the audience becomes acutely aware of the act of telling itself. The framework through which the other stories are delivered becomes a main focus. Examples of this can be seen in Creepshow, Quicksilver Highway, Tales From The Darkside: The Movie, Black Sabbath, even the contemporary Chillerama, all of which are tied together by a separate story making them inherently self reflective.

…these stories purge the author of their own horrors and pass them, like a sickness, onto their unwitting listeners.

It’s the act of being pulled in and out of each story that keeps the audience at a distance, forcing them to be aware of exactly what they are: an audience listening to a storyteller. Most films try desperately to hide this fact from the audience, but not the horror anthology, and especially not The Theatre Bizarre. This film uses the storytelling theme to great and profoundly troubling effect. It introduces the notion that stories are infectious in the most sickly sense of the word. Instead of being healthy expressions of shared joys or concerns about life meant to enlighten the audience, these stories purge the author of their own horrors and pass them, like a sickness, onto their unwitting listeners. This is storytelling with malicious intent.

Although the film’s many merits, including its ability to successfully shock both viscerally and thematically, are enough to make it a worthy entry in the horror anthology genre, something about it just doesn’t hold together. Much like the later works of Italian horror maestro Dario Argento, there are sparks of brilliance to be enjoyed here, the question is whether or not you’ll have the patience to sift through those muddy moments in order to find the shimmering ones.

55/100 - Much like the later works of Italian horror maestro Dario Argento, there are sparks of brilliance to be enjoyed here, the question is whether or not you’ll have the patience to sift through those muddy moments in order to find the shimmering ones.

Craig Stewart
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Horror Film Critic. Am I obsessed? Maybe. I prefer the term “passionate”; it has a less creepy stalker kind of vibe. Not that I have anything against creepy stalkers being that my genre of choice is and forever will be the depraved, demented and deranged dwelling of horror. If you're looking for films that don’t sugarcoat things, that reveal people at their ugliest, that aren’t afraid to spill a little blood and have fun doing it, then look no further!
  • http://twitter.com/NextProjection Christopher Misch

    This maybe too much for me! Sounds incredible gruesome!

  • http://twitter.com/NextProjection Christopher Misch

    This maybe too much for me! Sounds incredible gruesome!