Anguish

Anguish (1987)

Okay so there really isn’t any way to do a plot synopsis for this movie without including some spoilers. So if you hate that sort of thing just skip to the bottom and read my rating. You have been warned. This movie opens with a creepy old lady and her son. Right away you can tell there is something wrong with them. The son works for a medical practice and helps the doctor’s fit contact lenses and do other basic chores. He is slowly losing his vision so both he and his mother have this obsession with eyes. They also seem to have some sort of mental link, which is only made stronger by the mother’s use of hypnotism. When a customer wrongs him she sends him out on a killing spree to get revenge. The big twist is that after killing his victims he takes their eyes for his collection. Now here is where things get strange. Without warning we are suddenly watching an audience in a movie theater watching the movie (about the mother and son) that we were just watching! Here we meet a bunch of new characters. Including one man who thinks that he is the killer from the movie and that on screen mother is telling him to kill. So now with the original movie as a backdrop (literally in some scenes) we watch as the new killer locks the theater down and starts to kill the staff and patrons.

I have to give the movie props for being different. The movie starts off slowly, but then picks up steam as the killings start. Just about the time that I started getting into it the movie it throws the curveball of the theater audience. It then takes a good ten or fifteen minutes after shifting to the new storyline to start picking up again. But once the killer starts to lock the theater down and claims his first few victims it gets interesting. Though I still think the original characters and story was far better Anguish was still shaping up to be a solid movie until the filmmaker decided to mess with the audience again. There is another twist at the end that I won’t spoil, but really bugged me. The cast of the first movie with Zelda Rubenstein as the mother and Michael Lerner as her demented son is really quite good. I especially liked Rubenstein, who is very creepy and perfect in the role. The cast from the theater isn’t as impressive. But the most of them aren’t given much to do but sit and watch the movie before running in terror from the killer.

None of the killings are particularly memorable or gory. There are a few scenes where the killer (from the movie within the movie) is removing the eyes that are seriously messed up and effective. But other that those couple of times there isn’t anything here to get a gore hound excited. The rest of the movie is solidly made but nothing special.

I almost wish that the movie had stuck with the original story instead of abandoning it just as things were starting to get good. I’m never a big fan of filmmakers shifting gears or tossing in big twists to show how clever they are. But I was starting to enjoy the movie again until the filmmaker decided to toss in another stupid twist at the end, which just really ruined the movie for me. Still this is an interesting movie and worth checking out.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer