| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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ANGUISH
(Anguista)
Rating:  ½
Spain. 1987.
Director/Screenplay – Bigas Luna, Screenplay Dialogue – Michael Berlin, Producer – Pepon Coromina, Photography – Joseph Maria Civit, Music – J.M. Pagan, Special Effects Supervisor – Paco Terei, Art Direction – Felipe De Paco. Production Company – Spectrafilm/SambaPC/Luna Films.
Cast:
Michael Lerner (John Pressman), Zelda Rubinstein (Alice Pressman), Talia Paul (Patty), Clara Pastor (Linda), Angel Jove (Killer)
Plot: Optometrist’s assistant John Pressman is hypnotized by his domineering mother into going out and killing people and slicing off their eyes. However this is really part of a film called ‘The Mommy’ being watched by an audience in a theatre. At the same time as John enters a theatre in the film and starts killing people, so does a killer in the theatre where people are watching the film.
This is a very strange film. It has a most unusual film-within-a-film narrative structure, telling two stories, one of which is a film being watched by the audience in which the other story is taking place. Things become really strange when events in the film on the screen (within the film) start being paralleled by the killer in the audience watching the film. In one striking shot a character in the film gets up and walks out of the theatre and the camera pulls back looking down the aisle of the theatre first in the film and then down the aisle from the theatre where the audience is watching the character walk down the aisle, one which by implication takes in the fact that there is a third audience in a theatre (us) watching a film about people watching a film in which a character walks down an aisle in a theatre. It’s a shot where you cannot help but look over your shoulder and wonder if you cannot get a glimpse of an audience watching you. And there is a shock ending that plays between the two which, even if it doesn’t really make sense, is highly effective.
On the minus side director/writer Luna doesn’t really do anything with this intriguing interplay except use it for a slasher film. The film rather crudely plays on the old maxim that violent scenes seen on a screen cause psychotic behaviour in the people watching. In between its ideas the film itself is rather crudely made. It is drably lit and photographed, and Luna turns most of it into a cheap and rather monotonous parade of killings, although admittedly the scenes of Lerner slicing off people’s eyeballs are quite gut-churningly gruesome.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1992
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