The Theatre Bizarre (2011) US/France
There are some movies you wish you could just unsee. I know that's impossible, but if there was a brain scrubber out there I'd be making time with the soap. This was... just... terrible.
This is an anthology of six stories, and since I've got new felines in the house things are in a bit of an uproar but I thought I could handle short shorts and boy, did I pick the wrong movie. Or exactly the right movie, given what I'm supposed to be doing here. It all centers in Paris' Grand Guignol Theatre. Without any backstory we see a woman, and I'm only calling her that because she's obviously not a child, even though she dresses childishly with a blank eyed stare, look across from her room's window to this theater and, like she's never done it before or something, she decides to go in.
Now just because the wraparound story is in France, the movie doesn't have to be - it was filmed in Germany, the US, and Canada. That doesn't make it any better - they just spread the crap around a bit is all.
Our, err, tale teller is a puppet-like man played by Udo Kier. If you don't know the name, I guarantee you'd recognize his face - he's one of those character actors that appear just everywhere. He begins our journey into... I don't know. Horror? Meaning of life? Gore for gore's sake? Life lessons? You know what, never mind, I don't think you're supposed to come away with anything but a definite loss of appetite.
The Mother Of Toads: Another bad undertaking of the great stories of H.P. Lovecraft. We have an English couple in France, he's a self absorbed idiot, she's just a bitch. Sorry but she is. They discover at a bazaar an old woman promising a copy of the Necronomicon. Duh. Idiot says sure, bitch says I'm going to a spa. As he tries to get the book while at the old woman's house she changes into your typical 'hey I've got big boobs so I don't have to look like anything' type of woman and seduces him - just in time of course for his wife to find out. She is then attacked and slimed to death by frogs. Or toads I guess. They were supposed to be toads but I don't think the makers of this movie knows the difference between the two. She dies and the next morning the husband is also 'toaded' and killed.I Love You: Dumb, dumb, dumb. German man, French woman, more stupid people. She wants to leave, he wants her to stay. She confesses to massive amounts of infidelities which prompts him to say he was right, and wasn't being paranoid. We then get the only good line in the movie. She responds, "Just because you were right doesn't mean you're not paranoid." Touche'. She leaves with her new lover - then time skips - and skips again and by now we've figured this out since he woke up on the bathroom floor with a gashed hand. Duh. He'd killed the lover and her and now, because his love is so strong he slits his throat as he continues to tell her (not possible by the way) 'I love you.' Good thing these stories were so short.
Wet Dreams: First thing I see is 'Directed by Tom Savini'. Nooooooo! It's hard to see one of your faves in something so... ick. Okay this is his story of a man who keeps dreaming of being, umm, unmanned by a woman with a claw for a hoo-haw (that's medical lingo, look it up) so he keeps seeing his psychiatrist (Oh Tom, you think you get to star in your own stuff too?) and tells him yeah he beats his wife and is unfaithful, so what? The dreams need to stop. 
Bottom line: His lover is/was the girlfriend of his psychiatrist and his psych is his wife's lover.... so the lover is quartered (if you did that work Tom, not bad) and the man reduced to a trunk and head. He thinks he can wake up.... until his wife cuts off his eyelids. Whoops.The Accident: This is a major dose of What The Hell? A woman is trying to explain death to her little girl. While driving down the road, an older man passes on a motorcycle. A few seconds later, a young man passes, giving the little girl a wave. Further down the road we find both motorcycles stopped. The older man is sitting on the side of the road. The younger man collided with a deer and has died. They are father and son.
The mother tells her daughter to stay in the car which of course she doesn't. The young man is clearly dead, the deer suffering. The older man dispatches the deer as the police drive up. Again, what??? Sad but not revealing or even a story. Their basic concept: Dying well is the same as living well. WHAT????
Vision Stains: There's not much that can make me flinch, but a needle to the eye is one of 'em and you see it a lot. We have a woman who has discovered if she draws the fluid of someone's eye just as they die (she only kills those who 'want to die anyway') and then shoots it into her own she absorbs their history, their memories. She then writes them down so that the world will know... what exactly? Life isn't fair? People suffer? She decides the ultimate experience must be of the unborn so... needle to some crack smoking mother-to-be's fetus and then shot to the eye... she hears voices from somewhere that persuades her to poke out both her eyes. Message: Now that she's blind she can truly see. WHAT????Sweets: The weirdest and goriest of all the stories. If Tom had anything to do with the effects in this one, kudos to you dude 'cause it was top notch. The story: Man and woman are living a version of 9 1/2 weeks (without the sex and certainly not erotic). They are in a room littered with food... we're talking they literally pick stuff off the floor and... it's sick. Apparently that's all they did together - eat. Now she wants to leave, he wants to keep her.
So she takes him to her club. It is full of very strangely (I suppose this is meant to be 'art' or something) made up people at different tables. Then out comes the food. These stately people turn into massive pigs. We're talking food everywhere - in one corner a man stands, something like pudding in an IV going into his arm. The gore? The man who wanted to stay with his girl is going to get his wish - sort of. He's stripped, head cut off and eaten raw by the whole club. Yay.
The movie wraps up as the tale teller, who has become more and more human looking after each story is now totally human, it is the girl who is now a puppet. He picks her up and puts her in a box. Fin.
And I'm shaking my head and wondering if I should be writing about something else. But hey, you didn't have to watch it.
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