{"id":4058,"date":"2024-09-14T17:30:55","date_gmt":"2024-09-14T17:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4058"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:27:42","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:27:42","slug":"anguish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/14\/anguish\/","title":{"rendered":"Anguish"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Anguish <\/strong>(1987)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 International Spectrafilm\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, gore)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bigas Luna\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bigas Luna\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jose Manuel Pagan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Josep M. Civit\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 8, 1988 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Zelda Rubinstein, Michael Lerner, Talia Paul, Angel Jove, Clara Pastor, Isabel Garcia Lorca, Jose M. Chucarro, Antonella Murgia, Josephine Borchaca, Kit Kincannon, Marc Maloney, Jasmine Parker, Tatiana Thauven, Joy Blackburn.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $228,789 (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0At first glance, Anguish<\/strong> appears to be yet another horror flick about a creepy momma\u2019s boy with a homicidal streak. That\u2019s exactly what I thought the first time I saw it. It unceremoniously opened in theaters back in January \u201988. I caught a Saturday afternoon matinee at the Bryn Mawr, a theater not known for showing low budget B-movies like this. For the life of me, I couldn\u2019t figure out why it was playing there. That is, until about the 20-minute mark.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Something happens in Anguish<\/strong> that distinguishes it from other horror movies. At this point, I\u2019ll only say that a parallel narrative is introduced. Once it kicks in, the movie transcends the genre to a different plane of existence, one reserved exclusively for truly original films. It certainly took me by surprise. But I should have known something was up with Anguish<\/strong>. It has this weird vibe from the word go. It\u2019s the kind of vibe only found in giallo <\/em>horror films except that it was produced in Spain, not Italy. While I wouldn\u2019t exactly call Anguish<\/strong> a life-changing experience, I will say it\u2019s positively brilliant.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The tagline on the poster reads, \u201cThe eyes of the city are mine.\u201d It\u2019s a direct quote from the movie, one that succinctly sums up the main plot. It\u2019s uttered by Alice (Rubinstein, Poltergeist), a clearly psychotic woman who controls her crazed son John (Lerner, Harlem Nights) through hypnosis and some sort of paranormal mind control. She believes that collecting eyes will cure her son\u2019s condition; he\u2019s myopic and on the verge of going completely blind. After a hypnosis session, he goes out and removes people\u2019s eyes with a scalpel.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One night, John goes to a local movie theater and goes to work on various audience members. This is where Anguish<\/strong> throws a curve ball at its audience. The camera slowly pulls back to reveal that everything we\u2019ve seen thus far is, in actuality, a movie (\u201cThe Mommy\u201d) being watched by an audience that includes two teenage girls, Patty (Paul) and Linda (Pastor). Patty is freaked out by what\u2019s happening on screen and wants to leave. Her friend insists that she stay. As it so happens, there\u2019s a psychotic killer (Jove) in that audience too. The action in this plotline parallels what happens in the original plotline. Yeah, it\u2019s pretty freaky!<\/p>\n

\u00a0The subsequent home entertainment releases of Anguish<\/strong> include an introductory warning to viewers that watching the film could result in headaches or being hypnotized (presumably by Alice\u2019s spinning spiral). I like this. It\u2019s a cool homage to the gimmick-based low budget horror movies of the 60s and 70s; specifically, the ones where free barf bags or bogus insurance policies were handed to viewers as they entered the theater. But why wasn\u2019t it included in the theatrical release? Or on the poster for that matter? I don\u2019t know if it would have lured more people into the theater, but it still would have been a cool bonus.<\/p>\n

\u00a0But even without it, Anguish<\/strong> is still great. Rubinstein is amazing as the psychotic, overprotective mother. The quiet malevolence in her voice is positively chilling. Lerner does a great job in making his character come off as an overgrown child with an unnatural bond to his mother. I love that writer-director Bigas Luna doesn\u2019t waste precious screen time by having a psychiatrist explain the nature of their psychological issues. In fact, he doesn\u2019t explain their psychic connection at all. It\u2019s this sense of ambiguity that makes Anguish<\/strong> so unsettling a horror film. He also has a good handle on narrative in that the plot never gets convoluted. Luna manages to hold it together all the way to the final frame. In less capable hands, it would have fallen apart at the end.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While not exactly a bloodbath like most Euro-horror movies, it has some decent gore effects. It\u2019s sufficiently suspenseful too. Anguish<\/strong> really is a well-made film. It\u2019s weird, creepy and compelling throughout. Granted, it\u2019s not for all tastes, especially not the squeamish. But for all you adventurous moviegoers, you\u2019ll want to take a look. Just be sure to not to look directly at the spiral \u2026. or else.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anguish (1987)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 International Spectrafilm\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, gore)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bigas Luna\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bigas Luna\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jose Manuel Pagan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Josep M. Civit\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 8, 1988 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Zelda Rubinstein, Michael Lerner, Talia Paul, Angel Jove, Clara Pastor, Isabel Garcia Lorca, Jose M. Chucarro, Antonella Murgia, Josephine Borchaca, Kit Kincannon, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Anguish-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4058"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4451,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058\/revisions\/4451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}