Anguish

1987 [SPANISH]

Action / Horror / Thriller

12
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 63% · 7 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 63% · 500 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.7/10 10 4742 4.7K

sadism gore surrealism grindhouse serial killer slasher

Plot summary

An ophthalmologist's assistant with an unhealthy interest in human eyeballs goes on a killing spree to collect eyeballs for his overbearing mother's collection. Reality soon takes a bizarre turn, both for the characters and the audience.

Director

Bigas Luna Photo
Bigas Luna

Top cast

Zelda Rubinstein Photo
Zelda Rubinstein as Mother
Michael Lerner Photo
Michael Lerner as John
Isabel García Lorca Photo
Isabel García Lorca as Caroline
Ricardo Azulay Photo
Ricardo Azulay as Police Commander - New Movie
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
778.06 MB
1280*538
Spanish 2.0
NR
Subtitles es  
23.976 fps
1 hr 24 min
Seeds 4
1.56 GB
1904*800
Spanish 5.1
NR
Subtitles es  
23.976 fps
1 hr 24 min
Seeds 11

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by ma-cortes 6 / 10

Eerie film with astonishing images and original direction by Bigas Luna

This creepy motion picture ingeniously realized exploring the hypnotic effects of cinema talks about a timid eye clinic intern (Michael Lerner, Omen 4) under the sway of his psychic and authoritarian mother (Zelda Rubinstein, Poltergeister). Hypnotized by swirling spirals and screechy bursts of gleaming wails, the ominous son packs up his surgical tool set and goes out a rampage . Our hapless soon-to-be victims arrive for a view a horror flick only to watch the gore unfold in the audience as well as on screen in which are showing the silent film titled ¨The lost world¨ and ¨ The mummy¨ . As a group of viewers are killed in the form of a screening of a horror movie that brings naturalism to life. As the terror picture shown to the audience gets more and more violent. The spectators (Talia Paul, Clara Pastor) see Lerner carving eyes on screen while a psycho-killer (Angel Jove) obsessed with the movie unleashes his own criminal spree on the unsuspecting spectators and he attacks anyone who crosses her way and soon the place is filled with people killed. The survivors trapped in the theater must fend off attacks of the murderers. At the ending the remaining public start the desperate battle for their lives and eventually, the theatre turns a walled-in trap. Soon it becomes clear that the parallel arguments gather together in deadly synchronization.The picture is full of suspense,thrills, mystery, and lots of blood and gore .This slick gore-feast is a triumph of style over movie logic. It's packed with overwhelming body count, excessive gore, grotesque killing, and rivers of red blood. This is one of the most original utilization of the movie-within-a-movie with terror argument, such as formerly made Lambert Bava in ¨Demons¨(1985). The picture is smartly designed ,stylishly photographed filming in Barcelona by Civit and with a suspenseful musical score by Pagan . Bigas Luna delivers the terror movie goods with sense of style. He's an expert on murky atmosphere such as proved in ¨Caniche¨, ¨Bilbao¨ and ¨Reborn¨. The picture will appeal to horror buffs and Bigas Luna fans.
Reviewed by Woodyanders 8 / 10

A superior and inventive psycho horror slasher

Geeky and bespectacled mama's boy orderly John Pressman (an excellent performance by Michael Lerner) is hypnotized by his evil and domineering mother Alice (a deliciously creepy portrayal by Zelda Rubinstein of "Poltergeist" fame) to embark on a vicious killing spree and pluck out the eyes of his victims. Meanwhile, the audience watching this gruesome picture in a movie theater are terrorized by another deranged maniac (a frighteningly intense turn by Angel Jove) with similar mommy issues. Writer/director Bigas Luna makes crafty and inspired use of the nifty film-with-a-film premise (at one point Pressman goes into a theater to bump off patrons just as the other lunatic in the theater begins doing the same thing!), does a bang-up job of creating and sustaining a tense, freaky, and unnerving atmosphere, and stages several of the effectively bloody and brutal murder set pieces with real flair and style (the graphic moments of gory eyeball violence are very nasty and nauseating). Moreover, this film culminates in a positively nerve-wracking last third as all hell erupts in the theater and concludes with a truly unsettling ambiguous open ending. Better still, this movie even works as an interesting, intelligent, and provocative meditation on the slippery, subliminal, and manipulative nature of cinema itself. Both Joseph M. Civit's lush widescreen cinematography and Jose Manuel Pagan's spirited shuddery score further enhance the overall fine quality of this highly recommended cult favorite.
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