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Anguish

1987, Movie, R, 91 mins

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ANGUISH is a suspenseful horror film containing not one but two classic gimmicks: a William Castle-style warning that the "subliminal effects" on screen may cause mental distress, and a cleverly used film-within-a-film technique. The movie begins as a loutish optometrist's orderly (Michael Lerner) louses up on the job and is dismissed. His mother (Zelda Rubinstein), an odd little woman who totally dominates her docile son, uses a form of hypnosis to merge her mind with her son's, and sends him out to get revenge on the patient (Isabel Garcia Lorca) who caused his dismissal. At this point director Luna pulls back from the image to reveal that it is merely a horror film being watched by a small matinee crowd in a movie theater. We then find out that one of the patrons is a real murderer, who begins killing off theater employees and patrons in a manner that parallels the action on screen. ANGUISH is a well-crafted and entertaining exercise in cinematic style, and a good example of an adventurous director turning to the horror genre in order to have more room to flex his pyrotechnical muscles. leave a comment
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