Rating: 
Summary: Eyes Will Roll!!!
Review: A meditation on the interrelationship between spectator and display, this astonishing film covers the same territory (although in a different way) as Psycho, Rear Window, and Peeping Tom as tissues of reality and reference shift and change like cornea transplants. What is Real, what is illusion, and in the final analysis, does it matter?Throughout the film the address of the eye is undercut by other sensory cues, most memorably in the scene when audio surround information suddenly reframes our "reality" as part of a movie in a movie - a moment which somehow relaxes our tension and increases it at the same time. I'm reminded here of the astonishing scene in Fritz Lang's 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse when the audience discovers an entire frame of reference beyond the surface reality it had assumed was in place. The brilliant climax of the film predates the one in Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery as cinema becomes real becomes cinema - chinese box fashion. As a vitally important experiment in film narrative technique, Anguish is required viewing for anyone who loves the movies. The DVD is wonderful, but this is a film which for best effect should be seen in a theatre (as Videodrome should really be seen on video). I had the GREAT good-fortune to see this film in such a theatre. A small twin theatre in my town was playing both Anguish and Alien Nation (Imagine the fun the box office cashier had answering the phone "Tonight we have Anguish and Alienation!"). The theatre manager must have been the spiritual brother of William Castle because during the midnight show I attended, audience members (who were in on the joke) turned the movie in the movie into a movie in a movie in a movie in a theatre. On the screen, The Lost World was playing to an audience, before the screen, in The Mommy, Michael Lerner was menacing the heroine, before the screen in Anguish, the unnamed psychopath was menacing the heroine, before the screen an audience member was holding another audience member hostage while uniformed (costumed) policeman were invading not only both theatres in The Movie, but the actual theatre where I sat!!!!! Memorable, disturbing, brilliant, freakish. See it. Your eye will shake your hand!
Rating: 
Summary: AN EYE FOR AN EYE
Review: A middle-aged momma's boy runs rampant in a movie theater cutting out patron's eyeballs, while the movie onscreen depicts the same man as an optometrist who is driven to his evil acts by his overbearing, overweight squeaky-voiced mother. (The film's movie-within-a-movie THE MOMMY).
An interesting idea is well played out even if the end result is rather awkward. There is one funny scene of one of the victim's slobbering before having his throat slit with a scalpel. Presumably it's just a matter of taste. All in all, ANGUISH isn't a bad movie, I just expected it to be a lot better.
Rating: 
Summary: Reel or Real?
Review: A strikingly original, intricately constructed, and extremely gruesome post-modern shocker about a short-sighted, mother-fixated optometrist orderly with an unnatural penchant for eyeballs. "Soon", whispers his mother, "all the eyes in the city will be ours" and using a form of hypnosis, she sends him out on an eye-stealing killing spree. But, by using creepily effective close-ups and a clever Russian doll structure, Spanish director Luna (The Tit and the Moon) introduces another layer of his bizarre voyeurism in a neat little pull-back, by revealing that this is all just a movie-within-the-movie titled The Mommy being shown to a small matinee crowd at a seedy theatre in Los Angeles. As it plays, two teenage girls in the audience, the strong-willed Linda and the squeamish Polly, discover that one of the patrons sitting near them is a real maniac. In the on-screen movie, when the scalpel-wielding John enters a movie cinema and begins killing the patrons and cinema employees one by one, and removing their eyeballs for his mother's collection, the 'real' killer in the audience, armed with a silenced .38 pistol, begins killing the patrons and employees of the cinema in a manner which surreally parallels the action on the movie screen. A bold concept and another great reel-Versus-real movie (to rank alongside The Blair Witch Project, The Last Broadcast, Cannibal Holocaust, Scream and eXistenZ).
Rating:
Summary: An eye-popping,insurmountable hypnotic horror extravaganza!!
Review: An overbearing mother hypnotizes her middle-aged son into collecting human eyeballs from various members of the community. What more can you ask for in a film?! A stylishly gruesome, one of a kind horror flick that is absolutely impossible not to thoroughly enjoy. "Anguish" is sure to go down in history as the "Citizen Kane" of horror films. Hold on to your eyeballs!!
Rating: 
Summary: Good premise goes to waste.
Review: Anguish begins by introducing us to Michael Lerner as John, an eye doctor, and Zelda Rubenstein as his overprotective mother. It turns out Lerner has an obsession with cutting out people's eyes, possibly because he's losing his own eyesight, and he also happens to have some kind of telepathic bond with his mother. But wait, the camera pans back to reveal all this to be a movie that an audience is watching. The main focus is now on two girls in this crowd, one of which happens to be frightened out of her mind by the picture. When she sees Lerner on-screen enter a movie theater and kill off the audience, she begins to believe someone amid her own crowd is about to do the same. What do you know, she's right. Anguish has a good premise, doesn't it? Too bad it fails to gel. First off, there are the hypnosis scenes in the first twenty or so minutes. Rather than being disturbing or visually entrancing, it's just hilarious. Watching Lerner wave his hands in front of the screen while he spins over and over is a pretty funny sight. The yellow-tint cinematography is more annoying than atmospheric, making the film look as if though it were covered in butter. Once the twist reveals itself to be movie-within-a-movie, things don't get better. Our protagonist, named Patty, happens to be a terrible actress who isn't the slightest bit convincing. Sure, many slashers star actresses who aren't particularly talented, but they can usually get by with good looks and gratuitous nudity. Admittedly, around the forty minute mark, things do get slightly suspenseful once the killer in the "real" audience starts knocking people off one-by-one, but it's pretty disappointing to see him use a gun rather than a knife, and the theater is too crowded to gain maximum creepiness. Almost as detrimental is the fact the film is set during daytime, which destroys the chance for inescapable atmosphere. The last fifteen minutes degenerate rapidly, not making much sense at all, though I gather that was director Bigas Lunas' intent. The final scene is a big shaggy-dog joke and you get the feeling Lunas is trying to make some kind of commentary on how blurred fiction and reality can get, but it's all muddled nonsense. As I recall, only one horror film ever accomplished such a task, John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, a fun, unique rollercoaster ride that was genuinely frightening not only with its explicit frights, but the implications of them. That film also managed to develop a sense of chaos while following a srange form of logic. On the other hand, Anguish is an entirely forgettable slasher that's no better (and less enjoyable) than some of its more "low-rent" cousins (such as the Friday the 13th and Slumber Party Massacre series).
Rating:
Summary: Overall pretty good, with a frightening middle segment.
Review: Bigas Luna's movie-within-a-movie is handled expertly in this suspenseful horror/thriller about an audience watching a movie about a serial killer who is in the midst of a murder spree in a theater. Little does the audience know someone is actually emulating the same crime in their theater! Stylishly directed entertainment, Anguish's high point is its middle half-hour segment, a long, superbly directed sequence that cuts back and forth between the theater's bathrooms, the lobby, the audience and the movie they're watching. Loses some momentum in the last ten minutes, and the final scenes, while pretty scary, are still a little cheap. Still recommended for horror fans seeking a creative, suspenseful slasher with a twist.
*** 1/2 out of *****
Rating:
Summary: Overall pretty good, with a frightening middle segment.
Review: Bigas Luna's movie-within-a-movie is handled expertly in this suspenseful horror/thriller about an audience watching a movie about a serial killer who is in the midst of a murder spree in a theater. Little does the audience know someone is actually emulating the same crime in their theater! Stylishly directed entertainment, Anguish's high point is its middle half-hour segment, a long, superbly directed sequence that cuts back and forth between the theater's bathrooms, the lobby, the audience and the movie they're watching. Loses some momentum in the last ten minutes, and the final scenes, while pretty scary, are still a little cheap. Still recommended for horror fans seeking a creative, suspenseful slasher with a twist.
*** 1/2 out of *****
Rating:
Summary: THE Greatest Movie of All-Time!!!
Review: Buy or borrow this movie, watch it over and over again until the anguish becomes pure joy. Then make copies and push them down the throats of everyone you come into contact with. Do not accept any payment/reimbursement of any kind except an invitation to watch this masterpiece's hypnotic magic flow through your senses. Compare and contrast this gem of a flick to any "classic" and it will blow it away.
Rating:
Summary: Very very interesting and clever!
Review: Great little cult film about a movie within a movie(which you don't find out about until 20 minutes in-very cool). Both Michael Lerner(BARTON FINK, SAFE MEN) and Zelda Rubinstein are effectively creepy in the movie that is being viewed by the theater which is taken hostage(sort of). My strongest suggestion for those who've seen the movie and are presenting it to their friends for the first time is to NOT tell them what it's about. Just say that it's better if they just watch and see.
Rating:
Summary: The one chick is seriously hot
Review: Holy crank. I remeber when I first saw this movie when I was like 14 or something and the one girl in it is also probably about 14. She was so damned cute I wanted to find out everythign about her. I still do, but she hasn't done anymore movies. She's one of the reasons I even moved to L.A. but now I can't find her. At any rate this movie is seriously good. Maybe don't get it because it's too good.
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