Anguish (1987 film)

Anguish () is a 1987 Spanish-produced horror film directed by Bigas Luna and starring Zelda Rubinstein, Michael Lerner, Talia Paul, Angel Jove and Clara Pastor.

Plot

In the Los Angeles theater The Rex, moviegoers watch the film within a film, The Mommy.

The Mommy tells the story of John Pressman, an extremely myopic, uncontrolled diabetic who works as an ophthalmologist's assistant and is progressively growing blind. For unstated reasons, his overbearing mother Alice hypnotizes him and induces him to murder people so that he can remove their eyes and bring them back to her. One evening, John—against his mother's wishes—barricades himself inside of a movie theater playing The Lost World, where he sets about killing the patrons one by one with a scalpel. Once John's rampage becomes apparent, the surviving moviegoers attempt to flee the now sealed-off theater. The police bring Alice to the theater in an attempt to end the siege; in the course of trying to talk John down, Alice is accidentally shot to death by the police. The last scenes of The Mommy show John being placed into police custody and a detective looking upon Alice's corpse one more time.

As The Mommy wears on, patrons of The Rex begin to experience anxiety attacks and disorientation in response to the events onscreen. In particular, one man grows progressively agitated, constantly checking his watch; and a teenage girl, Patty, begins to break down in tears, though she cannot entirely articulate her fear. At a key point in the film, the man exits the theater and approaches the concession stand, where he's recognized by an employee as a frequent patron of The Mommy. Patty's friend, Linda, goes to use the bathroom moments later, and witnesses The Man removing a gun from his jacket and killing the concession worker and another theater employee. The Man drags their bodies to the bathroom—an act synchronized with John killing a woman in the bathroom of a movie theater in The Mommy. Linda escapes the theater and stops a man passing on the street, whom she asks to call the police.

In The Rex, the man barricades the projectionist in the projector booth and then slips back into the theater, where he holds Patty at gunpoint and begins reciting dialogue from The Mommy. When John Pressman begins his theater rampage onscreen, the man begins indiscriminately shooting patrons of The Rex, using Patty as a human shield.

Outside The Rex, a SWAT team arrives, in synchronicity with the police's arrival at the theater in The Mommy. The police obtain access to the projector booth via the roof and send in a sniper. The man holds Patty hostage in front of the theater, addressing Alice onscreen and asking her to come save him. Attempts by the police to engage the man fail; when the police in The Mommy kill Alice, the man becomes enraged, throws Patty to the ground, and resumes firing into the audience; the police sniper then shoots and kills him. Looking up at the screen, Patty has a vision of John gouging out her eye with a scalpel.

Outside, Patty and Linda are reunited and Patty is taken to the hospital for an evaluation. Doctors assure her that she is physically all right, though the experience was mentally scarring. As Linda leaves, she is attacked on an elevator by an unseen orderly who aims a scalpel for her throat. The orderly then proceeds to Patty's room and is revealed to be John, who assures Patty that he's only a figment of her imagination. Patty screams as John examines her eyes. As the screen cuts to black, the camera pulls back to show a movie theater of patrons watching the events onscreen, revealing that Patty's story was in fact a film within a film within a film. The credits for Anguish roll as the theater patrons leave one by one.

Cast

 Zelda Rubinstein as Alice Pressman, the Mother
 Michael Lerner as John Pressman  
 Talia Paul as Patty  
 Ángel Jovè as The Killer
 Clara Pastor as Linda
 Isabel García Lorca as Caroline  
 Nat Baker as Teaching Doctor
 Edward Ledden as Doctor
 Gustavo Gili as Student #1

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 60% based on , with a weighted average rating of 6.8/10.

Author and film critic Leonard Maltin awarded the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, calling it "Imaginative but overly violent". TV Guide rated the film three out of five stars, writing, "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." Time Out London called it "A strikingly original, intricately constructed, and extremely gruesome horror film", while noting that the execution occasionally didn't match its ambition.

Awards and nominations

Won

Goya Awards
 Best Special Effects (Francisco Teres)

Sant Jordi Awards
 Best Film (Bigas Luna)

Nominated

Goya Awards
 Best Director (Bigas Luna)

Remake
Ghost House Pictures and Vertigo Entertainment licensed the rights to remake in 2009, with Jake Wade Wall (When a Stranger Calls) writing the screenplay, but this version never materialized.

A new remake began development in 2021, with F. Javier Gutiérrez attached to direct. Production is set to begin in winter 2022.

References

External links
  
 
 
  

1987 horror films
1987 films
English-language Spanish films
Spanish horror films
1980s serial killer films
Films directed by Bigas Luna
Films set in the United States
Films set in a movie theatre
Films shot in Barcelona
1980s Spanish-language films
Spanish slasher films
1980s slasher films
1980s English-language films