Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again host a fundraiser for Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.
Today’s theme: In Memoriam
About the Author: Parker Simpson is a writer and podcaster focusing on cult films and their social impacts. They currently cohost Where Is My Mind, a podcast focusing on underappreciated films from a variety of genres and countries. They have also held panels, chartered local organizations, and written articles to their blog. When not writing or studying, they like to spend time with their pets and go outside. Check out the podcast Linktree and blog.
I despise the amount of celebrities that have been taken from us this past year. Catherine O’Hara, Tim Curry, Dolly Parton, Sam Neill, Rob Reiner, Chuck Russell, Sally Kirkland, Screaming Mad George, George Eastman – all of these people were incredibly talented, and no matter their age or the circumstances surrounding their deaths, they all feel as if they were taken too soon. That in mind, there is plenty to work with for the “in memoriam” category this year.
The most significant death to me personally has been Udo Kier. I’m certain most readers have heard of the eclectic German actor in some form, most notable for his striking blue eyes and eccentric line deliveries. He was in a variety of projects ranging from mainstream Hollywood productions, to arthouse cinema, to underground grindhouse cinema, to animated voice overs. He’s been my favorite actor for years now (Blood for Dracula had a profound effect on me in high school), yet I’ve only managed to see a quarter of his filmography due to how damn much there is of it. It never hurts to knock more off the list… that’s what Horror Gives Back is for (and donating to charity, duh).
Of course once you get past the hits, you begin to see some… not so great movies. Kier himself said out of the 220+ movies he had done at the time, “100 films are not good, 50 are okay, and 50 are very good”. The Theatre Bizarre unfortunately leans towards the first category. An anthology produced by Severin, it features six short stories inspired by Paris’s Grand Guignol theatre to varying degrees. Kier plays Peg Poett, the puppet-like host telling these stories to Enola Penny in an abandoned theater as he becomes more human…
Put very bluntly, all six stories are a bit inconsistent (both on their own and within the anthology). We have an H.P Lovecraft adaptation in “The Mother of Toads”, a twisted domestic drama in “I Love You”, recurring nightmares involving bugs and genital mutilation in “Wet Dreams”, a meditation on life and death in “The Accident”, a serial killer attempting to dream using vitreous fluid in “Vision Stains”, and food fetishism and cannibalism on full display in “Sweets”. I am aware this is an anthology, but there is hardly anything connecting these stories besides the fact that they are in the same film and they are all rather graphic in nature. This can likely be attributed to the multitude of creative forces on the project – there are seven credited directors, one for each story and the wraparound, plus even more writers. If there were only a couple on the entire project there would be more cohesion, but then again isn’t the point to be as strange and grotesque as possible?
I don’t want to spend an entire review being mean to a project like this, even if I was slightly miserable watching it. So I’ll just go off on some positives, to be nice. Catriona MacColl is nearly unrecognizable as Mere Antoinette in “The Mother of Toads”, and it’s a rather bold role for someone her age – you have to respect that. “The Accident” is very tonally different from the rest of the film as there’s not really a linear plot, but rather a mother explaining life and death to her young daughter after they see a deer fatally struck on the highway. It really shouldn’t have a place in this kind of anthology, yet it’s very thoughtfully done and may be my favorite of the segments. If by the end of the film you aren’t weirded out enough, David Gregory (the president of Severin films) hits you with “Sweets”, which feels like a fever dream aimed to either nauseate or arouse you – maybe both on a good day. I appreciated it purely for how weird it was, being able to top whatever Tom Savini concocted for “Wet Dreams” (I would mention what’s in that, but I value employment and a reasonable Internet footprint). And of course, the little framing segments with Udo are my personal highlight, because why wouldn’t they be? He’s the entire reason I’m here.
The Theatre Bizarre isn’t a complete waste of time; I still found myself enjoying parts of it. It’s just wildly inconsistent and feels incredibly disjointed, which I know is a choice criticism of an anthology. If you like especially weird shit, this is your jam. Or if you’re like me and need to keep finding every Udo Kier movie ever made. We all have our own struggles.
