Amazon.com reviews for
Angustia (1987) Plus avec IMDbPro »

Anguish (vhs):

Amazon.com video review: Michael Lerner (looking uncannily like Roger Ebert) is a clumsy eye clinic intern under the sway of his psychic, psychotically vindictive mother (Zelda Rubinstein, the diminutive spiritualist from Poltergeist). "All the eyes in the city will be ours," Mom commands, declaring war on the orbs of humanity. Hypnotized by swirling spirals and screechy bursts of electronic wails, the dutiful son packs up his surgical tool set and goes out collecting. Suddenly we pull back to find ourselves staring at the nervous reactions of a matinee movie crowd watching our same horror flick (though it's entitled "Mommy"). The audience watches Lerner carving skulls onscreen (in a darkened movie theater, of all places) while a killer obsessed with the movie unleashes his own rampage on the unsuspecting patrons. Soon it becomes clear that the parallel plots lock together in sinister synchronization. It's one of the most original uses of the movie-within-a-movie device, and an ingenious avenue for exploring the hypnotic power of cinema. Director Bigas Luna (Jamón Jamón) makes the two killers symbiotic blood brothers, the "real" killer feeding off his cinematic inspiration. It's often more cerebral than scary, and the home video experience unfortunately robs the film of its final layer (this movie within a movie was really meant to be seen by moviegoers). But it's smartly designed and stylishly directed, and Luna delivers the horror movie goods--plenty of suspense, buckets of blood, and more gory ocular excavations than eye-obsessed Lucio Fulci managed in his entire career. --Sean Axmaker