The Theatre Bizarre is a 2011 American/French horror anthology film. The six segments are directed by Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, Tom Savini and Richard Stanley. The wraparound segments featuring Udo Kier were directed by Jeremy Kasten.
Down a seedy city street in her neighborhood, young Enola Penny is obsessed with what appears to be a long abandoned theatre. One night, she sees that the front door is slightly ajar and impulsively decides to sneak inside. But there in the dark, decrepit auditorium, a show unlike any other unfolds before her eyes. Its host is an eerie human puppet named Peg Poett who will introduce Penny to six tales of the bizarre.
- "The Mother of Toads": A couple traveling in a remote part of the French Pyrenees cross paths with a lustful witch.
- "I Love You": A paranoid lover faces the wrath of a partner who has been pushed to her limit.
- "Wet Dreams": The Freudian dreams of an unfaithful husband blur the lines between fantasy and reality.
- "The Accident": The horrors of the real world are interpreted through the mind of a child.
- "Vision Strains": A woman addicted to other people's memories gets her fix through the vitreous fluid of her victims' eyeballs.
- "Sweets": A perverse obsession with sweets turns sour for a couple in too deep.
The Tropes Bizarre:
- Abandoned Area: Down a seedy city street in her neighborhood, young Enola Penny is obsessed with what appears to be a long abandoned theatre. One night, she sees that the front door is slightly ajar and impulsively decides to sneak inside.
- Amphibian Assault: In "The Mother of Toads", after Martin escapes from the witch's cabin, he finds the car. The car is full of toads and has his girlfriend's body inside, covered in frogspawn.
- Amphibian at Large: "The Mother of Toads" ends with Mere Antoinette transforming into the eponymous Mother of toads: a human-sized bipedal toad.
- And I Must Scream:
- At the end of "Wet Dreams", Dr. Maurey and Carla amputate Donnie's arms and legs (and castrate him) and keep him a prisoner in the attic. When Enola removes his gag to feed him, Donnie snarls that this is a dream and he will close his eyes and that when he opens them, he will be awake and kill her. She responds by cutting off his eyelids.
- The "Theatre Guignol" framing sequence ends with Peg Poett transforming Enola into a puppet, which he then puts into a trunk. As he closes the lid, her eyelid snaps open showing her still human eye.
- An Arm and a Leg: In "Wet Dreams", Carla and Dr. Maurey amputate Donnie's arms and legs and keep him locked up in the attic.
- Chained to a Bed: In "Wet Dreams", Donnie wakes up from a nightmare where here is chained to a rack in a dungeon with a buzzsaw moving towards his groin, only to find his hands tied to the head of his bed. Only when a buzzsaw appears out of his mattress and starts advancing towards his crotch does he realise it is a Dream Within a Dream.
- Children Are Innocent: In "The Accident" a mother and young daughter drive along a mountain road and come upon a fatal collision between a motorcyclist and a deer. Another biker puts the suffering deer out of its misery with his knife. The mother thoughtfully and poetically answers her daughter's questions about the nature of life and death.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Axel in "I Love You" is an obsessive man who follows and calls his partner constantly. The obsessive nature of his love leads him and his partner to their doom.
- Disposable Vagrant: "Vision Stains" is about a writer/Serial Killer who cannot dream. She extracts fluid from her victims' eyes as they die and injects it into her own eye so she can experience the others' lives as they flash by in their dying moments. She preys on female vagrants, runaways and prostitutes, believing that only women are truly creative, and claims that she only targets women who want to die.
- Domestic Abuse: In "Wet Dreams", Donnie verbally and physically abuses his wife Carla who extracts a terrible revenge with the aid of Donnie's psychiatrist Dr. Maurey.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: The boyfriend of the couple in “Mother of Toads” is drugged/fooled by a glamour into sleeping with the title character, something he clearly wouldn’t have consented to in the right state of mind. However, his girlfriend sees this (albeit out of context) and assumes infidelity. In the original short story, the protagonist is the underage apprentice to an apothecary and gets drugged into unconsciousness by Mere de Crapauds, who always appears grossly overweight and vaguely frog like.
- Dream Within a Dream: Several times in "Wet Dreams", Donnie seemingly wakes up from one of his castration nightmares, only to discover that he is still dreaming.
- Due to the Dead: In "Vision Strains", The Writer thinks she is memorialising the women she murders by writing down their stories in her journals, because otherwise they would be completely forgotten. During her Villainous Breakdown, a voice in her head (which may just her saner self) tells her that she is doing no such thing. All she is doing is stealing other people's stories because she has no creativity of her own.
- Emotion Eater: "Vision Stains" is about a writer/Serial Killer who cannot dream. She extracts fluid from her victims' eyes as they die and injects it into her own eye so she can experience the others' lives as they flash by in their dying moments.
- Erotic Eating: "Sweets" is the story of Estelle and Greg, a pair of food fetishists whose entire relationship is based on this.
- Evil Chef: In "Sweets", the banquet has a pair of chefs in stained kitchen whites who kill and butcher Greg before serving him as the main course.
- Eye Remember: "Vision Stains" is about a writer/Serial Killer who cannot dream. She extracts fluid from her victims' eyes as they die and injects it into her own eye so she can experience the others' lives as they flash by in their dying moments. She then logs it all in her journals. According to her, everything a person ever sees is stored in the vitreous fluid in the eye, and the strongest memories flash before a person's eyes when they die.
- Eye Scream: In "Vision Stains", a young woman goes about murdering homeless women and sucking out the fluid from their eyeballs with a syringe as they take their final breath. She then injects said fluid into her own eye in order to see her victims' memories. She ultimately ends up gouging out her own eyes after she starts to hear voices. There is no Gory Discretion Shot.
- Groin Attack: In "Wet Dreams", a man relates to his psychiatrist recurring nightmares about torture and castration; often at the hands of his wife whom he has betrayed and abused.
- High-Class Cannibal: The "Sweets" segment features a secret club of high class gourmets who regard dining on human flesh as the ultimate culinary experience.
- Hot Witch: In "The Mother of Toads", the Wicked Witch transforms herself into a young, nubile and naked form to seduce the anthropologist.
- I'm a Humanitarian: "Sweets" is the story of Estelle and Greg, a pair of food fetishists who gorge on sweets, and their break up, which ends at a gourmet cult feast with Greg as the main entree.
- Imperiled in Pregnancy: In "Vision Stains", The Writer attacks a pregnant woman and draws fluid from her womb with a syringe in an attempt to find out what an unborn child sees.
- Jabba Table Manners: The food fetishist banquet in "Sweets" is full of guests stuffing their faces in the most disgusting ways imaginable even before it enters I'm a Humanitarian territory.
- "Last Supper" Steal: "Sweets" ends with a shot of the cannibals at the banquet arrayed around the table with Greg's body positioned like the Last Supper, with Estelle in Jesus position.
- Last Survivor Suicide: In "I Love You", upon discovering that he has murdered his lover Mo, Crazy Jealous Guy Axel kills himself: not wanting to allow her to escape him even in death.
- Mad Artist: "Vision Stains" is about a writer/Serial Killer who cannot dream. She extracts fluid from her victims' eyes as they die and injects it into her own eye so she can experience the others' lives as they flash by in their dying moments. She then writes their life stories down in a series of journals, which regards as memorialising their deaths and giving their lives meaning. There appear to be hundreds of these journals in her squat.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In "Vision Strains", The Writer suffers a Villainous Breakdown in which a voice in her head forces her to recognise that she is a Serial Killer; that she does not have the right to determine whose life has worth and whose does not; and that the stories she is writing are just her plagiarising the lives of those she has killed. When the truth about herself finally dawns, she gouges her own eyes out.
- No Name Given: The Villain Protagonist of "Vision strains" is not named. She is listed in the credits as 'The Writer'.
- Off with His Head!: In "Sweets", the Evil Chefs cut off Greg's head before they butcher him for the cannibal feast.
- Perverse Puppet: The host of the theatre, Peg Poett, is either a human-sized self-animated puppet, or human made up to appear to be a giant puppet. Either way, he is creepy as hell (being played by Udo Kier helps), and at the end of the film he transforms Enola into a giant puppet and puts her into a trunk.
- The Place
- Playing with Syringes: In "Vision Stains", a young woman goes about murdering homeless women and sucking out the fluid from their eyeballs with a syringe as they take their final breath. She then injects said fluid into her own eye in order to see her victims' memories.
- Puppet Permutation: Enola Penny is intrigued by an abandoned theatre in her neighborhood. One night the theatre door mysteriously opens and she enters. A puppet host named Peg Poett introduces six short films. As each is shown, the host becomes more human and Enola becomes more puppet-like. And the end of the show, Peg places the now fully puppet Enola in a trunk and closes the lid.
- Room Full of Crazy: The walls of Enola's apartment are covered with photographs, sketches and notes relating to abandoned theatre she is obsessed with.
- Serial Killer: "Vision Stains" is about a writer/serial killer who cannot dream. She extracts fluid from her victims' eyes as they die and injects it into her own eye so she can experience the others' lives as they flash by in their dying moments.
- Slashed Throat: In "I Love You", Axel cuts his on throat after discovering that he has murdered Mo.
- Slipping a Mickey: It seems likely that the mulled wine Mere Antoinette feeds Martin in "The Mother of Toads" are laced with something to make him more susceptible to her seduction.
- Testes Test: In "Wet Dreams", Donnie wakes up from a nightmare where his penis is bitten off by his wife's Vagina Dentata. The first thing he does on waking is reach under the covers and check that everything is still present.
- Toy Transmutation: Enola Penny is intrigued by an abandoned theatre in her neighborhood. One night the theatre door mysteriously opens and she enters. A puppet host named Peg Poett introduces six short films. As each is shown, the host becomes more human and Enola becomes more puppet-like. And the end of the show, Peg places the now fully puppet Enola in a trunk and closes the lid.
- Vagina Dentata: In "Wet Dreams", one of Donnie's nightmares involves his wife's vagina sprouting mandibles are biting his penis off.
- Villain Protagonist: The protagonist of "Vision Strains" is a writer/Serial Killer who cannot dream. She extracts fluid from her victims' eyes as they die and injects it into her own eye so she can experience the others' lives as they flash by in their dying moments.
- Villainous Breakdown: In "Vision Strains", The Writer suffers one when her attempt to see through the eyes of unborn child goes wrong. A voice her head points out exactly how evil her actions are and what a failure she is as an artist. Confronted by this, she ultimately ends up gouging out her own eyes.
- The Voiceless: Enola Penny is intrigued by an abandoned theatre in her neighborhood. One night the theatre door mysteriously opens and she enters. A puppet host introduces six short films. Throughout the whole experience, Enola does not speak.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: In "I Love You", Axel awakens on his bathroom floor with bloodstains around him and deep cuts in his right hand and no idea how they got their.
- Wicked Witch: "The Mother of Toads" concerns an American anthropologist and his girlfriend who fall victim to a witch known as The Mother of Toads.
