Initially released in a limited edition package during last year's Black Friday sale, the gory horror anthology THE THEATRE BIZARRE gets its first authorized U.S. Blu-ray release courtesy of Severin Films.

The framing story (to use the term loosely) “Theatre Guignol”, directed by Jeremy Kasten of THE WIZARD OF GORE remake, has Penny (Virginia Newcomb, MACHETE JOE) entering an abandoned theater where a marionette-like host (Udo Kier, of course) directs her attention to six stories. In “Mother of Toads” from Richard Stanley (DUST DEVIL), anthropologist Martin (Shane Woodward) and his girlfriend Karina (Victoria Maurette, LEFT FOR DEAD) are vacationing in the French Pyrenees. At a street market, they come across the table of Mere Antoinette (Catriona McColl, THE BEYOND) and Martin recognizes H.P. Lovecraft’s Elder Symbol on a pair of earrings that Karina tries on. Mere Antoinette tempts Martin into visiting her cottage with the promise of a real copy of the Necronomicon while Karina lounges poolside at a nearby spa. Martin is fascinated by the book, but Mere Antoinette’s interests in him are less than scholarly, and he and his curious girlfriend are about to have very sticky encounters of different sorts with the titular beast.

Based on Clarke Ashton Smith’s very short story, Stanley’s adaptation is actually pretty faithful to the source. It changes the era, the protagonist, gives a victim fodder girlfriend, and throws in some explicit Lovecraft references (the author was a major influence on Smith’s writing). Whether Stanley was constrained by the running time requirement or the slight source material, but feels like a very short MASTERS OF HORROR episode directed by Stanley, and not a very personal one at that. At best, it feels like Stanley exercising his directorial aesthetics – although he has directed a handful of documentaries and scripted THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (which he was also to have directed), Nacho Cerda’s THE ABANDONED, as well as Cerda’s forthcoming horror comic adaptation I AM LEGION – as a rehearsal for something more substantial (possibly his proposed feature adaptation of Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan”?). McColl gives it a good try (and she’s just as obviously “sinister” as the unsubtle character in the story), but there is not enough time to adequately shape Woodward’s character’s scholarly fascination (and spends a good deal of the segment’s running time devoted to a generic stalking sequence featuring Maurette). At the time of release, I felt that it was a rather inauspicious return to filmmaking, but it has improved with age, especially in light of his ambitious but uneven more recent feature film comeback THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE.

COMBAT SHOCK’s Buddy Giovinazzo helms the Polanski-esque “I Love You” in which Mo (Suzan Anbeh, FRENCH KISS) plans to leave her drunken, co-dependent husband Axel (André Hennicke, A DANGEROUS METHOD) for another man (Harvey Friedman, VALKYRIE). Mo gives Axel every reason for him to be glad to be rid of her (multiple affairs, one night stands, a secret abortion of a child that might have been his); so much so, that Axel goes from angry to disbelieving. The ending is one of overused sudden twists of the protagonist’s false perception that reveals the supposedly shocking truth (and one good gore effect). While it might not have made a traditional horror film, a feature-length look at the relationship of these two characters being horrible to one another might have been more interesting.

In “Wet Dreams” from make-up effects artist Tom Savini (DAWN OF THE DEAD), philandering brute Donnie (James Gill) has nightmares involving castration and his putupon wife (B scream queen Debbie Rochon, TROMEO AND JULIET). He seeks help from a therapist (Savini), but his suggested relaxation methods seem to blur the lines of reality between Donnie’s nightmare world and his everyday life. The episode is more concerned with shock images of castration – no longer taboo in mainstream film thanks to the whole “torture porn” wave – and whatever “Freudian” analysis the audience can read into said images. Think of this one as an unrated TALES FROM THE CRYPT episode with an obvious twist.

The tone changes entirely for “The Accident” by Douglas Buck (the remake of Brian DePalma’s SISTERS) in which a mother (Lena Kleine, TERRITORIES) tries to explain why people die to her daughter (Mélodie Simard) after they witness a gory road accident between two bikers and a deer. Although it contains some gore, the story is more of a mood piece and rather ill-fitting to the “guignol” concept; however, that does not mean that it is not worth watching. In “Vision Stains” by cinematographer Karim Hussain – who lensed the Stanley and Buck episodes – a vagrant (Kaniehtiio Horn, THE WILD HUNT) kills destitute women and extracts fluid from their eyeballs, which she injects into her own eye to see life flashing by. In extremely redundant narration, she claims to be a voice for these women, preserving their stories although it looks like a very peculiar kind of drug fix. Things take an even gorier turn when she decides she wants to see the life of something that has not yet lived. Overuse of narration and voiceovers that spell out what is extremely obvious ruin what might have been an effective “silent” film; as if Hussain were afraid that something of his concept would be lost by condensing a longer story, or perhaps he just wanted to give actress Horn a vocal aspect to her performance.

Finally, in “Sweets” from Severin's David Gregory (PLAGUE TOWN), mismatched couple Estelle (Lindsay Goranson, THE POPCORN MAN) and Greg (Guilford Adams, EQUINOX KNOCKS) take the “joys of mastication” to grotesque extremes… but one of them takes it one step further. SHIVERS’ Lynn Lowry has a small role, and is a bright spot in a somewhat predictable story; and yet “Sweets” may be the only one of the episodes that truly belongs in not only in a film called THE THEATRE BIZARRE, but also may be the only one truly appropriate to the wraparound “Theatre Guignol” concept. Kier’s scripted introductions to each story are very vague and really add nothing to ones appreciation of any of them, and the ending is rather predictable. As a whole, THE THEATRE BIZARRE probably goes over better when screened for a crowd than when watched in any kind of home theater. Individual stories may be of more interest to various viewers’ tastes than the film as a whole.

Shot on various flavors of high definition from RED One on "Mother of Toads" to a Canon EOS 5D DSLR on "Sweets", THE THEATRE BIZARRE was mastered in 2K and debuted on DVD in 2012 from Image Entertainment with a handful of extras including a commentary track featuring several participants. A Blu-ray from Image followed in 2012 but it was entirely and bewilderingly barebones. As it turns out, these previous editions were unauthorized, with Severin describing their 2020 Black Friday limited edition Blu-ray/CD soundtrack combo and this 2021 single-disc standard edition as the "authorized U.S. Blu-ray premiere." Derived from the same master, the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen image is variable with Hussein's photography on three of the stories looking the crispest with stable saturated colors and contrasts, the photography of Michael Kotschi on "I Love You" has a deliberately antiseptic quality of clean, creamy whites soon to be spattered with blood, while TV cinematographer Eduardo Fierro trades in deep blacks in the nightmares and contrasting brights in the story's deceptively comforting waking life, and John Honoré seems to strike a balance between a certain softness in the early HD video of Canon's DSLR line and the appropriately "candy" colors. The "Theatre Guignol" scenes have a murky quality that is presumably intentional since they were shot in the most controlled conditions of an actual theater. The original 5.1 mix is included in DTS-HD Master Audio along with a lossless 2.0 downmix and a French Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo dub (the film was apparently big in France). The surround mix also varies by the film, with "Mother of Toads" and "The Accident" favoring ambient effects in the rear channels (as well as some unnerving frog croaking in the former) while "Wet Dreams" and "Vision Stains" are more aggressive in the rears, "Sweets" uses the rears mainly for music and some spread during the climactic gathering, while "I Love You" is very front-oriented with some rare ambience and music in the rear channels. Optional English SDH subtitles are included.

Severin Films have assembled a host of brand new extras as well as porting over some of the older ones. First up is the 2011 audio commentary track from the Image DVD. On "Mother of Toads", Stanley, Maurette, cinematographer Hussein, and producer Fabrice Lambot comment on the colored lighting’s debt to Dario Argento and referencing Lucio Fulci with MacColl who always wanted to play a witch. On "I Love You", Giovinazzo – who is now living in Berlin, where the story is set – says that he wrote the script with the two lead actors in mind, noting that Hennicke was usually typecast as Nazis in English-speaking films while Anbeh was usually cast in romantic comedies on German television, and that her ability to speak fluent French gave him the idea of a mixed marriage with English being the common language of the two (since he did not want to be the only foreign-language story in the film).

Savini shares his track with producers Michael Ruggiero and Robert Lucas, and they recall that the opening nightmare sequence scripted by John Esposito originated in his screenplay for the Stephen King film GRAVEYARD SHIFT (the final film of which is significantly different), and that the "pussy monster" was a gift from effects artist Greg Nicotero (DAY OF THE DEAD). No commentary was supplied for "The Accident", but director Buck does appear on the commentary track for "Vision Stains" with director Hussain and actress Horn in which they discuss the cold weather shoot, and that the images Horn's character sees were from the home movies of actress Cynthia Wu-Maheux. Gregory goes solo on the commentary track for this one, and mentions that the film’s candy-coated color scheme was conceived to evoke the colors and textures of vomit, and that they had to trick a candy store owner into thinking the actors were a couple taking anniversary photos to use the location. Kasten and Keir pop up intermittently do to discuss the wraparounds and interstitial bits.

Some of the participants return for the 2020 track which also features some new voices as well. The "Theatre Guignol" wraparounds feature director Kasten, title music composer Marcus Howell, choreographer Amanda Marquardt, special effects make-up artist Brian Kinney, associate producer Adam Neubauer, and actors Amelia Gotham, Jeremy Gladen, Liberty Larson, and Nicole Fabbri with Marquardt providing some anecdotes about working with Keir. Stanley goes solo this time around for "Mother of Toads" while Savini, Ruggiero, and Lucas all return for "Wet Dreams". This time around, Buck does provide commentary on "The Accident", recalling his preference for static compositions and his desire to shoot the film as a series of stills before Hussein convinced him the short was really about love not death.

On his solo track for "Vision Stains", Hussein chooses to discuss the short's reception, recalling that it was screened at Paris' infamous Le Brady theater that once showed many exploitation films of the sixties and seventies before becoming a porn theater, and the extreme reactions of some audience members to the eye imagery. Gregory is joined this time on "Sweets" by actress Goranson, and hair and make-up artist Aubrie Davis who recall the disgusting props (the chemical fumes of the various rotting candies littering the apartment made Goranson ill), convincing a candy shop owner that they were shooting wedding photos with the leads when they had to find a replacement location at the last moment, and working with Lowry.

Severin has ported over the three “Shock ‘til You Drop” interviews with Gregory (15:03), Giovinazzo (10:25), and Kasten (12:51) but has dropped the very short making-of segments for five of the tales from the Image DVD in favor of some new extras starting with the feature-length "Backstage: The Making of THE THEATRE BIZARRE" documentary (103:20) in which Gregory recalls being inspired to do a horror anthology around the Guignol concept while producing a featurette for the Second Sight UK DVD release of the multi-director anthology ARIA, traveling to France to meet Stanley who recalls that he had been preparing a Lovecraft short after having been inspired by the occult elements of the region in which he was living.

Hussain recalls contacting Buck about the project while Giovinazzo came to it through former Troma/Severin employee Evan Husney, and Ruggiero asked writer Esposito what gag Savini had wanted to do, inspiring the "Wet Dreams" segment. Separate sections take us through the shoots with behind the scenes footage as well as some French TV coverage of "Mother of Toads" which allows for some comments from performers and crew not seen or heard elsewhere on the disc (as well as footage of some anecdotes mentioned like a real witch who accosted Stanley during the shoot, the remarks of the episode's magic consultant Urani, as well as MacColl and American actor Woodward answering interview questions in fluent French. On "Vision Stains", Hussain mentions that the project stemmed from a feature script that he pitched to a producer who thought the script that would become Nacho Cerda's THE ABANDONED was too commercial, while behind the scenes on "Sweets" gives a look at the nauseating climax. The documentary concludes with coverage of the 2011 Fantasia Film Festival.

Filmmaker Pat Tremblay contributes a pair of making-of featurettes for "Vision Stains" (9:03) and "The Accident" (9:07) which consist of arty montages of behind the scenes video set to music without any interviews, but the first offers some views of the oversized face and eye props for the injection shots while the latter does indeed show that there was no animal cruelty on the set. "Boswell Scores" (10:23) is an interview with composer Simon Boswell who recalls keeping touch with Stanley after he moved to France after THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU and being surprised when the director contacted him about scoring another film. He recalls visiting the set and the shoot, and liking the fact that Stanley did not bother with temp tracks. He also recalls meeting cinematographer Hussein on the set and being asked to score "Vision Stains" and that Hussein asked him to emulate his eighties Italian horror work.