Classic Bigas Luna slasher that i've missed to view until
now, cleverly made on a low budget. The film is supposed to
take place in some Californian city but were filmed entirely in Barcelona,
Spain . Luna constructed a piece of a US
street with a US looking cinema, street signs, police-cars and policemen
and it looks pretty convincing. Great stuff.
When this film was released in Germany on a Blu-ray it was for the first
time anywhere (says the sleeve) and it has got
an interview with the friendly and likeable catalan director and screenwriter
Bigas Luna (R.I.P. 1946-2013) probably
made in 2012. He tell us that he lived in LA and prepared the film there
but moved production to Spain to get finance.
.......... BEWARE OF SPOILERS BELOW
..........
Turnable sleeve
Dr. John Pressman (Michael Lerner) is an eye surgeon
working at a renowned private hospital who has acted more and
more strange and started to scare the patients. He's sacked and his
freak dwarf mother, The Mommy (played by the
strange Zelda Rubinstein with that grating squeaky voice of hers that
resembles nothing else ever heard on film ... yuck!)
sends him on a murder rampage by using hypnotism and telepathy. The
Dr. is on a Eye Hunt, he kill people and cut out
their eyes, but the surprise twist is that this is only a movie.
Patty (Talia Paul, on the cover) and her friend Linda (Clara Pastor)
are watching the film "The Mommy" in a cinema, and
they feel more and more nauseated by the Gore and the Hypnosis scenes,
with probable subliminal effects, on the screen.

Talia Paul and the Killer watching the film within
the film, picture from the Spanish DVD
Patty's worries don't get better when the Dr. in the
movie suddenly enters a cinema, where they show an old dinousaur
creature film "The Lost World", and starts slaughtering the
audience. She watches a man in the next row behaving more
and more ominously and soon a "real" killer starts to murder
the audience watching The Mommy.
The Lost World is a legendary 1925 silent movie with stop motion dinousaurs
based on an Arthur Conan Doyle novel.
When the end credits are rolling Bigas Luna shows us that the "real
happenings" were also only a film. Luna seems to have
had Fun making this film and he constructed it as a Chinese Box with
a film within a film within a film.
Bigas Luna from the Spanish 2004 DVD
Warning for being hypnotized though, that spiral going round and round
with Zelda shrieking hysterically, and there's actually
a warning written on the Blu-ray sleeve and probably it were too at
the start of this film when shown in the cinemas.
Ha, ha, the film within this film is The Mommy and directed by Anul
Sagib (read that backwards). This film was great fun to
watch and with lots of murders, hysteria and chaos. Talia Paul suffers
a nervous breakdown all through the movie.
widescreen 2.35:1, english audio DTS-HD Master Audio
5.1 (with german subtitles only).
Extras: German trailer, teaser and TV spots, Interview with
Bigas Luna (22 minutes) in English, and probably made
some year before his death in his home in Barcelona and he seemed to
be a very likeable man
.................................................................
The old 2004 Spanish El Pais DVD edition has the same
ratio but a 2.0 stereo spanish audio without any subtitles
and as extras a Presentacion de la pelicula: Entrevista con el director,
Comentarios y Anecdotas, a trailer and a filmography
and a biography, tecnical info and an insert with text. The presentation
by Bigas Luna lasts for about 8 minutes