Happy 31 days of Halloween!
This year, we’re celebrating with a different movie pick each day that made us audibly gasp, “WHAT THE FUCK?!“
Day 25, we have chosen The Last Matinee (2020). This was an excellent addition to Shudder this year, and as usual, I went in with no background or expectations. There’s a mysterious killer in a movie theater killing indiscriminately, gouging out eyes, and it’s all good fun until he produces a pickle jar full of eyeballs. I mean, who does that? He’s been carrying around a jar of eyeballs!
The Last Matinee. Picture it. Montevideo, Uraguay. 1993. A mysterious man with black gloves and a crime-ing coat (you know, a coat you’d wear to do crimes in) sneaks into an old movie theater. I love that there’s no illusion of the motives or identity of who will be killing who. This man looks like he’d be carrying around a jar of pickled eyes. He starts killing patrons, and who cares why.
AKA Al Morir La Matinée and Red Screening, this Spanish language horror film was written by Maximiliano Contenti and Manuel Facal and directed by the former. It was a collab between Uruguay and Argentina and stars Lucian Grasso as Ana. Ana is an engineering student who has come to visit her father at work while she studies. He’s ill, and she convinces him to go home and offers to run the projector so he can get some rest. Unbeknownst to her and the handful of theater-goers, our asesino comeojos (credited as the eyeball-eating assassin) has begun to pick them off, one by one.
There’s killing, screaming, and loud noises that should be suspicious activity, but the movie is loud, masking the mayhem. And what movie would that be, you ask…why it’s Frankenstein: Day of the Beast. That’s right, the very same movie that is directed by the actor Ricardo Islas, who plays our pickled eyeball-loving killer!
Dude’s not hiding anymore, no sneaking; he’s going all out now. When he has Ana in his grasp, she stabs him in the eye. That’s not the WTF moment, though. Nope, the WTF comes when he yanks out — yes, yanks — his own eyeball out of his skull. Now we have the what the fuck show, and this guy has been dying to perform for everyone. Let’s swirl and slosh around our pickled eyeball jar and make us all collectively squeal. He sucks on his own eyeball and eats it. This guy is done. Everyone can go home now; we’ve seen it all.
