(1972)
Dir - Eloy de la Iglesia
Overall: MEH
The title is a bit misleading in Eloy de la Iglesia's The Cannibal Man, (La Semana del asesino, The Apartment on the 13th Floor), which could easily be confused as a braindead splatterfest since it opens with actual slaughterhouse footage. Once we realize that our would-be title character works there, two and two could be easily put together. While some of the unpleasantness one would imagine does go down, (kind of), the film is mainly de la Iglesia's metaphoric answer to an unhinged mind living under the Franco regime. While this is a noble and interesting angle to be sure and certainly something to elevate it above pure exploitation, the problem is that the social commentary falls flat due to the underwritten story. Vincente Parra's Marcos is completely unsympathetic since he immediately resorts to killing people, (mostly loved ones and those who are kind to him), while at the same time he goes about his business while being sociable. He gets along rather great with a rich, homosexual character, but the relationship between the two of them never gets properly fleshed-out. The potential is fairly here for a thought-provoking be it rather gory thriller, but none of the plot elements really come together as they should.
(1973)
Dir - Eugenio Martín
Overall: MEH
A year after making the superb Horror Express, Eugenio Martín directed A Candle for the Devil, (Una vela para el diablo, It Happened at Nightmare Inn), a very different and very inferior film all around. This is another one where the premise is rather elementary yet the unfocused writing makes everything fall apart. As two sisters run a small inn in a Spanish village, one of them is murdering any woman who shows any amount of skin, declaring that she is doing the lord's work when she is not putting on make-up, practically licking her lips staring at young shirtless men, and prancing around in a scandalous dress unabashedly. Meanwhile the other sister is even more screwy since she is sometimes helping her sister willingly, sometimes unwillingly, sometimes arguing with her and breaking down into tears of guilt, and sometimes acting on her own accord and murdering for other reasons. All the while, the movie just goes from one victim to the next as we wait for the sisters to be caught which only happens when they are pursuing their near-last victim at an absolute snails pace for no reason. There are obviously religious themes here that revolve around repression and hypocrisy, but they just come off as confusing. Plus, the tedious plot does not offer up any suspense or creativity whatsoever, making the whole thing easily forgettable.
(1974)
Dir - Amando de Ossorio
Overall: MEH
From the mind of the Blind Dead creator Amando de Ossorio comes another silly film with slow, slow, sloooow moving monsters, more nudity than you can keep up with, and a script that someone who has gotten kicked in the head too many times would think is coherent. The Night of the Witches, (La Noche de los Brujos, The Night of the Sorcerers), came out in between the first two and last two Blind Dead movies and features familiar Spanish horror faces such as Jack Taylor and Maria Kosti, the latter being the only female present who does not spend most of her screen time with her bare chest exposed. As he was often able, de Ossorio comes up with striking visuals like zombie voodoo priests and priestesses rising out of their clumsily made, stone burial sites. There are also amazonian-clad women running and exposing their fang-ridden grins in slow motion, because yeah there are vampires too. When the soundtrack is not playing dated, out of place, wah-guitar music, it is actually pretty creepy. The plot and its many holes are laughably dumb, (including the asinine ending), mainly due to how every single character in it consistently makes the most ridiculous decisions possible. These things kind of enhance the fun, but the story is simple to a fault as pretty much the same thing happens each day as predictably as you can imagine.
No comments:
Post a Comment