Dir - Julio Coll
Overall: MEH
The extramarital thriller Pyro...the Thing Without a Face, (Fuego, Wheel of Fire), was one of a handful of tacky B-movies from producer Sydney W. Pink, several of which were shot in Spain. This one is no different in that regard, though the two top-billed actors were Americans Barry Sullivan and Martha Hyler. The first half is an insufferable bore, revolving around Sullivan's guilt over his on-going affair with Hyler. This is because none of the characters are interesting or sympathetic and they prattle on with each other to such a degree that viewers will long check out before anything promised in the movie's title takes place. Eventually, the revenge plot takes over, first with Hyler torching her lover's home after he dumps her and then with Sullivan's now burned-up frame getting back at her. Julio Coll's direction is meandering and dull, but Pink's script deserves the brunt of the blame as it fails to properly exploit the plight of its adulteress pyromaniac or its architect-turned-ferris-wheel-repair-man, (?!?). How three different women become hopelessly in love with Sullivan's moody character is both ridiculous and insulting, but at least the couple of seconds that we get of his melted, fleshy burn make-up at the very end looks nice and ghastly.
(1965)
Dir - Javier Setó
Overall: GOOD
An obscure, supernatural romance that ends up growing increasingly chilling as things progress, La Llamada, (The Sweet Sound of Death), benefits from its minimalist production. The script by John Davis Hart, Paulino Rodrigo Díaz, and director Javier Setó takes some liberties as far as logic is concerned in order to keep the plot moving, but it also fuses familiar motifs with genuine surprises. A Spanish answer to Herk Harvey's American independent masterpiece Carnival of Souls, it covers some of the same ground of people questioning their existence from beyond the grave and it even borrows said film's gag of dropping out all of the noise on the soundtrack for a particular scene. Though it is set in contemporary times, (possibly for budgetary reasons), Setó still manages to make atmospheric use out of cemeteries and a crumbling mansion which recall some of the period Gothic aesthetic that European horror was already indulging in by the mid 1960s. The movie still cannot avoid some pacing lulls as Emilio Gutiérrez Caba and scream queen Dyanik Zurakowska's destined lovers exchange the same flowery dialog with each other throughout the first act, but the finale delivers the appropriate level of spookiness as well as a fitting plot twist that teases at a psychological undercurrent.
(1966)
Dir - José Antonio Nieves Conde
Overall: MEH
As the title would dictate, Sound of Horror, (El sonido de la muerte), does in fact contain an impressively sinister sound design. It arrives whenever an unearthed, invisible dinosaur monster whatever thing attacks a bunch of archeologists who were careless enough to blow up dynamite and not heed a superstitious lady's warnings about fucking around in a cave in order to find some treasure. A typical tale of people doomed by their own greed then, it features a small crop of bland characters whose names are not even worth remembering, even if scream queens Ingrid Pitt and Soledad Miranda play two of them. Director José Antonio Nieves Conde was not one to bother with the horror genre and there is little for him to do with it under the confines of Sam X. Abarbanel's stuck-in-the-muck script, which just has everyone boringly talking, getting picked off, and running from a house to the cave until the ninety minute mark. While it is clearly a detrimental byproduct of the inadequate budget that the deadly creature is left unseen, the film deserves some credit for the howling wind/human screaming noise that it utilizes at regular intervals, which serves as an unnerving substitute for a guy in a rubber suite or some bad puppetry.
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