| |
Day of the Beast, The
|
|
| Year: |
1995
|
|
Director: |
Alex de la Iglesia
|
| Stars: |
Álex Angulo, Armando De Razza, Santiago Segura, Terele Pávez, Nathalie Seseña, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Gianni Ippoliti
|
| Genre: |
Horror, Comedy, Thriller |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 2 votes) |
| Review: |
Despite being one of the most versatile directors working today, Alex de la Iglesia remains criminally overlooked throughout much of the world, receiving a negligible amount of recognition compared to the fame that has found other members of the recent generation of Hispanic filmmakers, such as Guillermo Del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuaron and Robert Rodriguez. With unique, witty and efficient genre outings like sci-fi Mutant Action, western 800 Bullets, road movie Dance with the Devil and thriller Ferpect Crime, this can only be the fault of distributors. Of course the kind of movies that Iglesia makes would give most marketers bad dreams - they aren't the sort that lend themselves to succinct taglines and easily digestible TV spots. His turbulent tales ride a wave of blacker than black comedy, peppered with downright outlandish characters and occasional flurries of explicit violence. Iglesia certainly shows no interest in pandering to the more mainstream concerns of Hollywood, and The Day of the Beast is no exception.
Through his cabalistic studies of the Bible, a Basque Priest (Álex Angulo) has found that Satan is fixing to screw up everyone's holiday season by making Christmas Day the date of the Antichrist‘s birth. Enlisting the help of a boisterous heavy-metal fan José María (writer/director Santiago Segura) and cynical TV presenter of a supernatural show Profesor Cavan (Armando De Razza), the Padre embarks on a quest to find the place of birth and kill the child before it's too late. It's a frantic race-against-the-clock scenario, but José still finds time to drop some acid along the way.
Iglesia's movie bursts as much colour and style as the wildest graphic novel you ever laid eyes on, and the performances from his talented cast balance delicately between realism and caricature. Particularly captivating is Maria Grazia Cuccinotta, who aside from excelling as Cavan's bimbo, also happens to have breasts that would make Russ Meyer rise from the grave. Despite abundance of snazzy visuals and eccentric humour, Iglesia does not skimp on the story. His film teeters between comic absurdity and genuine excitement in a similar way to Alex Cox's Repo Man, but avoids the pretentious pitfalls that have proved Cox's undoing in some of his more recent efforts.
As with many of the more energetic films that have come out of Europe in recent years, The Day of the Beast occasionally dips into mildly exasperating cinematic delirium. As is often the case with this breed of film, the pacing is notched up to 11 from start to finish, and the abundance of imaginative ideas at play sometimes make proceedings a little too shrill for their own good. However, when things threaten to escalate into a cacophony of the absurd, Teresa Font's quietly skillful editing does much to steady the flow, and ensures paradise is never entirely lost.
There's plenty of subtext going on if you can find time during the frantic proceedings to uncover it. Aside from a healthy amount of debate on the nature of faith, a certain amount of social commentary can be read into Iglesia's presentation of media personalities as false deities, his unusual perception of family values and his portrayal of street gangs, and although the movie doesn't make Madrid look like the most enticing place on Earth, it has a strong sense of national identity. Iglesia injects enough personality and charm into the tired cinematic preoccupation with Satanism to make The Day of the Beast a thoroughly enjoyable and well sustained escapade into the dark side.
AKA: El Día de la Bestia
|
| Reviewer: |
Dominic Hicks
|
| |
|
|
