Most of the time you don’t need to know history to enjoy a film. But sometimes a bit of historical context gets you to understand the circumstances that produced the film a certain way. Franco ruled the country with an iron fist from 1939 until his death in 1975. He instituted a harsh censorship board to control what could happen in films made in Spain. There were no cinematic critiques of life in Spain allowed. Somehow people working in the horror genre discovered they could get away with a bit more social commentary than filmmakers of dramas. The horror genre had a bit more wiggle room when it came to moral integrity. Somehow Franco and his censors didn’t understand that the monsters could be symbolic. Villages of the Damned – Three Horrors From Spain has a trio of films that exposed a bit of what was happening in the country without being hacked to death like one of their victims.
Beatriz (1976 – 85 minutes) opens with a friar being attacked by a gang in the forest. Instead of the man of the cloth being a victim, he ends up defending himself in an extreme way. A young boy sees the fight and allows the friar to hide out at his family’s manor. The friar stirs a bit of lust in the boy’s mother and sister Beatriz’s hearts. This film isn’t exclusively a lust for the religious leader flick. What none of them know is that one of the servants is calling on the power of Satan to heal her child, but for the spell to work, she must offer up an innocent soul. She picks Beatriz. When the girl goes through changes, everyone blames the friar and suspect he is really a Satan worshipper. If you were enjoying the recent Folk Horror retrospectives last year, Beatriz is a perfect additional viewing. This is a scary tale of why you can’t trust the servants.
El Bosque Del Lobo (1970 – 90 minutes) is also known as The Forest of the Wolf‘ and The Ancines Woods. Benito Freire (Travels With My Aunt‘s José Luis López Vázquez) roams a rural area. Rumor about him spread quickly because he suffers from seizures. Because there’s not much medical understanding, Benito has so many rumors floating about him from both the old ladies to the local religious ministers. They suspect he is either a werewolf or possessed by a demon. These accusations get to him hard and make him question his sanity. This isn’t a traditional werewolf story so don’t get too upset if it doesn’t follow the Universal Wolf Man mythos. Director Pedro Olea gets a bit deeper about how a community pressure with their superstitions makes monsters out of people. John Steiner from Dario Argento’s Tenebrae appears in the film.
The Sky Is Falling, The Sky Is Falling (1979 – 94 minutes) has perhaps one of the scariest creatures a filmmaker put on the screen: Dennis Hopper before he cleaned up. The star of Easy Rider found himself unable to work for major Hollywood studios after making The Last Movie. He was deemed out of control between his drugs and ego. This wasn’t too bad for him since he went around the world and made films such as Mad Dog Morgan and Wim Winders’ The American Friend. This exile from SoCal led him to Almeria, Spain. But he wasn’t there to make a Spaghetti Western. He was playing a messed-up poet stuck in a horrific situation. The Sky Is Falling, The Sky Is Falling (originally released in the USA as Bloodbath) takes us into an expatriate artist group living in a seaside town. Chicken (Hopper) is a drugged-up poet so he’s floating through consciousness with hallucinations. Treasure (Baby Doll‘s Carroll Baker) is an actress who swears her comeback is around the corner. A retired pilot Terrence (Hitchcock’s Stage Fright‘s Richard Todd) and his wife Heather (To Sir, With Love‘s Faith Brook) are a married couple also jaded by the life in Spain. They rather freaked out by the locals and their customs and superstitions. But things pick up when young hippie-ish characters arrive in town. They get the ex-pats excited about life when the new kids are eager to play with them. The coastal town finally turns into their carnal resort. But the fun gets awkward when a few ex-pats turn up dead at places that include the hog slaughterhouse. Is Chicken going to awaken from his drug induced haze to find out the truth about these groovy teens? This is a great movie that straddles the Art House and the Drive-In. There are great hallucination scenes mixes with the killings. The film isn’t quite Spanish since director Silvio Narizzano is Canadian although screenwriter Gonzalo Suárez is Spanish. He is the same person who wrote and directed Beatriz. The movie unites Hopper and Baker after their time together in Giant with James Dean. Hopper’s performance as a strung out junky is great, but hard to tell if he’s faking it. He could have been shooting up on camera. There’s a scene where he yanks down a damaged motorcycle so it feels like this could have been the fate of Billy from Easy Rider.
While none of the movies directly address Franco and his fascist rule, there are cloaked references. The people in power aren’t presented as trustworthy. The church doesn’t come out looking great in the films even though they had so much power during Franco’s rule. We see how Spanish filmmakers were able to get a taste of cinematic freedom sticking to the horror genre. The movies are scary without having to know that much history. Villages of the Damned – Three Horrors From Spain is a great evening of nightmares from the ’70s.
The video is 1.66:1 anamorphic for two films and 1.85:1 anamorphic for The Sky Is Falling, The Sky Is Falling. All 3 films were scanned in 4K from the original negatives and look clear and vibrant. The Audio on all three films is DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono. The first two films are only in Spanish with the English-speaking cast in The Sky Is Falling in English. All the movies are subtitled in English.
Lobishome (37:54) interviews El Bosque Del Lobo‘s director Pedro Olea. He was on a rush deadline to make the movie since he was going to lose the option on the novel and a major filmmaker was ready to swoop in to grab them. He was able to get the budget through is huge extended family. This film did well and screened the Chicago Festival. He tells of dealing with the threat of being banned by one of Franco’s men. This was made by Diego Lopez-Fernandez.
Introduction to El Bosque Del Lobo (10:44) with film historians Angel Sala, Carlos Benitez and Xavi-Sanchez-Pons. The trio are talking from a cool video store. They get into how the film differed from Paul Naschy’s films. This is in Spanish with English subtitles.
Interview with Ivonne Sentis (16:48) lets the actress from The Sky Is Falling talk about getting her start in Barcelona. She was just a friend of intellectuals and not an actress. She met a casting director through her friends. She played the hippie gal who gets attached to Dennis Hopper. She talks about making a western with Monte Hellman and Warren Oates.
Interview with José Lifante (18:47) gets into the films he made before Beatriz. He also focused on the stage for a while before getting before the camera. He gets into his relationship with director Gonzalo Suárez.
Vinegar Syndrome Presents Villages of the Damned: Three Horrors From Spain. Starring Dennis Hopper, Carroll Baker, José Luis López Vázquez, Amparo Soler Leal, Antonio Casas, John Steiner, Carmen Sevilla, Nadiuska & Jorge Rivero. Boxset Contents: 3 movies on 2 Blu-ray discs. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: July 25, 2023.
