Las crueles (1969)

... aka: Cruel Ones, The

... aka: El cadáver exquisito

... aka: Exquisite Cadaver, The

... aka: Finom holttest (Nice Corpse)

Directed by:

Vicente Aranda

A despondent-looking young woman emerges from some dried corn stalks, takes off her jacket, kneels down and then lies her head on the tracks right before a train comes barreling through. Years later, a book editor (who is annoyingly never given a name despite being the lead character, but is played by Carlos Estrada so I'll be calling him "Carlos" from here on out) receives a small package wrapped in yellow paper. Inside is what appears to be a severed human hand. He refuses to touch it, insists it's fake, made out of wax and must be some kind of joke and makes his secretary (Alicia Tomás) swear she won't tell anybody else about it. He's next seen out in the woods burying the hand and frantically looking around to make sure nobody has seen him.

When Carlos returns home, he's greeted by his two annoying young sons, who inform him that his wife (who is also never given a name but is played by Teresa Gimpera, so she's now "Teresa") is out running around with the new neighbor and the two had been "having drinks in the kitchen" and talking "about clothes... and about men... and pills" before taking off. When the wife finally shows back up, we can quickly see this is a loveless and miserable marriage. She presents him with a telegraph asking if he'd like a forearm next. Signed "Parker."

The following day at work, Carlos receives another yellow package, this one much larger than the last. Too scared to actually open it, he takes it to a public square, leaves it on a seat and waits for a man to steal it and walk off. When he returns home, his wife hands him back the same package and claims a man brought it to their home. This time she opens it. Instead of a body part, there's a dress and a photo of an unknown brunette woman. Suspicious, Teresa starts trailing her husband and discovers the woman in the photo, who dresses in all black and seems to always be wearing black gloves, is stalking her husband and even knows where they live. Another note is left behind at their home, again mentioning the forearm.

The mysterious woman who's been signing all the letters "Parker" turns out to actually be a Parisian woman named Lucia Fonte, who's played by glamorous French actress and model Capucine. When she pulls up next to Carlos one evening and looks over, he feels compelled to hop into the car with her. The two take a silent drive to a mansion, where she tells him all of his questions will be answered if he drinks a glass of whiskey and eats a blotted paper LSD tablet. After he does, he hears voices from a woman bemoaning her lost love, who apparently didn't feel the same way about her as she did him. That's followed by the discovery of a well-preserved nude corpse in an upstairs fridge, a hallucination of a nude woman falling over and over again and brief flashbacks. The spurned lover, Esther Casino (Judy Matheson), turns out to be the train girl from the opening scene, while the man who drove her to suicide was, you guessed it, Carlos.

Carlos awakens the next day at home in his own bed, with his wife informing him that she brought him back there herself at Lucia's insistence. However, Lucia's recollections from the night before do not match the husband's. She claims it's Carlos who's been stalking her for weeks, finally showing up at her home and exposing himself to her. Fearing being raped, she slipped a sleeping pill into his drink and then called Teresa to come fetch her wayward unconscious hubby.

Finally backed into a corner, Carlos is forced to confess his affair to his wife, which we see in flashbacks. Esther was a troubled, aimless, unemployed, bored hippie into astrology and on some kind of medication that she refused to take because it made her put on weight. He first spotted her in a diner drinking a strawberry milkshake and playing with her pills (red flag!), but began a brief, intense affair with her anyway. That all ended with him eventually tiring of her bizarre behavior, moodiness and suicidal tendencies, and literally leaving her in the dust. There's now clearly some scheming going on with at least one of the characters, though it's best I not reveal any more.

This film has no reputation to speak of, few online reviews and has mostly been forgotten, which made the discovery that it's actually quite good all the more sweet. For starters, it's well-written for a change, especially in comparison to most other European mystery / suspense / gialli from this same time. There's an intriguing and twisty plot, some surprising content (electric carving knife dismemberment anyone?), interesting characters and a decent, somber mystery that reveals different layers all the way up to the end. The direction is also nice, with some tastefully done, stylish flourishes here and there using stills, sepia flashbacks, film run backwards in slow motion, out of focus shots, surrealist elements, etc. These are used sparingly to enhance the story, not distract from weak writing as we all too often see in films like this.

Performances are quite strong here, too, especially from the ill-fated Capucine (who committed suicide in 1990) as the enigmatic, possibly lesbian, possibly vengeance-seeking woman in black. On the flip side, the male protagonist is a complete dickhead and difficult to handle on at first, though that just ends up making the finale all the more satisfying. Genre regular Víctor Israel swings by for a minute as a creepy doorman and there are also small parts played by José María Blanco, Luis Ciges and Luis Induni, but focus is placed almost exclusively on the four lead characters.

The director went on to make The Blood-Spattered Bride (1972), which is highly regarded by some, and co-write THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK (1976) before finally finding some acclaim in his homeland in the 80s and 90s, winning some of the country's top awards in the process. 

It's based on the story "Bailando para Parker" by Gonzalo Suárez, who isn't mentioned much in horror circles despite writing and / or directing some pretty interesting films himself. Some of his other work includes the short El horrible ser nunca visto / "The Horrible Being Never Seen" (1966), El extraño caso del doctor Fausto / "The Strange Case of Dr. Fausto" (1969), the underrated MORBO (1972), La loba y la Paloma (1974; called House of the Damned in the UK and US), Beatriz (1976) and Rowing with the Wind (1988), which netted him a Best Director Goya Award.

Reportedly, the production was beset with problems from the get-go, which also extended to its post production and eventual release. Director Aranda and Suárez were feuding (stemming from a previous production the two had worked on together), Aranda got injured, they went through five different scripts and then, after filming wrapped, there was a lawsuit over ownership and issues with distribution. Quite a headache.

Though this boasts a cast seemingly hand-selected to appeal to international audiences (the four leads are all from different countries: Argentina, England, France and Spain), I'm only aware of a couple of countries this was officially released in. Aside from Spain, a cut, English-language version was released theatrically in the U.S. in 1973. This same print, which is oddly missing any credits and doesn't even have a title screen (the one I'm using was taken from the trailer), was used for the later Something Weird VHS, DVD-R and streaming releases.

★★★

Último deseo (1976)

... aka: Last Desire

... aka: People Who Own the Dark, The

... aka: Planeta ciego (Blind Planet)

Directed by:

León Klimovsky

As I've no doubt already pointed out elsewhere on this blog, I don't think director Klimovsky has really been given his due in horror circles. The fact his film THE WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN (1971) helped to kick start the busy Spanish horror cycle of the 70s after it became a surprise international hit is only part of the reason why. He also cranked out over a dozen genre films in just one decade (an accomplishment back then; not so much now in the age of digital "filmmaking"), which makes him one of the most prolific genre directors of the entire decade, though again that's just a small part of his legacy. When one takes a look at Klimovsky's horrorography, they'll notice a lot of films that, on the surface, appear to be dredging up Universal Studios-style classic monsters for the umpteenth time. While it's true that his films are usually highly uneven, he never made what most would consider a true genre classic and he's not the visual stylist that many of his contemporaries were, what's usually not pointed out about his films is that he almost always puts a unique spin on tired tropes. 

Klimovsky's THE DRACULA SAGA (1972), for instance, mixes a Gothic vampire film with ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) and delivers some genuine surprises along the way. THE VAMPIRES NIGHT ORGY (1974), another of his low budget bloodsucking yarns, is basically a warped version of Brigadoon (1954). When it came time for him to make his Frankenstein film, he instead delivered I HATE MY BODY! (1974), an amusing pseudo-feminist Nazi mad scientist romp about sexual politics. So it comes as no surprise that when Klimovsky decided to tackle a nuclear holocaust the resultant film was going to be anything but ordinary.

Though he made around 75 films in all genres, Klimovsky is best known these days for his numerous collaborations with Spanish horror legend Paul Naschy. Naschy is present here as well, only he's billed pretty far down the cast list and was never promoted as the film's actual star. Top-lining the cast of Euro-horror heavy hitters is sultry German-born Nadiuska. Now I've already written a little biographical information about this actress in my review for DEATH HAUNTS MONICA (1976) and don't want to repeat myself here only to say that when she did this film her fame was such that not only was she billed above the title but even her personal make-up artist was given a shout out in the opening credits. Still, she and Naschy are just two of the familiar faces in a cast filled with horror film regulars in what is actually something of an ensemble piece.

The film opens with numerous vignettes introducing all of the principal cast and, quite surprisingly, it does an above average job introducing its many characters and does so with a good deal of humor. Nadiuska plays Clara, a high priced call girl who's something of a veteran in her field and currently has pretty novice sex worker Marion (Julia Saly, another frequent Naschy collaborator and his co-star in THE NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF) under her wing. Seemingly on the opposite end of the spectrum is Berta (Teresa Gimpera - NIGHT OF THE DEVILS), a busy homemaker with two young children whose insurance salesman husband is frequently out of town. Somewhere in the middle are a pair of in-demand models; Luna (Leona Devine) and Tania (Diana Polakov), but apparently even Vogue gigs aren't enough to pay all of one's bills. All five ladies are looking to pick up some extra cash "entertaining" wealthy men at a weekend party at the mansion home of Lily (Maria Perschy) and her lover Victor (Tomás Picó). Lily's home / brothel, called Vilmore, caters only to wealthy clientele and, being wealthy and all, they tend to be more perverted than the rest of us mere peasants.

Among the five men scheduled to attend the next party are esteemed academic Prof. William Fulton (Alberto de Mendoza - Horror Express), obese world-famous surgeon / chess aficionado Dr. Edward Robinson (Ricardo Palacios) and Robinson's colleague, Dr. Meisser (Emiliano Redondo). After receiving an urgent emergency phone call, a Russian ambassador (Barta Barri) has to cancel at the last minute and ends up sending his young attaché, Vasily Seriabrakov (Jess Franco film regular Antonio Mayans), in his place. Rounding out the quintet is Naschy's character, Mr. Borne, who's first seen sport shooting birds and making some kind of shady business deal. He's later described as being a former Foreign Legion soldier turned international drug trafficker turned adventurer / outdoorsman. While he may be a criminal, he's managed to never get caught, and he's rich, which means he's welcome there.

In a scene surpisingly similar to, yet predating, Kubrick's acclaimed Eyes Wide Shut by decades, the men are asked to go upstairs, put on robes and rubber monster masks and then meet their hostess down in the candle-lit cellar for a cult-like ceremony that involves food, booze, drugs and the five working girls, who have been hired to offer the men "pleasure without limits." Lily informs them that their "great master" is one Donatien Alphonse François aka the Marquis de Sade, which should give you some idea about the tastes of all of the socially-respectable male participants. However, the fun and games are interrupted by a sudden tremor in the home. A nuclear bomb has been dropped somewhere nearby. Venturing upstairs, they discover the two maids - Greta (Carmen Platero) and Anita (Estela Delgado) - have both been blinded by the blast and now have cloudy white eyes. While the underground cellar acted as a bomb shelter and spared the hedonists a similar fate, they'll soon have other, equally problematic issues to deal with...

Professor Fulton decides it would be best for them to stay put and only venture out whenever necessary, i.e. when their supplies are low. Due to radiation levels and nuclear fallout being carried there by the wind, he proposes mostly staying in the cellar for at least two months. However, they're short on food so the men venture out to find a local market. While in the village, they encounter a panhandler who's been blind from birth, who informs them that the villagers were having some kind of outdoor celebration when the bomb exploded and now everyone there has been blinded. They've since gathered at a local monastery. Victor loses his mind, starts murdering the blind villagers and has to be put down himself, but the damage is already done.

As the survivors await the radiation to reach them before they retreat to the cellar for awhile, tensions arise and everyone is at each other's throats. Berta turns out to be Lily's former lover, but left her for a "normal" life with husband and kids, and now the two have a chance to rekindle their relationship. Clara reveals that she survived a suicide attempt and now has a renewed desire to live, becoming romantically involved with Fulton. Having dealt the death blow to Victor himself, Dr. Robinson goes crazy, starts stripping off all of his clothes and crawls around on all fours snorting like a pig (!) and lapping up spilled milk from the floor.

Though now short on sight, the villagers are still able-bodied and none too happy about what Victor did. When Vasily and Marion go back into town to look around, they're surrounded by a mob and promptly murdered. The villagers eventually show up with rocks and sticks and lay siege on the home, determined to get inside and kill everyone, and this thing suddenly (though briefly) becomes something of a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD rip-off, with crazed blind folks instead of zombies! They break windows, try to bust through doors and this even copies the NOTLD tension between Ben and Harry Cooper, except with Fulton and Borne arguing about whether or not it would be wise to retreat to the cellar. Once the ambush survivors are out of the house and on the run, the film takes a few unexpected turns before delivering a grim and surprisingly haunting finale.

I'd previously only seen the 82 minute English-language dub of this one and, while I enjoyed it, I much preferred this re-watch of the longer, restored, Spanish-language print, and am bumping my score up by half a star as a result. Yes, this is still flawed and somewhat disjointed even in its uncut form, but the script (written by Vicente Aranda, Gabriel Moreno Burgos and Joaquim Jordà) is more ambitious than usual, with well-placed laughs (including some absurdist humor that would be more at home in a surrealist film), inventive ideas, fairly solid characterizations and (gasp!) even elements of social commentary. Though it takes awhile to get to its more horrific content and is a bit light on exploitative elements, there's an unpredictability to the whole thing that more than makes up for it. 

The performances here are all pretty solid, most especially from leading ladies Nadiuska, Gimpera and Perschy, though I'm also quite surprised this never seems to register very highly for fans of Naschy. His macho, tactless character is one of his better roles and he's given a lot of sarcastic ("What do you suggest? That we teach them braille?") or just plain distasteful one-liners that are quite amusing.

In addition to cutting out over ten minutes, the English-dubbed version (supposedly prepped by Sean S. Cunningham) also Anglicized the credits and substituted portions of the original music score. After an extremely limited run in American theaters in 1980, this was issued on both Beta and VHS in 1981 by Sun Video Corporation. In 1987, it was reissued by Star Classics (who had the best cover art) and then laid dormant until Code Red resurrected the title in 2012 on DVD and then released a much-improved Blu-ray three years later. Canada and Spain are the only two other countries this appears to have been officially released in.

★★★