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.

★★★

El pez de los ojos de oro (1974)

... aka: Eyes of the Golden Fish

... aka: Fish with the Eyes of Gold, The

... aka: Fish with the Golden Eyes, The

Directed by:

Pedro L. Ramírez

The name Waldemar Wohlfahrt may not mean much to you (it didn't to me either prior to viewing this), but this flash-in-the-pan minor 60s / 70s celebrity has an interesting story that's worth telling. Long story short, in 1966, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed German-born playboy from Stuttgart found himself accused of being a serial killer targeting young ladies along the Autobahn! As for hard evidence that implicated him, well, it basically boiled down to his love of travel (he divided his time between Germany and Spain) and the fact he happened to own a red Mercedes sports car. And that's about it! Wohlfahrt ended up getting arrested and was slandered mercilessly by the tabloid press, whom he later successfully sued after it turned out he wasn't even in the same country at the time of one of the murders. I'm not sure if the real killer was ever apprehended or not, but Wohlfahrt decided to parlay his press notoriety into a show business career. He first released an unsuccessful album, posing on the cover with his red sports car and using the name "Waldemar the Vampire" (!)

While he made mention in the press that he'd also been eyeing an acting career and stated he'd love to play a 007-style secret agent, there would be no James Bond level films for Wohlfahrt but instead stuff like The Horrible Sexy Vampire, The Lustful Amazons and Virgin Killer. But them's the breaks, especially when you're not much of an actor to begin with. His film debut, which he himself financed with his lawsuit earnings, was the 1969 sleaze-horror film El vampiro de la autopista; a title directly alluding to the Autobahn serial killer the Spanish press had once insisted was him. The film, which wouldn't be released until two years after it was shot, had absolutely nothing to do with the killer nor the star's life. The Spanish murder-mystery El pez de los ojos de oro on the other hand does actually seem to be sometimes commenting about Wohlfahrt's celebrity and contains a few direct references.

Wohlfahrt (billed as "Wal Davis") stars as a bellbottomed "Englishman" record store employee named Derek, who's hitchhiking through Spain on his way to visit a couple of friends for the holidays. As he's standing on the street trying to thumb a ride, he spots Mónica (Montserrat Prous) and Marco (Rex Martín) having a heated argument. She immediately jumps into her red convertible, spots Derek, picks him up and takes him back to her apartment for an off-screen revenge fuck. Later that night, Derek awakens to find her bloody corpse lying in bed next to him. She'd been stabbed to death and the killer has been kind enough to leave the murder weapon lying right on the floor. After touching her body, thumbing through her purse and doing everything else to ensure his fingerprints are all over the place, Derek then flees in the woman's car.

Instead of going straight to the police, Derek goes to visit his friends, artist Zachary Kendall ("Richard Kendall" / Ricardo Vázquez) and his sculptress wife Virginia (Norma Kastel). There, he learns there's a serial killer on the loose in the area. In fact, Zachary himself had previously witnessed the scuba gear-clad killer stab Belgian tourist Hildegard Aaron (Susana Taber) to death on an inlet. He also has visions of a child seeing their father stab the mother to death as a fishbowl gets knocked over. It's likely no coincidence then that the killer seems to be set off by images of fish. The Belgian girl had been killed while lounging on a fish beach towel, while Mónica was wearing a fish necklace when she was murdered. The killer had even stolen the pendant after killing her.

Zachary and Derek decide to go to a police commissioner (Barta Barri) to report their experiences and are shocked to find themselves the two key suspects in the killings. I mean, that's pretty understandable though, right? One claims to have directly witnessed a killing and the other had somehow managed to sleep right through a murder being committed right next to him and it's all just an "odd coincidence." The inspector obviously isn't buying it. The fishiness (har har) continues with the introduction of Marina (Adela Tauler), who's a student studying under Zachary and the daughter of the ultra-strict Pedro (Víctor Israel), who happens to run an aquarium. While Marina fancies a job as an artist, her demanding father is always nagging her to feed the fish. He also talks to the fish and claims they're his loyal friends. Despite Marina being an adult, Pedro tries to forbid her from dating, so he's none too thrilled to find out that his daughter has recently started seeing Derek.

It's revealed that the neglected Virginia is having an affair with sleazy gigolo and con artist Marco and is currently working on a fish sculpture herself. She claims to have gotten the design from somewhere else, perhaps from a local goldsmith named Miguel Toledo (Gustavo Re) who is, in turn, making golden-eye fish pendant necklaces like the one Mónica was wearing. However, he hasn't put them up for sale yet and had only given one to Marco to give to Mónica as a gift. The investigation turns up that Marco has been sexually involved with not only all of the victims thus far but also at least one of the suspects. That man really gets around. However, he's soon strangled to death so that checks him off the list. Meanwhile, Zachary starts his own affair with Nurse Tessi (María Elena Arpón) and she moves into his home. A few more murders follow.

Sleep with the fishes you cheap, bland, subpar film! This is talky and tame, with zero suspense, a poorly structured and surprise-free mystery, annoying cheat scenes, comically bad dialogue, horrible editing and mostly bad acting. There's also a curious lack of exploitative elements. Most of the kills are bloodless and there's no nudity in the 80 minute version I watched despite there being ample opportunity for such and a cast of performers who were certainly not shy in most of the other films they appeared in. One random bird who has nothing at all to do with the plot is even introduced just long enough to be stabbed to death in the shower, yet they show nothing. However, the hatchet job editing indicates the version currently floating around has been cut and is likely derived from a heavily-censored, Franco-approved Spanish release. That said, I could find no evidence this was ever released outside of Spain so a "continental" version may no longer even exist.

As for ole Waldemar, he's strictly of the deer-in-headlights school of emoting, though his hilariously unsubtle facial expressions at least elicit a few laughs. Tauler, who plays his romantic interest, was also his real-life girlfriend (eventually wife). The two appeared in no less than seven films together and she even wrote a vehicle just for him to star in. Co-star Ricardo Vázquez was also the executive producer and one Ricardo Vázquez Jr. is listed as being the assistant director. The director only made on other genre film: the mediocre though slightly better SCHOOL OF DEATH (1975).

The only legitimate home video release I'm aware of was a 1984 Spanish VHS release on the Videotel label, which uses a drawing of a screaming Carroll Baker stolen from the Spanish poster for Detrás del silencio / Knife of Ice (1972) for the box. Some bootleg dealers now carry it on DVD though the same exact VHS print is used for all of these as no official or restored version of the film has ever been released.

Edit: Since I've reviewed this, there's been a new Blu-ray release for this title from Vinegar Syndrome, as part of their "Spanish Blood Bath" set. It's paired with Jess Franco's NIGHT OF THE SKULL (1974) and Jorge Grau's Violent Blood Bath (1974), and the full running time is 84 minutes. 

★1/2