It is having a lot of run-run, and not only in our country. Carlota Pereda has found the key in ‘Cerdita’ that allows a totally Spanish terror that also has a good reception abroadwith festivals like Sundance or the Fantastic Fest giving in to his way of approaching slasher from the rural and from social criticism to problems like bullying.
It also offers an opportunity to vindicate the patriotic terror that has ended up being reduced to a cult status or to celebration in more specific circuits. Today we recover three unique films that brought the slasher to our borders in different historical periods and that deserve to be revisited through the different streaming platforms.
‘A thousand cries has the night’ (1982)
Address: Juan Piquer Simon. Distribution: Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Frank Braña, Edmund Purdom, Ian Sera.
“You don’t have to go to Texas to have a chainsaw massacre.” Juan Piquer Simón’s film did not hide the sources from which he drank, far from it. In fact, he sought to celebrate them in a slasher orgy with a good dose of gore and violencesome escape towards the giallo reference and a grateful eighties shamelessness.
Cult piece not only in our country by the most coffee growers of Sitges, but also internationally, as seen in the careful physical edition edited by Arrow. Simón compensates for some limitations based on pure playfulness, with a delirious story, an investigation and a murderer addicted to offal because of a childhood trauma charged with eroticism.
See on FlixOlé
‘Black tuno’ (2001)
Address: Pedro L. Barbero, Vicente J. Martin. Distribution: Silke, Jorge Sanz, Fele Martínez, Maribel Verdú, Eusebio Poncela, Enrique Villén.
With the revival of slasher following the success of ‘Scream’, there were numerous attempts to cash in on its success. Our own industry was not exempt from this phenomenon, with ‘Tuno negro’ being one of the films that most tried to emulate the Wes Craven classic to our college culture.
Even that fabulous prologue with Marivel Verdú couldn’t be more ‘Scream’. Not for that reason it ceases to be an uninhibited, funny and playful film from the violent point of view. The film is self-aware of its debts to other films, but that does not stop it from incorporating elements of Spanish university life that give it another charisma and allow it to stab concepts such as colleges or meritocracy in these environments. A misunderstood gem.
See on FlixOlé
‘The Innocents’ (2013)
Address: Carlos Alonso, Dídac Cervera, Marta Díaz, Laura García, Eugeni Guillem, Ander Iriarte, Gerard Martí, Marc Martínez Jordán, Rubén Montero, Arnau Pons, Marc Pujolar, Miguel Sánchez. Distribution: Mario Marzo, Charlotte Vega, Àlex Batllori, Joan Amargós, Enric Auquer.
A fascinating experiment with surprising cohesion. Its peculiarity is that it does not have a single author, but rather the creative work is distributed among several ESCAC students, with Lluís Segura offering advice. Twelve different directors come together to make a slasher that doesn’t hide its amateur character but doesn’t stop working well for that.
He manages to have a lot of consistency from start to finish, at the same time that he throws himself into making a pure and hard old-school slaher ‘Friday the 13th’. Teenagers going to have a lazy party in a hostel, sexual awakenings, a traumatic event from the past. All familiar, but all well run for an effective and appreciable film.
See in Filmin