Eloy de la Iglesia



Going from Mexico to Spain, these three films consist of Iglesia's early 70s horror output. The first two are wholly faithful to the giallo aesthetic, with vibrant colors, slow and calculated zoom and tracking compositions, attractive actors and imitation-Morricone scores. And like giallos generally, they are less traditional horror films than Hitchcockian thrillers with slasher elements and V8 blood.
Cannibal Man has no cannibalism (all of these films have multiple titles from different countries), but makes the constant allusion with our killer (Vicente Parra) working in a slaughterhouse. Due to an unfortunate series of circumstances, he finds himself responsible for a number of murders and an increasing burden to cover them up, ie dumping remains into the slaughterhouse vats. All the while, he's unsuspectingly being spied by a neighbor (unmentioned but obviously gay) whose motives are uncertain.
No One Heard the Scream is similarly also a succession of unfortunate circumstances, almost a comedy of errors, ever-increasing complications that find Vincente Parra (again) bonding with his beautiful neighbor (Carmen Savilla) in sympathetic complicity. Cannibal is the better straight horror film of the two, but Scream has the more canny script, with even more complicated motives and agendas and twists, both of our attractive leads playing their cards close to the chest for most of the film.
Murder in a Blue World is easily the most interesting of the three films, but the slasher element is somewhat sidelined. It's a bald-faced rip-off of Clockwork Orange (even blatantly citing both that film and Kubrick by name right off the bat) which has a near-future, fascistic society decor'd in moddish designs and colors where a band of young hoodlums (red motorcycle helmets replacing the black bowlers) rampage the denizens. We see a similar Ludavico treatment, administered by Robert Wagner lookalike Chris Mitchum. Where the film diverges from Clockwork is the addition of a mysterious nurse with her own nocturnal peccidilloes, played (again, with a wink) by Sue Lyons, who's also helpfully seen reading the Nabokov book just in case. This film also makes the fascistic nature of its society more explicit than Clockwork, with a Reichsadler eagle being the ubiquitous national emblem, and making more explicit the homosexual implications which Kubrick only explored in a couple of humorous allusions. (The fascist/homoerotic connection may prove offensive to some, depending on one's sense of humor.)
It's noteable that these films managed to skirt the Spanish Franco regime's censors, although the Franco regime was in its final stage, finally ending in 1975. Blue World is especially significant being produced in a late-fascist country. After Franco's death, Iglesia would forgo horror and concentrate on more openly politically and sexually charged films for the remainder of his career. Many of his fans may very well see these as among his more minor work, but I have yet to explore his oeuvre further.
All: 7.5/10