The collision of farce and occult thriller in The Day of the Beast,
far from being a surprise, pretty much follows the mainstream of contemporary
horror films. Perhaps the result of an exhausted period in the genre's
history and to a large part triggered by Re-Animator and Evil Dead
II, this tendency hit a mass consciousness with the bewildering success of
Scream. Though The Day of the Beast was also a huge hit in
Spain (depending upon which source, either its year's biggest or
tied-for-biggest box-office draw), it draws from a different tradition of both
black comedy and religious transgression. Though Iglesia has three
features to his credit, all co-written by Jorge Guerricaechevarr¨ªa (who also
wrote Live Flesh), only the Almodovar-produced, quasi-political science
fiction splatter film Acci¨®n mutante (1993) has gathered much notice
outside Spain, and then primarily to genre buffs and cineastes already disposed
to that type of film.
The Day of the Beast is more coherent and well-made, it rarely
achieves the sheer weirdness Accion Mutante sometimes achieved.
The Day of the Beast opens with a timid and frightened priest (Angulo) confessing to a colleague that he's discovered the key to interpreting
the Revelation of John. The Apocalypse, it turns out, is only a few days
away. Instead of resigning himself to prophecy, the priest decides to stop
the coming events. So he tries to be as evil as possible so that when he
calls up Satan to sell his soul (when he'll make his anti-Apocalyptic move),
it'll be plausible. In his attempt, he enlists the help of a very
unwilling TV occultist (De Razza) and a heavy metal record store clerk (Santiago
Segura, who won a Goya for Best New Actor, never mind that this was his fifth or
sixth film--including all of Iglesia's; Segura would later direct 1998's
Torrente, el brazo tonto de la ley/Torrente, the Stupid Arm of the
Law, the highest-grossing film in Spanish history).
Iglesia shows a real knack for rendering such peculiar characters
plausible, which helps maintain a balance in a film pushing to be labelled
"bizarre." The main problem, though, is that he's not willing to push too
far. The priest's foul deeds include such things as stealing luggage and
pushing a mime down subway stairs, not exactly what most people--let alone the
Prince of Darkness--would consider evil. (However he does burn crosses
onto the soles of his feet; a sacrilege that would have passed me--and
presumably many other American viewers--right by if I hadn't read about Medieval
heretics accused of such practices.) So there's never much of a sense that
anything important is really at stake, even at the end when it's a bit unclear
how far the priest has gone in his attempt to avert the end times. When
the film shows regular humans attacking homeless people, it's more a shock than
anything the priest has done or that we hear that Satan will do.
The Day of the Beast comes close at times to bogging down in comic
antics (will the landlady discover the drugged girl?) but at such moments the
pace picks up shortly. Iglesia's firm visual sense is never more apparent
than his mix of long and medium shots which doesn't quite follow the usual
practice but is appropriate for a film that moves from close, mostly verbal
scenes to broad physical action. (And several shots--notably the
grandfather's first appearance--show a masterful use of framing for comic
effect.) One unexpected result of Iglesia's honest approach to the
material--not condescending like so many would-be comic horror directors--is
that the last 30 minutes are genuinely spooky, with some potentially clumsy
special effects made quite appropriate. Perhaps that's typical of The
Day of the Beast where style and a genuine sense of wit stand the film out
from more cynical efforts, though it's hard not to wish that Iglesia had
intended something more than just a first-rate entertainment.
From
Full Alert Film
Review
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