Reviews

"La prima Angélica" (1974) is one of the most sensitive and important movies of Carlos Saura. Set in 1974, one of the most transcendental moments in Spain with the debacle of franquism, the film is a wonderful portrayal of the effects of the Spanish civil war in a family and the love that Luis -great José Luis López Vázquez- feels about his cousine Angélica -beautiful Lina Canalejas-. The childhood, the adolescence of both -Luis and Angélica- and their forbidden love is seen in the past and in the present with a nice nostalghia. Carlos Saura creates a great love story with an historical background -spanish civil war- and shows to the audience a passional game between past and present reality. "La prima Angélica" is for me one of the most important movies of the Spanish Cinema. This is one of the masterpieces of Carlos Saura.

SCREAM...AND DIE! (or "The house that vanished" (1973))is the unknown piece of horror and sex that the master José Ramón Larraz did in England in the seventees. It's an erotic thriller with psychopatic murderer (Karl Lanchbury) perfomed by a beautiful model called Valerie (terrific Andrea Allan)involved in a haunting mistery and sadistic murders occurred in a isolated manor in the forest at midnights. Scream and die has an excellent and very particular quality in images and atmosferes. The movie is slow, yes, but this thing is normal in Larraz's movies: the story is very slow and predictable, but it's too sexy (the love scenes are really good and erotic) and brutal sometimes, and has the mark from the director of masterpieces as "Vampyres" and "Symptoms", both from 1974. The fog, tne night, the sounds of the killer walking with his black gloves following Valerie, the anguish in her face in her firsts shots, the slowly music give to the film a personal sight. The first murder seen by the hidden Valerie and husband as intimate witnesses and the escape from the manor are a classic composition of horror shots, wonderfully executed by the "voyeurisitic filmmaker" with a rare and genuine talent. It's a really brutal moment of sophisticated murder and "naïve" sex. Scream and die has the very personal "touch" of the catalanian director, all the constants that are in the most part of his baroque, sensual and horrific world (Emma puertas oscuras,La muerte incierta,Vampyres, Symptoms,Estigma,Whirpool, Deviation or Deadly manor) are present in here. The spiral of terror and tension grows very slowly -step by step- describing the world of this sexy model for fashion photographers in a continuated state of danger. Larraz creates a really personal style in a very traditional thriller that must be remembered by the tension,the british locations in Kent in winter,the quiet and dead moments of inusually fascination, the use of the photography, the artistic colors and the incredible dark shots of nights, the typical "english" fog, the horror moments and the clever sex that impressed me a lot in my adolescence. Scream and die has a kind of elegance in the horror genre that others horror thrillers hasn't. All the personal obsessions of José Larraz are here in a fine lesson of cinematography in his best period of his career, the british period. The fans of José Larraz need to know his firsts features, as "Whirpool" (1970) and "Deviation" (1971)-nobody has said anything more specific about these movies? (Please: more information and reviews in IMDB or other places,webs, etc.) and his last contribution tot the terror lately in "Deadly manor"(Savage lust, 1990)produced by his old british friend Brian Smedley-Aston. When the fans of José Ramón Larraz, Brian Smedley-Aston (editor of "Performance" ,etc.), his actresses and his horrific world will have a web or a personal page about the director? Where are the fans of this spanish/british filmmaker?. Goodbye!

JILL is the name of this movie, and this is the name of this sexy starlette called Jill Robinson,perfomed by the nice and beautiful chilean actress Raquel Evans-¡nobody remembers this erotic actress and their terrific body in films of Jesús Franco, etc!- that arrives to "the Costa Brava" in Catalonia (Spain).Directed by his brother Enrique Guevara, JILL tells the story of a lonely woman, manipulated sexually by her lesbian secretary (Mireia Ros)and others supossed friends (Lynn Endersson, etc.) that help her to survive artistically as a striptease and singer in music halls in the summer of 1977 when I was a teeneager. A woman reporter (Emma Cohen) follows Jill and tries to save her from this hell of life as an pure object of desire. JILL is a nice and femminist portrait of a young, sexy and tormented woman that appeared in theaters in Barcelona during the period of the "destape"- in the seventees- and impressed the audience for theirs nudes and explicit eroticism, but 25 years after, JILL is an interesting approach to a tragedy of loneliness, artistic bussiness and free life. I suppose that this film never appeared on video in Spain or around the world (someone has seen this film?), but I have a copy on beta really bad. Someone has references from this movie? In this same period the same crew did anothers sexy films as "Una loca extravangancia sexy", "El último pecado de la burguesía" or "Cariño mío,¿qué me has hecho?". JILL wasn´t really a great movie, but had a haunting aspect of sexual freedom, hippie attractive and beautiful locations of the incredible "Costa Brava", in the coast of Catalonia, in the mediteranian sea, in the summer, that the filmmaker captured with his camera and with really hot scenes of lesbianism and love never seen in commercial spanish films before. A decent and classic of the '70 erotic film that deserves a second chance. For fans of darkness and hidden movies, difficult to find, of the decade of freedom, really hot sex, sun, beach and life. Refreshing style!

"Dressed to kill" (1980) was described for more critics as one of the most important movies of the 1980 and a really homage for Alfred Hitchcock in the year of their death. The movie was beautifully shot by De Palma in a very classical style influenced by "Vertigo" and "Psycho", but the screenplay is full of references to other filmmakers, basically Luis Buñuel and his "Belle de jour". "Dressed to kill" is a nice gore film with psycological ambitions and a very serious portrayal of a sadist killer called Bobbi, a transvestite or transexual man with problems of adaptation to the society. The movie is a really horror tale of frustration with an incredible presence of erotism and an analysis of mental illness seen by the magician De Palma with their derivative imagination and their narrative talent. The main question of the film is the crazy character of Dr. Elliott/Bobbi perfomed by the eccentric Michael Caine and the others actors -Dickinson, Allen, Gordon and Dennis Franz- are involved in this brilliant erotic thriller. Bobby is back to remember to the audience that a transvestite is a paranoid person and the conservadurism of De palma is evident: nobody like him could be free in the streets. This is the moral dilemma and the trascendental message of "Dressed to kill".

BLOW OUT established De Palma as a Major filmmaker in recent american movies in 1981, but the movie was a disaster in theaters and nobody loved it with the exception of the prestigious critic from "The New Yorker" Pauline Kael that defended De Palma and the movie saying that "it was a great movie". Blow Out is the culmination of De Palma's works saying to the audience a moral message. John Travolta as a soundman recordist, Jack Terry, does his best job until today as a mature character at 27 and Nancy Allen as Sally Bedina, a hooker, is beautiful and human. DePalma builts a political fantasy -echoes of Chappaquidick, etc.- with their cinefilic obsessions -since Hitchcock, but particularly Antonioni's "BlowUp", Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" for Burke character starring by the sadist John Lithgow- and their personal and shocked style, derivative and misogism. As others "autors" in the seventies -Lucas, Scorsese, Lynch, Cimino, Coppola,...- De Palma was a great lover of movies,in essence their favourite is "Vertigo", and for that was accused of plagiarism in all their movies, specially in "Obsession" (1975), "Dressed to kill" (1980) or "Body Double" (1984) where De Palma reworked Hitchcock traumas and their own De Palma's traumas and really obsessions over abuse of power, revenges, late capitalism, Shakespeare's theatre.

BLOW OUT is a sensitive and surrealistic mural of conspiracies and a plausible effort that we live in a corrupted society where everybody has their particular responsibilities. No one is innocent and the images of Vilmos Zsigmond cinematographer offers us an idealisitic vision of a big loser (Travolta) at the end of the film, one of the most horrific endings never shooted with Godard influences, but De Palma as a big idealistic moviegoer and "cinefile" tries to elaborate a unique and particular vision of the reality. The results were tragical in box-office after their released in 24 July when Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was a big success in US and Europe, including Venice Film Festival on September '81. Quentin Tarantino rediscovers Travolta seeing and seeing Blow Out and the honest intentions of their vulnerable hero and the citizen insecurity around this controversial production, a very artistic triumph. De Palma is in United States as Truffaut is in France. They are both really obsessions about maturity, crazy loves, emotional disorders and problems of adaptation to the society. They are autobiographical and sincere with them and with the audience; they are really tragical and romantic in their charged emotional films. In essence, BLOW OUT is a true vision of a robotized society, full of circles and circles and this is the vision of a really artist, the vision of the insecurity male. BLOW OUT is a very serious, dramatic and violent movie that works in diferents levels of analisis with an strong suspense style and a very effective performances. The music score was composed by the brilliant italian musician Pino Donaggio that never appeared on records or cassettes in 1981 -what a pity!- and the visual style of the movie was composed by three colors -red, blue and yellow- with an splendid use of the scope prints. BLOW OUT is a masterpiece of the macabre with political references. All the people need to see it with a virgin mentality. brilliant italian musician Pino Donaggio

I know the famous and scandalous success of this brilliant film written and directed by James Clarke in 1975, the most exciting moment for movies in the British industry. "The house on Straw Hill" is a suspense thriller with a lot of blood and oniric sexual scenes with calculated violence and slowly intimate moments. No-one knows the reasons of the characters, specially Udo Kier -a paranoid writer with blood nightmares- and Lynda Hayden -a mysterious secretary with bad intentions-. The music, the splendid locations and the beautiful photography of the woods and the manor in Hatfield Peverel is the basic attraction of this horrific and erotic film banned in United Kingdom. Lynda Hayden has her moments as a killer female character and a very sexual presence described by the filmmaker around the movie. Udo Kier, in their best moments before -he did "Story of O" in the same year- is vulnerable and caothic as a worried writer obsessed with finishing their second novel and their traumas. A very recommended production for fans of horror movies in the seventies. This is a very rarely piece of blood, suspense and sex that today follows provoking a really commotion in audiences.

"Symptoms" or "The Blood virgin" is the favourite movie shot by Joseph Larraz, the catalanian director of such horror movies -Whirpool, Deviation, Scream and die or masterpieces as this "Symptoms" or "Vampyres"- that nobody did with their particular sight and their personal style. "Symptoms" is a very traditional horror tale with vampiric reminiscences and a very special study of a crazy lesbian woman obsessed with their dead mistress. The phantom of Cora, their lover is in the middle of this sensitive story and the reason of their crimes around the movie. The atmosphere and climatic shots are superb and the music score by John Scott are wonderfully executed with gothic images and dark places. "Symptoms" appeared in 1976 in british theaters and received cool opinions, specially in "Monthly Film Bulletin" and other prestigious movie magazines in United Kingdom. Twenty five years after "Symptoms" is a disturbing masterpiece of the horror movies and one of the most romantic studies of crazy love that other prestigious directors in the seventies, for example Truffaut, De Palma, Rivette, Richardson or Losey, did in this past prodigious '70 decade. Joseph Larraz, 70 years old now has a clear head yet and a great sense of humor. He is one of this rare spanish directors that made movies in United Kingdom or Demmark. He has their particular obsessions about sex, horror and movies and he showed us their talent in fashion magazines, in spanish comics or erotic pictures of beautiful women as Marianne Morris, Anulka, Lorna Heilborn, Teresa Gimpera, Helga Line, etc. "Symptoms" is a rarely piece for collectors and fans of darkness dreams and inmoral tales. The film has their soul and force in the face of Angela Pleasence as Helen Ramsey, the predator woman that kills everyone around her and use the people to take to their mortal manor where occurs all the drama. The movie is great in the beginning and in the end and offers to the audiences a clever entertainment that intelligent people will love with passion.

I want to write about this masterpiece of the prodigious '70 decade. Shooting in the spring of 1974, the year of "Sweet Movie", "Symptoms" and "Enmanuelle", "Vampyres" is the quintessential of the clever catalanian filmmaker José Ramón Larraz (one the most unknown spanish and sensitive directors of my country, Spain). Released in Barcelona in 1979 the critics ignored it and never received a positive position until 20 years after when Tim Greaves wrote a brilliant booklet over "Vampyres", a very complete study of this controversial production with a low budget and the two very beautiful ladies, Marianne Morris as Fran and Anulka as Miriam. The experience of seeing "Vampyres" is unique and romantic. You haven't seen before a movie so lyrical, tragical, emotive and erotic than "Vampyres". The references to other movies and filmmakers isn't place in here because the year of this film, in 1974, nobody had made anything similar; this genuine and naïve masterpiece of the horror recent history of the macabre is in essence a tragical love story, a male fantasy as "The phantom of the Paradise", in the same year -by Brian De Palma- did it too.

We have to recognise the abilities in Joseph Larraz's movies to create a unique and very personal vision of the spiral of terror that never appeared before: "Vampyres" is the part of a trilogy that emerges with "Scream...and die! (in United States called "The house that vanished") and "Symptoms" (The Blood Virgin) that represented to UK in Cannes Film Festival in the edition of 1974. Possibly Joseph Larraz is a ferocious follower of vampirism and one of the most productive and imaginative spanish filmmakers of the seventies. The importance of "Vampyres" is evident and trascendental. The best important movie of vampirism never shooted until today. The combination of violence and sex is brilliant and the very, very, very original screenplay signed by Joseph Larraz and Diane Dauveney -his wife in these days- was productive and elegant. Echoes from jazz music in the soundtrack and the talented editor, Brian Smedley-Aston, give us to the spectators and to the screen the best of all. "Vampyres" is the culmination of a tragical love story never seen before and after.

My opinion is clear and eloquent: 10 points.