A Christmas movie we can all get behind! About a priest who decides to commit all the evil he can on Christmas Eve so he can call up and defeat Satan, THE DAY OF THE BEAST (EL DIA DE LA BESTIA) was an early effort by Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia, who specializes in horror and science fiction laced screwball comedies.
If you’re unaware of the existence of this film that’s likely because it was extremely poorly distributed in the US (where it has yet to be released on DVD)—the fault, Iglesia has claimed, of an unscrupulous producer. Yet it exists, and is well worth tracking down.
Getting back to the priest in question, Father Angel, having studied the Torah, determines that the end of the world will begin on December 25, 1995, as that’s the date the antichrist will be born. He becomes determined to stop the birth and save the world.
On December 23 Angel hits the streets of Madrid, where he tells a dying man “I hope you rot in Hell,” pushes a mime into a subway stairwell, steals a suitcase and smokes a cigarette. He also hooks up with Jose Maria, a longhaired heavy metal buff, in whose home Angel beds down for the night. The following day he continues his mischief making, stealing a book by the sleazy occultist Professor Cavan from a bookstore and enlisting Jose Maria in his crusade—and also Cavan, who Angel forcibly abducts and ties up in Cavan’s own luxury apartment.
Cavan advises Angel on how best to invoke the devil, which requires the blood of a virgin maiden. Angel finds one in the form of the leggy housemaid Mina, with whom Jose Maria is in love. Angel manages to subdue Mina and get the desired blood, but not until after accidentally killing Jose Maria’s mother.
From there Angel and Jose Maria manage to lose Cavan in a fall, disrupt a lecture on Nostradamus, cause several actors in a department store display to get machine gunned, crash a heavy metal concert and eventually get back in touch with Cavan through his TV show, on which he informs the “ten thousand assholes watching this program” that “Christmas is fucked!” and leads Angel and Jose Maria to the true temple of Satan.
This was only the second feature by Iglesia, but his comic sensibility, amply displayed in later films like COMMON WEALTH and THE LAST CIRCUS, was fully formed. Iglesia incorporates extreme gore, breakneck action and a very Spanish-centric (i.e. un-PC) sexiness into a screwball aesthetic not far removed from that of the Marx brothers, albeit with a mordant worldview akin to Iglesia’s fellow countryman Augusti Villaronga (of IN A GLASS CAGE infamy).
He’s aided by a consistently inventive script, co-written by Iglesia’s frequent collaborator Jorge Guerricaechevarria. That script, in another Iglesia trademark, takes a fairly simple premise upon which Iglesia and Guerricaechevarria pile any number of outrageous complications and clever gags (such as when the protagonists break into an apartment to face a little girl, who mistakes them for Santa Claus).
There may even be a political angle in the presence of a band of terroristic thugs who frequently pop up to cause mayhem and spray paint a “Clean up Madrid” slogan everywhere they go, although THE DAY OF THE BEAST ultimately works best as precisely what it is: a consistently entertaining knockabout comedy that’s also authentically twisted.
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THE DAY OF THE BEAST (EL DIA DE LA BESTIA)
Iberoamericana Films Produccion/Canal+ Espana
Director: Alex de la Iglesia
Producer: Andres Vicente Gomez, Claudio Gaeta, Antonio Saura
Screenplay: Jorge Guerricaechevarria, Alex de la Iglesia
Cinematography: Flavio Martinez Labiano
Editing: Teresa Font
Cast: Alex Angulo, Armando de Razza, Santiago Segura, Terele Pavez, Nathalie Sesena, Marie Grazia Cucinotta, Gianni Ippoliti, Jaime Blanch, David Pinilla, Antonio Dechent, Ignacio Carreno