HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 69
9th of 12 countries: Spain

I ultimately found the wacky black comedy stylings of Alex de la Iglesia's Witching and Bitching a tad irritating - not the kind of film I was expecting at all after the nihilist punk neo-noir of Perdita Durango. The Day of the Beast leans once again into that irreverent, gleefully violent, slapstick territory, but this time it works.

Violent slapstick within a horror aesthetic generally makes one think of film makers like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, and this film fits nicely into that sort of mould. I think the key here is in a far more simplified plot and a small assortment of characters - even managing to give us a couple that we can root for, albeit knowing we should be doing so with grave reservations because these guys... have some issues.

When I say slapstick, I mean it. There are gags in this film which wouldn't look out of place in a Three Stooges film. It's a strange juxtaposition alongside demonism, mortal combat with tough old ladies, homeless people getting beaten up and burned alive, and literally buckets of blood.

As with Jackson and Raimi, these chaotic hijinks are beautifully filmed, with gorgeous heightened set design in these Madrid apartments and street scenes. This gave me some of those movie-in-my-hometown thrills because although I've never lived in Madrid, I have spent weeks at a time there on numerous occasions, so a lot of the exterior scenes were very familiar places for me.

Alex Angulo is great in the lead role of a mild mannered priest who needs to convince Satan he's evil so he can summon him and try to defeat him, having literally decoded some esoteric texts to discover that the Antichrist is being born TONIGHT. The no-nonsense way he goes around trying to steal people's blood (first checking with the girl at his boarding house that she is indeed a virgin) and doing other random acts of evil - all just a means to an end - brings a lot of the comedy, and he goes for a quasi-Buster Keaton vibe which he largely pulls off.

The film pulls the rug out immediately (the base premise being so outrageous) and then continues to take unexpected twists and turns, so it's constantly entertaining. I'm just going to put my hands up and admit it though: I didn't understand what happened at the end, exactly. I won't go into it, but I'm assuming it's my fault for not paying enough attention. I'm happy to give it another watch later and see if I can do better. To be honest, I'm not sure I'm even OK with it - it takes one specific very dark turn (I think) which I need to understand better before I judge it - but at this point I just enjoyed this wild ride for what it was up to that point at least.