Original subtitles

- "When you smashed an axe into a head,

you were actually breaking a system

that had provoked a great deal of unconscious frustration." Paul Naschy

- Cinema has always found a way

in which to subvert the demands of the institutions.

- Because of the dark history of Spain,

because of the terrible history of violence,

of abuse that happened under the Franco era,

it still reverberates.

- Spain was controlled for many years

and that forges a mindset.

- After Franco died,

there was no censorship at all.

All of a sudden, the floodgates were open

so filmmakers could make whatever they want.

- What cinema gains is that one could say absolutely everything.

There is no more fear.

It was like a boiling pot, and you suddenly take the lid off.

Everything inside wants to come out.

- "I want to be the first to show you

what has never been seen on a film screen before."

"Let's see who can stop me from saying what I want to say."

- In 1931, after eight years

of military dictatorship,

Spain finally had a democratically-elected government,

whose progressive policies sought to modernize the nation.

New measures were passed that restricted the power

of big land owners and the Catholic church,

while simultaneously restructuring the military,

encouraging secular, mixed education, allowing divorce,

and granting women the right to vote.

But while much of Spain celebrated this progress,

the landowners, the Church, and the military could only see

a loss of privilege and a weakening

of their traditional values of family, country and God.

On July 18th, 1936, under orders from pro-fascist generals

that included Francisco Franco,

a portion of the Spanish army launched a coup d'etat

against the government.

The result was a violent civil war that lasted three years.

- The fratricidal fight of the Civil War

is very difficult to forget

because it belongs to our grandparents' past.

I mean, my father was in the Civil War.

This is a climate that they've experienced at home and shaped their minds.

And we all have a kind of nightmare,

as in a Lovecraft tale.

It's like a nightmare that whispers in the night.

- Spain's Civil War is bitter.

Barbaric.

Countryman against countryman.

- Franco obtained the support of Hitler

and Mussolini, who sent ground and air support to Spain

for what would become a dress rehearsal for World War ll.

April 1st, 1939, Franco and his rebel forces captured

the capital city of Madrid.

The war was over, but new forms of brutality

and oppression had begun.

- He is declared El Caudillo, the leader,

the dictator of all Spain.

- We can define Francoism

as a dictatorial regime of a fascist nature

sustained by the Church, the army, and big money.

- The State joins hands with the Church.

Catholicism once again becomes the official religion

of Spain, with large government subsidy

and control over education and censorship.

There is no freedom of religion in Spain.

- Any form of dissent to Francoist values

was severely punished.

- The 40 years that Spain was under the rule

of General Franco was terrible.

- These men would unclench their fists.

And the brotherhood of the open hand and the outstretched arm

welcomed them with the generosity that the Spanish Empire of a bygone time

always had with the vanquished.

- There was no political dissent whatsoever,

the Catholic church ruled over everything with an iron fist.

Women were basically considered little more than chattel

and had virtually no rights.

- Society made sure that women were always put

in a secondary position.

- I have a job, do you hear me?

- I'll believe it when I see it. - I have a man's job.

And you'll wear this apron.

Get into the kitchen, that's your place.

- Not even her body was her own,

but her body was to serve men.

- José, do you take Maria Victoria

as your lawfully wedded wife,

as ordered by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church?

- Yes, I do.

- Religious fanaticism

and a culture of fear were established.

- In the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

- A new ideology was quickly codified:

the Spanish race as a paragon of Catholic values

and heir to an imperial past of great military heroes

and exploits.

- Those who feel in the depths of their spirits

the superior seed of the race,

have been chosen for the great task of returning Spain to its rightful place.

They, not you, deaf materialists,

will carry their banners to the altar of triumph.

For them, inevitably, the joyful clay of victory must come.

- Cinema became a valuable tool

in furthering Franco's dictatorial doctrine.

Franco himself, under the pseudonym Jaime DE Andrade,

wrote the feature film RAZA in 1941.

- Isn't it lovely? What's this called, Mom?

- It's called "race," my son.

- Given the film's alignment with Nazi ideology,

Franco ordered the negative destroyed

when Germany lost World War ll, but a single surviving print

was discovered in Berlin in the early '90s,

which allows its preservation to this clay.

All cultural endeavors, especially cinema, were subjected

to strict censorship that would ensure the content

was in line with the values of the dictatorship.

In addition to political oppression,

sexual repression became the main goal of the censors.

- Oh, they censored the kiss.

- Sex could never be used for pleasure,

but only for procreation in the context

of a traditional Catholic family.

- Good morning, family. - Good day, Dad!

- Orgasm was a sin requiring confession.

- Francoism lasted from '39 to '75, but the dictatorship is not homogeneous.

The dictatorship of the 1940s is not the same as in the 1960s or the 1970s.

- There are erotic, political, or violent films.

- Franco banned all these kinds of genres.

- Censorship works very differently as it progresses.

But some constants remained.

- The censorship included 37 very detailed and complex rules:

Illicit sexual relations, abortion, prostitution, divorce...

- Spanish cinema ends up going, on the one hand,

towards some sort of white comedy, in search of that purity,

that shaping of the family as a nucleus.

- Have you seen Mother?

- Yes, I couldn't resist the urge.

I stayed in a corner, no one saw me.

I saw everyone.

I prayed with devotion...

And I'd say,

"|t's because of you.

It's because of you...

Mother!"

- On the other hand, a kind of symbolic justification

of the reasons for the military uprising.

- This is Lopez,

one of those men of 1936. Nobody could keep off his mind

that part of the hatred he encountered in his youth

was so because some of us could live and others could not.

This is a heartfelt and moving account

of a generation of young Spanish men

who once risked their lives

for the joy of putting the people, threatened by poverty,

back on their feet.

- First, the script was presented.

- The first level of censorship to obtain what was known as the filming card.

It said the things to be changed.

There were always dialogue and image corrections, and so on.

- Then the filming began

and the censors could visit the set, and they made sure

that what they had changed in the script was done.

- The American shot, the three-quarter; the Spanish shot reached the nipples.

They weren't shown.

- Imagination, at that time,

went further than what you actually saw.

- Leave it! You need delicate hands for that.

- Then there was the final stage,

which was when the edited copy was presented.

They intervened again on this first version.

- You'd modify the film again.

You'd change scenes, the editing, and so on.

And you'd present it again

to attempt to get permission for the film to be released.

All films shown in Spain were very authorized

and super-censored.

A pre-screening was held for a priest.

They made you cut certain scenes.

- During the censorship, the classification board

became modernized

and more "professional" filmmakers joined,

and less military and priests,

who were the majority of the original censors,

who had no knowledge of cinema.

[speaks in Latin]

- But censorship, interestingly, also included

the prohibition of cruel and violent scenes

against people or animals, and scenes of horror and morbidity.

Why this concreteness regarding horror images?

I think it could be interpreted as fear

to reveal the horrors of the Civil War.

- Every Spaniard had in his vicinity

a war casualty.

And every Spaniard had seen a corpse.

- By eliminating these images,

in a way, they were erasing history,

preventing wounds from being reopened,

avoiding the exhumation of the graves,

which are classic horror film images.

- And generally the Catholic church does not...

They don't want anything of the fantastic

unless it's to do with God and Jesus.

Yes, Jesus, you know, his body is bread, his blood is wine.

But that's the only sort of fantastical mysticism you'll get

officially in Spanish culture.

But the reality is somewhat different.

- Marcelino, are you afraid?

- I am. - Come closer.

Now the thunder will come. - It doesn't matter anymore.

- In the early 1960s, the government wasn't doing so well.

There wasn't a lot of money coming in.

So they put money into film production,

mostly co-productions.

- Suddenly, they realized that there is a very popular audience

who conceives cinema as a form of leisure, rather than a cultural element,

for those who love genre films.

- They encouraged other European countries to come,

other countries in general to come,

and make a lot of films in Spain.

- Why not get together and cut costs?

They were looking for a new phenomenon that would maintain that system

of foreign co-production, of foreign sales.

They work wherever they are seen.

A Spanish film can work in Italy,

an Italian in Germany...

- Above all because of Paul Naschy, but also thanks to others,

Spanish audiences started to enjoy a type of horror that's very much our own.

Thematic and representational lines are quickly overflowing

because the genre demands violence;

it demands blood, sex, and supernatural stories.

From the moment the State itself sees

that Spaniards want to see horror and that it's an international success,

the State and the producers embrace horror.

- Serrador's film THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED

or LA RESIDENCIA,

these films just started to boom.

They were popular with audiences both in Spain and abroad,

and they started to get a little more dangerous.

They started to get a little more violent.

If you look at the werewolf films of Paul Naschy,

they were getting a bit more violent.

Most importantly with these films,

because there still was censorship at the time,

you couldn't just have a horror film

that the government would approve of.

So they had to be coded as foreign.

- Seances, walking dead,

wax dolls...

Laurence, this is Scotland Yard, in London,

in 1972.

- They couldn't be set in Spain because they were trying

to maintain the image that Spain was a safe country,

that it was a non-violent country; the Civil War had ended

and all the trauma of violence and blood

had to be forgotten, it had to be erased.

- If it were not excessive,

I'd speak of a ritualistic murder.

- It's not possible, doctor.

In our country, there are no diabolical cults or covens.

Forget it, it's the 20th century.

- In Spain, having films where these wounds are reopened

or the graves were exhumed, with the living dead, or whatever,

would clearly tap into the horrors of the Civil War.

But they wanted to erase it

as part of what is called "collective forgetting."

- Often these films were clubbed in English,

even though they were filmed in Spanish or another language.

Sometimes you had actors speaking

two completely different languages on set,

but they would be dubbed in English.

They were often not set in Spain,

they would explicitly say that they were not in Spain;

they would be in France, or Germany, the United Kingdom,

or they just would never mention they were from,

even if you had a car going down the street

and it was clearly Madrid or Barcelona.

- What would you like? - A cheese sandwich.

- And to drink? - A glass of wine.

- I can shoot in Vigo, but I'll say it's Hamburg harbor.

I can shoot in Toledo, but I can say that it's a Swiss city.

Whereupon censorship says:

"Well, if this is Switzerland, women can show their thighs.

If you say it's Toledo, I have to censor you."

- Beth!

- Hello!

- Almost from the beginning, there are many filmmakers

who see in the fantastic horror genre a vehicle

to tell the stories that censorship wouldn't allow them to tell any other way.

- LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE

and TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD

are films that talk about something that happened to them.

These zombies are not just for the sake of it.

- There are some very clever filmmakers

who see this as a way to infiltrate and insert their subversive messages.

- I think it was a way of circumventing censorship

because films couldn't just be nuns and rosaries,

masses and weddings,

happy families...

They were a way of rebelling against censorship.

- Not all directors were subversive.

Fantastic horror was also a way of making films and attracting audiences

and keep working in their trade.

Some directors are not so politically positioned

but they made groundbreaking films.

Why? Because they did not know the material they were dealing with.

Showing half-naked women was also something political.

- The first thing we see in THE WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN

is that the lesbians started appearing.

Or vampires, or women who touch themselves too much.

At first, they're dark or in the backdrop, but in the next film

they have a main plot.

Until they finally become protagonists.

It's a fantasy of a heterosexual male who likes to watch women touching themselves.

But we're now seeing lesbians, women who enjoy sex with other women,

in popular cinema during the Francoist era.

- I've never managed to forget you.

And you haven't either.

You have to remember what I taught you.

- It was very often the case in the earlier part

of the decade, like early '70, mid '70s,

that a Spanish film that was going to have nude scenes

would have clothed version shots.

So the same scene with the same action, the same dialogue,

the same actors, would be shot twice,

once where there would be nudity,

and that was for the export version,

which was the version that was played everywhere

except for Spain, and once where there would be no nudity.

So, you know, a sex scene may have someone,

you know, on the nude version they would be fully nude

and there would be sex.

In the clothed version, they would be fully clothed

or wearing a nightgown or underwear or something,

and it would cut off

before anything explicit were happening.

- Officially, there were not supposed to be double versions,

but a lot of people did them.

- The issue is that they had to compete

with other films that didn't have that.

Since we have no money, since our budget is scarce,

since we don't have the capacity

to get closer to an American production,

let's offer something else.

So they offered affordable and cheaper things,

like sex or pouring syrup on people.

- Fantastic horror films cannot be described

as particularly transgressive or subversive films, quite the contrary.

In these films, any rebellion, like the hippie generation,

drugs, homosexuality,

or any such deviant moral conduct according to the Regime,

were always associated with negative, diabolical characters

or evil, and end up punished.

- It was providence.

A punishment of providence.

As for Narciso lbéfiez Serrador, although he works in Televisién Espafiola,

and works within mainstream and commercial cinema,

there is political and quite subversive content in his films.

THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED is a film about repression and censorship,

which says some very strong things

against this repressive and censorious apparatus.

Although it is framed within a residence, it's clearly translatable

to what was happening in Spain.

- Ladies.

- Or a film like EL TELEVISOR, which was made by Televisién Espafiola,

and is a very cruel and radical film

against a society, lulled by television,

and against the Francoist apparatus in some way.

- Be careful with this device

because dangerous people can come in through there,

things that don't...

- What sort of things?

- Things kids shouldn't see.

Nor you.

- I think the thing that really distinguishes

Spanish horror, at least in the early to mid '70s,

from the types of horror films being made

in other countries, including the United States,

is just how extremely gory a lot of them were.

You know, everyone thinks about the extreme gore

of Italian horror films of the late '70s

into the early '80s, but the Spanish stuff being made

at the time, like in the early to mid '70s,

was every bit as violent.

I mean, it's kind of amazing how graphic

some of the death scenes were.

Like, lots of dismemberment, decapitation.

- The trauma of the Spanish Civil War, perhaps, allows Spain

to have greater tolerance to graphic violence,

absurd violence,

a certain surrealism, too.

One of the things they say about the trauma of World War ||

is how it influenced the Surrealists.

We could argue that the Civil War

influenced all these films, such as the fantastic horror genre,

in which there is a lot of unintentional Surrealism,

and how that connected to the trauma of war.

- Spain has always been a country where the culture thrives

on the grotesque.

Obviously, there's a lot of cultures that do,

but if you look at the, for example,

you know, the black paintings of Francisco Goya,

they're very much of the grotesque

that has sort of been steadily there

always through Spanish culture.

- In Spain, violence,

pain, suffering, and death have always been present.

It's not uncommon for this presence to have seeped into artistic practices.

Spanish culture and society

have always had significant contact with pain and violence,

largely because it has been a fully rural society.

What happens in rural areas?

You have cattle, livestock, hens, chickens...

You kill them to feed yourself and to sell them.

Spanish culture strives to sublimate this rite,

which is a rite of murder, and turn it into an aesthetic ritualistic tradition.

Take bullfighting.

FAR FROM THE TREES is a very special film

that defines Spanish culture extraordinarily.

It's a perverse but fascinating culture.

It's a Spanish Mondo

featuring the brutality of Spanish folkloric festivals

and the rites performed in the villages during their festivals.

Jacinto Esteva proves that we cannot stop looking.

- Censorship, of course, cut it savagely

and even banned the original title of the film, which was

"The Land of All Demons."

- From the best times of the Middle Ages,

some peasants in these lands were considered to be possessed by the devil.

The demon-possessed went on pilgrimage to Our Lady of Corpifio in Lalin,

hoping to be free from the Evil One,

which, they believed, tormented them mercilessly.

- The male gaze is clearly dominating.

There's a very determined attitude towards women,

which is the cutting up and stripping of the body.

Making a woman's body just an ass or tits

is also part of, perhaps,

a certain fear of men towards women,

precisely in the historical period we are talking about,

a historical context in which women were beginning to gain freedom,

more relevance, and were becoming more self-reliant.

- Every time I hug a woman I feel like killing her.

- Of the representations of women in the cinema of the '70s,

one that seems to me more interesting and redeemable

is Vicente Aranda's THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE.

Because here we see a type of woman

which was not so common in fantasy cinema,

or cinema in general.

- Say it.

- I hate him.

- Say it again.

- I hate him.

- Say it from the heart.

- I hate him.

- He has defiled your body to humiliate you.

- He has defiled my body to humiliate me.

- He has used his strength to subdue you.

- He has used his strength to subdue me.

- THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE clearly strives

to blow up the institutions of the Regime, such as marriage,

and to claim

women's role.

- Open up, Susan.

- During Franco's regime, women were seen entirely as accessories to men.

Your own body and decisions were subordinated to men,

both the father and the brother, as well as the sons.

It is a very interesting film to understand feminism,

and it's also full of symbolism.

Simén Andreu's own character is called "Him."

He doesn't even have a name. He is "the patriarchy."

The symbolism of blood, of the dagger,

of a rifle, which is, clearly, a phallic symbol of power.

Perhaps this fear of the new, more liberated woman

results in the stripping and violation of women's bodies

in cinema.

- It also happens

that young filmmakers who are starting to develop their careers

see in horror films

the door by which to enter the industry.

The most interesting case is probably Eloy DE la lglesia.

He's one of the great filmmakers of the '70s and '80s.

- Probably after Bufiuel, he's been the most radical director

that Spain ever had.

- Perhaps the most groundbreaking filmmaker in the history of Spanish cinema.

CANNIBAL MAN

- I have a friend with a big beard and very thick glasses

who would say that you and I are two declassed men.

- What? Two what?

- Nothing.

Intellectual things.

- Eloy DE la lglesia realizes that in the late '60s and early '70s

the most important thing is emotional repression

and not political repression.

Why can't I experience sex as openly

as my neighboring countries?

Eloy DE la lglesia starts making stories

that always feature sexual repression.

- A highly-censored film

that was completely ahead of its time

featuring extreme filmmaking images

which were not even done outside Spain.

And, above all, it had a gay story

that was unthinkable.

In fact, it was heavily censored.

Then we found the images of the whole story,

but even as it is,

as it was released in its day, it was understood as

a very subversive story.

- Eloy DE la lglesia, he was an out, gay filmmaker,

which was really hard to do,

certainly before General Franco died.

You really couldn't even mention the word "homosexuality"

in any way, shape or form.

Everything had to be coded, or maybe not so much coded

in his film like CANNIBAL MAN.

- So, essentially THE CANNIBAL MAN is being marketed

essentially as a guy who's going around

with a bloody hatchet, but it's not quite as simple as that.

- A very clear example of how,

despite the fact that the censors kept asking for cuts,

they took umbrage with the film.

In the end, it was released, it was seen, and this film

is one of the first cases

of what "S" cinema would become.

Saying: "There are no limits here. I'll tell you what I want.

So if I need gore, I'll give you gore. If I need unseen sex, I'll include it.

And I will see how far I get."

I think that explains

a large part of the narrative of Spanish cinema in the 1970s.

"Let's see who can stop me from saying what I want to say."

- In the summer of 1974, Franco fell ill.

International pressure against the regime increased,

along with clandestine political opposition

within the country.

This led to strikes

and protests, which were brutally suppressed.

Franco's body was dying while his regime disintegrated.

When his health deteriorated even further in 1975,

his inner circle chose to keep Franco on life support...

Almost as the living dead, to delay the inevitable

as long as possible.

-|t's interesting to see that the year Franco dies,

the cinema that was made in the months leading to his death

had clearly become uncontrollable.

- Whose dolls are these?

Do you have a sister?

- THE KILLER OF DOLLS is a completely extreme and unthinkable film

out of that moment.

- Save your help and compassion for your sick.

| am young.

I have a living body, while you...

- Please, Sheila. You must listen to me, for your own good.

- Shut up!

- Now, finally in 1975, General Franco dies.

- I always said that I didn't want right-wingers.

They were nothing but criminals.

When he got ill, I said...

When he was so ill, I said, "Why won't he die?"

- Spain will be Republican tomorrow!

- But I'm so glad he's dead.

He should have died much earlier. - We have taken a step forward.

- Spain will be Republican tomorrow!

- So, censorship was still around officially

for another two years, but unofficially a lot

of filmmakers could perhaps push against this,

and they decidedly did.

- In those years, films such as

WHO CAN KILLA CHILD? were released.

- The last censored films.

1976 is a total boom, an explosion of

"let's see what we do with what's going on."

- This is very clearly a film that is critical

of the government.

This couple may be British,

so therefore it's coded as foreign,

but this is about the children fighting back

against the violence imposed on them by years

and years of fascist Francoist rule.

- What is the great theme of films during the Transition?

Criticism of the family.

The family had been a pillar of Francoism.

How many films criticize the family during the transition? All of them.

- It's killing me.

- What did you say?

- I feel it inside me.

It's killing me!

It's one of them.

One of them.

It's one of them!

- Franco's system was made to last.

With Franco's death, the containment wall disappeared,

which was the figure of the dictator.

- Tom! What is she doing?

- What does this mean for cinema, for society in general?

The desire to regain what had been lost.

- Why?

- What was lost most of all was the possibility to say everything.

- Why have you done this?

Why have you done this?

Why?

- During the second half of the 1970s, cinema gains

that everything can be said now; there is no more fear.

- Once here, prejudices and convictions,

compassion, and even your doubts,

are to be set aside.

I expect you to be ruthless,

in the fulfillment of your desires.

- THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK is full of subversive and transgressive ideas.

- The film featured eight or ten characters

who were ambassadors from different countries

that came together to have a high-level meeting,

but the basement was actually a nymphomaniac orgy room.

I don't know, one of these strange things.

- There were already drugs, people were getting laid,

couples were living together out of wedlock.

In other words, there was already... Francoism was beginning to crack.

- Repression is spoken of in a way that's also very wild.

There is a reflection on concentration camps...

In other words, there are very powerful and very subversive ideas

against the Francoist regime.

- It was like a boiling pot, and you suddenly take the lid off.

Everything inside wants to come out.

- Like THE SKY IS FALLING.

- This is a film that certainly foreshadows

the type of really rebellious, transgressive original movies

that would come out of Spain starting in the late '70s,

and certainly continuing on to the present.

LAS FLORES DEL VICIO, it's an interesting

example of a movie that was made in Spain

before the removal of the more sexual censorship

that is quite sexual in nature,

like the narrative is sexually motivated.

And also graphic violence, of course.

Worth noting, I suppose, is the presence

of two interesting American actors:

Carroll Baker, who was at the end of her European phase,

and Dennis Hopper.

- You understand?! You understand?!

- In one of the definitely stranger roles that he plays.

- It's as if Spanish society had been getting ready

for the 40 years of Francoism for what was to come.

P Are your garments spotless? P

P Are they white as snow? P

I' Are you washed in the blood of the lamb? P

- The idea was "You will see whatever you can take.

I want to be the first to show you what has never been seen before

on a cinema screen."

- During the Transition, everything changed a lot.

In Transition films, there is something very interesting, which is the denunciation

of the extreme right.

They're saying, "Watch out.

There is a danger.

We are conquering freedoms step by step, clay by day."

There is a very violent reaction like in '36.

So, the cinema of the Transition reflects all that.

- The whole family is here.

And even if my parents hadn't come,

I would've walked here alone no matter what.

- I'm a 100% Francoist.

What we need in Spain is another Franco.

- People want peace, tranquility, and work.

- Long live Spain! - Long live Spain!

- Long live Christ the King! Long live Spain!

Long live Spain!

- I learned one thing, and I learned this in DESPUES DE...,

and the fact is that at demonstrations, people are eager

to communicate that they are against something.

It's the richest film there is from that period, almost, isn't it?

One thing is the official story,

and another thing is what was happening with the people on the street.

Official TV didn't send anyone, and then, well,

as it turned out, we were the only ones who were there.

MURDERED BY FASCIST GROUPS

YOUNG COMMUNIST STABBED TO DEATH IN MADRID

- Because of the terrible history of violence,

of abuse, that happened under the Franco era,

even though it's so long ago, it still reverberates.

- On the street, in bookshops... The Antonio Machado bookshop

was stained red several times and so on.

In cafés, they'd come in and order you

to sing "Cara al sol" or they would beat you up.

- That's where so much of that Spanish horror influence

comes from, always having one foot in the extreme,

but one foot in reality as well.

- Franco found Spain in ruins;

unmade, full of lice, full of corpses,

miserably plundered by Communism and freemasonry.

And he left us a wonderful Spain. Spain was at its highest level.

And they have destroyed it. They've left it full of terrorism,

misery, and lawlessness.

We shall overcome and we shall win! We have faith in God.

We're Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman.

We know we have to get through this bloodbath.

But the Sacred Heart of Jesus will help us.

- Franco dies, the dictatorship ended. What shall we do now?

Let's all get together and say,

"Will we form a world

where we can all talk together?

Or will there be a total war to the death among all Spaniards?"

There was no telling what might happen then.

- The cinema of the '70s, of the Transition, has not been made again in Spain.

It's a cinema connected to its time.

- In 1977, the Spanish people participated

in the country's first democratic election since 1936.

The UCD, a centrist coalition, won by an ample majority.

The Socialist party became the leading opposition.

The period that begins with the death of Franco

and culminates with the consolidation

of democracy in the 1982 elections

is called "The Transition."

Power has been given back to the Spanish people,

and the transition sees the return of political

and civil rights that had long been denied.

One of the concerns of the far right was excessive sex,

drugs, and violence in films, music and books,

which threatened to erode Catholic morals and decency.

To ease tensions with these hard-lying conservatives,

the newly-appointed Prime Minister banned censorship

in 1977 and instead approved a new rating system

that would protect audiences from films with extreme sexual,

violent, and political content.

"S" classified films were restricted

to those over 18 years old,

with the warning that their subject matter

or content may offend the sensibilities of the viewer.

- "S" is a classification

that began to be applied to films from 1977 to 1983,

and this category is exclusive to Spanish cinema,

which was eventually applied to 400 films.

- The classification board, finding films eminently erotic,

didn't know where to put it, how to classify it.

So, a member of that board, nobody knows who,

had the happy idea that, from that moment onwards,

those unclassifiable films

that couldn't be banned because they weren't pornographic,

were to be called "S" films.

- I'm all that is forbidden, all that is shameful.

A black woman of undefined sexuality; shameless, irresistible.

- Anything that couldn't be classified as "X," which will arrive in the '80s,

they make up this letter

that became a catch-all in which to put what we didn't know how to classify.

- Category "S"

always seems to lead us to think

that it's related to sexuality, that "S" stands for "sex."

- A big slice of the pie, of the market,

is erotic cinema,

or cinema that is not erotic but has a high sexual content.

It's cinema that not everyone can see; it's not for children.

- Sexuality begins to manifest itself

since our birth as something natural,

even if when we talk about it we are branded as immoral with a huge

- But it's actually a category

that refers to the word "sensitive."

So it's used for films that hurt the viewer's sensibilities.

- You sat down to watch the film and the first thing that popped up

was a sign announcing that this film

could affect your sensitivity.

SENSITIVE CONTENT

- How do "S" films hurt the viewer's sensibilities?

Well, through two fundamental elements

which are, well, Eros and Thanatos, love and death.

Or what we could also call eroticism and violence.

- Are you crazy?

Hand me the shotgun.

- I'll kill him. I'll kill him if he comes back.

I swear.

- What bloody character you have in this country!

- Freedom equals nudity.

Not just being naked, but having the chance to watch it.

- Freedom! - Here!

- Freedom!

Freedom in love!

- Most "S" cinema is very wild and playful,

and overthrows what's suggested.

- These films were good because you were looking for a plot.

And, apart from the plot, you understand, you'd add some sex.

Sometimes, if you will, using a shoehorn.

But you added it.

- Who will watch the "S" movies?

They aren't going against the regime, they're watching nudes.

- How much was a straightforward, almost intellectual, authorial proposal?

How much was just fooling around? It is very difficult to know.

- Some of them were definitely just about making money,

but a lot of them was a reaction

to finally coming out of the fascist era.

- The act of walking into a theater and having nobody asking.

You can watch whatever film you want. It's an act of subversion,

or it feels like subversion because it was,

because you couldn't a few months earlier.

So it is a clear sign that Spain was no longer a Francoist country.

- And the violence wreaked upon the people both, you know,

literal violence and psychological violence

of living under that time, that came out a lot

in these "S" classified movies.

- "S" films could also be "P" cinema, for "pulses."

I mean, we need to see these things, don't we?

- And then there is a period between '77 and '83,

where the State is funding, so to speak,

a violent, explicit, and transgressive cinema.

- Humans sometimes need

those fantasies that we may have...

Darker, about sex, violence, and death.

We need to see them, to exorcise them on screen.

- So it is quite logical that many plots and many situations

are disrespectful

to the older institution or the previous generation.

- That's why it's a very detailed cinema; it's very much based on detail,

in seeing the detail, in seeing stripping,

blood, seeing the knife sinking in,

to see the ins and outs of all kinds,

to recreate that kind of inner pulses that we have.

- Anything that is too strong for the average viewer of the time

is classified as Category

- Category "S" started off as a stigma...

Well, a warning against these films.

In the end, it turned out to be quite the opposite.

It became some sort of attractive label.

- Soon producers realized

that having the "S" label, which was very distinctive inside a circle,

on the posters attracted the public.

- Sometimes they placed it without officially having that title

because it became fashionable and it attracted more viewers.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST SCREW

SEXUAL ABERRATIONS OF A HOT BLONDE

- I think there was a time when if you talked

with a Spanish viewer about "S" cinema

or you asked what they thought or knew about "S" films,

what people remembered most were the titles of the films.

- At that time, in the "S" films,

having a good title accounted for 50% of the success.

- They even changed the title of the films

to make them sound like "S" Cinema films.

- To find the best title,

to compete on a billboard full of erotic cinema,

they did very fun pirouettes.

- The titles of the films themselves are sometimes embarrassing.

THE PIPE CLEANER. Well, you say...

- Creating puns

that would attract a lot of attention.

- We thought, "Even if it has nothing to do with the argument,

come up with fun titles."

- For example, DON'T TOUCH MY DICK, I GET IRRITATED.

- IN SEARCH FOR THE LAST SCREW.

- KLITORIS PECATA MUNDI.

- THE PLUMBER, HIS WIFE, AND OTHER THINGS TO PUT IN...

A very famous title.

- DANCING BREASTS!

"Yes, this one, 'Dancing Breasts,' it's funny."

And that's how we created titles.

- Jesfls Franco's film

BLOODY MOON, in English,

was called RAPED SCHOOLGIRLS in Spain.

- RAPED SCHOOLGIRLS. Sometimes films flirted with the idea

of taking it beyond eroticism.

Going beyond eroticism and into violence.

- We hadn't even really seen the film.

We would create titles,

and we would use some of them and not others.

- Or CANNIBAL SEX. That is,

films that really said, "Look what I have here for you,

which is not the same as what you have in the other room

which is just sex."

- Do you know how many times I have dreamt of this moment?

- I love you.

- We produced a film that was called, commercially,

SWEDISH BISEXUAL NEEDS STALLION.

The film had nothing to do with the film's title, right?

And it was a great success.

It made 80 million at the box office at the time. So much.

- It grossed more money than any other Spanish film that year.

It even beat the film that had just won the Oscar,

BEGIN AGAIN.

So it made more money than BEGIN AGAIN.

Classifying a film as "S" would fill the theater. Fill it.

- The viewers, hundreds of thousands and a few million and all, so...

- If it wasn't classified as "S,"

it was very difficult.

- There are moments in '80, '81,

where you see that most of the films on the screen are classified as

So it's a matter of statistics.

- We had to write

and practically start pre-production at the same time.

Because we didn't know when the good streak would end...

- We worked with little money.

With a lot of imagination and little money.

- These films paid for themselves immediately.

And, at that time, with the distribution advance,

you would normally cover the cost of production.

- A distributor would say, "Look, I'd like you

to make a film for me that more or less goes like this."

- No one read your script. I mean, no one...

What they wanted was a sheet of paper where you told a bit of the story.

- And at night you'd get on, write it, and in two days the script was finished.

- I think we wrote the script, shot, and edited it in one month.

- At that time we were shooting films with,

I don't know, a week or ten days of preparation.

- I was hired by months, not by film.

So, in one month I had to write, work as an assistant, and dub.

- We'd locate the places,

the technicians and actors, and start filming.

- Sometimes as an actor, as a director, the last few times.

I mean, I did everything.

I made up to four films in two weeks.

- And the funniest thing in the world was that this could possibly be the industry.

- Just switching the same actors a bit.

Now A is with B, B has to be with C.

"What film is this?"

"Well, this one is called TITS AROUND THE WORLD.

The other, HOLDING TITS."

It was like making churros.

- The sub-industry was the somewhat intellectual films.

That was a sub-industry.

Because the cinema, for the most part, were films of that sort.

- I think cinema was better then than it is now.

Because now you have a lot of means, and people don't make the most of it.

Cut!

Cut!

- The end of censorship

allowed for the direct depictions

of diverse sexual identities onscreen

for the first time in Spanish history.

Homosexuality had been a felony until 1978,

so was adultery,

which punished women more severely than men.

Franco's Spain had repressed any form

of sexuality outside Catholic marriage,

and the end of his regime saw the emergence

of social movements that championed women's rights

and queer identities.

The "S" classification was born at a moment in Spanish history

when sex went from being a sin

to being an expression of freedom.

- "S" films showed a country of hyper-sexual people, men and women.

- We somehow, even if we didn't want to,

portrayed what was happening in Spain at the time.

- People who can't wait to have sex

with the plumber, who arrives with the neighbor, at each chance.

- Sweetheart, the gas technician is here.

- Madam, please let me go.

- What's the issue then?

- He's very handsome, I feel like making love to him.

- Women are also beginning to find models in film and on television.

- Because you finally were seeing sex on screen.

- They allow a woman to consider not having children, for instance.

- And sometimes it was sex dramas,

but sometimes it was sex comedies.

- In other words, to give up, so to speak,

to the idea of a home,

family, being a mother, a wife...

- I freed myself from all that long ago.

Long ago.

- In Spain, people didn't meet the sexual freedom

of the late '60s, or the leftist counterculture

of the late '60s, like in France or in the States.

So the liberation had been delayed eight years,

and when finally, like, Franco died

and like a new Spain was going to start

all this pressure that they had for one decade exploded.

- There was a very strong interest in showing

what had never been seen in sex.

- And those were years of real debauchery.

We didn't care about anything!

- Strip them naked for the bisexual liberation movement!

- Leave me be!

- Some of it was just because they couldn't show sex before.

- Sex is not necessarily seen as a negative thing,

but as something very radical in a person's life.

- And we discovered a sexuality that existed.

- Now it's like, no, accepting the reality

of people having sex outside of marriage.

- My parents are really cool, they spent their whole lives

exchanging partners with their friends.

Democracy has been a godsend for them.

- And then, among what had never been seen, suddenly,

gays and lesbians started to be seen.

BATTERED FLESH

- You like women, Berta? Would you fall in love with a woman?

- I don't know.

- Don't you see?

You still belong to that society that is terrified of sex,

that has turned the most natural thing into a taboo.

- For the pleasure of heterosexual men or couples who went to the cinema a lot...

- Lesbian films were very successful.

Especially because men really liked to watch.

They found it sordid to see two women together.

- And it's true that in the end they are films made to show

girls making out.

- If you didn't add two or three lesbian scenes, you totally failed.

- But the reality is that we see lesbian stories.

- And above all, sexuality, bisexuality.

- We see stories of women who feel love and desire for another woman.

- But the important thing is to appear virginal and pure.

And no rebelliousness.

Like good nuns, they want us to say "amen"

to everything, you know.

- BATTERED FLESH is another very interesting title.

It is probably one of the few that are appreciated today.

I understand that it has a feminist reading,

which is interesting for the 21st century viewer.

And I think it is a recommendable title

if one wants to watch the cinema of the time.

It has violence, it has sex,

but it has a very non-conformist line of thinking.

It's very critical of the system.

THE PRIEST

- People enjoying sex with partners of the same gender,

this was finally being explored in films

by Eloy DE la lglesia.

He is one filmmaker in the late 1970s

and early 1980s who had gay characters in his films.

- When THE PRIEST was released in Spain,

oh, for sure it had an "S" rating, it's a very weird movie.

In all his movies there are characters

that are very right-winged or close to the cops

or to the military, and it mostly shows you

there are two kinds of Spams'.

The leftist Spain and the Francoist Spain.

But you can see it's like a castle of cards

that is falling to pieces

and that the old Spain is meant to disappear.

And all his films are about that moral collapse

of Spain in the late '70s, early '80s.

- It is shocking to think of such sinister excursions

to the French border to watch immoral films.

Can you imagine that, on your return, one of these buses had an accident?

How many souls would be damned

for the simple fact of having witnessed a disgusting show?

- THE PRIEST is a very peculiar film

within the peculiar trajectory of Eloy DE la lglesia.

- So even a film like THE PRIEST,

which is not a horror film by any stretch,

but it is a film which contains some of the most disturbing

imagery that I've seen from a film of that era.

- The film was very successful, and had an ending

that left no one indifferent

because it is really a very extreme ending.

- That's the kind of thing that could not have been made

a few years before in Spain,

and probably a lot of other places.

- Especially the scenes with the children;

they're images that could not be shown today.

- So this is a perfect example of that veil being removed

and being able to actually be critical of the Catholic church

and also create some cinematic imagery

that you will not forget.

- So in these milestones of the cinema of the Transition,

of what could no longer be clone and what today's political correctness

wouldn't let us do either, THE PRIEST occupies a very high place.

- Hello.

- Oh, my goodness, did the sexologist send you?

- Yes, of course. - Come in, come in.

I will introduce you to my wife now. - Hey! Have you seen that ass?

- Crazy. The poor thing, you know, doesn't like women.

- No? - No. I'm telling you, look at her.

- But then that third gender came in,

the transvestite. That's how they called them.

- Trans people.

- Beautiful women and beautiful men

who had transformed themselves into beautiful women

with tremendous sexuality.

- Well, I've soaked long enough.

- Officially, you are dead now.

Flee to the mountains.

And if fate puts you in my way again,

make sure it's on my birthday.

- DIMORFO is an anomaly in Spanish cinema.

It's also a queer anomaly.

- There are real fans of this film.

This film is as cultured as it is dark.

- DIMORFO can be interpreted as a version of Passolini's THEOREM,

where one character, played by the director, Rodjara,

comes to the house...

- I'm not sure, but be careful if you try it.

They say it's an aphrodisiac.

- ...turns family life upside down,

but at the same time he frees them from all their repressed sexual desires.

Everyone wants to sleep with Solomon.

From the mother, to the son, and daughter-in-law too.

- Speak up, I am prepared to hear the worst.

- Do you want to be my husband?

I can see you don't want to.

- I think that in all of Spanish cinema, no film comes close to DIMORFO.

- What's the matter?

What's so special about a woman shaving? Huh?

- The FUhrer!

- Heil Hitler.

- BACANAL EN DIRECTO is probably the clearest example of

"|'ll show you a lot of sex so you can see how horrible it can be."

- The film has an ultimately reactionary reading

because it tells the story of this couple

who end up going to an orgy organized by a film director...

- Facing the sun in my new shirt

that you embroidered in red yesterday. - Shut up!

Shut up!

If the priests and nuns knew how many blows we're going to give them

they'd come down from the choir singing, "Freedom, freedom, freedom."

- It falls into a category of erotic cinema of the time,

not only "S" but international cinema, on orgies.

- Many male showers.

- Wild parties.

- There is a parade of Nazi cocks.

- It introduces you to different characters.

There's the gay sissy, there's the most promiscuous woman.

- Hymns are sung in pursuit of freedom.

- A gallery of characters,

none of them are good, none of them have salvation.

- Fuck and fuck.

Fly the soul to Heaven.

Dust returns to dust.

The rich fuck the poor.

The living fuck the dead.

- Amen.

- One way to understand this is the ending. If it's a happy ending

and people have enjoyed it, we can say, "Okay, sex is good."

- And that orgy ends really badly and in a very sinister way.

- The end is destruction.

- Don't hit me, murderers!

- Rather than saying "good or bad,"

"conservative or liberal,"

I think they are films that tell you,

"Enjoy this, you won't see it anywhere else

and you couldn't see it until just now."

- Most of the "S" classified film production

was devoted to sex comedies and softcore dramas.

But horror and genre cinema gave filmmakers the opportunity

to further subvert the values of the former dictatorship.

- Satan exists because Evil exists.

- Unfortunately, the majority of "S" classified films

do fall into the comedy and drama,

then every so often there's a little action film

or a thriller.

But there are also some really interesting, weird,

creative horror films

and those are really the ones that stand out.

- Carlos Puerto's SATAN'S BLOOD is the first film

within the "S" category that also uses elements of horror films.

- After JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH,

he said, "|f you have an idea."

But it was originally Juan Piquer Simén's idea,

who clearly sees the seam.

It has very few actors, very few sets,

it's a very cheap film in terms of budget.

- Ana. - What?

- Do you know them?

- Who? - The people in that car.

- Hello. Blaqui, shut up!

- I gave him an idea that he liked at first,

"Oh, yeah, hey. Four adults, one house, Satanism. Fantastic."

Then there was the second part, in which that part of that Satanism

came from him, as a producer, because he wouldn't let you live.

- Do you find that interesting?

- Let's say it piques my curiosity.

I'm going to help Berta.

- Carlos Puerto and Piquer Simén cast Sandra Alberti,

who had been on the cover of IDtQFViU magazine.

- Looking for something?

- We started it with great enthusiasm, but even the actors had a big problem.

"What do we do with these people? Are they going to strip or not?"

- Father of incest, curse us.

Serpent of Genesis, curse us.

- And I remember that had a very quick solution.

We went to Piquer's office, we all got naked except Piquer,

and we had a chat.

- Stay there. Don't move.

- A half Satanic, half paranormal plot.

- We saw that it was fine for the director and the actors to chat in the nude.

It was a go and they accepted it.

- But at the same time it is an erotically-charged film.

- Someone inside might say, "What am I doing in this film?"

- It has some very successful and terrifying moments.

- But, it was funny, it was part of his filmic world.

- With a certain message against repression and against the institution of marriage.

- That image of Christ on fire.

That's a bit profane; it's a bit blasphemous for some people.

- And you have to let go and enjoy your bodies.

- On the contrary, I think it's one of the moments of the film.

- And sex and Satanism and anything else we felt like.

- It's a warning that there's a lot of stuff that can burn in there...

- Nico, you've lost your mind. - I had no other option.

There's no compromising here. - Help! Help!

I'm burning!

- BEYOND TERROR is, in effect, an intersection between

the Quinqui and "S" cinema.

- I adore you...

After I have given you my soul for you to dispose of it.

- Now it's time to praise this film,

which I think has gone very unnoticed for a long time.

Well, it starts out like a Quinqui film.

That is, with a girl mugging a gentleman and then immediately

it seems that it'll follow the codes of Quinqui films:

juvenile delinquency,

violence, some sex, let's see what happens.

But the amazing thing about this film is how

it switches gears halfway through the film,

and it ends up being a film about the occult, Satanism, and zombies.

- Come here, all you fornicators of the world.

- We will send a powerful jet of semen to all those who deny sex.

- It's pure and simple transgression.

- Forgive your people, Lord.

- We also see two brothers almost make out with each other.

In other words, an attempt at incest.

- Watch out for the priests.

And undercover cops.

Remember,

keep your nose and ass clean.

- I don't think we've ever seen such a mixture, have we?

Then at the end of the film, like many "S" films,

it ends with the moralizing stick.

- Help! I'm burning!

- In other words, at the end,

all the bad guys" the criminals, in this case-- die.

So that after so much transgression,

after so much wickedness, after this spectacle of perversion

this "S" film has, in the end, the viewer goes home happy.

"|'m going home, and in the end all evil has its punishment."

- BLOODY SEX by Manuel Esteban.

When I watched it for the first time, it was like,

"This is fun, this is fine."

And then when it finally tied... you know, it starts

with, like, I think a radio announcer saying something like,

"Franco has died."

- The head of the Spanish state, Francisco Franco Bahamonde,

had just passed away at the Ciudad Sanitaria La Paz

of the social security system, at the age of 82.

- And I thought, "Okay, this is sort of interesting,

but like, what's the point?"

Like, you know, where's this gonna go?

And it pays off in a really, really clever way.

- It figures in the film that, in a way, there has already been some freedom,

but there is always a fear of what might happen.

Because when there is such a radical change, you say,

"Well, now there's been a change,

but who's to say that we won't change again and go back?"

And we will end up being marked.

They've already got you: "You're this, you're right wing, you're left wing."

Do you understand?

- What's interesting about BLOODY SEX

is that it really makes a point

to deal with Spain's recent political shift.

- There were a lot of left-wing people in Darenz.

So we would sit down sometimes

in a bar that used to be a hotel.

We used to sit with a group of older people

and they would share their stories.

That's how we wrote all those scripts.

From one place and another, we mixed one thing with another,

and what was left you made up.

- Look at me.

- That's definitely a rarity in Spanish exploitation film.

I mean, not completely unheard of but the vast majority

of exploitation films, and certainly "S" classified films

that I've seen, even when they're political,

they rarely go overtly into government stuff.

- Who is buried in the flower-covered grave?

- My father.

- Is that the man in the portrait in my room?

- A good, intelligent man.

During the Republic, he was an exemplary mayor.

- What happened to him?

- He had no choice but to cross the border.

Like so many others.

- By the way, how are your recordings going?

- Manolo's godfather was a leftist and escaped to France.

In other words, these things always happened in families.

Some are right wing and some are left wing.

Unless you're an only child.

- MORBUS is my film.

And not because I'm the main character, but I love this film.

Above all, I love it because it has become a cult film.

People see me and say, "Wow, Carla Dey from MORBUS."

- I was working in the advertisement industry,

and while the editor was working in the studio,

he had a 19-year girl

whose name was Isabel Coixet.

- May the spirits illuminate our footsteps

on the road ahead

towards the mansion in the forest.

- And the editor says, "Hey, this girl writes.

She writes scripts. Maybe..."

Well, I talked to her and she says, "Hey, what if we bring two genres together?

Let's combine horror and sex

and make a parody of both genres."

And that's when she got me.

For us, it wasn't If anything, it was a parody of "S" films.

Because, of course, it was labelled as "S" when they saw

that more than half of the film they were wandering around naked, so

And the distributor says,

"Thank goodness they didn't listen to you

because with the "S" we will sell the film."

- We cannot waste time. - I have a gun with silver bullets.

- And it turned into a freak show. The fans began to see the irony of the film.

And that is where we, Isabel and I, felt rewarded.

- Shit! They don't work.

We have to get out before they surround us. Move!

- It has more impact now, after so many years.

I wish it had this boom at its premiere.

But MORBUS' well-deserved success has come too late.

HUMAN ANIMALS

- In the '80s,

HUMAN ANIMALS by Eligio Herrero came out,

one of the latest examples

of a particular cycle of apocalyptic cinema that took place in those years in Spain.

In it, these characters fall from the sky

and end up in a sort of desert.

A man and a woman in party dresses. We don't know who they are.

And we get to know them.

It's similar to a re-reading of Genesis.

And they kind of start to form a new society.

And they find a dog and the thing ends

in a very tragic and lurid way.

It addressed the end of a civilization and the start of another.

They're talking a bit about the Transition, and they're talking

about this new Spain that they didn't know.

In which, some more than others,

trusted that this change could come to fruition.

HUMAN ANIMALS addresses everything in a very radical

and almost experimental way,

as the film has no dialogue.

At first it is closer to art cinema,

and the second half of the film turns towards sexual revolution cinema,

dirtier and more decadent.

HUMAN ANIMALS also had... A sequel to the film was written,

which was called "Why is Every Future the Antechamber to the Past?"

And we don't know why it was never produced.

- This is in 1981, a Paul Grau film, MAD FOXES.

- Hey, you, womanizer! - Motherfucker!

- A sex film and violent exploitation.

- We're going to sit. Bring the champagne over there.

- On one hand you have a playboy, a rich man,

who has at least three girlfriends.

But there's also the violent side.

One of his girlfriends is violently raped

by a gang of Neo-Nazis.

This rich boy and his friends who were at a karate school

go and attack the Neo-Nazis.

- Cut it off. - No!

- Some of them get away, and it's a back and forth

between the Neo-Nazis and this playboy.

But in the meantime, this playboy also has time

to have sex with several women.

So it's almost two films in one.

So is Paul Grau examining the violence

wreaked upon Spanish people?

Or is it simply, you know, "I have two ideas for movies,

let's put them together. It's cheap to make

and will make a lot of money."

It's hard to say.

- Three directors in particular thrived

within the “'5“ classification:

Jess Franco, Jose Ramon Larraz, and Ignacio lquino.

Iquino came from the Francoist film establishment

and saw the financial opportunity

that "S" classified films provided.

Jess Franco and Larraz both worked outside Spain

during the first part of the '70s, gaining recognition

within the horror and erotic thriller genres.

When censorship was abolished, they saw the opportunity

to return to Spain and tell the stories

they hadn't been allowed to before.

- Do you like that?

- Mm.

- Now we go to watch the film with the censor...

- Are you English?

- What makes you ask?

- You don't look English.

What are you then?

- If I told you, you wouldn't believe me.

- Try me.

- Easily one of the best-known directors,

in at least the English-speaking world

and certainly in the United States,

who was a Spanish filmmaker

and made exploitation films is Jose Ramon Larraz.

- He was a Catalan director

who lived in England and developed

the first stage of his career there.

And he makes a very European, very elegant cinema, erotic, psychological...

What he liked best was psychological horror.

- He is a director who was, from the beginning,

very interested in making movies that were sexually explicit

and also narratively themed around sexuality.

- I swear I won't tell anyone. I promise, not a word!

- Not a word to anyone?

Ever?

Give me a kiss, a real kiss.

Like you know how to when you want to.

Like you kissed Aunt Sarah.

- His movies do not feel...

Like, nothing about his films feel very British.

They feel like an outsider making a movie in England,

not so much someone who's coming

at it from British filmmaking mindset.

- He was a very Mediterranean character.

A bon vivant, he loved the good life, eating, partying, music...

When the censorship ends, he returns to Spain

and begins to work mainly with producer José Frade.

He pitches to Frade THE COMING OF SIN,

which is a perfect project in the producer's opinion,

because he says, "We're going to make an EMMANUELLE."

A very elegant, classy erotic film

which can be seen by men and women,

but in the world of flamenco and with all the iconography of flamenco,

Andalusian Spain, and so on.

The issue is that the film doesn't turn out very well.

He said it was because

the only good performance was the horse's.

Because it creates a very dreamlike, surreal world, with very powerful images,

which are, we could say, somewhere between Dali and flamenco,

and all that Mediterranean iconography that he wanted to add in there.

So, I think that the film, in short,

although he did not manage to make an EMMANUELLE,

he managed to make something even more interesting for me.

He was not particularly interested

in eroticism and horror films.

He always said that he did it because he sold his films better that way.

But he said he always had a thorn in his side

because he wanted to do something more ambitious,

a little more interesting than what he ended up doing.

- Babe, what's wrong?

- BLACK CANDLES is kind of one of his early '80s...

essentially a softcore movie,

but, you know, people like Jose Larraz

are not content with just doing a softcore movie,

that's too dull,

so it has to involve all kind of devil worship

and goat-fucking

and stuff that actually makes it of interest

and keeps it of interest to this audience today.

- You've heard of the evil eye, haven't you?

It's bad luck.

No, you don't really know about those things.

- The film attracted a lot of attention because of the famous goat scene.

Another animal takes the limelight again,

as in THE COMING OF SIN and the horse,

which is quite unforgettable and quite remarkable.

- That's it.

Doesn't it feel good?

- It's a film that mixes in a very interesting way

sexual freedom and horror films, two of his specialties.

He said that he had once gone to a black mass

and that he went under the condition

that they didn't kill anyone,

and they said, "We won't kill anyone."

So, referring to the film BLACK CANDLES,

he always said that he had managed

to reproduce what he saw at the black mass he had attended.

- Larraz found a workaround,

and as such his filmography is hard

to fully classify as Spanish.

But, on the other hand, it's so evocative

that it's impossible not to look at them

as like a probable point of inspiration for other filmmakers

who began taking advantage of the relaxation

of censorship in the late '70s.

- After a moment... Bang, bang, bang! Gunshots in the distance.

- Ignacio lquino is a very curious case of the recycling

that democracy brought into the film world.

- |quino's story is terrible because he came from an anarcho-syndicalist union.

- When religious cinema becomes fashionable,

cinema with children, Spaghetti Westerns, he always did what people wanted.

- Of course, when Franco won, he became a right-winger.

- Perhaps comparing himself to Carlos Saura and the greats of the time,

he understands that he also has to have a say in what is going on.

- He had the good fortune to say, "|t's time to make films

showing a powerful sexual freedom."

- When the "S" films arrive, he's among the first to realize

that it will be very popular.

- And he made right-wing films.

Almost always with love affairs and so on.

But with a moralizing ending.

- I am sorry for all the offenses I did against him.

Deep down, those fits of arrogance

were just to hide my bitterness,

seeing myself so sunk by his side.

Now I would give my whole life to have been a decent girl.

I regret everything I have done.

Today I cried for the first time.

In prison, I will try to remember all the prayers I learned as a child.

And I wish my sentence to be very long,

so that when I have served it I may walk the path of truth.

- Well, the casting was very peculiar,

because I walked in... He's a very serious man...

- I didn't like working with him because he had a very bad temper.

- He said, "Open your mouth."

Like a horse, a very odd thing. "Smile."

Then he said, "What's your name?" I answered, "Carmen Serret."

"That name isn't going anywhere." "|t isn't?"

"I have to change your name if you want to work on one of my films."

Then he was quiet for about five minutes, and he says, "Carla Dey."

- In the 1970s, when Spain began to have freedoms,

or certain political freedoms, he invents "denunciation cinema."

And quickly with his entire production company, a well-oiled machine

after decades of filmmaking, he starts producing one title after another.

- For example, the first one he made

was a tremendous success called CRIMINAL ABORTION.

- Yes. Don't be afraid.

- He brought two French porn actresses

to show more than necessary.

But in the end, after seeing a thousand naked ladies in a thousand positions,

making love, whatever you want, he ended up saying

that abortion is very dangerous, that it should not be done,

and this is immoral. Of course, immorality was

the transport he made towards this morality.

But he always believed there should be that moral part.

- THE DAWN RAPISTS is one of |quino's most peculiar films

of his "S" period, and I think of his entire filmography.

- Leave it on my account. I'll keep him under control.

- How long does this fascism of yours have to last?

Didn't you see that I'm a man? - A man?

- Yes, a man.

With the same needs as you.

When did you expect to give me proper sex education?

- I wrote the script with him.

Of course, at no point did I see a moral thing there;

I saw something as detrimental.

- This film is difficult to defend from a 21st century point of view.

- These films were made under a false umbrella,

under the false umbrella of "denunciation cinema."

- It speaks of a shared fear

that part of the right wing of the time was strongly promoting

how democracy and freedom had brought much violence along with it.

- You can't walk alone in the street at dawn because you may be attacked.

Girls must be accompanied by their parents.

- But then come explicit scenes

of rape, violence, sex, and that's about it.

- It is an unpleasant film.

It is a film to violate the viewer,

not to eroticize them.

- We are not raising any debate.

Don't sell me a debate because there is none.

This awakens the most basic drives of the male gaze, full stop.

- SECTA SINIESTRA is a real favorite of mine.

It's in the Italian tradition.

So you get just completely ridiculous

murderer set pieces, lots of gore...

Ridiculous plot twists...

- Margaret, soon I will be in Hell.

And I will get my revenge!

- Just trying to describe the plot is kind of pointless

because you don't watch a movie like this for the plot,

you watch it for the absurdity of everything.

And it really delivers that.

There isn't a single five minute period

in which someone doesn't get killed or maimed or menaced,

or gets naked, or a frog gets stabbed

or something like that.

And it's just, it's a lot of fun.

I think the director was about 80 years old when he made it,

and I found that that's actually kind of a great age

for some directors to make their exploitation film.

Like the director of ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST,

also known as DR. BUTCHER M.D.,

was about 80 when he made that,

and we see how wonderful that turned out.

(speaking in Latin)

- So, yeah, more geriatrics, octogenarians,

should try to make an exploitation film.

- The cinema is a show. It must be a good show.

- Jess Franco told me on, I think the first time

I ever interviewed him, out of many, that he left Spain

because he was not able to make the kinds of films

that he wanted to make.

And I think the Minister, the Cultural Minister,

basically said something along the lines of

"Well, we have to abide by a certain censorship code."

And Jess Franco told them, "Those are your rules,

not my rules, fuck you, I'm outta here."

And that's when he left Spain.

P I open my eyes P

P And then I started to cry P

- Jesfls Franco, one of the most peculiar directors in Spanish cinema,

just at this time of change and Transition

also considered returning to Spain.

♪ Day after day P

P You know that day after day P

- And by the time he came back, he could have made

whatever he wanted.

- Jeslls Franco returns with the intention of continuing to do what he wants to do.

That is what he has always done and what he likes to do most.

- Jess Franco made at least 18

"S" classified movies during this period.

- JesUs Franco is an icon. He is a god, isn't he?

A person who shot several films at the same time,

who dealt with impossible subjects,

who had no shame whatsoever,

and who only wanted to enjoy the craft of filmmaking.

- The Bressacs have always been an exemplary couple.

- Only in appearance.

- Jesfls Franco came into contact

with Golden Films International, which is the production company

who will work with him the most during the 1980s.

P Day I was born P

P You know the day I was born P

P I opened my eyes P

- He made some of his most personal movies,

like MACUMBA SEXUAL. The films he made

for Golden Films International

are very much pure Jess Franco,

because it was him, Lina, Antonio Mayans, a few friends.

- They give Jesfls the freedom to do whatever he wants,

as long as he makes "S"-rated films,

and within a fairly limited budget.

- Going to either the Canary Islands

or somewhere similar, where they would take over

some sort of abandoned hotel during the off-season

and just make their movie there,

with no creative interference whatsoever.

- Which is precisely what JesUs needed:

a producer who would not interfere in his work,

give him the money he needed,

and that he could do as he pleased.

- They knew that "S" films were popular

and that they could make so much money.

We were given very little money to make them,

but we made them with very little money.

- Jesfls Franco reinterprets

the myth of Dracula; he revisits this myth

but in the style that I've called "Gothic-Mediterranean."

And what's more, while clearly keeping its own style.

It is a film that reminds us of

Jess Franco's films in every scene.

- Jesfls called me: "Listen, if you want to, come here to shoot a film."

"Well, yes. But now?"

"You have to be here tomorrow morning." I said, "Okay then."

And on Sunday he called me, "Hey, come back,

we're going to keep rolling," and we rolled another one.

And that is the beginning of a great friendship.

There was a year in which we made ten films, Jesfls Franco and me.

What we couldn't do was sell ten films

by Robert Foster, or ten films by Antonio Mayans.

In other words, "I brought you ten films by Antonio Mayans."

No producer would want them. He'd go to a producer

and say, "I have five Antonio Mayans films."

"It's cool," this and that, and they bought them.

Then I'd tell the same producer,

"I have five more by Robert Foster,"

and he bought them without even watching them,

because that was the business.

- You can tell when Jess is, like, following

his own fever dream, inspiration, his creativity,

and then other ones where they said,

"Okay, Jess, we need a horror movie with a cannibal in it.

We need it by Tuesday."

- Cannibals were the new fashion. It was what it was.

The producer would say, "What the hell now?

Cannibals are the thing, man, so let's film a cannibal."

A cannibal...

It was all the same to us. "Yes, no problem."

- He'd be like, "Sure, got it."

And would go off and make that, too.

THE DEVIL HUNTER's probably a good example of the latter.

BLOODY MOON as well, actually, is definitely

a job for hire that he made.

As brilliant as it is a piece of cinema,

it's definitely not one that he would've made

had he not been asked to do a American-style slasher movie.

- In 1982, the Socialist Party won

the general elections.

Amongst other cultural policy goals, the socialists aimed

to highlight the value of cinema as a cultural asset

and appointed Pilar Miré as the director

of the government body that derives policy

for film and media.

Pilar Miré was the first woman in Spain to graduate

from film school,

and the first woman to become a TV director.

She was also a film director, whose second feature,

1979's THE CRIME OF CUENCA, was seized by the military

due to its depictions of torture carried out

by Spain's civil guard in the early 20th century.

Following a military trial for slander, the ban was lifted

and Mirc'>'s movie was finally released in 1981

as an "S" classified film.

- Don't you understand?

I don't want to spend half my life locked up.

- At the end of 1983, a law was approved

that ended the "S" classification.

Instead, it authorized the "X" rating

for films considered extremely violent or pornographic.

The public funding process was radically revised

and a new system based on the artistic merits

of productions was created.

A committee of industry professionals would assess projects,

but Pilar Miro would have the power to veto any production

that she considered to be of poor quality.

- By the end of 1982, there is a film industry in Spain.

There are a number of producers who produce films,

a number of distributors who distribute them and the theaters

that project them, and there is a gear that makes it all work.

That industry may seem better or worse to you, but it is an industry.

There is a capacity to make films and Pilar Miré ruined all of that.

- She was made, you know, head of the...

Director General of DE La Cinematografia,

in the early 1980s.

And sort of she was in charge of saying,

"Okay, which movies are going to get funding?"

She and her people had power,

because they wanted films to be made.

They said, "Let's show Spain to the world through cinema."

- The Miro Law came to say that Spanish cinema could no longer be supporting,

not even symbolically,

most of the production, of our production, which was "S" cinema.

- It was a necessary kind of cinema.

Evasion, entertainment.

Easy, simple, for the person who works 14 hours a day,

who sits in front of the screen and just wants to have fun and laugh.

- The Miré Law destroys this idea of industry.

She doesn't believe in the industry, she believes in big industry.

- It was a very specific moment in the history of Spain,

which they wanted to completely erase.

- The filmmakers who produced most of the "S" films

quickly saw themselves as victims

of a new legislation that said that your films

could not be shown in any theater, just in "X"-rated ones.

- As a result of the Miré Law,

the number of films produced in Spain

was dramatically reduced.

In 1982, the year before the law was approved,

nearly 150 films were produced.

After the law was passed, the amount steadily declined.

By 1989, only 47 films were made.

This translated into an employment crisis

for film technicians and actors who needed to reinvent

themselves and transition into TV and theater.

Or, in many cases, leave the industry altogether.

- Many actors and actresses, especially actresses,

they had a very bad time after the mm Law

because they were labeled as erotic actresses.

- It was like, "|f you've done 'S'-classified films,

we don't want to see you again."

As if you weren't even an actor or an actress.

- Once "S"-classified cinema was over,

it took me many years to get back into filmmaking.

Many, many years.

Because I was the "dirty one" from the porn films,

the "dirty one" from the erotic movies.

- I don't think she was thinking

of erasing a film genre just like that.

But she wanted to put an end to the films of sexual freedom,

what were known as "Spanish cliché" films.

- So, on hand, she created a good thing

what was called "quality cinema."

But that "quality cinema" was to the detriment of the industry.

- Any of the directors making genre films of the time

throw a fit every time they talk about Pilar Miré.

They accuse her of ruining their careers

and of having put an end to the Spanish film industry.

- By the way, what is "quality cinema"?

Who decides what is "quality cinema" and what is not?

So if she said a movie was "quality cinema" it would obtain public funding.

- That is a scam. It seems like a very big scam.

- You like other kinds of films, other kinds of scripts, other actors, that's great.

But let others do what they want to do or what they can do.

- The Miré Law

was very good for some and very bad for others.

The fact is that the second cinema has disappeared.

- As a result, all Spanish production

becomes homogeneous, interchangeable.

- It was a cinema very worried about its past.

Very worried about big literary authors.

In the same way as "S" cinema went from being potentially super-liberating

to become something very conservative,

the Miré Law, which was going to be the big progressive law for an open cinema,

very quickly turned into a straitjacketed cinema.

- A person who allows himself to be carried away by his passions

loses the force of sanity

and becomes an outcast,

a crazy person.

_ Why,

when it comes to giving an opinion on something,

do we have to say right away that it is crazy

or sensible, good or bad?

- These were going to be serious dramas

about the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath.

- He says that it is a matter of grammar,

and that the reason for this should be asked to the academics.

- These were going to be literary adaptations.

These were gonna be social realist dramas and comedies.

They were not gonna give money to horror films,

they were not gonna give money to science fiction films.

Fantastic genre films were not films they had any interest

because to their minds, those films weren't Spanish.

- How dare you disobey me!

- In summary, all the "S" films disappeared.

Well, the ones that had been filmed could not disappear,

but it practically wiped out all this cinema.

- In other words, they cut off your wings and your freedom.

The new form of censorship is called public funding.

- Don't move.

Be patient, you'll like the show.

' No'.!

- POPPERS is one of the last films

of this period of freedom and unusual cinema in Spain.

It's a film from '84,

and it is a film that we can clearly classify today as a queer film.

It's a very interesting film because,

in a way, it's talking about the country's transformation

and how old Spain, Franco's Spain,

was ushering in this modern Spain.

- Just as Franco wanted to control cinema with his censorship,

in democracy, different governments have also attempted

to force cinema to conform to their ideal.

But when time goes by, you see the history and watch the films, it's never

what governments wanted as their ideal.

- It's a very interesting film that plays, visually too,

with a very comic book aesthetic,

closely related to comics of the time such as El Vibora

or the Ceesepe comics,

and also with the music, playing with flamenco music,

which is usually used to illustrate these old streets of Madrid,

where some old prostitutes appear and so on.

And modern synthesizer music, which is the music that accompanies

Miguel Ortiz most of the time, who is the protagonist.

- Guys,

this is not a tragedy,

it is an Anglo-Saxon amusement, and therefore

it's elegant, cold, and perverse.

Do you understand me? Perverse!

- So the film tells the story of a young man

who belongs to this group of modern youth typical of the Movida Madrilefia,

where you see inside the clubs, with the music, sex, and drugs

from Spain of the '80s.

And then these two Spains confront each other: the old Spain,

represented by old-school actors,

among them Alfredo Mayo, an actor who was starring in RAZA,

and who was... who had even

fought during the Spanish Civil War on Franco's side.

He's one of the protagonists of this kind of sect of older men

who are devoted to hunting

human beings in Count Zaroff style.

- "S" cinema is the scarlet letter of our Spanish cinema.

It is largely unknown and the first option is to ignore it and forget it.

It is a cinema of which we are ashamed.

- It's a pity that no one has really taken the trouble

to say, "This existed, for better or worse,

but it existed." It has been part of our history.

- The "S" classified movies really came out

of a very particular time,

a time when those kinds of films were in a sense necessary

for the burst-out of filmmakers who'd been held in so long.

Sometimes we just wanna see sex on screen,

sometimes we need an extremely violent image

because that is how we feel inside,

that is how we were treated for so long.

- Our cinema could be bad, awful, lacking in quality,

because we were going a thousand miles an hour. With no time.

But what I can assure you is that there was freedom.

The freedom to do whatever we wanted to do.

- Transition films will never be made again

because those longings for freedom have never reappeared.