Original title: El día de la bestia

In the early 1990s, Álex de la Iglesia emerged as a vibrant new talent in Spanish genre cinema. His first film, Acción mutante/Mutant Action (1993), co-produced by Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar, had been a hit-and-miss but inventive and energetic science fiction/horror hybrid that brought him to the attention of cult film fans, but it was his follow-up film, El día de la bestia/The Day of the Beast that really proved to be his breakthrough film, an often very funny spoof of the Biblical “end times” horror, pricking the pomposity of all the paraphernalia that goes with them.

In Madrid, Ángel (Álex Angulo), a Basque priest and professor of theology, has decoded the Bible and come to the conclusion that the Antichrist will be born on the impending Christmas Eve. After a potential collaborator is killed by a falling cross, Ángel sets out to commit as many sins and crimes as he can in the hope that he will attract the attention and earn the trust of the Devil. On his night of mischief, he meets record shop worker and heavy metal fan José María (Santiago Segura), who claims to be a Satanist but who seems to have only limited experience of the subject. José María puts Ángel up in the boarding house run by his mother (Terele Pávez) and they join forces. After Ángel tries to steal a book written by the famous occult television personality Professor Cavan (Armando De Razza), the two men, as add a couple as any in horror films, decide to torture Cavan into telling them how to perform a Satanic ritual so that Ángel can sell his soul to the Devil. Virgin’s blood is required so Ángel drugs Mina (Nathalie Seseña), a young woman who also lives at the boarding house, draws some blood, but accidentally kills José María’s mother while trying to escape. Ángel, José María, and Cavan perform a ceremony while on LSD and eventually arrive at the Gate of Europe buildings where Cavan believes the Antichrist will be born. There, they are attacked by a right-wing gang who have been terrorising the city and learn to their horror that their leader is the Devil himself…

The Day of the Beast kicks off in fine style with the mild-mannered Ángel (an excellent performance by Angulo) performs various wicked acts that run the gamut from the petty (keying cars) to the potentially lethal (pushing a street performer down the stairs), a very funny way to kick off a clever, witty and very inventive film. It starts with a fairly crazy idea, that of a likable priest trying to attract the attention of the Devil so he can sell his soul, and just gets progressively madder as it goes along. Our trio end up dangling from a neon sign while still tripping, Ángel is beaten up by dopey heavy metal fans at a concert and his efforts to escape from José María’s mother has all the insane energy of Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi. And yet the film remains uniquely Iglesia, a director never afraid to wear his influences in plain sight but who still manages to forge something fresh from often well-worn ingredients.

The Day of the Beast also has more serious and often quite dark moments. We find ourselves genuinely caring when one of the trio doesn’t make it and the other two are reduced to hobos unable to tell the people of the world that they saved them, there’s a shocking moment when the new born Antichrist is killed and the violence is often quite brutal. The script, co-written by Iglesia and his regular writing partner Jorge Guerricaechevarría (the two had met when they started flat-sharing and Guerricaechevarría has penned most of Iglesia’s films since), takes pot shots, not all of them particularly well focussed, on matters as disparate as the fake posturing of heavy metal fans, the vacuity of 90s Spanish television, the pomposity of 70s and 80s devil movies and the peculiarities of modern Spanish architecture. It’s often gleefully blasphemous too, a brave move in a still religiously conservative country like Spain.

But amid all that, it never stops being fun. Cavan is so self-absorbed, for example, that he buys booze from a convenience shop completely oblivious to the fact that the staff have all been slaughtered in a recent robbery committed by the right-wing gang. The supporting cast are made up of all manner of eccentrics and weirdoes, collectively so peculiar that our heroes, who act as the three not-so-wise men at the birth of the Antichrist, seem positively normal by comparison.

Wild, unconventional and constantly surprising, The Day of the Beast is a fine Antichristmas film, never entirely cynical (Good prevails over Evil – but at what cost?) but always with its tongue firmly in its cheek. First rate performances all round add to the sense of manic silliness, the Madrid locations are well used and the satire sits comfortably alongside the horror and the knockabout comedy. It was the film that Iglesia’s big break, winning a clutch of Goyas (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars) including gongs for Best Director, Best New Actor (Segura) and Best Special Effects among a total of six, with a further eight nominations. It was a hit in Spain and earned a sizable cult following and opened the door to the even more successful crime thriller Perdita Durango (1997), released as Dance with the Devil in the United States.The Day of the Beast was a particular hit in the States, and on the back of that success Iglesia sold the remake rights with plans to make an English language version himself. That never happened and thankfully attempts to “Hollywoodise” him (he was in the frame to direct Alien: Resurrection (1997) at one point) came to nothing and he has remained a singular director whose chequered career remains fascinating and unique even when his projects don’t quite work. That’s no problem here though – The Day of the Beast is a terrific and very funny film that still packs a punch even now.