El día de la bestia [The Day of the Beast] (1995)

Another in a long line of movies I'm gobsmacked I never knew existed until now, The Day of the Beast is a Spanish horror/comedy from director Álex de la Iglesia about a Catholic priest attempting to prevent the apocalypse by committing enough sins and spreading enough evil that he tricks the devil into buying his soul and revealing the birthplace of the anti-Christ. A premise this absurd is of course going to rest on style and tone - fortunately, de la Iglesia is up to the task, and the resulting film is compelling and darkly funny. Where it comes up a bit short is the ending, which feels like it's missing a beat. But more on that when we come to it.

The movie starts on December 22nd with Angel (the aforementioned priest, played by Álex Angulo) bringing his discovery to a fellow clergyman, who agrees to help him in his quest to prevent the end of the world. Unfortunately, that guy dies immediately after when a comically large cross falls over and crushes him; the first of many gonzo sequences.

The next day, Angel arrives in Madrid and begins sinning and sowing discord as best he can. We see him steal from the poor, ignore those asking for help, look on as police assault minorities, and push a street performer down stairs (we never learn if the performer is all right). Angel eventually befriends José María (Santiago Segura), a heavy metal fan working in a music shop who seems fascinated with the priest. After a number of other false starts, they attempt to enlist a TV occultist going by the name Professor Cavan (Armando De Razza), who they kidnap on Christmas Eve to force his help in summoning the devil.

Cavan, it should be noted, initially believes in none of this - his show and persona are primarily an act, though he has enough of a background in the subject to begrudgingly walk them through the ritual at gunpoint. When the devil actually appears in the form of a black goat, Cavan's perspective changes. Unfortunately, Angel's hope of fooling the devil backfires, as Satan leaves them with a message that this isn't a game.

Around this time the police show up, and the three attempt to evade capture (or more accurately Angel and José María attempt to escape while Cavan tries to help them). In the process, Cavan falls off the side of the building. He survives with a broken leg but is separated from the other two. Cavan leverages his resources and clout as a popular television star to locate both Angel and the site where the anti-Christ will be born. Meanwhile, Angel tries following signs and leads, venturing into a lecture about Nostradamus and a heavy metal concert being performed by a nominally Satanic band, neither of which pay off and both of which lead to trouble.

What he should be focusing on is a group of fringe right-wing supremacists murdering the homeless and minorities under the guise of cleaning up the streets. These guys appear or are referenced a handful of times throughout the movie, and Angel watches in horror towards the end as they burn a homeless man alive. He takes this as a sign but misinterprets its significance, focusing on the fact the victim was wearing a shirt for the aforementioned Satanic band. 

Eventually Cavan manages to track his friends down and picks them up. He then brings them to a building he's identified as the place the anti-Christ will be born. Outside, they hear the cries of a newborn baby born to a homeless woman. When they go to investigate, they're confronted by the right-wing fascists who attack them and also murder the baby and mother. In the ensuing chaos, one of the fascists turns into the literal devil and throws José María off a construction site to his death. Another of the men lights Cavan on fire, though Angel is able to smother the flames and shoot the fascists and the devil.

A short epilogue set nine months later shows a disfigured Cavan and Angel as wandering homeless men. Cavan has a line about being annoyed they can't talk about how they saved the world, a detail I find a bit confusing. It feels like something is either missing or was perhaps changed in post-production. If we assume the baby at the end was indeed the anti-Christ, then it was counter-intuitively one of the devil's helpers who saved the world. It's possible the ending was changed last minute to remove a finale deemed too dark or disturbing (i.e.: maybe they were going to have Angel go through with it, as he intended).

More likely the implication was supposed to be that it wasn't a literal child the devil was trying to bring into the world, but rather that the ideology was the real anti-Christ. That's an intriguing idea that works both as an extension of ideas present throughout the film and with what's on screen. If that was the intent, I feel like it needed some ellaboration in the closing moments of the film.

Regardless, I find the movie fascinating and - despite the bleak subject matter - surprisingly fun. There's a wry humor to the whole thing, and I certainly appreciate the subtext around having a priest ignore those in need because they're poor, fixate on meaningless iconography (such as music), and fail to appreciate the evil inherent in fascism and right-wing extremism - all sins the church (and numerous other religious institutions) have certainly been guilty of in the real world.

Holiday decorations, tropes, and music are heavily utilized in several capacities. Similar to American productions, this of course makes use of the juxtaposition between Christmas imagery and violence. Likewise, there's no surprise seeing religious aspects of the season highlighted, as the reflection of the nativity is at the heart of the story. It's worth noting this reflection manifests in a handful of less obvious ways, as well. For example, when the three protagonists arrive at the site of the anti-Christ's birth, they're positioned to resemble the wisemen. I also suspect the nine month window between the climax and epilogue is an inversion of the Spring Equinox (and by extension Easter).

But it's really the combination of the movie's biting satire with its carefully managed tone that sells the experience. This is a fun movie to watch. As its various twists (the majority of which I glossed over completely in my synopsis) play out, the whole thing has the feel of a weird dream. The world of the movie has an unreal quality enhanced further by the glow of Christmas lights (yet another use of the setting). Even the dark stuff tends to land with a soft touch - this movie wants to weird you out and make you think, not depress or sicken you, so it pulls quite a few punches to that effect.

With a stronger ending, this would rank among my all-time favorite Christmas horror movies. As it is, it's still fantastic and intriguing. And I assume it goes without saying this is well worth a look for any fans of the genre interested in a somewhat off-kilter take on the religious aspects of the holiday that isn't afraid to criticize that religion. This doesn't quite come off as explicitly atheist in its approach, but those looking for holiday offerings with an anti-religious (or at least anti-religious institution) point-of-view will particularly enjoy this.

Comments

  1. Very strange! I, too, had never heard of this and watched it this week. I do think there’s more to the ending, though I’m not 100% confident on all my readings since I’m not all that familiar with Catholic theology and/or the history of Madrid and Spain in the 1990s. That said, I think the visions that the three "wise men" have in the second half of the movie (the black goat and the beast at the Plaza de Castilla towers) are influenced by their having just taken LSD in Cavan's apartment. Thus, the beast that Ángel sees at the top of the tower at the end of the movie is merely one of the Limpia Madrid fascists, and the baby the fascists kill is just a human child. The devil plot was all a figment of their (psycho) active imaginations, and the real evil all along was not just the fascist ideology but, more broadly, the disregard that humans often have for each other, especially in times of need.

    The Christmas setting, of course, brings to the fore this lack of empathy, as it's a time when people are supposed to feel and act charitably toward each other. Each of the three wise men, in turn, is also shown not to have much insight into the human condition. José María, the stoner music store clerk, is constantly drugged out and portrayed as an oblivious loser, though he's probably the least harmful of the three. Professor Cavan is a charlatan willing to fleece TV viewers for fame and fortune, and he's shown to be apathetic toward human suffering, as when he nonchalantly walks past the dead/dying workers in the convenience store. The priest comes in for the most criticism, as he's so convinced of the rectitude of his theology that he begins to believe that being evil is the best route to saving the world. He's willing to do all kinds of horrible things in the name of what he sees as his divine mission to save humanity.

    The epilogue shows that Ángel and Cavan are still delusional about what actually happened. Cavan wants to be able to tell the world that they stopped the devil and saved the world, and I assume that they feel can't do that because no one would believe them. Cavan has been removed from his job as a TV host, and Ángel is shown as no longer wearing the priest's cassock or collar. I imagine they’ve both been discredited and left with pretty much nothing. As the camera pulls up to the sky at the very end of the epilogue, the shot of the departing Ángel and Cavan is foregrounded by a sculpture that's part of the Fuente del Ángel Caído (Fountain of the Fallen Angel) in Buen Retiro Park. The piece depicts Satan falling from heaven after being banished for his rebellious pride, and he’s depicted landing on a tree stump and being tangled up with a serpent, which suggests a connection to the tree of knowledge in Eden (aka, the scene of the original sin). Make of all this what you will! I suppose I would read the scene as suggesting that evil is in humanity’s nature. Ángel and Cavan are unable to see that the true evil was human nature rather than some silly battle with the devil, and thus they're left to wander.

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    1. As a final aside, while I don't know much about the history of the towers at the Plaza de Castilla, from reading up about them a little, I'm guessing that the location was used to pointedly suggest that capitalism and greed are at the root of the contemporary lack of empathy. The towers are known variously as the Puerta de Europa (Gate of Europe) or the Torres KIO (KIO, or Kuwait Investment Office, Towers). From what little I understand, the towers were constructed by the KIO, which had heavily invested in Spain at the end of the 1980s, as an anchor for a new business district (maybe accompanied by some "Limpia Madrid" campaigning?). A vast scandal involving the mismanagement and corruption of the KIO oil wealth fund left a lot of anger in Spain, with the putative "gate of Europe" its most prominent symbol. By the time that the KIO's Spanish holdings went into receivership in 1992, the towers were left unfinished and had become a glaring symbol of the downfall of Spain's economy. Quite a location for a nativity scene!

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