Not a lot of movies out there are anywhere near as funny as the first fifteen minutes of Álex de la Iglesia's 1995 sophomore effort. In it a meek, provincial priest (a perfectly cast Álex Angulo) is convinced - after a brilliantly staged and hilarious Omen-like accident - that he has worked out the date and place of the birth of the Antichrist. So, he reasons, he needs to damn his eternal soul and commit as many sins as possible so he can get in with the satanists and maybe get an opportunity to kill the spawn of Satan when they're at their most vulnerable. Kind of the methodology of the Augustine order of hellbound saints, but the priest here makes them all look like a bunch of posers; This guy's fucking hardcore.
It's the way he goes around doing it that kills me every single time I watch this movie. From the moment he gets off the bus at Madrid, the priest commits a string of crimes of opportunity that range from stealing someone's luggage to telling a dying man he'll burn in hell (and pocketing his wallet) while performing the extreme unction to casually pushing a mime down a stairwell. It's the way Angulo portrays his steely determination while tamping down on the inner turmoil it obviously causes him, and the incongruity of this mousy, naive, lovely old man of the cloth earnestly trying his best to damn his eternal soul.
And the man is a theology professor, so he gets really creative; at one point he burns crosses on the soles of his feet, so he can tread on the cross with every step he takes. Seriously, the hellbenders have got nothing on this guy.
The priest quickly gains a disciple in José María (genre stalwart Santiago Segura) when he goes to a record store to buy some heavy metal records from a hilariously misspelled list. From there on they try to enlist a third for their unholy trinity, Italian TV personality and supposed expert in the occult Professor Cavan (Armando De Razza), whom they think will help them get in contact with Satan himself.
The script (by de la Iglesia with his constant writing partner Jorge Guerricaechevarría) is unpredictable and very, very sharp. It stages all sorts of madness - from slapstick violence to farce-like chases and near-misses, from daring stunts to an effectively creepy seance. It's not scary (name one horror comedy that is), but it feels thrillingly dangerous and transgressive even after all these years. This is, after all, a movie where a priest is working his way towards murdering a baby.
It's a shame, then, that it seems to lose its way for twenty minutes or so in the third act. The climax itself is a good one - and it's a great example of de la Iglesia's penchant for using Spanish landmarks in all sorts of creative ways - but I've never really understood the specifics of what happens there. Looks great, though.
Still. This is an essential movie that remains just as powerful and funny now as it was when it came out. Del la Iglesia and his actors show impeccable comic timing, and the cinematography (by Flavio Martinez Labiano) often finds creative ways to frame the action - such as long shots in a building's stairwell to show our heroes evading the police - as well as some cool imagery in the film's fever-dream finale.
There's just so much to like here, but I keep coming back to Angulo's quintessentially Basque priest, beret and everything, pushing that mime down a subway entrance, or how he politely tries to explain whatever insane, horrible thing he's up to as if it was the most natural thing in the world. What an incredible creation.
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