HumanoidOfFlesh During the Spanish Civil War young boy named Fando is forced to watch as Garcia Lorca is executed by a taunting Fascist firing squad.He keeps asking his mother what happened to his father,and eventually learns that his mother betrayed him to the Franco government because of his unspoken leftist ideas.Fando imagines bizarre scenarios where his father is tortured and mutilated.Many of his visions present his mother as a monster who gouges out his father's eyes,or makes love to his captors in front of him,in addition to other gruesome and scatological horrors.Fando also shows signs of sexual interest in his libidinous aunt Clara and a neighbor girl,Thérèse,as he lives a miserable existence acting out the cruelty of his mother with small cruelties of his own.Fernando Arrabal is a well-known Spanish surrealist and "Viva la Muerte" is his first and most famous piece of work.The film has its share of shocking and unpleasant moments-the defecation scene and the bull slaughter moment especially come to my mind.Many of the hallucinatory scenes of violence,that include the father's head being stomped on by horses,a priest's genitals being cut off,and imagined sexual liaisons involving Fando's mother,were filmed on videotape,distorted via the use of colour filters and transferred to film.So if you liked this one I'd also recommend "Sweet Movie" and "The Cremator".7 out of 10.

lazarillo This film begins with a long credit sequence where a strangely catchy nonsense song sung by French schoolchildren is played over Boschian illustrations (by "Fantastic Planet's" Roland Topor) of torture and sadomasochism. And the film never lets up after that. This is the first film of Fernando Arrabal, a Spanish friend and collaborator of the more famous (and more notorious)Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. (Arrabal wrote the play on which Jodorowsky's first film "Fando y Lis" was loosely based). Although they would probably both be loath to admit it, both men owe an obvious debt to fellow countryman Luis Bunuel. But while Jodorowsky's films resemble the early, very surrealistic films Bunuel made with Salvador Dali (albeit with a lot of trendy 60's era Eastern mysticism thrown in), this film is more of an uncensored version of the films like "Los Oividados" that Bunuel made in Mexico in the 1950's which combine surrealism with neorealist social commentary.This film is much more autobiographical than anything Bunuel or Jodorowsky ever did. It tells the story of a young boy, Fando (no doubt based on Arrabal himself), whose Republican father has been arrested by the Fascists in the dark days after the Spanish Civil War where people who supported the other side were rounded up and executed even if it meant "killing half the country". Much of the movie is based on the boy's memories of his father and bizarre surrealistic images he imagines of the fate that might have befallen him (including being buried up to his neck in the sand while Arabesque figures on horseback use his head to play polo, or being sewn alive into a cow's carcass). As in "Los Olvidados" the boy has a strange Oedipal love/hate relationship with his treacherous young mother who he finds out betrayed his father to the soldiers. He also has an "aunt" who seems to suffer from a bizarre combination of religious mania and nymphomania (Arrabal gives the Catholic Church all the credit it so richly deserves in the tragedy that befell Spain).This movie is quite political. The title is based on a real quote by a fascist general: "Down with intelligence, long live death!" (a sentiment that by the 1970's was making its way across the Atlantic to Pinochet's Chile and the military government in Argentina). Ironically, this film which is a scathing indictment of human cruelty, has often drawn charges of animal cruelty. One act of "animal cruelty" involves a disgusting bug (good riddance). I would hope a scene where a lizard gets its head bitten of was faked (as much for the sake of the young actor as the lizard). The footage of a bull being butchered and castrated is definitely real, but animal rightists should be glad if anything since this occurs thousands of times a day and this scene shows how truly disgusting it is. Besides this is not an Italian cannibal film with a tacked-on political message to justify its animal slaughter--this scene will really hit home with the kind of people who have no stomach for animal suffering but think nothing of their government creating or permitting massive human suffering for the sake of high-minded political ideals. This is truly a brave, powerful, and memorable film.

cinemaofdreams For the reputation it has, Viva La Muerte is a terrific disappointment and a muddled mess that really does not in any way expose the horrors of Franco's Spain but rather exposes Arrabal's juvenile and pretentious preoccupation with perversity and cruelty. The story goes absolutely nowhere, and the characters have all the depth of cardboard. Even fellow "panic" artist Alejandro Jodorowsky (whose first release "Fando Y Lis" is based on an Arrabal play) had a notion of plot and was able to breathe life into the most bizarre characters and shocking situations. For my part I consider this a waste of perfectly good film stock.

Afracious Viva la Muerte begins with the credits over a view of surreal Roland Topor images while a pleasant tune plays. The film's central figure is a young boy named Fando, who lives with his mother. His father has been arrested during the Spanish Civil War. Fando later finds a letter and discovers his mother turned his father in to the authorities. This triggers off the many fantasy sequences of Fando. Arrabal uses grainy filtered footage during these sequences and gives them several different colours. The film is full of frenzy. It was created by someone with a furious imagination. The bull slaughter scene is a masterful surrealist sequence. It is a remarkable film and essential viewing for anyone interested in surrealism.