Customer Reviews

El Día de la bestia

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

From the opening scene you know that your in for a real treat. I have the spanish version, subtitled in English but this was certainly no means for alarm as the comic performances from three fine spanish actors will hold you, immersed inside this strange action-horror film. If you liked films such as Re-animator or other films in the comedy horor genre...then go for this. It's about a priest who believes that the anti-christ will be born on christmas day. Convinced that the devil resides in 'Heavy Metal' music he goes on a mission to track down satan and destroy him. His life seems to be spiralling down a long road of psychotic tendancies until he meets the hilarious 'Death metal' hippy Jose Maria and together they kidnap a celebrity tv para-psychologist who tells them the best way (Or the most stupid) to invoke the devil. The characters are perfect, the direction is extremely stylish (From the director that bought us Accion Mutante) the story-line is original and well scripted. All in All this is one of the best examples of very funny comedy and graphic violent horror ever to grace the realms of the movieworld. An unheard of classic. PERFECT.

There have been many movies made about the apocalypse and the second coming from damien to the overblown Arnold Schwarzennegeer extravaganzas - End of Days. This is easily the best of them. It approaches the subject with erudition, sarchasm and humor. I have seen the film in Spanish in Spain in the year it was released and would not recommend any other version than the original because the performances are excellent. The Italian TV magician/Producer speaking Spanish with an Italian accent is really funny and the expressions of the stoned heavy metal devil worship expert also need to be understood in their native language to get the full effect. The story takes plece on new year's eve (1995) and a monk has calculated on the basis of a biblical code he has uncovered (very smart writing here)that the apocalypse is imminent. As he searchges for experts on exorcism and devil worship he runs into an Italian TV host of a paranormal phenomena show and a metallica fan who runs a devil worship occult shop. The three set out to save the world. Th ecast also features a very sext Maria Grazia Cucinotta of 'Il Postino' fame. It's a shame north-american audiences are not too familiar with this one.

Great film, excellent performances, a treat from start to finish... almost. I was so disappointed with the computer-generated "devil" that I had to take off one whole star. That video game character unfortunately snapped my suspension of disbelief. Still, it's a film I highly recommend.

A great movie that is ruined by English dubbing. Unfortunately this movie in unavailable in the US in the original Spanish language with English subtitles. What a tragedy.

How does a holy man meet Satan? It's not like Satan hangs out with the righteous. When the anti-Christ visits the Earth, he'll be surrounded by sinners. Catholic priest, Padre Ángel Beriartúa (Álex Angulo) realizes this and sets out to commit an array of affronts in order to meet the anti-Christ (and destroy him). Thus begins Alex de la Iglesia's 1996 supernatural comedy.
Padre Beriartúa goes on a rampage of transgression. Rather than giving last rights to an accident victim, he bids the man to rot in Hell. Worse yet, he pushes a mime, smokes, and listens to heavy metal music. Aided by metal head Jose Maria (Santiago Segura), the pair kidnap Professor Cavan (Armando De Razza), host of the supernatural talk show "The Dark Zone." From there, the film becomes something akin to THE KING OF COMEDY crossed with THE NINTH GATE.

DAY OF THE BEAST is a wonderfully dark, insane romp and typical of de la Igelsia's outrageous oeuvre. Unfortunately, DAY OF THE BEAST has not been released either as a sell-through title, on DVD, or with English subtitles in the U.S. A beautiful copy of this is available from [..]

Alex de la Iglesia takes one of the most scary moments in a society full of technology, absurdity, and vanity (December 31, 1999). Using this elements as a obstacle for a society to realize its lost, only a man, Padre Angel, who has dicovered the code in the bible would save the world. A aesthetically beautyful master piece, a great mise-en-scene, and an plot who would put you in the edge of your chair. The day of the Beast is more than a simple film, and more than another story of a saviour.

I'm not a big horror fan, which is probably why I really liked this movie. This is more of a comedy than anything else, and the main character is a comedy of errors. The metal head cohort is really great too, especially in the scenes with his grandfather. This movie is inventive, original, and for the most part unpredictable. This is not how boring Hollywood characters act or how typical Hollywood plots play out. The dubbing is a little distracting, but the rest of the film more than makes up for it.

A great, fun film, but it suffers from being too small. A preist has twenty-four hours to find the Devil and stop the birth of the AntiChrist. Along the way he tries to commit a few sins in order to be evil, but the most he does is steal a few petty things, push a mime, and brain a security guard. Cant help but think it might have been better if he had a few more days and he had to break all the 10 Commandments, or at least a few more sins, because it was an interesting and funny idea that, I felt, the film could have explored more.

To help him in his quest he enlists the aid of a smarmy t.v. show psychic and a death metal druggie (wich it is never explained just why in the Hell the death metal guy takes an instant? liking to a preist! ).

The story is fine, with a few great sequences (having to get the blood of a virgin) and a few lackluster ones (crawling on the outside of a building, and the finale when they meet the Devil), but overall it is still great fun in the spirit of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and Peter Jackson's Bad Taste and Brain Dead (aka. Dead Alive), but without those films wild energy and manic pacing. The film could have benifited from being more sacriligous and having a larger scale in storytelling.

All in all, though, it is still a fine film. Ten years ago, before the likes of such things as Army of Darkness, Santa Sangre, and Hong Kong films, this would have seemed like a better movie.

I was initially tempted to say that this film begged to be featured on Mystery Science Theater 2000, and I am still not so sure that isn't true. I concede that perhaps a lot was lost in the translation. (I rented the English-dubbed version from my local video store--the only one they had in stock.) First, I'll deal with some elements of the story I didn't like at all, just to get them out of the way. (1) The story is as shopworn as they come--a priest figures out the exact day the anti-Christ will appear and tries to recruit an army to save the world from The Apocalypse. But to be fair, any theme must become shopworn by default after 2000 years of use. (2) "The Devil", whether appearing as a hissing goat in an apartment or as a gilded (gelded) computer animation figure atop an abandoned highrise, was far too absurd to be frightening. (3) The priest proposes to save the world by lending a hand to the effort of a group of thugs who murder homeless people and spray-paint "Limpia (Cleanse) Madrid" on the walls near their crime scenes.

Perhaps my initial frustration with this film stemmed from the fact that the video store sleeve touted it as a horror film, for which I was in the mood at the time, and which this film definitely is not. Nothing in it is scary--merely occasionally revolting. When I realized that, I thought perhaps it was supposed to be an action film, but the "action" was not sustained for sufficient periods to qualify the film as that, either.

At last, I think that (hopefully deliberately) this film is a satire of horror and action films. The definite major plus is the relationship that develops between the sad-sack priest (Angulo) and the satanico-goth, LSD-gulping record store operator (Segura), who are both in search of Satan's child for radically different reasons. These two make (to keep to the theme) a hell of a funny team--sort of a spiritually divided Laurel and Hardy. Throw in the charlatan host of a t.v. psychic talk show and his crew to emphasize the fact that the ages-old battle between good and evil is more likely to pack a t.v. audience than a church. (You half expect a chant of "Cavan! Cavan! Cavan!" to break out during some studio scenes.) "The virgin" and "the bad girl" both spill out the tops and the bottoms of their dresses, exposing bountiful clevage and lacy stocking tops--hard to tell good from evil just by looking at the two. Okay, after reflecting on these choice bits of satire and irony, I add another star to my rating.

I still don't understand why the all-powerful Satan let his offspring get killed. It seemed to me that His Unholiness arrived on the scene in plenty of time to prevent that. Or could it have been that the priest miscalculated the date of the end of the world? After all, it has happened before. Yeah, I think that was it--the date and "the chosen people", as well. Otherwise, why was Satan hanging out with the homeless-murdering baddies who had just killed "his" child while trying to "cleanse Madrid"? And it seemed that Satan can be killed with a single gunshot, after all. Isn't that a disappointment?

In the end, the priest and the former talk show host sit homeless themselves on a park bench bemoaning the fact that the negative aspects of their story are being highly publicized--gleefully by the talk show host's replacement--and neither the priest nor Cavan is being given any credit for saving the world.

Wait! I think I've got it! Set your think-track to a "Little Shop of Horrors" (original version) mode when you watch this film, and you might actually get a kick out of it. Yeah! That's it! I hereby change my rating to "4 Stars". Now I'm outta here.

This is one of the wickedest and funniest comedies I have ever seen! The humor is VERY twisted, which is just the way I lke it! Just don't mistake this movie for a real occult horror/drama, like *someone* apparently did.