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Human Beasts
[Deimos]
1972; color
Directed by Jacinto Molina
Starring: Paul Naschy, Eiko Nagashima, Silvia Aguilar, Azucena Hernandez & Julia Saly
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As part of our ongoing education in all things Naschy - our Naschification, to coin a Dante phrase - both the Kommandant and I read his autobiography, Memoirs Of A Wolfman, on our most recent vacation. As far as it's factuality... well, I wasn't there so I wouldn't dare say. This supposedly non-fictional book sure was entertaining though. As a bonus, if you've seen any of Deimos' previously released Naschy titles, featuring bonus introductions from the man himself, you can easily imagine what it would be like to hear him relate these stories. (Which makes the book that much more entertaining.) At any rate, as many a memoirist is wont to do, Naschy spends more time talking about various periods of his life than others. Similarly, he spends more time discussing various entries in his filmography than others. Human Beasts, aka El Carnival De Las Bestias, for example warranted only a few paragraphs and a couple of photos, despite the fact he says was quite pleased with the production overall. In his own words - as translated by Mike Hodges - he describes the film as "a weird, claustrophobic, erotic and cruelly perverse story." I would definitely agree with the first and last adjectives; I suppose the others are in the eye of the beholder. He further refers to it as "a pessimistic film dealing with the inevitable impossibility of redemption which brings the concepts of life and death as seen by two very different and ancient cultures into brutal head-on collision." I love this quote because it really makes little sense. And, really, at many points this movie makes little sense. For one thing, the plot moves not so seamlessly through many different film genres. It's a crime story that's also a love story, and a loss of love story, that incorporates a revenge angle, a horror angle, a mystery angle, random acts of softcore sex and a couple gory scenes involving one poor innocent pig and a local sleazeball being violently killed; all in it's 90 or so minutes. The pig, incidentally, is slaughtered by a group humans and then, later, the human gets literally ripped to shreds by a group of pigs. This pig-on-man violence is not part of the revenge plot by the way, it's kind of unrelated. (PS: I closed my eyes during those parts!) I hesitate to relate any of the plot specifically, because I didn't know too much about the film when I sat down to watch it and I think part of enjoying the film is seeing how the whole thing plays out. Even though I'm still not a hundred percent sure I understood it, I would recommend it, to fans and novices alike.
—Bunny
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