CINEMAGNILOQUENCE

An on-line magazine about film which is hosted, constructed, maintained, up-dated, written and edited by Jesus Petterson.
NARCISCO IBAÑEZ SERRADOR

Spain´s finest hour (and a half)

Spanish director/scriptwriter/genius Narcisco Ibañez Serrador was born on April 4, 1935, in Montevidéo, Uruguay, and is now responsible for Spain´s most popular quiz-show; Uno-dos-tres on channel TVE, but some twenty years ago, he made two feature films; La residencia (1969) and Quien puede matar a un niño? (1975). La residencia was one of the first Spanish horror films to get distribution abroad and lots of great films followed its path (La novia ensangretada and La campaña del infierno to name a few).
After watching his films one must agree that Serrador is a film maker maybe even more talented than contemporary Spanish horror directors like Javiér Aguirre, Leon Klimovsky and Carlos Aured Alonzo. The fact that he both scripted and directed his films only goes to prove that political awareness and an eye for art can be (and in this particular case, is) conclusive.

La residencia aka Finishing school aka The house that screamed aka Boarding school
(Anabel Films, Spain)
Producer: Arturo González
Director/writer: Narcisco Ibañez Serrador
Scriptwriter: Luis Verna Penafiel (Narcisco Ibañez Serrador)
Camera: Manuel Berenguer
Music:Waldo de los Rios
Cast: Lilli Palmer, Christina Galbo,
John Moulder Brown, Mary Maude...

Story:
Thérèse (Galbo) is brought to a girl´s finishing school to learn some manners. The teaching is lead by Mme Fourneau (Palmer) whose methods in the field of upbringing are only equalled by her sadistic acolyte Irènée (Maude). Mrs Fourneau also has troubles with her peeping tomish son Luis (Blanco), who secretly dates the inmates, which are - according to her - "indecent". Things aren´t better off (?) when someone starts a killing spree among the inmates.

My Opinion:
Even though it claims to be based on a story by Juan Taber, It´s actually Serrador himself who wrote the story and only uses a psuedonym as a cover to justify the obvious critisism against the Catholic church (extensive use of cross-cutting between praying-sessions and sadistic beatings e.t.c.). Unlike most Women-In-Prison films, La residencia doesn´t only go for the cheap thrills; catfights, tits & ass in the shower a.s.o.), but also introduces a murderer, which puts it halfway out of the W.I.P.-subgenre only to enter its namesake (Women-In-Peril). Very much like Jimmy Sangster´s far inferior Lust for a vampire (1970), it concentrates almost equally on both themes, which creates - together with Rios´ haunting score, brilliant acting(especially Maude and Galbo) and Berenguer´s ultratmospheric camerawork - a perfect blend of terror and suspense.

Video versions:
New Zealand (Video & Cable sales inc.)
Austria (VCL-Video) dubbed into german
U.S. (AIP) cut several minutes
All tapes are letterboxed (1.85:1) during the credits but the black bars then disappear in a way which makes one believe that La residencia was filmed in fullscreen (1.37:1) and actually "masked" for its theatrical release.
The two uncut versions are also a bit different: 16 minutes into the film, when the pupils are having supper, Mme Fourneau calls out "Enough Mme Deprez!", which is "cut" in the Austrian version (4 sec). Apart from that, the only difference is the way the reels are put together which makes the Austrian version slightly shorter (29 sec).


Quien puede matar a un niño? aka Would you kill a child? aka Who can kill a child? aka Island of death aka Death is child´s play (Penta Films/Manuel Salvador, Spain)
Producer: Manuel Perez
Director/Scriptwriter: Narcisco Ibañez Serrador
Camera: José Luis Alcaine
Music: Waldo de los Rios
Cast: Lewis Fiander, Prunella Ransome,
Maria Durille, Roberto Nauta...

Story:
A brittish couple (Fiander and Ransome) are in Spain on vacation.Since she is pregnant they travel to Almanzora, an isolated island, to avoid other tourists and find some peace. When they arrive everything seems deserted except for the presence of young children. Soon they begin to discover corpses of adults and realize what has happened; the children have revolted against the society and killed every grown-up on the island.

My opinion:
It seems that one has to read Juan José Plans´ novel El Juego (translation: The game), which the film is based upon, to understand why the children are behaving the way they do, since there is no explaination whatsoever in the film. This makes one want to construe it as an allegory of the opressed Spanish working class´ revolt. And it seems that Serrador interprets Marx´ revolutionary theories as a two-phased process, like many others do (for example George Orwell in his book Animal Farm (1953)); The inevitable revolt against the capitalist society leads to a communist society which degresses into a new capitalist society. This is shown very clearly as the revolutionary class/the children will obviously degenerate/grow into capitalist/adults.
When the "possessed" children are near normal ones, they seem to affect them into killing adults. Even Evelyn´s (Ransome) unborn child gets possessed and kills her from within, and leaves Tom (Fiander) with no other choice but to ask himself the taboo of the title; would I kill a child?
Although the film is totally different from La residencia you immediately feel that this is a film by Serrador. He´s once again into breaking taboos in a way that makes me wonder how this film ever saw the light of a spanish projector beam. Some versions even have stills of tortured/mutilated/ starved children during the pre-credits just to make the viewer feel even worse. Rios´ score and Serrador´s firm direction give the film a really nasty feeling, making Children of the Corn (Fritz Kiersch, 1984) look like a prozac-commercial in comparison.

Video versions:
Greece (Video Alsén) Greek subtitles
Australia (Star Video) English subtitles when spanish spoken
Spain (Videocompact) Spanish spoken
The greek version is very annoying unless one understands greek or spanish, since the film is in both English and Spanish, and the subtitles are Greek. The Spanish version is also annoying as everybody speaks Spanish and parts of the dialogue become irrelevant because of this. None of these versions are letterboxed, and I suspect it was filmed in 1.66:1 judging from the looks of the shift-marks near the reel changes.