All language subtitles for The Sleazy And The Strange The Director and The Cannibal Man

Eloy de la Iglesia was absolutely
an extraordinary director.

And by saying this, I am not
saying he was great, or brilliant,

or a genius, I mean extraordinary
in the most literal sense of that word.

He came out of the blue.

His family was from
the north of Spain,

called Basque Country.

He studied film and
philosophy in Madrid.

And he made an
impact with his first movie.

The most crazy and unusual thing
is that Eloy de la Iglesia started

his movie career with a family movie,
FANTASY 3 (1966).

That was the title because it
had 3 episodes.

This is not too surprising because
at the end of the 60s, there were

very important grants in Spain
for family movies.

So significant that they covered
almost all the budget for the film.

So many Spanish directors started that
way at that time, making family movies.

But Eloy de la Iglesia's second film really
revealed the way he is and was.

Titled ALGO AMARGO EN LA BOCA (1969),
it was a psychological drama ancl

a rugged, tough film.

Eloy de la Iglesia's
movie style was defined

from his second movie.

THE CANNIBAL MAN was born
with the intention to make

the most shocking film ever
in Spanish cinema.

With a purpose of political
ancl social criticism,

including the homosexual
element in a determinative way.

Back in the clay, censorship was a
huge deal in Spanish cinema.

The movie was filmed in
a very unusual way.

They started to film without
the proper permit for 3 weeks.

Then they had to get the permit.

But when they went to get the permit,
they requested it based on

the script they were filming, and
of course it got denied.

They asked, "What do we do now?"
They suspended the filming.

They had to rewrite the script,
and based on that much lighter script

they resumed production.

Total madness!

But the censors didn't want the first
version of the script to be made

because it was too
excessively shocking

and harsh for that time.

It's a logical question.

How they dared to make a very
harsh and transgressive movie,

knowing how hard censorship was?

It happened that the director,
Eloy de la Iglesia,

had a big commercial success
with a sexy thriller a year before,

titled THE GLASS CEILING.

That encouraged him!

On the other side, the male
protagonist was Vicente Parra.

He was a very popular actor and
very much in demand.

He was very loved and had the image
of a handsome, sweet guy,

because he always starred in
comedies and dramas.

So he was very enthusiastic
to be involved in the project

also as an associate producer.

He risked his own money
because he wanted to make

a completely different movie
from all of his previous work.

So thanks to those two things,

they were motivated to make
a really shocking movie.

The first problem with the script
that affected the movie

with the censorship,
was Eloy de la Iglesia

wanted the lead roles to be
around 18 or 19 years old.

Both the killer and the
rich neighbor,

but the censors wouldn't allow it.

The homosexual situation
was very clear.

The censors would allow homosexual
tendencies between both characters

only if they were mature, but
not if they were teenagers.

That wasn't going to happen,

so they changed it ancl made
the characters older,

for one thing. And for another thing,
they didn't accept the ending at all.

It was an open ending,

where you didn't know what
happened to the killer.

So they imposed an ending
where the killer, over the course

of one week, kills a person per clay,
and decides to turn himself into the police.

That was imposed
by the censors.

At that time, censorship in Spanish
cinema had two phases.

The first phase was the script,

ancl the second phase was when
the movie was finished,

the imagery.

I mentioned earlier the
biggest inconveniences

for the script, but then when the
movie was finished and they watched it,

they raised hell, and they were scandalized.

What happened? The movie broke
the record for the most censorship cuts

in the history of our cinema.

62 cuts, no less.

Here a few minutes, there some
seconds, here a whole scene...

It was a total massacre!

For example, they shot this
oneiric scene of homosexual love

between the two protagonists,

between Eusebio Poncela
and Vicente Parra.

They totally suppressed it!

It was an oneiric, poetic, and lyrical
scene. With it the director

Eloy de la Iglesia created a clash
with all the roughness

and sordidness that
everything else had.

And why?
Because Eloy de la Iglesia,

Vicente Parra, and Eusebio Poncela
were gay.

So what does this mean?

To them that scene had a meaning
of power and reaffirmation of their

personal sexual orientation, ancl at
that time it was absolutely transgressive.

The fact that Vicente Parra
dared to take this unusual role

in his career, playing an insane
and possibly gay proletariat,

really benefited him in
terms of the industry.

Why? Because they gave him an
award for the best actor of

the Cinema Writers Circle.

Those were very important awards,
which means Vicente Parra

proved that he was able to play
different kinds of characters.

Even when the movie wasn't a
commercial success in his career,

this personal achievement was
especially valued.

This movie also introduced
Eusebio Poncela.

Poncela is an important and
personal actor from his generation.

Distinguished by his
participation in unusual,

different and unconventional movies,
he also believed in working

with young people, new people,
and even with debutants.

All the problems with THE CANNIBAL MAN
didn't affect the friendship between

the director Eloy de la Iglesia
and the actor Vicente Parra.

They were such good friends that
they made another film together,

NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM (1973).

It was a very interesting thriller and very
different than THE CANNIBAL MAN.

It doesn't have the sleaziness,
but it does strive for

an elegant and cosmopolitan look.

NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM
also marked another important point

in Eloy de la Iglesia's career,
in that he again cast

the actress from the movie that he'd
made before CANNIBAL MAN,

Carmen Sevilla, and she was a
diva of Spanish Cinema.

In the GLASS CEILING, she did
the same thing that Vicente Parra

did in THE CANNIBAL MAN,
she broke her image,

the sweet and cloying persona that she
had in the movies as a folk actress,

and reinvented herself as a sensual,
mysterious, and disturbed woman.

She did great, and she participated
with excitement.

Doing a different film with a young,
gay, communist director... how interesting!

Eloy de la Iglesia was a very different
and transgressive director.

At the beginning of his career, even big
Spanish movie stars with contrary

political views wanted to work with
him, and were delighted to do so.

In the case of Carmen Sevilla, she
was a Folk diva from Francoism.

And even Vicente Parra himself
and Eloy de la Iglesia

had a great relationship, even
though one was a communist

and the other was a right winger.

I don't know, maybe they got along
well because they were both gay.

I want to highlight that this is not a
movie in the serial killer genre.

It's not a slasher at all.

The lead role is not a criminal
psychopath who kills

due to obsession, addiction,
or sadism at all.

The protagonist is a proletariat, not too
smart, an uneducated man who has a sad life.

He's sleazy and miserable,
and kills someone by mistake.

And in order to cover up that initial
crime, he must kill other people.

That's it.

And these people, which is also
one of the main points of the movie,

represent all the repression he has.

Sexual repression, family repression,

social repression, financial repression,

and even political repression.

The three essential ingredients of
CANNIBAL MAN are

the social criticism,
the homosexual vindication,

and the extreme sleaziness,
but all that magnifies and marks

a fourth element, that is the
documentary quality.

This is a film that reflects in a
physical way how Madrid

was at that time, and in this
sense we need

to recognize the set decoration
director Santiago Ontafion.

Santiago Ontafion was truly a genius.
A prolific man who was friends with Lorca.

They worked together in the 1930s.

He had all kinds of phases, but here
he does brilliant work.

For example, the rural house
where the protagonist lives,

the interiors, all the sets,
and decorations.

It's a total masterpiece in the
art direction of cinema.

The Director of Photography for THE CANNIBAL
MAN was also a very interesting man,

Raul Artigot,
a very sensitive man.

He also got to direct. He made
three movies as a director.

He was a versatile man
and very good at his job.

He lost himself, but in
his case, it was alcohol.

He turned into an alcoholic,
and people stopped calling him.

His career ended up very sad.

He was also a writer,
a multi-talented man,

Raul Artigot. But he lost
it to the alcohol.

Due to all the censorship problems
and shooting conflicts, etc.,

the film premiere was delayed.

It took two years to premiere, and
by the time the movie was out,

nothing happened. No success.

No noise, although a few lucid critics
favored it. They didn't say it was

marvellous, but they highlighted
that it was an unusual film,

and that it was like no
previous Spanish film.

Over time it became a cult film
inside and outside Spain, but in a

misconstrued way, in a false way, because
it started being sold as a "Video Nasty."

It started to get the reputation
of a sleazy, violent, nasty film,

when it's not like that at all.

It is a sleazy drama, a critical film,
where violence has a meaning,

more than a cheap spectacle.

It's a severe expression of
dramatic violence.

He went for a sleazy style, showing a
series of perspectives and realities

that weren't shown by any
Spanish director before.

I knew Eloy de la Iglesia well.

I was even a part of the tribute that was
held at the San Sebastian festival in the 90s.

I'm also one of the five authors of
a book about him.

Eloy de la Iglesia was an
educated man, ancl highly intelligent.

To the point where he always justified the
stupidest things, and the biggest barbarities,

his most personal insanities,
with such brilliance that

he would convince
you to believe him!

In that sense, he had
a fabulous skill.

He was very well spoken.

When Eloy de La Iglesia
was young and started

doing movies, he become
famous right away.

Not only for his fascination with
those sleazy and strange stories,

but for his political views
as a communist,

of course, at that time
it was clandestine,

and for his homosexual orientation,
which he didn't hide.

He was addressing
guys all the time,

even minors from bad neighborhoods.

The more uneducated, the more
rough and the more rude,

the more attraction he felt.

In that sense, Eloy de la Iglesia
was like Pasolini.

His big problem was that he
had a drug addiction.

He was engaging with
different kinds of drugs

until he got really bad,
and then he disappeared.

Nobody knew anything
about him.

Everyone thought he'd died in
a very obscure and sleazy way,

but then he appeared selling
Kleenex at a traffic light.

S0 an old acquaintance saw him
and said, "Eloy, get in the car."

And some friends paid for his
rehab treatment and a room

in the gothic old part of Madrid,
near the Plaza Mayor.

So he got better.

Diego Galan found out, and the people
from San Sebastian festival,

and a resurrection was prepared

with that tribute and book.

Thanks to this resurrection, he
was able to make another movie,

but he died shortly after that.

He couldn't get past all the
damage that the drugs had caused

over all that time, and he died young.

He was around 62 or 63 years old.

Whether one likes him as a person or not,

what can't be denied
is that Eloy de la Iglesia

had two important virtues
of a filmmaker:

his own unique personality
and talent for the movies.

Ultimately, he can be liked more
or less for what he did.

I believe in his career,
even if he didn't make a 'perfect' movie,

he made many very interesting movies,
and he was a very prolific filmmaker.

Like I said before, Eloy de la Iglesia
was a good person

with personality and talent.

I met him, spent time with him, and
wrote a book about him.

I'm satisfied that he is now turning into
a worldwide cult figure.

He really deserved it, and
he dared to do all that.

He had more success than any
other director of his generation.