This is not only one of my favourite Luis Buñuel features but it is up there amongst my top horror movies too - and there are precisely no spooks nor jump-scares at all. It’s a collection of the great and the good who have assembled for a lavish dinner party at the home of “Lucia” (Lucy Gallardo) and husband “Edmundo” (Enrique Rambal). We have already ascertained that there is quite a bit of unhappiness amongst their staff and so aren’t too surprised to learn that many of them have absconded before the meal is even served. That’s just the start of their evening/morning of misfortune as trivial mishaps accrue with what becomes alarming regularity. When the clock strikes four, the hosts realise that at such a late hour nobody has tried to go home. Are they all having such a great time? Well that isn’t likely to last when their deliveries don’t arrive in the morning and for some inexplicable reason nobody can manage to make their way to the front door. Despite the fact that they are hungry, thirsty and gradually turning on each other - with almost feral effects, they still seem incapable of breaking out. All the while, there is a growing crowd of public and police officers outside their palatial residence just as unable to go in! It might well be that it’s only “La Valkyria” (Silvia Pinal) - scorned by many of the guests for still being a virgin, who can find a way out of this self-imposed community imprisonment? Then again...? What makes this genuinely quite terrifying at times is the effect their captivity has on their behaviour. Their polite society soon degenerates into a sort of survival of the fittest - physically and intellectually. Their polite veneers are soon stripped away exposing hypocrisies galore amongst these ostensibly upstanding and Catholic citizens. What little trust there was amongst them is soon stretched to breaking point and for us watching, the sense that there is something supernatural dictating events is compellingly unnerving to watch. Imagine you need to walk through the door to your bathroom but your body, however desperate, just won’t allow your feet to move through the portal? This is creepy in a way I’ve never seen on screen before. Will they ever manage to break free, or will they for ever remain reduced to burning the furniture for warmth and maybe even forced to eat one of the lambs that have rather mercurially arrived amongst them? Perhaps it is allegorical of Franco’s Spanish government of the time? That regime could certainly have provide for fertile pastures of exploitation and religious double-standards that our “guests” or their contemporaries could be held responsible for; maybe it is just a sinister fantasy from an imaginative auteur or maybe a hybrid of both? Watch and see, but be prepared to feel distinctly uncomfortable.
