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Released by: Severin Films
Released on: September 24th, 2023.
Director: Eloy de la Iglesia
Cast: Ana Belén, Juan Diego
Year: 1977
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The Creature – Movie Review:
Eloy de la Iglesia’s 1977 feature, The Creature, stars Ana Belén and Juan Diego as married couple Cristina and Marcos. He’s a television host with increasingly right wing leanings and she’s basically a housewife. When she has a miscarriage, their marriage starts to get pretty stressed, and so they decide to adapt a giant black dog that they name Bruno in hopes that it’ll give them some sort of comfort and let them get their marriage back on the right track.
Cristina bonds with the dog almost immediately, showing it no shortage of affection and seemingly more interested in Bruno than in Marcos. As her husband becomes more heavily involved with the far right Alianza Nacional Espanol, he’s also fooling around behind his wife’s back with his mistress, Vicky (Claudia Gravy). Cristina, however, finds the companionship that she lacks with their new dog, and as she becomes closer to the animal, their relationship becomes stranger and stranger. When Marcos tries to have sex with his wife one night, the dog reacts very aggressively.
At first, Cristina treats him like most people treat their dogs but it isn’t long before she’s dancing with her new pet and from there, she has his in the bathroom while she bathes and gets into a tug of war with him over the towel. When Marco comes home and finds her wedding dress laid out with black paw prints on it and Cristina in bed with the dog sleeping beside her, he starts to wonder what exactly is going on here, even getting a little jealous over a woman that he generally treats quite poorly. Cristina, however, isn’t going to let her love for Bruno die anytime soon…
Not one to shy away from controversy or taboo-shattering stories, Eloy de la Iglesia’s film is a shocker indeed but despite the fact that Cristina’s relationship with Bruno goes exactly as far as you expect it to, it never feels like an exploitation movie but rather a boundary pushing exploration of relationships, good and bad. While you can’t say that the movie takes a specifically pro-bestiality stance, it certainly does make Bruno out to be a much better companion in many ways than Marcos, who, let’s be honest, is a bigoted and intolerant asshole. He treats his wife poorly, clearly not taking their marital vows seriously at all, as his relationship with Vicky so clearly demonstrates. Bruno, however, is unquestioning in his love and his loyalty to Cristina, clearly willing to do anything she wants him to without issue.
Complex in its exploration of its character, The Creature is rife with allegory and social commentary, casting a pretty damning light on the Spanish society in the era in which it was made and painting the country’s far right in a deservedly unfavorable light. The performances from the two leads are really strong. Juan Diego is really good as Marcos, as the more we learn about him the less we like him, which makes Ana Belén’s work as the truly sympathetic Cristina even more impressive (and, it probably goes without saying, quite brave!).
The Creature – Blu-ray Review:
The Creature arrives on Blu-ray from Severin Films in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.85.1 widescreen taken from a new 2k scan of the original negative on a region free 50GB disc. The transfer generally looks quite good, though it is a tad waxy at times. Detail is pretty strong and colors look good, flesh tones as well. There aren’t any compression issues and the image is pretty much spotless, showing no real print damage to note.
The 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono audio, in the film’s native Spanish, sounds just fine. The track is clean, clear and properly balanced and there aren’t any problems to note with hiss, distortion or sibilance. Víctor Manuel’s score has a fair amount of depth to it for an older Mono mix.
Extras start off with A Strange Movie, an interview with Assistant Director Alejo Loren that runs twenty-three minutes. Here, he speaks about how he came to know Eloy de la Iglesia and how they came to work together, what he was like as a person and as a collaborator, the independent film scene in Spain at the time, his strange sense of humor, thoughts on some of de la Iglesia's films and anecdotes about working on some of them, how he came to work on The Creature, the themes that the film explores such as living as a social outcast, how the film explores relationships, thoughts on the performances and what the actors were like to work with, memories of shooting some of the more controversial scenes in the film, how the film works more as a parable than a statement on zoophilia, how complicated the movie was to make, the effects that the low budget had on the way that the movie turned out and how the film was received upon release.
Gaspar / Eloy is an interview with Filmmaker Gaspar Noé that runs fourteen minutes. Here, Noé talks about his thoughts on de la Iglesia's work, how he came to know his films for the first time, how tough it was to track down his work in his native France, how varied his filmography is, his own thoughts on a few specific de la Iglesia films like Cannibal Man, how de la Iglesia was willing to make truly transgressive films and how he feels about The Creature and the way that it addresses its themes and how he feels it compares to the work of Douglas Sirk's 1960s films!
Last up is an introduction by Gaspar Noé that he gave before a screening at the Cinémathèque Française on July 20th, 2023. In this four minute piece, he talks about why this is his favorite of the director's films, how de la Iglesia came to make the movie, the themes that it explores and the director's initial hesitation to make the movie in the first place.
The Creature - The Final Word:
The Creature is a challenging film and one that’s certainly going to put a lot of people off based solely on its subject matter, but underneath the undeniably shocking scene that is the film’s taboo-busting centerpiece there’s a surprisingly tender story about a failing marriage and the complexities of human (and animal!) relations. Severin’s Blu-ray release of this under-seen film presents the film in a nice presentation and with some interviews that serve to detail its origins and effectiveness.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized The Creature Blu-ray screen caps!
