Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Alex de la Iglesia is a Spanish director known for his dark, violent comedies, many with a hint of horror and the supernatural. The battles of the sexes is his bread and butter, his stories filled with arrogant, strutting men cut down to size by cruel women. Rivalry, lust, fear and vengeance are the emotions, all seen against the setting of contemporary Spain. And the scary parts? Witches, ghosts, killer… and clowns. Hideous, scary clowns!

Álex de la Iglesia: Dancing with the Devil, a retrospective of his films is showing now at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. This week I’m talking about some of his films, looking at the rise of themes like sexual conflict and the supernatural over the course of his career. Plus a new action-thriller about The Troubles in Belfast.

Dying of Laughter
(Muertos de Risa)

… is an early film of his where the war between the sexes is played out, in proxy, by an odd couple.

Nino and Bruno (Santiago Segura, El Gran Wyoming) are like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis – a two-man comedy team. Their act is simple: fast-talking Bruno provides the chatter, until it comes time for chubby Nino to respond. Struck with perpetual stage-fright he just stares straight ahead, unable to speak. And then comes the punchline: Bruno slaps Nino’s face. That’s their shtick and it never fails to have the audience rolling in the aisles. They don’t change the act, just the silly costumes they wear. (Nino insists on always wearing the same pair of socks – never washed – for good luck.) They become stars, rich and famous, and build their homes right beside each other.

The problem? They hate each other’s guts! They are consumed with rage and jealousy, each thinking the other is more talented and more attracted to women. They concoct elaborate schemes to ruin their partners and the source of their fame and fortune. And they just might die of laughter…

A bit more supernatural, and heavier on the man vs woman theme is

A Ferpect Crime
(El Crimen Ferpecto)

Raf (Guillermo Toledo) is the best salesman at the Yeyo department store. He was actually born there, and knows every nook and cranny. He treats it like his personal fiefdom – the silk bathrobes, the lobster and champagne, and kingsize beds. Loaded with self-confidence, he can charm the pants off any woman he meets – and he’s met a lot of them. He’s always surrounded by beautiful saleswomen who want to sleep him, and men who want to be him. Raf’s life is dedicated to high aesthetic values: beauty, quality and prestige. He is opposed on principle to marriage, families and suburban living. But his job and his future are in danger when, in a scuffle after closing, his rival, Don Antonio, ends up dead.

The death is witnessed by Lourdes (Mónica Cervera) an unattractive and shy saleswoman. She’s also the only woman he refuses to sleep with on aesthetic grounds. But she’s not as dumb as she looks. After she helps him dispose of the body (she is a former butcher) he is forced to give in to her desire… maybe even marry her. The greenish ghost of Don Antonio warns Raf of her treachery. He will need a perfect crime to get rid of her once and for all… but who will win?

These themes, plus a mammoth dose of the supernatural come to a head in one of his most recent films

Witching and Bitching
(Las brujas de Zugarramurdi)

Jose and Antonio – a divorced misogynist and a dumb jock — have a perfect plan. Dressed as a silver Jesus and a green plastic soldier, they knock over a pawn shop. They grab a taxi and escape with a bag of loot – thousands of abandoned wedding rings – and the divorced man’s 10 year old son. But he is hotly pursued by his fuming ex-wife and the police tracking her. After an exciting chase the motley crew – the gangsters and the people in the cab — land up a small Basque town country named Zugarramurdi. A town run by witches, who view men as fodder for their evil spells.

It ends up as a face off between the whole panoply of male vs women: On the men’s side are the selfish boy, the sex-crazed guy, the bitter divorced man, the wary cab driver, and the clueless, detached older guy. But they are no match for three generations of witches, plus a furious ex-wife. Only the rebel biker granddaughter witch, who’d rather sleep with men than torture and eat them, provides a chink in the armour. But can they escape the world’s largest coven and the Great Satan himself?

The films of Alex de la Iglesia provide just the right balance between sex, violence and gross-outs —  and giddy laughs. They’re not for everyone, but I really like his horror-comedy combinations.

‘71
Dir: Yann Demange

It’s 1971, and Gary (Jack O’Connell: Skins, Starred Up, Unbreakable) wants to learn a skill and see the world. He hugs his little brother goodbye and sets off with the British Army for his first foreign posting. But he doesn’t get further than Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The city is in the midst of The Troubles and is divided on religious and political grounds. The IRA unionists are Catholic – they want to join the Republic to the south. The protestant loyalists want to stay within the UK. And within these groups, on both sides, there are militants (like the Provisional IRA and the Ulster Volunteers) who seem to relish the idea of killing some people on the way. So the streets of that city are divided by walls and twisting allies, punctuated by Molotov cocktails and ticking time bombs. And fresh out of boot camp is Jack’s squad, plunked down onto the mean streets on his very first day. As luck would have it – bad luck – his army buddy gets shot in the head and he sees the shooters’ faces. But he gets separated from his unit. So he’s all alone in this hellhole. He meets a guide – a tough, wee lad — who takes him in an out of windows and down deserted allies – and a father and daughter who help him hide. But both sides, and perhaps even elements of the army, want him dead. He’s seen too much.

This is a great, exciting action-thriller about a sympathetic young man who catches the brunt of horrific violence… and realizes he’s part of the forces causing all the trouble. ’71 is a war movie, but not a pro-war movie.

’71 opens today in Toronto, check your local listings, and the Álex de la Iglesia retrospective continues through March. Go to tiff.net for details. Also opening today is Harold Crook’s great documentary The Price We Pay, about off-shore banking and what it does to our economy. I interviewed him last December.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com