Macabre…ish Horror Review: Day of the Beast

The Day of the Beast aka El día de la bestia 1995/ 1 hr 45 min

A priest confesses to his long time friend that he has deciphered the code and discovered the date of the apocalypse.   But first he needs to sin as much as possible and steal books on how to invoke the devil.

Minutes after telling his friend his secret, a massive cross falls on him, killing him. And so Padre Cura aka Angel Berriatua (Álex Angulo) goes on a sinning spree, all the way to a record store, where he searches for albums with a message or signal from the devil. There he meets a friendly rock fan, José Maria (Santiago Segura) who likes his ‘taste’ in music. Who also points him in the direction to a hostel run by a woman he calls his girlfriend, Mina (Nathalie Seseña).

After a night of petty crimes and a detainment, he returns to the hostel to ask Jose Maria if he knows how to invoke the devil. But first, Padre gets to see Jose’s grandad nude, do drugs and get beaten up by his mom. Afterward it is decided that they should consult a popular tv occultist, Cavan (Armando de Razza).

They follow the man home and kidnap and torture him with education and violence, to the extent that he confesses to be a sham but Padre demands his help anyway.

Violent and hilarious hijinks ensues until they finally get to the long awaited invocation. But not so fast, they still need to almost die because of Jose’s hard acid trip and cross paths with a murderous gang on a killing spree before they get to save the world.

This is a Spanish comedy horror and it’s good, good pacing and graphic effects. This is not a gore fest but there is a lot of violence in this. Once it get’s going, this movie is pretty relentless to the end all while being somehow endearing and ridiculous. Very entertaining.