Bigas Luna, the bad boy of post-Franco Spanish cinema (witness the pubic haircut of the drugged heroine in Bilbao), has been on his better behavior for the world at large (cf. the somber religious parable, Reborn). In this handsome production, he has taken over an idea from Lamberto Bava's Demons (even more so, in some ways, from the finale of Bogdanovich's Targets), of a horror film spilling off the screen into the theater showing it. This idea was not so well handled by Bava that he deserved a patent on it, and indeed Luna's Chinese-boxes plot construction is more intricate and intellectual by far, and it even accommodates some violence-against-eyeballs in obvious homage to his countryman, Luis Buñuel. Besides which, his movie-within-the-movie is much better able to stand -- and walk -- on its own. But it, along with the movie around it, stops developing and slows to a crawl once we get to the movie-within-the-movie-within-the-movie: the 1925 version of The Lost World. From that point onward, the original two movies become unimaginative mirror-images of each other. Witty ending, however, which any true film buff (i.e., diligent reader of credits while the rest of the audience files out) will appreciate warmly. With Zelda Rubenstein and Michael Lerner. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd
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