Plot Summary for
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) More at IMDbPro »El espíritu de la colmena (original title)

In Castile c.1940, a travelling movie theatre brings James Whale's b/w film classic "Frankenstein" (1931) to a village. (Admission 1 peseta for adults, 2 reales for children.) Two young girls, Isabel and Ana, determine to find the Monster. Written by Michael Crew <m.crew@bbcnc.org.uk>

In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Ana, a sensitive seven-year-old girl in a rural Spanish hamlet is traumatized after a traveling projectionist screens a print of James Whale's 1931 "Frankenstein" for the village. The youngster is profoundly disturbed by the scenes in which the monster murders the little girl and is later killed himself by the villagers. She questions her sister about the profundities of life and death and believes her older sibling when she tells her that the monster is not dead, but exists as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn. When a Loyalist soldier, a fugitive from Franco's victorious army, hides out in the barn, Ana crosses from reality into a fantasy world of her own. Written by Gabe Taverney (duke1029@aol.com)

It's 1940 in a small, stark Castillian village. The Spanish Civil War has just ended and Franco has assumed dictatorship of the country. The war had a profound effect on beekeeper and amateur mycologist Fernando, his younger wife Teresa and their two adolescent daughters Isabel and Ana. Teresa longs to be with a soldier she met during the war and she still tries to correspond with him. As such, their family life is cold and emotionally distant, especially between husband and wife. One day, Isabel and Ana, who are not only sisters but best friends, go to watch the movie Frankenstein (1931), which is the latest movie to arrive in town as part of a traveling movie show. The movie leaves a lasting impression on seven year old Ana, who is moved especially by the friendship between the monster and the little girl and the result of that friendship. Isabel mockingly tells her impressionable younger sister that the spirit of the monster lives close by in an abandoned one room farmhouse and that its spirit will show itself to her at night once she befriends it. Thus it becomes Ana's mission to find the monster. An encounter she has with an anti-Franco soldier in hiding may assist in her goal indirectly, but at the possible cost of her life. Written by Huggo

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