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Las horas del día (2003)
Anything or nothing
Rosales' odd film could mean anything or it could mean nothing. It could be the ultra-clinical study of a sociopath - and there are clues throughout that Abel is utterly unable to empathise with anyone. But then not every sociopath is a random killer, and vice versa.
The mundane conversations that make up 95% of the film could hint at something greater, or they could just be... well, mundane, as 95% of real life is.
My only interpretation is that Abel's first victim (a woman) represents, to him, all the strong females in his life with whom he's invariably weak and feckless. The second, the old man at the train station, represents Abel himself. He overhears the man's daughter lamenting him for 'never doing anything any more' and 'wanting her old dad back' - very similar comments to those that Abel's girlfriend makes before they split up. Thus Abel, in killing the man, is ultimately trying to purge his own pathetic existence.
But all this is semi-philosophical film-school analysis, and Hours of the Day simply resists it. It's a tough film to get through not for its brief bouts of shocking (yet equally clinical) violence, but its total banality. And whether it's actually any good is the toughest question of all.
Death Line (1972)
Magnificently underrated oddball horror
A truly original horror film. American director Gary Sherman somehow manages to capture the sight and sounds of '70s England, including a career-best performance by Donald Pleasence (as usual, playing a goodie rather than a baddie, despite popular opinion).
Death Line somehow combines immense pathos, gruesome visceral horror, Carry On-style humour and claustrophobic terror into one package. While the perpetrators are indeed hideous, they are simply trying to survive; meanwhile, '70s London goes on about them as if they didn't exist.
Christopher Lee's cameo is pointless, clearly a marketing exercise; it's Pleasence and co-star Norman Rossington who carry the film, grounding this plausible yet outrageous tale in reality. Death Line is an oddity, to be sure, but even now, in 2002, it remains horribly horrific yet strangely homely. For all its faults, this remains a masterpiece; see it, and you'll never forget it.