La cabina

I share a similar experience to many of the other posters regarding this short movie.

Late at night, over twenty years ago, flipping channels. I'm not a big fan of foreign language films but sometimes a rare gem comes along that never leaves you.

Despite having no real dialogue, you understand everything that is happening and you can follow the story from it's innocent beginnings to it's dark ending.

I have largely forgotten many of the details of this film, but it is the overall effect that stays with you long after the movie has finished.

I think the phone box was originally in a plaza and I remember the lorry ride with the hapless man on display in the over-sized 'fish bowl' for all to see.

One of those gems that rarely gets shown again. Definitely a contender for BBC FOUR to broadcast. Especially given it's short running time and provoking nature.

I think I'll email them!

There's little I can add to the other comments on the film. Like others, I saw it as a child and never got over it. I spent countless hours fruitlessly trawling google for a film called "man in a glass booth". Finally after a tip-off from the only other person I know who'd seen it, I found it on YouTube. It brought it all back in the short 30-odd wobbly minutes it lasts, and reminded me that this bizarre childhood experience is central to my love of film now.

I am convinced this was shown on more than one occasion by the BBC. The range of dates and ages given by other reviewers is too broad to be down to error (you *know* how old you were when you saw La Cabina). I saw it in the early 80s, but definitely later than 1980. Maybe it was a stock film the Beeb held in case they needed to fill in late night when the schedules ran awry.

OK it's dated a little, but not enough to detract from the effect. Which is profound.

But if you've read this far you've probably already seen it. If so *please log in and vote on this title*. The reviews have made me realise how valuable IMDb is. If you've any new views on interpretation, I think we'd all like to hear them. The mean score for La Cabina is so high it would rank in the top 100 on here if only it had enough votes. So give something back, create an account and vote on La Cabina and be part of the IMDb process. We might even finally get this "little dirty gem" the attention it deserves!

When I was a child I played outside. I was happy. I did not know about life. I skipped school. I looked at the stars. I was innocent. I loved purely the girl I saw across the street. I was happy. I like films that move me. 'Soft' films like Field of dreams. I'm not a critic. I like happy endings. This is not a film I would have chosen to watch. I tuned in to this once by accident when I was young. It has never left me. I'm not happy I watched it. It changed me. It stole my childhood. I would not have missed it for the world. To this day I speak of it. No one I know has ever seen it. I always wondered if I imagined it. Having seen IMDb I now know it was real. Now I have worse fears. Was this really a film or a message sent to just a few to warn us. A warning. A WARNING. I would have missed it for the world. Oh God.

Horror is often associated with Gothic imagery . Think of how many classic horror films have thunder storms sweeping over bleak desolate moorland and there in the middle of the frame lies a foreboding castle . But often banal everyday objects can be used for instruments of horror . Classic DOCTOR WHO was very good at this and one of my earliest memories was watching the story Terror Of The Autons where a child's doll came alive and tried to attack the Doctor's companion Jo Grant. The Pertwee era was full of this type of imagery where the banal suddenly became dangerous . It continues today and 35 years from now middle aged people will say they are instinctively frightened to look away from statues

LA CABINA follows this type of trend . Spain has a rich history of morbid cinema and perhaps this 1972 horror short is the closest the country came to having an equivalent of DOCTOR WHO . Everyone knows what a phone box is and before everyone had a mobile phone we all used a public phone box which were dotted around cities , towns and villages. No one gave them much thought and after seeing this LA CABINA you'll never look at a phone box in the same way again as the story starts off in a everyday manner and becomes more and more terrifying as an unnamed man finds himself trapped in one

Earlier tonight I saw a documentary by Mark Gatiss where he stated Spainish horror didn't confront its fascist past until Guillermo Del Toroarrived on the scene but I disagree . You don't have to read between the lines very much to realise LA CABINA is a statement on fascism . The trapped man could be a marrano converso or a leftist or any other undesirable living in a fascist regime . It's interesting too that the man's fate takes place for the most part in public and one wonders what excuses would be offered by the witnesses ? " I didn't hear anything , I didn't see anything , I didn't know what was going on " . It's also co-written by Jose Luis Garci whose later work often used the transition from Francoism to democracy as a theme

That said if anyone watched this as I did on Channel 4 sometime in the late 1980s the political subtext would be quickly forgotten by the audience but the gloomy ,doom laden ending wouldn't . I'd even forgotten what the title and I'm glad I've found out " The Spanish film about the man trapped in the telephone box " is called LA CABINA

The last film I watched before "La Cabina" was a thriller named "The Boat", and it was based on a successful short film. The short was amazing and tense, the full-feature film was mediocre. There aren't any links with this Spanish short film, except that "La Cabina" further proofs that short films are ideal for telling experimental horror/thriller ideas with a minimum of characters and terrifying themes that can afford themselves to remain largely unexplained. I certainly hope nobody will ever come up with the bright plan to remake "La Cabina" into a full-length film. Changes are slim, though, since it's already half a century old. And no, Joel Shumacher's "Phone Booth" starring Colin Farrell is not a remake.

Another bizarre little hobby of mine is pro-actively seeking out, here on IMDb mainly, movies from the 60s or 70s that left an everlasting impact on people during their childhood. In their user-comments, almost exclusively rated 10/10, you can read how they watched a certain movie on late-night television, and how it remained printed in their memories ever since. Or how a particular movie sparked their passion for the horror genre, or even cinema in general. Of course, I cannot share the same sentiments as these lovely people, since I often never even heard about the titles before, but I can always understand why these films are considered as personal favorites or milestones. Quite often this concerns made-for-TV movies, as the early 70s brought forward an immense load of life-altering and genuinely petrifying tales.

"La Cabina" is such a movie that changed the lives of many, and - admittedly - it's fantastic. It's an abstract and experimental short film from Spain. It can get compared to the very best episodes of "The Twilight Zone", maybe, but even then... The tone and especially the climax is a lot darker and more disturbing than anything that ever featured in TZ. Simple but effective, the plot of "La Cabina" revolves around a middle-aged man who tries out a newly installed phone booth in a little park and gets trapped inside. Bystanders, handymen, or even the police can't get him out of his little prison. Most people don't even try to help, though, as they only gather around to observe the spectacle and laugh. This particular detail makes "La Cabina" also a cynic but confronting satire. People just want to watch other people's misery. The ordeal for the trapped man even gets worse when the manufacturers of the booth come to pick him up for a humiliating drive across the city, and then still the worst is yet to come...

Modest but near-brilliant little slice of Kafkaesque TV-thriller, thriving entirely on unsettling atmosphere, the petrified grimaces of lead actor José Luis Lopéz Vázquez, and the knowledge the ending will be brute and merciless. I can only wish I watched it as a child in the early 70s.