Severin Films offers up yet another masterclass on genre cinema.
This was totally by coincidence, the one film I HAD to see at Tribeca was a Severin produced doc on one of my favorite genre directors Andy Milligan, and the first thing I decided to click on to view on the virtual edition of the Chattanooga Film Festival was yet another Severin produced doc directed by Alberto Sedano – Exorcismo: The Transgressive Legacy of Clasificada ‘S’. Which I originally clicked on first – because it was a doc, and second – it had some bonkers artwork (See above) – which is how you sometimes have to pick things when doing a virtual festival. The description, honestly for this one just didn’t do it justice because little did I know, I was about to be taken to school yet again by my favorite boutique label.
This is because Severin is content simply releasing niche films from forgotten corners, but also producing docs such as this – that delivers the context to properly enjoy and discover them, allowing their fans to follow along with the label down these esoteric rabbit holes together. While this no doubt encourages sales, I feel like these forays come from a better place than simply late-stage capitalism.
While the film does tackle this S Classification as promised – which were films that contained sexual, violent or political content, and how they came to be in Spanish cinema after relaxed censorship laws. This ability to show things previously forbidden was primarily due to the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. While the film’s title and description would lead you to believe it was more about the ‘What’, I was more curious about the ‘Why’- and thankfully the doc doesn’t shy away from the fascinating deep dive into Spanish history to explain just that. Having already fallen down this rabbit hole of Spanish Genre film history thanks to Eloy De La Iglesia’s Quinqui (pronounced ‘kinky’) films I was already a bit deep in the weeds and looking for the kind of clarity this doc offers.
I recall one frustrating night of bouncing from one Wikipedia post to another trying to really understand, just what would push and influence Eloy de la Iglesia (Cannibal Man, No One Heard The Scream), to craft some of the most graphic juvenile delinquent films you will ever see.
With a vibe akin to Woodlands Dark And Days Bewitched, Exorcismo powers through a dense masterclass of Spanish socio/political history to deconstruct how once censorship was laxed, it created a raging thirst for this unfettered content. This in turn influenced its genre film output — this is broken down in informative sound bites with talking head interviews with the likes of Gaspar Noé, Shelagh Rowan-Legg and Álex de la Iglesia. Narration on the doc is by Iggy Pop, whose gravely and weary vocals add an interesting weight to the information unfolding on screen. The film offers nothing short of a semester’s worth of Spanish film history, that leaves the viewer with a better comprehension of the history and market that fueled these graphic and sometimes extreme cinematic forays, while also suggesting titles for those that have yet to travel this path.
While I feel like I have a better grasp of the film’s subject matter than I ever had before, I feel like I really HAVE to see this film again to really soak it all in. Like All the Haunts the film hits on an almost academic level with its exploration of Spanish genre cinema and the history behind it. ItItss something I appreciate as a cinephile, to have that history and context curated in such a way that it’s much easier to digest and understand. While this isn’t going to be for the more casual genre fans, I think it will definitely help those like myself better understand some of these works and the environments that helped forge them. Severin is simply out there killing it with this work and it’s something that needs to be done sooner rather than later before the people who experienced these even’t can no longer tell those stories.
I feel like a broken record, but if Spanish horror is your jam, you NEED to see this doc and unlock that whole new level of context and understanding that is just waiting for you.
